Remembering Felicia Mary Browne (18 February 1904 – 25 August 1936) The only British woman combatant and volunteer to be killed in Spain defending democracy and fighting fascism.

 

Black and white photograph of Felicia Browne holding a child ([c.1936])

Felicia Mary Browne was an English artist , painter,  sculptor and Communist who  was the only British woman combatant and  volunteer to die in the Spanish Civil War , when  she  was killed in action  at  Aragon  on  25 August 1936.  

Felicia was born at Weston Green, Thames Ditton, Surrey, on 18 February 1904. Her family were middle class but her father, had progressive political ideas, and encouraged his daughter in her early artistic endeavors. Felicia had an older brother, called Harold, who was named after their father, and who died out in France in 1918 during the 1st World War. She also had two older sisters, Helen, and Edith, and a younger brother called Billy, who also tragically died fighting in the Spanish Civil War, two years later than Felicia, who after joining  the International Brigades in February 1938  lost his life in Aragón in the following month..  

Felica  studied at the St John's Wood Art School and the Slade School of Art between 1920–21 and 1927–28 and was awarded the Certificate in Drawing. Arriving at the Slade at the unusually young age of 16, she was a contemporary of William Coldstream, Henry Tonks, Clive Branson, Claude Rogers and Nan Youngman. 

In 1928 she went to Berlin, to study metal work and Sculptureat a state technical training facility in Charlottenburg, Berlin (she spoke several languages very well, In 1929. She became an apprentice to a stone mason whilst there, and witnessed the rise of fascism first-hand  and became politically active and dedicated much of her time to encouraging working women to fight for better conditions. She also actively participated in anti-fascist activities and was involved in anti-Nazi street-fighting. 

Having joined the Artists International Association, Felicia visited the Soviet Union in 1931,to see how people lived and worked under a communist regime. She also went to Hungary and Czechoslovakia, sketching the townscapes and the local people there.. She spoke at many meetings on her experiences in the Soviet Union on her return in  the early 1930’s where she continued to study at Goldsmiths College and the Central School of Arts and Crafts and contributed art to The Left Review. 

She donated her personal fortune to refugees, and, in a subsequent period of privation, took employment in a restaurant kitchen. Her ability to speak four languages eased her travels through some of the most remote parts of Europe.”  

In 1933 Felicia joined the Communist Party of Great Britain, attracting the interest of M15 and Special Branch. Whilst she was a patient at Guy’s Hospital, she distributed leaflets and attempted to convert some of the nurses to communism. As a result, a watch was established on her postal mail, and it became clear that her home, in Bessborough Gardens and then Guilford Street, London, were being used as cover addresses for foreign mail being sent to Communists in Britain.  

 In 1934 Felicia won a prize for her design of a medal for the Trades Union Congress, which commemorated the 100th anniversary of the Tolpuddle Martyrs. Ironically, some of the future recipients of this medal, also turned out to be Communists. 

Felica's involvement in the Spanish Civil War was not directly planned. While many of the other fighters had to travel from Britain in secret after the British government declared it illegal to go to Spain to fight, Browne had, in fact, arrived just before the war  broke out,. In July 1936 Browne embarked on a driving holiday to France and Spain, accompanied by her friend Dr. Edith Bone, who was a left-wing photographer. Bone went on to become heavily involved with the establishment of the Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia, (PSUC) in Barcelona. 

Their objective was to reach Barcelona in time to  attend the International  People's Olympiad, which had been organized as protest against the 1936 Olympics that were being held in Hitler's Berlin, however just  two days before the  the event’s scheduled date, on July 17, 1936, the fascist military rose up against the Spanish republic, and the Spanish Civil War began. Felicia  and Edith were immediately caught up in the violence that engulfed Barcelona.  and as Athletes either fled or were stranded; Browne decided to stay and fight.

The  Spanish Civil War had began after generals Emilio Mola and Francisco Franco instigated a coup aimed at overthrowing the country's democratically elected republic.At first, the efforts by Nationalist rebels to fire up military revolts throughout Spain succeeded only partially. In rural areas with a pro right-wing political allegiance, Franco's confederates generally succeeded, seizing political power and imposing martial law. In urban areas, particularly cities with leftist political traditions, such as Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Bilbao and Málaga, the revolts met with fierce opposition and were repulsed.

The Nationalists on one side were mostly composed of the military, large landowners, businessmen and the Roman Catholic church. The Republicans on the other side were urban workers, most agricultural labourers, the intelligentsia and the educated middle class. The two sides were partly composed of members from opposite extremes of the political spectrum, such as the fascist-oriented Falangists and the militant anarchists. 

The conflict pitted the leftist Republican government against fascist-backed Nationalists led by General Francisco Franco. With Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini already in power in Germany and Italy, anti-fascists around the world feared that Spain would be the next to fall, threatening the future of European democracy. When world powers like the United States and the United Kingdom refused to intervene in the Spanish Civil War, more than 35,000 anti-fascist volunteers poured into Spain from 52 countries to take up arms against the Nationalists. They included Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, idealist intellectuals like a young George Orwell and communists  like Felicia  committed to crushing an ideological enemy. 

At the same time as the Spanish Civil War was raging, Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists was gaining strength in Britain, marching and holding meetings in predominantly Jewish areas. In 1936, a clash between Mosley’s blackshirts and anti-fascist demonstrators in London’s East End – what was to become known as the Battle of Cable Street – spurred many people to scrutinise what was happening in mainland Europe. Fighting in Spain was seen by many as the only way to stop fascism spreading further across Europe, They saw in Spain the risk of allowing fascism to spread unchecked. For them, joining the struggle was about stopping that advance, which is reflected in many of the popular calls to action that echoed throughout the Spanish Civil War: “No pasarán” (They shall not pass), “This far and no further” and “If you tolerate this, then your children will be next.”

The foreign volunteers who fought in the “International Brigades” of the Spanish Civil War hoped to ward off the coming nightmare of Franco’s brutal dicatorship and, in turn, arrest the insidious spread of fascism across the rest of Europe.   

 “The Spanish Civil War looked like it could be the moment when fascism was finally thrown back,” says Richard Baxell, an historian and author of Unlikely Warriors: The Extraordinary Story of the Britons Who Fought in the Spanish Civil War. “There was this feeling that perhaps people could go out armed with just a gun and political conviction and do their bit alongside the Spanish people to defeat fascism at last.”  The foreign volunteers who fought in the “International Brigades” of the Spanish Civil War hoped to ward off the coming nightmare of Franco’s brutal dicatorship and, in turn, arrest the insidious spread of fascism across the rest of Europe. Sadly  it didn’t work out that way.

Browne learned of a mission to blow up a fascist munitions train and boldly volunteered for it. However, the Communist party attempted to dissuade her participation. She defied the orders and went to the party offices, where she demanded to be enlisted to fight on the Saragossa front. According to the Daily Express correspondent Sydney Smith, she declared that "I am a member of the London Communists and I can fight as well as any man."  embodying the fearless determination with which many women travelled into the warzone with a readiness to lay down their lives. 

A desire for equality of the sexes underpinned the ideologies of many women volunteers. While a number claimed to have no political inclination or reason for entering the conflict beyond religion or humanitarianism, those that did were often also fuelled by the feminist sentiments spreading across the continents at that time. 

One of many female volunteers to fight – there were mixed-gender Spanish combat battalions on the front line and women-only rear guard battalions – Felicia  was the only known British woman.The Spanish Civil War was one of the first wars where women were allowed to participate in combat, which further cemented the Republic’s view of women as equals. 

Drawing by Felicia Brown of a Republican militia (1936)

Felicia Brown sketches

On 3 August 1936, Felicia  successfully enlisted in the PSUC (Catalan Communist) Karl Marx militia to fight in Aragon. Shortly after joining she wrote to her friend Elizabeth Watson in England, describing her desperation to get involved; "Apparently no chance of aviation school on account of my eyesight, God damn it."  

James Hopkins, the author of Into the Heart of the Fire: The British in the Spanish Civil War (1998) describes Felicia’s mission and tells how she met her death on 25 August 1936:  

 "A German comrade on the raid, George Brinkman, has left a fascinating typewritten report, describing their mission. According to Brinkman, the pudgy, bespectacled Browne was forced to clear a final gender hurdle before being allowed to accompany the raiding party. She went to its leader and asked if he would accept a woman comrade as a volunteer. After attempting to intimidate Browne by telling her of the dangers that awaited them, and failing, he accepted her as one of the ten who would attempt the hazardous mission. They left Tardienta by car and travelled to the farthest point of the front, where they disembarked walked about twelve kilometres to the rail line. Browne and two others were told to keep watch and signal if there was trouble. The remaining seven moved close to the tracks. They set the charges with only thirty seconds remaining before the train passed." 

"On their way back, the group stumbled upon a macabre scene, a crashed plane with the remains of the pilot in the cockpit. As they hurriedly buried the dead man, a dog suddenly appeared, and with him an oppressive sense of danger. Brinkman moved quickly up a steep incline where he saw thirty-five or forty enemy soldiers nearby. He signaled to the rest to take cover. To re-join them, Brinkman had to run through heavy rifle fire. An Italian volunteer beside him fell with a bullet through his foot. Brinkman made him as comfortable as possible under the desperate circumstances and then ran to the others for help. Browne insisted on returning with first aid for the wounded man. When she reached him, the enemy concentrated its fire on the two of them, killing her with bullet wounds to her chest and back.”   

 As Angela Jackson pointed out in British Women and the Spanish Civil War (2002): "Her story has all the ingredients essential to heroic legend, the willing sacrifice of her life to save that of a comrade."

Browne's body could not be recovered, and had to be left there, but her comrades retrieved a sketchbook from her possessions, filled with drawings of her fellow soldiers, these stoic men and women all having been captured in Browne’s lyrical, romantic modernist style.

In her obituary in the Artists International Association journal it said:  “She had it in her to represent the very best type of the new woman, but the kind of upbringing to which she was automatically subjected  to, and the forces with which she had to compete in a society where commercial values are preeminent, seriously and unnecessarily delayed her in harmonizing all the remarkable powers within her”. 

  “She had most of the best human characteristics, but she conceived her own variety more as a source of opposition than of enjoyment. She was without guile, duplicity or vanity; painfully truthful and honest, immensely kind and generous, completely humane, loving any aspect of livingness, and as capable of enormous humour as she was deeply serious. She was gifted at every craft that she tried, a witty letter-writer, an amusing cartoonist, a vital and interesting companion, and socially much too gracious to belong credibly to the twentieth century." 

  “But if her fighting was the expression of her deeply conscientious but less happy side, at least she had intellectual faith in the future. And she found happiness at the end, as far as one can judge from her letters, in a real sense of comradeship with her fellow militiamen. Intellectually she was quite clear about what was necessary for the next few years other life.”  

Felicia Mary Browne's  friend and colleague Nan Youngman, who was much affected by Felicia's death, organized a memorial exhibition for Browne in October 1936.

The  Spanish Civil War was one of the greatest  idealistic causes of the first half of the twentieth century, Of the roughly 40,000  selfless3 foreign volunteers who fought in the Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1939, an estimated 5,000 to 6,000 were killed and thousands more were recorded as missing. They paid the ultimate sacrifice for their ideals, 

Most of those who  fought in Spain  were men with left wing sympathies, motivated by the Europe-wide threat of fascism. British writers like George Orwell, WH Auden and Laurie Lee were just three of the men whose work now better informs our understanding of the war and British participation in it. Felica's story in contrast, is far less well known, but through her sketches and drawings, she documented her own experiences, as an unofficial war artist .

While some historians view the International Brigades as naive idealists or expendable pawns for the communist regime in the USSR, but  at the time  they showed the Spanish Republic and people around the world that Spain was not fighting fascism alone, Given what was going on in the world, that was a powerful message.

In her farewell address to what remained of the beleaguered International Brigades in 1938, the Spanish Republican leader Dolores Ibarruri, known as “La Pasionaria,” praised the foreign volunteers:  “Communists, Socialists, Anarchists, Republicans—men of different colors, differing ideology, antagonistic religions, yet all profoundly loving liberty and justice, they came and offered themselves to us unconditionally… You are history. You are legend. You are the heroic example of democracy's solidarity and universality.”

Sadly Franco , with help from Hitler and Mussolini, overpowered the Republicans, Franco mounted a major attack against Catalonia in January 1939, which proved a decisive moment because Barcelona, the region’s capital, was unable to fend off the superior power of the Nationalists. On March 28, 1939, the Nationalists triumphantly entered Madrid, leaving the Republicans little option but to raise the white flag over the city, bringing to an end the bloody threeyear struggle. Franco ruled as a dictator until his death in 1975.

Even in death Felicia Mary Browne  continued to help the cause she died for: Her  drawings made their way to Tom Wintringham, a journalist for the Daily Worker, who suggested to Harry Pollitt that they be sold by the Artists' International Association (AIA) to raise money for Spanish relief campaigns. The AIA presented Browne as being the epitome of an artist choosing to take direct political action. 

“If painting or sculpture were more valid or urgent to me than the earthquake which is happening in the revolution,” she once told a friend who questioned why she didn’t simply concentrate on her art, “if these two were reconciled so that the demands of the one didn’t conflict … with the demands of the other, I should paint or make sculpture.”  

Felicia Mary Browne 's collection of drawings, prints, book designs, sketchbooks and correspondence were purchased by the Tate in 2010 and have  since thankfully  been fully digitalised. Now, with the Tate archive , we can at last get a fuller picture of the only known British woman to give her life to the Spanish civil war. Here is a link to the collection:

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/archive/tga-201023/drawings-and-papers-of-felicia-browne

 The spectre of fascism still haunts and universal equality has not been achieved. We should not forget the likes  of Felicia Mary Browne and the other internatinalist  brigade  volunteers  who preceded us  who  gave their  lifes so selflesssly,, and we must continue to resist oppressive , fascist forces, with whatever  way  is  at our  disposale,.

Felicia Browne: Unofficial War Artist : Animating the Archives

The  following film uncovers the work and untimely death of Felicia Browne, an  event that reverberates through the work of artist Sonia Boue, here reflecting on the significance of British volunteers, like Browne, who helped republican exiles like her father.

co

Felicia Browne) is celebrated here in this evocative song composed by Patrick Dexter. 

The Road to Barcelona (Felicia Browne) 

Words and music by Patrick Dexter 

Vocal by Eilís Dexter

Oh the sweet sound of the guitar

Play on comrade, play on! 

Let the music flow like this cheap wine in my cup

while I sit here in my reverie

Every strum draws my mind back

to that journey we took together 

We packed the car and set off 

on the boat to France

Passion and ideas were our potion  

We sipped fine wine,

You and I 

As Eagles soared way up high 

The snow capped mountains in our rearview mirror. 

In café’s, through cobbled streets 

We shared our passions and our dreams 

Oh how I miss that sweet aroma 

On the Road to Barcelona   

Seized upon our chance 

Became volunteers at last war for us,

hell to those who doubt our gender 

My dearest friend Felicity you always had one up on me

Debating the world’s changes that were stirring 

“Anything is possible” you kept declaring 

You were going to change the world miss Brown 

Through vineyards and sweet smelling flower fields 

As we drove through sunshine with the rooftop down  

We sipped fine wine, 

You and I As Eagles soared way up high

The snow capped mountains in our rearview mirror. 

In café’s, through cobbled streets 

We shared our passions and our dreams 

Oh how I miss that sweet aroma 

Of the Road to Barcelona  

Now I am old I drink bad wine here all alone 

My thoughts a drift in this muddy river 

But what good is sweet reverie 

When you are gone, all is left is this memory 

I long to be back again the times we had there my dear friend 

But with the wind in our hair our ideals took over 

You died for your beliefs, a martyr for your dreams

all I can do now is sit here and remember  

Sipping wine, as Eagles fly

high above the snow capped mountains 

The Basque sunrise in our rearview mirror.

In café’s on cobbled streets

sharing our passions and our dreams 

Oh how I miss that sweet aroma 

On the Road to Barcelona   

And I miss you dear Felicity

and the time we had 

On the Road to Barcelona

Sources :

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/releases/2004/may21/soviet_org.htm

CPGB archives

http://www.international-brigades.org.uk/british_volunteers/militia.htm

Marking the anniversary of the death of the revolutionary leader, Michael Collins (16 October 1890 – 22 August 1922)

On 22 August 1922, the most idolised and arguably most controversial leader in modern Irish history, Irish  republican  and  revolutionary leader  Michael Collins, was killed in a sudden ambush. The  son of a tenant farmer,he  was born on 16 October 1890 in Sam’s Cross, West Cork. the youngest of eight children . Collins   or “the big fellow” as he was nicknamed, had what by most accounts  a happy childhood. Educated at Lisavaird and Clonakilty national schools, young Michael was precocious and intelligent, and while there were some early influences that piqued his interest in Irish nationalism, it was, ironically, his move to London when he was 15,  in 1906 ,joining his sister Hannie Collins (1879-1971) that lit the flame of Irish republicanism within him.

He was subsequently employed by a firm of stockbrokers in the City of London, and finally as a clerk in a post office, a position that gave the young and energetic Collins the organisational skills he would eventually draw upon to change the course of history. Like many Irish in London to this day, he played Gaelic football  and he was involved in the Gaelic Athletic Association, a hobby that led him to rub shoulders with figures from the clandestine Irish Republican Brotherhood. 

He  was sworn into the Irish Republican (or Fenian) Brotherhood (IRB) in 1909 by his fellow post office worker Sam Maguire, and went on to become treasurer of the IRB for London and South England.. On April 25th 1914, Collins cousin Sean Hurley enrolled him into the No. 1 company of the London Irish Volunteers. 

Upon hearing of the planned Easter Rising, Collins returned to Dublin in  January  1916  to take part in the first and most significant armed conflict of the revolutionary period. He fought alongside other household names, including Patrick Pearse, James Connolly, and other members of the Rising top brass. The insurgents held their positions for the minimum time required to justify a claim to independence under international criteria, and so viewed it as a strategic win.

While the insurrection was put down after only six days, with the  bulk of the leadership, and ninety men in total, sentenced to death .The executions turned the tide of Irish public opinion greatly against the British state,

 Like the other ring leaders, Collins was arrested by plain clothes officers, or “G-men” from the Dublin Metropolitan Police and incarcerated. His arrest after the rebellion led to him being identified as a person who should be treated harshly, with the possibility of execution—but by a pure stroke of luck, he was accidentally transferred to Frongoch prison in North Wales.Famously dubbed the 'University of Revolution', the internment camp at Frongoch was the location where the IRA was formed and where s  ignificant figures in the subsequent War of Independence, , trained internees in the tactics of guerrilla warfare. Here, while resented by some for his thrusting, still callow assertiveness, and his involvement in establishing an IRB circle in the camp, Collins began to emerge as one of the better-known figures in his revolutionary generation He  remained as a Prisoner of War for several months before his release.

Michael Collins masterminded Eamon DeValera’s own escape from England’s Lincoln Prison, allowing DeValera to become Ireland’s first ‘Prime Minister’. Had the rebel not been accidentally transferred, Irish history would be very different indeed.

Shortly after his release in late 1916, Collins was appointed secretary of the Irish National Aid and Volunteer Dependants Fund. He became a member (and, it seems, President in 1919) of the reconstituted Supreme Council of the IRB. He was narrowly elected to the Sinn Féin executive in September 1917. He was appointed adjutant general of the reorganised Irish Volunteers (later known as the IRA). At the 1918 general election he was elected for Cork South. In April 1919, Collins was appointed Minister for Finance, and threw his remarkable organising energies into the organisation of the Dáil loan. By mid-year, he had also commandeered the position of IRA director of intelligence. His network of informants reached into Dublin Castle, giving the IRA an important advantage.

Collins, who contrived to remain at large, was centrally involved in the putting together of the “Squad”, whose initial purpose was to kill a number of plain-clothes detectives in the G division of the Dublin Military Police. The intention was to achieve an escalation of the conflict, to terrorise others within the Dublin Castle system, and to provoke a repressive response from the British authorities. The strategy achieved its culmination on “Bloody Sunday”, 21 November 1920, when a dozen special branch detectives were killed in their homes, prompting a massive backlash. It relied on after-events to give a vestige of credibility to Collins’ insistence that the IRA’s “organized and bold guerrilla warfare” was in self-defence.  In what became known as the War of Independence, Collins was a superlative organiser rather than a commander in the field. Capable of utter ruthlessness, he sought to calibrate the deployment of violence in the attainment of a defined political end. Few revolutionaries were so alert to public opinion. Though apt to pose as primarily a fighter, he was a highly gifted and exuberantly charismatic politician. 

After the truce of July 1921, Collins reluctantly participated in peace talks led by Arthur Griffith. These negotiations resulted in the Anglo-Irish Treaty, which granted Ireland Dominion status within the British Commonwealth. Collins was one of the plenipotentiaries in the Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiations. Conscious that the IRA was not in a position to withstand a full-scale British military onslaught, Collins came down on the side of the treaty, signed on 6 December 1921. He and Arthur Griffith (1872-1922), who called him “the man who won the war”, were the Treaty’s principal proponents.

However, the treaty divided the Republican movement, leading to a bitter dispute between those who accepted it, led by Collins, and those who rejected it, including Eamon de Valera. The acceptance of the treaty led to the outbreak of the Irish Civil War in 1922. Collins and Griffith worked tirelessly to enforce the treaty, but they faced opposition from armed Republicans who saw it as a betrayal. In June 1922, Collins resorted to force against the opposition, sparking a civil war that ended in May 1923. 

 Collins became chairman of the Provisional Government, and remained Minister for Finance. His various endeavours to avert military hostilities with the Treaty’s opponents, which exasperated Griffith, were unsuccessful. He and Richard Mulcahy (1886-1971) directed the military operations of the hastily constituted Irish Army.

On 12 July 1922, he made himself Commander-in-chief, the last of the extraordinary sequence of overlapping positions he was to hold. Sacrifices, alliances, and betrayals unimaginable weeks ago were routine in the new bloodbath of brother against brother. Despite these dangers, Collins believed he wasn't a credible target for Anti-Treaty Irregulars. especially in his native Cork.

 He set off to inspect military installations in that beautiful, wild corner of the country.  Perhaps he confused his hopes of reconciliation and renewal with the desires of the new domestic enemy.When the National Army Commandant Joe Sweeney  warned against the tour, Collins replied, ''No one is going to shoot me in my county.'  

On  the morning,  of 22 August 1922, Collins' open-top car and a small armoured motorcade with 15 men began their fateful drive from Cork City through West Cork. On their way, he also hoped to parley with anti-Treaty IRA volunteers. His whistle-stop route was to take them through Macroom, Bandon, Clonakilty, Rosscarbery, and Skibbereen.  Collins makes a pit-stop at Long's pub, "The Diamond," looking for directions. It is here where Denny 'the Dane' Long, a lookout for anti-treaty leader Tom Hales, spotted the Big Fella. His travel plans to return through the crossroads area of Béal na mBláth were communicated back to base, and the trap was set.  Around 7:45pm, Collins' cars return through the village of Béal na mBláth and into the jaws of the enemy. But the Anti-Treaty lads would not have it all their own way. The convoy was late, so many of the IRA columns had already dispersed from the hiding places. They had even begun to dismantle and move land mines they'd installed at the choke point road. However, the main obstruction, a dray cart blocking the path, was still on site. 

 Free State commander Dalton wanted to try and barge through the ambush, but Collins vaingloriously insisted they stay and fight. When the assassin's guns speak, they roar for almost half an hour.  Collins and his guards left the open-top car and ran for cover at a ditch on the roadside, returning fire. Collins then broke this position and got behind one of his armoured where he began returning fire this time with his Lee Enfield rifle.

The armoured car was equipped with a Vickers machine gun, which started to riddle the anti-treaty position before promptly breaking down and jamming due to a badly loaded ammunition belt. Collins broke cover again, and it would be from this final position in the middle of the road that he would become the only real casualty of the ambush. 

Collins  is  struck by a bullet in the head  and dies instantly. just ten days after the death of Arthur Griffith.  Whose bullet was it? Most historians believe it was fired by Denis "Sonny" O'Neill. He had been an officer in the Royal Irish Constabulary and a sniper during WW1 in the British Army before joining the IRA in 1918. But it's not certain.

Collins was brought back to his hometown, through road blockages and muddy fields, and at times carried by members of his convoy. His body was eventually laid to rest in City Hall by Dublin Castle. 

Collins lay in state for three days. Tens of thousands of mourners filed past his coffin to pay their respects, including many British soldiers departing Ireland who had fought against him. His funeral mass took place at Dublin's St Mary's Pro-Cathedral where a number of foreign and Irish dignitaries were in attendance. Some 500,000 people attended his funeral, almost one-fifth of the country's population at that time. His remains rest in Glasnevin Cemetery. His final resting place is the most visited grave  with flowers placed there daily by people from around the world.

His death at age 31 in an ambush on a country road deprived Ireland of a charismatic leader and changed the course of Irish history. His immense myth in contemporary Ireland continues to radiate beyond the remote valley not far from his birthplace in which he met his death  and  regularly emerges top of various popular polls to select the Irish public’s favourite figure from their history. Collins’s enduring popularity owes much to the circumstances which allow him to be portrayed as the handsome and youthful leader struck down in his prime.

Over a century after his death, he is a lightning rod for controversy, with his very name sparking a debate whenever politically minded Irishmen get together. Unlike other Irish historical figures who have largely receded into the past, his life and death remain subjects of fascination on a national scale, with radio and television documentaries, ficionalised dramatisations, and even multimedia spectacles dedicated to the scrutiny of his brief life and tragic death. Moreover, at least twenty biographies and biographical portraits, the majority of which have appeared in the twenty-first century, along with three dozen Collins-themed topical monographs, have debated his life and legacy, often highlighting the still-mysterious – and probably never to be conclusively resolved – questions about what transpired on his fateful last day. 

Rumours have circulated widely since the 1920s, with little support from scholars, about the alleged involvement in Collins’s death of Ireland’s most notable politician, Eamon de Valera, leader of Ireland for more than twenty years, including serving sixteen years as Taoiseach of Ireland. He and Collins were strong republicans and close comrades ever since the Easter Rising of 1916 who worked closely together until the Irish Civil War of 1922-23 set them against each other as the leaders of opposing factions. One established historian and strong partisan of Collins who believes that “Dev” was actually his diabolical enemy is T. Ryle Dwyer, though he stops short in Michael Collins and the Civil War (2012) of finding him guilty of any direct involvement in Collins’s death. Nonetheless, Dwyer leaves the reader with the impression that de Valera was a rival who envied Collins’s mystique and charismatic appeal – and who certainly could have harboured motives to eliminate him once the civil war began, whereupon “General Collins” assumed command of the opposing pro-Treaty forces. 

Revised and updated in light of emergent scholarship in 2016, Tim Pat Coogan’s The Man Who Made Ireland: The Life and Death of Michael Collins, which after three decades in print still stands as the best biography in an estimable field, is also severe in its overall assessment of de Valera’s relationship to Collins, accusing him of “vindictiveness and pettiness”, though he firmly rejects the idea that de Valera played any role in the ambush  Coogan’s judgments are rendered especially authoritative in view of the fact that he has also authored another stellar full-length biography, Eamon de Valera: The Man Who Was Ireland, where he writes that to “assert his ascendancy over colleagues […] and secure dominance over Collins in particular” became one of de Valera’s top three political goals during the war years, along with “keep[ing] control over the Irish Americans” and “taking over the reins of the peace process and work[ing] himself into a favourable negotiating position with the British” 

Like other biographers, Coogan notes that Collins risked his life to spring de Valera from a London prison and then braved even greater perils during strict curfews to make weekly visits to Dev’s family during the latter’s eighteen-month absence to the U.S. during the Anglo-Irish War (1919-21), which the Irish typically refer to as the War of Independence.

Neil Jordan’s epic film Michael Collins (1996) depicts the life and death of one of Ireland’s most important revolutionary leaders at the beginning of the 20th century. Opening with the Easter Week rebellion of 1916, the film highlights Collins new strategies for securing the independence of Ireland, his signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in December 1921 and the ensuing Civil War which was to cost him his life.

Despite his relatively short political career, Collins remains a highly respected and revered figure , his journey from a remote Irish village to the heart of the struggle against British rule renowned for his relentless dedication to securing Ireland's independence from the British Empire. showcases the indomitable spirit of a man who left an indelible mark on Irish history and his life  is a testament to the unwavering spirit of those who fought for Ireland's independence. His legacy endures as a revolutionary leader known for his realism, efficiency, vision, and humanity. 

An annual commemoration ceremony takes place each year in August at the ambush site at Béal na Bláth, County Cork, organised by The Béal na mBláth Commemoration Committee.There is also a remembrance ceremony at Collins' grave in Glasnevin Cemetery on the anniversary of his death every year. 

Michael Collins  House museum in Clonakilty, Cork is a museum dedicated to Michael Collins and the history of Irish Independence.Situated in a restored Georgian House on Emmet Square, where Collins once lived, the museum, tells the life story of Collins through guided tours, interactive displays, audiovisuals and historical artefacts.

Collins’s death in the ambush will be marked on Sunday when Fine Gael leader Simon Harris becomes only the third serving taoiseach after Enda Kenny and Micheál Martin to give the oration at the monument near where Collins was fatally wounded on August 22nd, 1922. 

 A statue of Michael Collins now  stands in Cork city, the scene of one of his most famous public orations. The near lifesize statue depicts Collins standing alongside a bicycle, a nostalgic nod to a photograph of him taken with a Pierce bicycle in Wexford in 1922. The statue is a reminder of the time when Collins used to cycle around Dublin despite there being a bounty on his head. 

 Sculptor Kevin Holland was commissioned to create the new statue. The piece is being described as a “monument for the people, from the people” funded through a crowd-funding scheme spearheaded by the Michael Collins 100 committee.

"Give us the future, we've had enough of your past. Give us back our country, to live in, to grow in, to love." - Michael Collins.

Written by teenage rebel Brendan Behan, the   following well-known Irish song “The Laughing Boy” was penned in memory of another iconic rebel, Michael Collins. But this song also had an extraordinary and dramatic afterlife as “To Yelasto Paidi,” the powerful left-wing anthem of resistance against the dictatorship that ruled Greece in the late Sixties and early Seventies. Translated by the poet Vassilis Rotas, Behan’s words in Greek were set to music by the legendary Mikis Theodorakis.

The laughing boy - Brendan Behan 

't was on an* August morning, all in the morning hours

 I went to take the warming air all in the month of flowers 

And there I saw a maiden and heard her mournful cry:

 Oh, what will mend my broken heart? I've lost my laughing boy! 

 So strong, so wild, so brave he was, I'll mourn his loss too sore 

when thinking that we'll hear the laugh or springing step no more

 Ah, curse the time, and sad the loss my heart to crucify,

 that an Irish son with a rebel gun shot down my laughing boy! 

 Oh, had he died by Pearse's side or in the G.P.O.**

 killed by an English bullet from the rifle of the foe,

 or forcibly fed while Ashe lay dead in the dungeons of Mountjoy, 

I'd have cried with pride at the way he died, my own dear laughing boy. 

My pristine love, can ageless love do more than tell to you:

Go raibh míle maith agat*** for all you tried to do 

For all you did and would have done my enemies to destroy 

I'll prize your name and guard your fame, my own dear laughing boy!

 Béal na Bláth  where a simple Celtic Cross marks the spot where the course of Irish was changed forever.

Respite

Pain is inevitable 

Especialy  when  disfunctional

But  we can  all  resist 

The  struggle  can  be won 

Sometimes  lost we  can find hope 

In  magic  moments pulsating

Discover  calming  thoughts

laughter  to  overcome  madness

The  comfort of  friendship

To  destroy  the sadness 

The  milk  of  human  kindness 

Beautiful  souls flowering 

liftng  inner consciousness

You can  punch and kick  me

But I'll  always refuse to surrender

Amongst periods of  exhaustion

With the power of  dreams

The calming balm of  music

Peace  always keeps  returning

Allows me to dance beyond constraints

Sorrows branches firmly abandoned 

Insecurity released, no longer dictates

Danger  will  always hover among darkness

But with steadfastness  can be beaten back.

No parasan to fascism in all its forms

 

The violence that has afflicted many UK towns and cities over the weekend has left the country appalled, with mobs steered by hatred committing violent acts against people of colour. Violence first flared after three girls – Alice Dasilva Aguiar, nine, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven and Bebe King, six – were  shockingly  stabbed to death at a Taylor Swift-themed summer holiday camp in Southport.

 After the northern English town in mourning held a peaceful vigil, a group of far-right agitators ran riot in scenes that have been repeated for a week. Conspiracy theorists were quick to float the idea that the Southport attacker was Muslim and a migrant.  Neither is true of his identity. The suspect has been named as 17-year-old Axel Rudakubana. Suspects below 18 have automatic anonymity, but judges decided to identify Rudakubana, in part to stop the spread of false information.  He is a British national born in Wales, reportedly to Christian parents from Rwanda. Despite attempts to debunk the provocateurs, it was too late. The damage had already been done  as hate  filled riots and Islamophobic attacks spread across the country, fuelled by disinformation online..

A range of far-right factions and individuals targeted mosques, Muslim-owned businesses and hotels housing asylum seekers in London, Liverpool, Leeds, Bristol, Manchester, Sunderland, Stoke-on-Trent,  Blackpool, Rotherham, Hartlepool, Aldershot, Middlesbrough, Belfast and Hull.  Rioters mobilised support through Telegram channels and WhatsApp groups with slogans such as “enough is enough”, “save our kids”, and calling to “stop the boats”, an anti-migrant slogan touted by the Conservative government.

The images of people attacking and setting fires to hotels housing refugees. men, women and children who’ve fled horrific violence like torture – are proof that divisive rhetoric inspires hateful acts. This violence is a direct result of years of divisive politics, scapegoating, demonisation and dehumanisation. 

As far-right mobs threaten mosques, intimidate and harass people, and throw Nazi salutes, we  must  offer our utmost solidarity to people of colour, and Muslim communities in particular. These riots are not about protecting children.What is happening in the streets of our country are not protests. There can be never be "justified concerns" that cause people to attack minorities and places of worship.  Let's call them what they are: Far right race riots.  and  are a racist outpouring from a vile underbelly in British society  that are currently terrorising Britain’s streets and  must be stopped.

Imagine being the parents of one of these killed kids, not only grieving but also having to deal with your kids death being hijacked and turned into nationwide far right riots   The people who encouraged this need jailing,  the  likes  of Nigel  Farage and Tommy Robinson  who couldn't care less about those poor children. They  simply stoke hatred for their  own political ends. They are a danger to the security of this country  and are a disgrace. Literally the most far right figureheads we’ve seen since  Adolf Hitler  and  Oswald Moseley.

There’s little doubt that social media   has plaed a significant role in stoking tensions. However, the threat of the far right is not new, and many of their views entered the political mainstream long before the domination of social media. 

What's happening in England   can  also be linked to Gaza.  When Arabs and Muslims are being murdered on a live feed for 10 months, with British bombs, and called "terrorists" because they don't like having a colony of European Zionists on their land, then this emboldens far righ rcists to behave like thugs and attack any Arab or Muslim they see. After all they are simply mimicking the violence of the state and the media. As anti-war and pro-Palestinian protests have been the focus of hateful anti-Muslim comments in British media and politics since the start of the Gaza war, many believe that the long-standing rhetoric has set the stage for the rise in hate.

Even in their responses to this violence, our Prime Minister and Home Secretary fail to centre Muslim people, or call out racism for what it is. What we are seeing unfold is more than ‘thuggery’, it is violent racism  and  islamphobia. 

Police have emphasised that these riots over this weekend were significantly more violent than any mass gathering in recent years. These recent riots, in the words of one police constable, were “about trying to frighten communities, damage property and attack police officers,” not promote any unified or specific cause.

.Far-right violence hasn’t come out of nowhere.  It is the result of anti-migrant rhetoric from mainstream politicians who scapegoat refugees.. Islamophobia  nurtured and made mainstream by the media, mainstream politicians and commentators. It is sad that things like this are   so normalised. The far right have no place in this society ! No immigrant has taken your job. You were laid off by a capitalist who required cheap labor and took advantage of that immigrant to increase his profits, and nothing makes him happier than to hear you blame the immigrant and not him. 

Defeating the far right doesn’t stop with ending the violent riots on the streets, the politics that inspired them must be beaten too. We beat the far-right and the race riots by finally tackling a quadruple of evils: racism (especially Islamophobia), the demonisation of immigrants, poverty and inequality.These acts of violence and hate have no place in our society.  

The full force of the law" is not what's going to stop emboldening fascists and reactionaries  What will is a public discourse that stops mainstreaming their politics through increasingly less subtle dog whistle and pretending they represent "the people" We  must  encourage everyone to stand against racism and discrimination and support efforts to build a fair and just world for all. 

It is hard to believe that  all  this could happen in our country in 2024 – but it is a reminder of the scale of prejudice that exists in our country still, and that we must continue to stand against the emerging Far-Right threats. The media needs to stop giving them airtime. Hate needs de-normalising.It is pure poison and infiltrates everything. It seeps into daily life and damages everything it touches.  Politicians and Brexiteers ruined the UK not refugees  or  asylum  seekers. 

There are reports that over 30 locations will be targeted tomorrow evening and groups including Stand up to Racism are organising counter-protests to protect cultural insitutitions and our diverse communities. 

Stop the far right events in your area – Stand against the fascists and say refugees are welcome here.Unity is our strength, and we must  stand firm against those that aim to pit different communities against each other. We are the many, they are the tiny minority. No parasan to fascism in all its forms. https://standuptoracism.org.uk/

In Celebration of Lughnasadh / Lammas

Lughnasadh (“LOO-nuh-sah” or “LOO-nah-sahd.”) The pronunciation can vary slightly based on regional accents)  or  Lammas is the first harvest festival of the wheel of the year  and this cross quarter holiday  is one of the Greater Sabbats (the others are Samhain, Imbolc, and Beltane).  For Wiccans it’s when the God begins to lose his strength and the Goddess mourns his coming passing, which occurs at Samhain. It is also time of both hope and fear. At Lughnasad, modern Wiccans face their fears, concentrate on developing their own abilities, and take steps to protect themselves and their homes.

Lughnasad   falls halfway between Litha (the summer solstice) and the Mabon (the autumn equinox). This year, the holiday falls on August 1, 2024 in the Northern hemisphere and on February 1, 2024 in the Southern hemisphere.

 Lammas is also rooted in Christian tradition, emerging from the Anglo-Saxon era in England. The name itself derives from the Old English words “hlaf,” meaning loaf, and “mas,” meaning mass.As the name implies, it is a feast of thanksgiving for the first  fruits of the corn.The sun has shone upon the crops all season, Rituals of Lammas are centred around seeing the fruits of our labours unfold as we wished. Our hard work has paid off and we can relax now before the preparations for next year begin. Time to chill out, break bread and share our spoils. 

Thoughts of transformation, death and rebirth are also part of Lugnnasadh ,Pagans  also give thanks for the bountiful harvest – honey, fruit, corn – as they realise that the days are growing shorter, and these nutrients will  providet the  sustenance that were needed   for people to survive the coming winter  that  will  soon  return

Bread is very symbolic to Lammas as the barley is now being harvested, with bread, symbolizing the first fruits of the harvest.and so friends and family  gather and break bread together, sharing what we have for every-one’s benefit, and acknowledging our blessings and good fortune The festival  was traditionally marked by baking bread from the first grain harvest and bringing these loaves to the church to be blessed. Lammas is historically observed by various Christian communities, and the rituals involve not only the breaking and blessing of bread but also prayers for a fruitful harvest season. 

Many people choose to celebrate Lammas as an “eat, drink and be merry” festival, focussing on the excitement and gratitude of first harvest – revelling in the fruits of labour now being rewarded and celebrating the bountiful land around us. 

Others prefer to commemorate Lammas by focussing on “sacrifice” – in that something has to give in to make way for something else – the sun has given his strength to the land to create the fruits of the harvest, and the very fruits of the harvest themselves will have to wither and die in order to bring forth seeds for next year’s crops.

Unlike Lammas, Lughnasadh is deeply intertwined with ancient Celtic mythology and cultural practices. It is named after the Celtic god Lugh, known for his skills and crafts. According to lore, the festival commemorates the funeral games Lugh hosted for his foster mother Tailtiu, who died of exhaustion after clearing the lands of Ireland for agriculture.  Lughnasadh festivals which lasted from 15 July until 15 August.  is traditionally a time for community gatherings that included athletic contests, storytelling, matchmaking, and ritual ceremonies. It was not just about the agricultural harvest but also about celebrating skills and craftsmanship, reflecting the attributes of the god Lugh himself. 

Today, Lughnasadh continues to be observed by practitioners of Celtic based pagan paths, Wiccans, and other nature-based spiritual traditions. It is a time to celebrate the abundance of the harvest, express gratitude for the gifts of the land, and honour the cycles of nature and the changing seasons.

As summer reaches its peak and the fields bear the fruits of labour, many cultures around the world come together to celebrate the bountiful harvest. Among these celebrations, Lughnasadh stands out as a significant festival that honours the first harvest of the year. Lughnasadh is steeped in traditions that connect people to the land and the cycles of nature. 

 Lughnasadh  is a festival rich in symbolism, reflecting the cycles of life and the interconnectedness of humanity and the natural world. it is a celebration of the Earth's fertility and the abundance it provides. It reminds us to be grateful for the sustenance we receive and to recognize the interconnectedness of all living beings.and is a time for people to come together, reinforcing the bonds of community, emphasizing the importance of supporting one another and  offers us an opportunity to reconnect with the cycles of nature and express gratitude for the Earth's abundant gifts. By honouring the first harvest and celebrating the interconnectedness of all living beings, we can find meaning and inspiration in this timeless celebration. 

The focus on community and the mythological roots of the festival give Lughnasadh a distinct cultural and spiritual flavor, celebrating more than just the harvest—it’s about the endurance and spirit of  community. We can  acknowledge that resistance keeps us alive, helps us struggle against injustice, maintain our boundaries, and live in the world. And yet, for a time, we simply let  Earth hold us. 

In addition to celebrating and expressing our thanks to Mother Earth for her gifts, we take time now to contemplate our own personal harvest. We contemplate what we set out to achieve when we set our intentions at the beginning of the wheel’s cycle, and what  we have succeeded in. 

This is also a time for letting go of anger, injustice and past regrets, preparing ourselves to move forward and plant our own new seeds. Whatever which way  you  decide to  celebrate this day,  may blessings fall  on you and on your house,

A Poem for Lammas

We harvest the seed and the grain from the soil.
And transformation now surrounds us,
There is joy among the chaos, roses as well as bread
Lets share our rewards and bless the earth,
Release sparkles of thankfulness
With our smiles spread a glint of hope,
Let our spirits belong to the world
Move forward  together light and bold,
As summer recedes and winter draws near
Hold on to any chance that breaks,
Bless the departed the newly arrived
Let black clouds of hate drift on by,
In the noisy confusion of life
Keep gratitude within our souls.

After the Rain

Soul  awakens

Beyond  dark nights 

A sweet beginning returns

Echoes of magnificance

From falling stars

The comfort of love

Sails on  down

Delivering mercy

Dissolving  tears

Allowing trysts return

Branches of  forgiveness

The welcoming  balms 

Of diffusion

Gloriously

Unbounded

Miraculously

Restoring 

Inner faith

Cancelling

Wild hallucinations

Mexican adventires

Dizzying distortions

Constant confusion

Swirling again 

In  certitude

Passionate 

Committment

Familiarity

Swimming

Transforming

Mindfulness

Focusing 

Renewing

Embacing

Cultivating

Pulsating

Seeds 

Pixelating

Thoughtfulness

Merciless

Reasoning

Freedom

Comforting

Passion 

Enduring

Arising

Healing 

Soothing

Rainbows

Circling

Delivering

Gias

Enduring 

Light

Never forget nor forgive the murder of Carlo Giuliani

 

20 Jul 2001 Carlo Giuliani, a 23-year-old Italian  working  class history student and activist, was shot in the face  at  point  blank  range and run over by police during protests against thet 2001 G8 summit in Genoa, in  Genoa  while  defending  his  community.

Making his the first death during an anti-globalization demonstration since the movement's rise from the 1999 Seattle WTO protests  and the student became icon for the left, who saw his murder as a state execution.

In the weeks before the summit, public demonstrations and leafleting were banned, and downtown residents had to pass through security checks daily. Italy also withdrew from the European Union’s Open Border Treaty, arresting and blacklisting many activists trying to enter the country. Authorities raided political squats, conducted “sweeps” of immigrants in Genoa, transported hundreds of inmates to make room for protestors, and declared that 200 extra body bags were ordered.

To protect the meeting of the G8 economic  powers which comprises of the heads of state of the most powerful nations in the world: Germany, Canada, the United States, France, Japan, Italy, Russia, and the United Kingdom. who  convene yearly to coordinate global economic policy, discuss geopolitical concerns, and pose for photos from the nuisance of interruption, Italian police deployed 14-foot high barricades of iron and concrete, bolted to the streets and walls of downtown Genoa. They dubbed the area inside the fences the “Red Zone.” Eighteen thousand Carabinieri (Italian paramilitary police), and unknown numbers of Guardia de Finanza, military, and foreign secret service were enlisted to ensure that no demonstrators breached the zone. 

 On July 19th, 50,000 people flooded the streets to demand the recognition of immigrant rights. The march was sponsored by the Genoa Social Forum (GSF), the main umbrella group organizing the weekend’s demonstrations. The event was colorful, spirited, and joyful.  Everyone present respected the immigrants’ wishes that tranquility be maintained to ensure police had no excuse to make arrests. Police still drove close by in armored personnel carriers, decked out in riot gear, and brandishing the latest in crowd control weaponry. Demonstrators exercised tactical self-control, and the march concluded as a grand success. 

On July 20th 2001 there was a palpable tension in the air of the historic port city of Genova in Northern Italy. July 20th was the “Day of Direct Action” against the G8. Clusters of protestors set out to either disrupt business as usual in Genoa, or attempt to breach the Red Zone itself  in  a  show  of  defiance. Pacifists, Greens, and others formed non-violent blockades just outside of the Red Zone. Meanwhile, the disruptive communist group Ya Basta, unionists, and the international Black Bloc separately tried to enter the Red Zone. As each group neared the Red Zone, they were beaten back by clubs, tear gas, and water cannons. Riot police unloaded hundreds of rounds of tear gas on demonstrators of all stripes, and appeared to be randomly charging and beating protestors, bystanders and journalists alike.  Consequently, street fights and rioting erupted all over the downtown area. From nearly all points of the city, plumes of smoke from burning cars, banks, and dumpsters were visible, and the sting of tear gas lay thick in the air.

Carlo Giuliani was one of the rebels in the crowd that day who fought back when the Italian and International police forces violently cracked down on the Global resistance movement. Eyewitness accounts by residents of Genova described the scene as a war zone and detailed how the military and police units savagely attacked anyone who was on the streets indiscriminately,  launching themselves at demonstrators, truncheons flying.  

One young man on his way to the beach was beaten to the ground by riot police in a cloud of tear gas. Old women and shopkeepers were attacked on their city streets just for being there. This was the New World Order showing its most ugly and violent of faces to send a signal to those of us who believe that another world is possible!, as George Bush, Silvio Berlusconi, Tony Blair and the others smirked over fine wines and a fancy lunch. 

Carlo Giuliani was young and idealistic and happy to add his voice and muscle to the growing international movement for a world that values human dignity and the integrity of our natural environment over corporate profits and capitalist plunder. His father Giuliano was a leader of the communist trade Union CGIL and he came from a family rooted in struggle for the rights of working people with a deep respect for real democracy and humanity,  and  was raised with knowledge of Gramsci, Marx, Malatesta, Sacco and Vanzetti.  

Photographs showed Giuliani,  23-years-old and  living in  a   squat in Genoa, throwing a fire extinguisher towards the van, a pistol firing a shot in return from the van, and Giuliani's body having been run over by the van, then saw police attacking people who went to his aid.

Charges against the officer were initially dropped without trial as a judge ruled that the ricocheted bullet was fired in self-defense, but the incident became a point of public scrutiny. Eight years after the incident, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the Italian forces had acted within their limits, but awarded damages for the state's procedural handling of the case. Appeals upheld the ruling, and Giuliani's family later filed a civil suit. 

Carlo Giuliani was  not the only victim that day. There was a well coordinated, systematic and full fledged attack led by the Italian police forces to repress this demonstration at all costs. Later that evening two schools that were housing activists  from  the Genoa Social Forum (GSF), a coalition of activist groups that was using a local school as a convergence and media centre, and as accommodation for protesters  were raided by police forces who proceeded to torture and beat people that were sleeping on the floors. Three people were left in comas, one suffered brain damage and hundreds were injured. People reported being spat and urinated upon by the police, as well as repeatedly beaten in the G8’s first condoned use of torture, setting precedence for the terror wars in post 9-11 Afghanistan and Iraq.

The violence, however, couldn’t quash the spirit of solidarity and resistance that emerged from Genoa. That spirit continued into the following weeks, months, and years: in the campaign to free the activists who had been arrested in the raid on the GSF, and in the anti-war movement that was built following the 11 September 2001 attacks on New York and Washington that provided the pretext for the US and its allies to launch the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

There has been nothing like the anti-G8 protests in Genoa. They were a high point in the struggle for global justice. A total of half a million people participated (subtracting any overlap) in the July 19 rally for immigrant rights, the July 20 day of civil disobedience, the awesome international march of July 21, the Italian-wide demonstrations against state violence a few days later and the 250 worldwide solidarity protests. 

Besides the massive numbers, there was also an increase in militancy and self-organisation. The protests were politically more radical than previous ones. There was a strong working-class component to the revolt, tens of thousands of workers attending, many not through official trade union contingents. All these factors made the protests a major escalation and consolidation of the anti-corporate and anti-capitalist movement.

The ending of Carlo Gialiani life was largely the determining factor that angers thousands of young people around the world that were seeing themselves in the face of the twenty-three year-old fighter. 

It is true that the Italian state did everything to wipe away Giulani’s rememberance and bury the massive crackdown that was enforced in Genove those three days in July 2001, nevertheless Giuliani was memorialized in music tributes and public monuments, and is remembered as a symbol of the 2001 G8 protests. The 2002 documentary Carlo Giuliani, Boy, recounts the incident.

There were no flowers at the non-religious ceremony for Carlo Gialiani  at a cemetery in Staglieno on the outskirts of Genoa. Giuliani's coffin was adorned with green ferns and draped with an AS Roma football club flag, of whom Giuliani was an ardent supporter.

Friends carried the coffin through a 500-strong crowd of mourners who broke into a minute-long applause, some shouting Giuliani's name and shaking their fists in despair. Giuliani, Carlo's father, addressed the crowd, saying: "In his short life, Carlo has given us many things. Let us try, in Carlo's name, to be united, to refuse violence.  "Carlo taught me you shouldn't judge a person by his crumpled t-shirt, ripped trousers, body piercings or dreadlocks because under those dreadlocks may be a head which thinks, a person hungry for justice," he added in a shaking voice. "Carlo, you'll always be in our heart," one mourner shouted as the coffin was lowered into the grave.  Friends read poetry at the graveside, which was attended by around 1,000 people, including left-wing local politicians, Never forget nor forgive. Rest in peace Carlo  or  discontent.

Conflict - Carlo Giuliani

Lynched - Carlo Giuliani

Remembering Srebenica massacre 29 years on.

 29 years ago Serb forces captured the Bosnian town of Srebrenica, and carried out Europe's worst worst atrocity on European soil since the  Holocaust.Second World War. Around 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed there over several days and their bodies dumped in mass graves. It didn’t come out of nowhere: In the three years leading up to the genocide, an estimated 100,000 people were killed, 80% of whom were Bosniaks, one of three ethnic groups who called the fledgling state of Bosnia and Herzegovina home.

The Bosnian Muslims had found shelter in Srebrenica during the Bosnian War because it was supposed to be under UN protection. On 16 April 1993, one year into a civil war that began when Bosnia sought independence from Yugoslavia, the  Security Council had passed Resolution 819 requiring all parties to treat Srebenica and its surroundings as a safe area which should be free from any armed attack or any other hostile act. 

However in July 1995, General Ratko Mladić and his Serbian paramilitary units overran and captured the town,  Dutch  UN peacekeeping forces were at the time accused of  failing to do enough to prevent the massacre.The Muslim men and boys were told by the Dutch peacekeepers they would be safe and handed over to the Bosnian Serb army. They never returned. The Netherlands  has since been found  partly liable for the deaths of 300 Muslims killed in the Srebrenica massacre, The Hague appeals court upheld a decision from 2014 that ordered the Dutch state to pay compensation to the victims families. In August 2001 the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) concluded that a crime of genocide was committed in Srebrenica. Ever since, the survivors and the victims’ families have been fighting to obtain justice and recognition. 
Srebrenica  happened during a war with seemingly few rules of engagement, bitter fighting, indiscriminate shelling of cities and towns, ethnic cleansing and systematic mass rape. Essentially a territorial conflict, one in which people of difference looked back on times of peaceful coexistence, however fragile, and forward to ethnic separation, exclusion and to living apart.
When the attackers overran Srebrenica on July 11 and took peacekeepers hostage, about 25,000 Bosniaks fled to the UN base at Potocari on the city's outskirts. They sought refuge despite the scorching heat and catastrophic hygienic conditions. A day later, the attackers began to assault, rape and kill them. On July 12 and 13, girls, women and elderly refugees were loaded onto buses and driven to regions under Bosniak control. After murdering thousands of Srebrenica’s Muslims, Serbs dumped their bodies in numerous mass graves scattered throughout eastern Bosnia, in an attempt to hide the crime. Body parts are still being found in mass graves and are being put together and identified through DNA analysis. Almost 7,000 of those killed have been found and identified. Newly identified victims are buried each year on 11 July, the anniversary of the day the killing began in 1995.The remains of 14 more victims of the massacre - including a 17-year-old boy - were due to be buried at a memorial cemetery in Potocari today, just outside the town.
The remains of some 1,000 victims of the massacre in the eastern town during Bosnia's 1992-1995 war are still missing.
Bosnian Serb wartime political leader, Radovan Karadzic and his military commander Ratko Mladic were both convicted of and sentenced for genocide in Srebrenica by a special U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague. In all, the tribunal and courts in the Balkans have sentenced close to 50 Bosnian Serb wartime officials to more than 700 years in prison for the Srebrenica killings.
Bosnian Serbs, however, still celebrate Karadzic and Mladic as heroes. Some were even staging celebrations of “the 1995 liberation of Srebrenica” on the anniversary of the crime.
The Serbian Orthodox Church supported Mladic. Serbs celebrated the notorious  paramilitary commander Zeljko Raznatovic, better known as "Arkan," as a hero. Now, a quarter of a century after the slaughter of Srebrenica, most Serbian leaders and many citizens still refuse to recognize it as a genocide; streets, schools and student dorms in Serbia are named after the convicted war criminals Mladic and Karadzic; and many of the men who were directly or indirectly involved in the 1995 massacre hold key positions in the country's political and economic sphere.
In fact, Bosnian Serb political leaders have consistently prevented the country from adopting a law that would ban genocide denial, with the Serb member of Bosnia’s presidency, Milorad Dodik, even publicly describing the Srebrenica slaughter as a “fabricated myth.” 
Thousands gathered in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica today to commemorate the 29th anniversary of the massacre which comes under the shadow of the ongoing Israeli assault on Gaza, which has drawn a number of parallels from activists and commentators.  The remains of 14 more victims of the massacre - including a 17-year-old boy - were due to be buried at a memorial cemetery in Potocari on Thursday, just outside the town.

Among those taking part in the commemorations in Potocari was Palestinian journalist Motaz Azaiza, who escaped from Gaza in January along with some family members. “I want to thank the people who raised the flags of Palestine alongside the flags of Bosnia and Herzegovina. I wasn't born when all this happened in Srebrenica," the photojournalist told reporters at the ceremony.  “Since I was little, I listened to what happened here, through the news, through friends. The people here have great support from the people of Palestine and I thank you for your solidarity."  'Never again' 

A number of campaigners and politicians, including Benjamina Karic, the mayor of Sarajevo, have drawn direct comparisons between Srebrenica and Gaza.  The Bosnian genocide has also been referred to in relation to the ongoing war in Sudan, where non-Arab civilians in Darfur have been the victims of massacres perpetrated by the paramilitary. 

Today we remember the victims, survivors and those still fighting for justice.It should be studied by all today. And in solemn memory of the Srebrenica massacre, we must reflect on the tragedies that echo through history.A ghastly, tragic, murderous reminder that a genocide began while the world watched. And we did nothing. As we remember the past, we cannot ignore the heartbreaking parallels unfolding in Gaza and do nothing.

As we commemorate the 29th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide reminding us of the horrors that racism can inflict, Gaza enters its 9th month under Israeli bombardment and a new genocide unfolds. Nearly 38,000 Palestinians have been killed, mostly women and children, with another 87,000 injured.

Just as Bosnians were dehumanized and systematically killed, so too are Palestinians today. As we witness the ongoing genocide in Gaza, we must unite for peace and justice and keep talking about Palestine. History must not repeat itself.

Srebrenica: We will never forget !

Palestine : We will never give up!

Stop the genocide!

Here is a link to the official site of rememberance.:-

http://www.srebrenica.org.uk/

Remembering the life of Revolutionary French singer-songwriter and anti-militarist Gaston Mardochée Brunswick aka Montéhus (9 July 1872 –31 December 1952)

 

Gaston Mardochée Brunswick, French singer-songwriter,  revolutionary socialist  and anti-militarist  better known by his pseudonym Montéhus, was  born  on July 9, 1872 shortly  after the Paris Commune  of  1871 https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2021/03/150th-anniversary-of-paris-commune.html. . The eldest of 22 children born to a working-class Jewish family in Paris, he was the son of a Communard, and  shoemaker  named Abraham Brunschwig, and he was committed to left-wing politics throughout his life.

Montéhus was raised in a post-Commune context, which accounts for his commitment to left-wing politics. The "Revolutionary jingoist" as he liked to present himself, he was close to the "wretched of the Earth" spoken of by Eugène Pottier in L'Internationale. 

He began to sing in public at the age of 12, in 1884, a decade before the beginning of the Dreyfus Affair.Montéhus published his first song (Au camarade du 153ème) in 1897. He adopted his pseudonym then to avoid the anti-Semitism then rampant in French society (his concerts were often interrupted by racist violence). 

As he began his military service, the Dreyfus affair broke out which was  the political crisis, beginning in 1894 and continuing through 1906, in France during the Third Republic. The controversy centred on the question of the guilt or innocence of army captain Alfred Dreyfus, who had been convicted of treason for allegedly selling military secrets to the Germans in December 1894. At first the public supported the conviction; it was willing to believe in the guilt of Dreyfus, who was Jewish. Much of the early publicity surrounding the case came from anti-Semitic groups (especially the newspaper La Libre Parole, edited by Édouard Drumontan anti-Dreyfusard , nationalist and anti-Semite), to whom Dreyfus symbolized the supposed disloyalty of French Jews.

Initially a moderate socialist, he became virulently anti-militarist and libertarian in outlook close to the positions of Gustave Hervé and his newspaper La Guerre Sociale  .After a brief stint in Chalon-sur-Saône, where he was defeated in an election,the anti-militarist settled in Paris in 1902.On 5 March 1902, he is initiated into Freemasonry at ″l'Union de Belleville″ lodge in Paris.  

In the second half of the 19th century, song was central to popular culture. Books, which are expensive , are not easily accessible to proletarians  and when it has a strong political dimension, the song can be a real propaganda tool, Montéhus was one of the champions of the Red Revolt. 

Author of hundreds of songs, the best known of which, such as: Gloire au 17e ( 1907) and La Grève des Mères (1910), were taken up by revolutionary Paris. In Paris he was hired at Les Ambassadeurs, where his repertoire were often interrupted by the reactionary anti-Semites of Édouard Drumontan or by the police (because of their subversive content), and Édouard Drumontan  would  get  his men  to distribute leaflets against  "the Jewish Brunswick"  who  "belched infamies at the leaders of the French army", and provoke fights.  

The courageous singer, who had to emigrate to the concerts of the suburbs to find an audience likely to hear his vengeful verses. There, his success was resounding. The people, who admirably understood the artist's rancor for having felt the same outrages and the same disgusts, did not spare him their applause.  In the press, only one newspaper clearly defended him. It was L' Aurore , under the signature of Urbain Gohier .

Here is what Gohier wrote on February 9, 1902: An artist has emerged who devotes himself with great ardor to singing pity, fraternity, hatred of war, the suffering of the soldier, the horror of the barracks. His name is Montéhus. And after speaking out against the nationalist bands who organized a violent obstruction to prevent him from performing, Gohier continued:  Small, thin, pale, the artist sings or says these things with all his nerves. Ten years ago, the crowd applauded Le Père la Victoire , En revenant de la R'vue , and all the nonsense of nationalism. Today, it applauds Montéhus.  

A contemporary of Jean-Baptiste Clément, Eugène Pottier, Jules Jouy, Pierre Dupont and Gaston Couté, Montéhus like them used his songs as propaganda tool for socialist and anarchist dissent, with his  lively catchy songs, he  used his artistic talents to advocate for social justice and workers' rights. He became a prominent figure in the French socialist movement, using his music to spread revolutionary ideas and inspire the working class to fight for better living and working conditions.  

Montéhus was a staunch critic of the capitalist system and the inequalities it perpetuated, using his music to express solidarity with workers and call for a more just and egalitarian society. His songs often reflected the harsh realities faced by the working class, highlighting issues such as poverty, exploitation, and oppression. With his powerful lyrics and rousing melodies, Montéhus became a voice for the marginalized and downtrodden, galvanizing support for the labor movement and socialist causes. 

In addition to his musical contributions, Montéhus was also actively involved in politics, participating in protests, demonstrations, and strikes. He used his platform as a popular musician to raise awareness about social and political injustices, advocating for systemic change and challenging the status quo. .  opposing war, capitalist exploitation, prostitution, poverty, religious hypocrisy, and even income tax in his lyrics. 

He also defended the cause of women in a remarkable way.  In 1905, Montéhus created a song that caused a real scandal within French society. Anticipating the First World War by a few years, the song La grève des mères (The Mothers' Strike) was intended to be a denunciation of war, of youth serving as cannon fodder and encouraged mothers – like the Lysistratas of fertility – to no longer give sons to sacrifice to the executioners.  

This goualante will be so badly received, not by critics but by censors, that a judge will declare that La grève des mères is a pro abortion song .Montéhus will therefore appear before the courts for inciting abortion  and will be sentenced to two months in prison – a sentence later converted into a heavy fine that  he  had to pay. But the reactionaries did not stop there La grève des Mères was  banned from public performance on 5 October. 

Montéhus - La grève des mères

In 1907 he sang Gloire au 17ème which highlighted the action of soldiers from the 17th line  Infantry regiment who, having been ordered to shoot winegrowers on a demonstration of wine growers in Béziers during the winegrowers' revolt  refused to fire  and  then mutinied and fraternized with the revolters.The Revolt of the Languedoc winegrowers was a mass movement in 1907 in Languedoc and the Pyrénées-Orientales of France that was repressed by the government of Georges Clemenceau. It was caused by a serious crisis in winemaking at the start of the 20th century. The movement was also called the "paupers revolt" of the Midi.

Montéhus - Gloire au 17ème

In 1912, he wrote The song of the young guards,( Le chant des jeunes gardes ) commissioned by the  French Section of the Workers' International ( Section française de l'Internationale ouvrière, SFIO) of  which  he was  a member  for its youth movement, sung by generations of young socialists and young communists, and still considered the anthem of the National Union of Students of France (Union nationale des étudiants de France or UNEF). The French Section of the Workers' International ( Section française de l'Internationale ouvrière, SFIO) was a political party in France that was founded in 1905 and succeeded in 1969 by the modern-day Socialist Party.

Le chant des jeunes gardes (1936)

During Lenin's exile in France  from 1909 to  1912, Montéhus became friendly with him and sang at some of his gatherings.

Montéhus' pacifism  however faded when the Great War broke out (1914)  he  became a staunch supporter of  the war  effort following Gustave Hervé's turn, applauding and patriotism he joined the Sacred Union (Union Sacrée) and the fight against the German invader and became a war cabaret singer, tasked with remobilizing soldiers on leave and civilians, and fighting against defeatism, always at the rear, far from the front.He composed numerous patriotic songs, which earned him the Croix de Guerre in 1918. He  sang : 

We sing the Marseillaise 

For in these terrible days  

We leave the International 

For the final victory  

We will sing it when we return  

If this visceral patriotism was shared by many socialists, like many of them too, he returned to it after the war, when the horrors of the fighting were reported to him. Discredited among the working people for having defended what made them die in mass graves, touched by the death of several of his friends, members of his audience, he wrote one of his most famous songs, La butte rouge (to music by Georges Krier), a song which tells not, as is wrongly considered, of the fighting on the Butte Montmartre during the Commune, but rather of the fighting on the Butte de Berzieux, in the Marne.The class struggle is making a comeback: 

What she drank, good blood, this earth  

Blood of workers and blood of peasants,

Because the bandits who are the cause of wars 

Never die, we only kill the innocent  

Playing much more on the register of emotion than the rest of his repertoire, it also translates the loss of pre-war illusions, the end of lightness and the heavy character of the tragic return of History. Thus, the last verse gives: 

The red hill is its name, the baptism took place one morning 

Where all who climbed rolled into the ravine  

Today there are vineyards, grapes grow there

 But I see crosses bearing the names of friends.  

The song would  be covered by many artists, from Francis Marty to Zebda, including Yves Montand and Claude Vinci!

When he considered joining the Communist Party in 1922, as the French Communist Party did not accept Freemasons, he preferred to remain faithful to his lodge,  but Montéhus returned at the time of the Popular Front, and rejoinined the SFIO and wrote songs to mobilize workers and sing his support for the new government. At the age of 64, Montéhus was once again in the spotlight with "  Le decor va change", "Vas-Y Léon! ", "Le Cri des grévistes", "L'Espoir d' un gueux" , songs in which he supported the Popular Front and Léon Blum the first Socialist (and the first Jewish) premier of France, who presided  over the Popular Front coalition government in 1936–37.

Vas-y Léon (1936)

Silenced by Vichy,  he managed to avoid being sent to a concentration camp, but was forced to wear the yellow star until the Liberation of France. He wrote the Chant des Gaullistes in 1944. In 1947 he  was decorated  with the Legion of Honor by the President of the Council Paul Ramadier , He died almost forgotten from the  collective memory, five  years  later  supported  only  by  his  family on 31 December 1952 and was cremated at Père-Lachaise.https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2021/05/the-communards-wall-at-pere-lachaise.html where  his ashes remain.

Mireille Osmin, federal secretary of the Seine, described him as "more of a libertarian than a socialist, more of a rebel than a revolutionary." Montéhus was a reflection of the socialism of his time. Willingly republican while denouncing the bourgeois Republic, a man of deep conviction and a political pen always quick to analyze reality in the light of the class struggle and the misery in which the people were plunged, pacifist as much as patriot, nicknamed the revolutionary patriot, he was one of those artists who, placing himself in the background, sang by putting himself in the place of others and effaced himself before their work. 

The author of La grève des mères sadly remains somewhat forgotten today, despite the renewed interest in committed song, of which he was certainly one of the precursors.Despite facing censorship and persecution from the authorities, Montéhus remained steadfast in his commitment to advocating for a more equitable and just society, leaving a lasting legacy as a symbol of resistance and solidarity in French political history.

. Vote for Palestine

 

A message for anyone who thinks it’s “not worth” voting on Thursday. I  tend   to  agree .  our  democracy is  a  sham Westmonster  is broken  a total farce. but whatever we do, we're  going to end up with a new MP on Friday. Either a friend of Palestine and a friend of the people, or a friend of Israel and Keir Starmer. On July 4th,  if you actually decide  too vote, vote for pro Palestine candidates,  for  humanity.

For nearly 9 months, we have protested, campaigned, lobbied and boycotted to stop the genocide in Gaza. Despite over 37,000 Palestinians killed by Israel; the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) seeking arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister and Defence Minister alongside Hamas leaders, for crimes against humanity; and a “plausible” case of genocide under investigation by the ICJ, parliament has consistently failed to reflect widespread public support for peace and Palestinian rights.

 News from the ground in Gaza only gets more horrifying as Israel’s genocide continues, fully funded, supported, and coordinated with the US, Germany, UK's  support.

Meanwhile, in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the rest of Occupied Palestine, systematic invasions, abductions, and general violence against Palestinians continue to rise.

Now, is   the time to Prioritise Palestine at the General Electionm if your MP refused tto vote for a ceasefire in Gaza  back  in  November  when they had the opportunity to do so, they do not deserve your vote.

The same people, Labour and Tory ,who support more austerity, that literally kills thousands in this country, are the very same people who support war and the ongoing genocide in Palestine. Starmer's Labour and the Tories have continued to defend the Israeli government’s brutality and collective punishment of the Palestinians, despite massive protests demanding an end to Israeli state terror. 

Don’t march for Palestine if you’re voting for parties at the general election that enable the genocide of our brothers and sister there ,t’s not complicated.  and  don't vote for bloody dystopian genocidal liars.

Thanks  however to Damian Albarn and all the other artists using their platforms to support Palestine. When you vote on Thursday make sure it's for a candidate who does the same. Use your vote wisely folks. Vote for a immediate Ceasefire  in Gaza  and to end apartheid  and  the occupation, and for human rights and  equality for all. For real hope, real change  wherever you live. Remember  no one is free until Palestine is free.The liberation of Palestinians is essential to dismantling oppressive systems world wide. My vote will go to whoever has the strongest position on Palestine.

You can find out where your candidates stand by going  to  the  following  links :

https://palestinecampaign.eaction.org.uk/votingrecord

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https://www.foa.org.uk/campaign/prioritisepalestine