Overreach is almost always usually preceded by unthinking hubris.
I think today that An Taoiseach Leo Eric Varadkar TD has a fuller understanding of what is meant by “the nation of the townlands”.
He was clearly blindsided as the anger built around Tan Fest.
Perhaps such things were not on the curriculum at the King’s Hospital.
The expensive private school he attended in Palmerstown County Dublin.
That’s just a guess…
Anger and derision is a toxic cocktail for any politician to have to ingest.
Especially one who spends so much public money on PR and image enhancement.
I knew something was stirring yesterday morning when I was asked about my opinion on the issue by a buddy as we met at a filling station at the foot of Mount Errigal.
“What do ye reckon about this shite with the Tans in Dublin?”
The thing is I know that he is from a long line of Fine Gael voters!
A journalist buddy of mine in Scotland sent me a message on WhatsApp:
“Some righteous anger in your piece today”.
That’s because, as a child in Mayo, I heard the stories from the survivors of the Tan terror.
Anthropologists reckon that the folk memory of an atrocity is around 90 years-three generations.
My grandmother told me what she had witnessed.
So, as a child, I was in the room with that raw visceral emotional memory.
I have a hunch that she withheld what she had personally experienced at the hands of Britain’s war criminals.
I was a child and there are some things that children should not know of.
What we already know of the RIC is enough to establish that they should never be commemorated.
This is a picture of the Loughnane brothers, Patrick (29) and Harry (22).
The RIC abducted them from their farm at Shanaglish County Galway.
They were beaten and tortured.
Some of their fingers were amputated before the RIC shot both men dead.
They the two brothers had grenades detonated in their mouths.
Commemorate the force that did this?
Lest we forget…
The news last night was Tan Fest was being “deferred” brought a genuine feel-good vibe to everyone I had been on touch with here about it.
Charlie Flanagan, the Injustice Minister, had inadvertently found Ireland’s disgust reflex.
I continue to be disgusted with him and he should resign.
At times like this, the general population can wake up and realise the power that they actually have in a democratic society.
My hope today in Dún na nGall is that we should now direct that righteous anger at the new Tans.
The bankers, financiers and politicians that have constructed an atomised society where people shiver to sleep in doorways and the sick are untreated on hospital trolleys.
Our current Taoiseach doesn’t seem to have a problem with those societal atrocities.
We were, briefly, a risen people over Tan Fest.
Moreover, I hope that folk liked that feeling of power and use it again soon.
I’m sure that my grandmother would approve.
Abu!
Discover more from Phil Mac Giolla Bháin
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
I watched “The Wind That Shakes the Barley ” last night on your recommendation from the other day. Great movie, shocking story/content. I never knew about the green and tans.
But leo the liar is a dub you forgotten to mention that part, typical dub
A very moving and distressing article. It never fails to amaze and dismay when you learn of such atrocities.
Maybe your TD suffers from Alastair Johnson disease,sorry,selective memory disorder;so easily confused those two.
Liked that piece Phil,also note that those ‘folk liked those feelings of power and they use them again soon’ …might inspire that Fergus McCann feeling in more likeminded Celtic supporters to take back the reins of control of OUR beloved Club🍀.
Slainte🍺
My father, whose people came from Dublin, carried a righteous anger inside of him all his life due to the stories of the Black and Tans he had heard. He attempted to pass it and them on to my sisters and me but was given short shrift. It was the time of Cream and Hendrix so I didn’t have any space for it in my head although this didn’t stop him attempting to shoehorn them in anyway. My mother, who was Irish, would implore us not to get involved in any discussion with him about Ireland as it inevitably gave rise to this anger.
I would argue, had the IRA backed off, the growing Civil Rights movement that was happening at the time would be successful and like Selma in the States would eventually involve the world’s press.
According to him I knew nothing about the history but he seems to have been right. Some of the stories were quite grotesque and I chose not to believe them and my stomach is churning slightly as they come flooding back as I write this. (Bayonets, children, babies, running through houses, butts of guns etc. ) In more recent times, single Protestants getting large houses before families of ten and so on.
However this witness seems to back up everything he was saying.
“The Black and Tans would arrive in those lorries and run into the houses with their guns and wreck the place.
But if that was all they did then you were lucky. They were savage and vicious, they didn’t care who they hit around the place, women and children too, no one was safe. I can see them coming up the street even now.’”
https://letterpile.com/memoirs/Bridget-Maguire-was-twelve-years-old-in-1921-when-she-had-to-avoid-the-bullets-during-the-Irish-War-of-Independence
The only other thing that would set him off was Churchill and the Tories, even though he was a business man but I guess they were the ones that started it all.
If a police barracks is burned or if the barracks already occupied is not suitable, then the best house in the locality is to be commandeered, the occupants thrown into the gutter. Let them die there—the more the merrier. Should the order not be immediately obeyed, shoot and shoot with effect. If the persons approaching carry their hands in their pockets, or are in any way suspicious-looking, shoot them down. You may make mistakes occasionally and innocent persons may be shot, but that cannot be helped, and you are bound to get the right parties some time. The more you shoot, the better I will like you, and I assure you no policeman will get into trouble for shooting any man.’
The Black and Tans—brought into Ireland in 1920 to assist the armed police force, the Royal Irish Constabulary. (Mick O’Dea)
The Black and Tans—brought into Ireland in 1920 to assist the armed police force, the Royal Irish Constabulary. (Mick O’Dea)
These were the orders given in June 1920 by Lt. Col. Gerald Brice Ferguson Smyth, a one-armed veteran of the Great War and Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC).
There is talk of mass resignations after that speech which included a young Constable Jeremiah Mee.( ” The Memoirs of Constable Jeremiah Mee Ric”) who allegedly became an ally of one Michael Collins. Who knows?
However, it seems they exported their particular brand of policing elsewhere. This by a respected writer.
https://www.palestine-studies.org/jq/fulltext/78290
Good that you posted that Charlie Green. ‘Plutocracy’, if it’s still on you tube or Bitchute, is an excellent account of policing in general.
I failed to include above that the building they got round to commandeering, was the convent of the Sisters of Mercy.
To point out,Charlie Flanagan is a TD for Laois.Dublin CC voted overwhelmingly to not attend.Just in case people think this is a Dublin Tan Fest
Leo the liar is a dub you forgot to mention that
How come my reply was not put up are you Phil A dub sympathizer what happened to free speech
Oh dear…
My own experience is that Dubliners tend to be brutally honest.
Something that I tried to convey in The Squad.
Oh dear, and the rest of us irish are not is that it Phil a but real Irishmen would know that outside the West Brits we are the real honest people
Liam you want to take the huge chip off your shoulder, and while you at it buy yourself a big bottle of cop on.
Seamus your a truth hater