Stair na Síochána in Éirinn

le Risteárd Mac Annraoi

Coiscéim, 300 leathanaigh, €20.

Léirmheas: Máire Úna Ní Bheaglaoich

Seo stair ghluaiseacht na síochána in Éirinn ón luath-stair anuas, ó ré Chúchulainn, Cáin Adamhnáin, Foras Feasa, go dtí inniu, i 6 chaibidil. Tá sé ana-chuimsitheach, go háirithe ó 1800 amach. ‘Sé an laige is mó atá ann ná an tréimhse is déanaí,s a 20ú céad agus na dosaein grúpaí ba mhaith linn a bheith sa chúntas, mar Afri, PANA, Gluaiseacht an Phobail (people.ie), agus go háirithe sa Tuaisceart, Bishopscourt Peace Camp ’83, Peace People ’76, Veterans for Peace 2012, Women Together 1970, a bhí ag coimeád dreamanna trodacha ó chéile. Nach mór an gá a bheadh leo inniu! D’oirfeadh cuntas ar leithrigh dóibh sin, taréis an méid a d’fhulaing an pobal dúchasach. Tá liosta foilsithe ag INNATE.

Bhí páirt mhór ag mná sa streachailt ar son na síochána, Louie Bennett, Lucy Kingston, Eileen Robinson, Helen Chevenix, Rosamund Jacob. Fite fuaite leis an ngluaiseacht náisiúnta tá an iarracht frith-sclábhaíochta, an ghluaiseacht frith-choinscríofa, saoirse na ndaoine gorma, fuascailt agus cearta na mban, ag rith comhthreormhar leis. Bhí dhá chogadh ag bagairt. Chuaigh an dá chogadh ar aghaidh in ainneoin gach aon rud, sampla atá againn sa lá inniu, agus tionscal na n-arm ag ” fás” agus ag carnadh airgid.

Ní raibh Hanna Sheehy Skeffington sásta nach raibh an tacaíocht cheart dhá fháil ag mná sna gluaiseachtaí. Bhí Louie Bennett ag lorg athmhuintearais seachas cogadh cathardha ach d’ eitíodar í. “Tarraing cogadh agus bris síocháin”. Dá réiteofaí ceist cearta na mban sa domhan, ní dócha go mbeadh na cogaí chomh mí- dhaonna, mar is mná agus leanaí agus seandaoine is mó go ndeintear ár orthu.

Tír, talamh agus teaghlach is cúis le cogaí.

De réir teagasc Gandhi, tá an neamh-fhoréigean préamhaithe sa bhfírinne.

Tá léargas suimiúil anso ar na coimhlintí go léir a bhí ar siúl ag an am céanna agus an pháirt mhór a bhí ag Cuallacht na gCarad iontu. Dhiúltaíodar go hiomlán don bhforéigean. Muinín as Íosa an teagasc a bhí acu agus bhíodar seasamhach sa phrionsabal san i gcónaí. Bhí alán taistil dhá dhéanamh acu ar fuaid na hEorpa, Job Scott, Abraham Shackleton, Henry Richard, William Jones, Ennis Darby agus mórán eile. Bhí comhdháil síochána sa Bheilg, i bPáras, Frankfurt, i Londain i 1848, agus na céadta ag freastal orthu. B’shin aimsir na gorta in Éirinn. Eadrán a bhí uathu seachas troid.

Bhí Wolfe Tone diongmhálta ar son neodrachta na hÉireann i 1792, dar leis, dála Swift agus Molyneux, gurb é Sasana préamh gach oilc in Éirinn. Theastaigh uaidh an ceangal le Sasana a bhriseadh, scríobh sé billeog The Spanish War, ag cur in iúil dá seasfadh muintir na hÉireann go léir le chéile faoin ainm “Éireannach” seachas Caitliceach, Protastúnach nó Easaontóir, ba cheart don dtír a bheith neodrach, nár chóir fuil a dhortadh. B’shin í an aisling a bhí aige. I 1824 a bunaíodh an chéad chumann síochána in Éirinn. Bhí deireadh le sclábhaíocht i gcóilíní Shasana i 1834. Cuireadh Crosáid Frith-Chogaíochta ar bun in Éirinn i 1936 agus bhí teagmháil acu le War Resisters’ International agus an Peace Pledge Union. Bhí Peace News ar díol ar shráideanna Bhaile Átha Cliath.Tá an nuachtán san beo fós. Tá na “conarthaí” Eorpacha nár iarramar, ar a ndícheall ad’ iarraidh neod racht na hÉireann a chloí. Tá an fíor-scéal ar leathanach a 279. Dí-armáil domhanda atá le moladh.

Ní gá an leabhar a léamh d’aon-iarracht. Is féidir é d’oscailt ar aon leathanach agus cúntas beo bríomhar a léamh ar stair na síochána in Éirinn agus a bhuíochas san dos na laochra go léir. Bhaineas ana-shásamh agus tairbhe as an leabhar so agus as an eolas atá ann.

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[Review translated into English]

Coiscéim, 300 pages, €20.

Review: Máire Úna Ní Bheaglaoich

This is a comprehensive history of the peace movement in Ireland from early history and legends like Cúchulainn, Cáin Adamhnáin, Keating’s Foras Feasa, in 6 chapters, however beginning mainly in the 1800s. The weak point is the scant coverage of contemporary peace movements of the 20th century, groups like Afri, PANA ,People’s Movement (people.ie), and especially those in Northern Ireland, Bishopscourt Peace Camp ’83, Peace People ’76, Veterans for Peace 2012, Women Together ’71 who endeavoured to keep rival gangs apart. I wonder how they would fare today? INNATE has catalogued many of these groups and they would warrant a separate booklet perhaps.

Women had a large part in the struggle for peace. Louie Bennett, Lucy Kingston, Eileen Robinson, Helen Chevenix, Rosamund Jacobs and others. While the struggle was going on in Ireland, there were other parallel groups like the anti-slavery, anti-conscription, freedom for people of colour, and the emancipation of women. Two world wars were threatening. The two wars happened despite protests,and we have echoes of that today. The weapons industry is feeding the frenzy in its race for profit. Hanna Sheehy Skeffington was not impressed with some groupings for not supporting women. Louie Bennett was looking for reconciliation and peace rather than civil war but she didn’t get much of a hearing, “Make war and smash peace”. If women’s rights were a priority, wars would not be so bloody, because the victims are usually women and children and the elderly.

Earth, land and home are the excuses for war.

According to Gandhi, non-violence is rooted in truth.

This book gives us an insight into all the conflicts that were happening in Europe, and the important part that the Society of Friends (Quakers) played in their total opposition to violence. They were steadfast in that principle. There were a lot of travels to and from European countries by people like Job Scott, Abraham Shackleton, Henry Richard, William Jones, Ennis Darby and many others. Peace conferences took place in Belgium, Paris, Frankfurt, London 1848, attended by hundreds.

Wolfe Tone advocated neutrality in 1792; in common with Swift and Molyneux, he regarded England as the root of all evil in Ireland. Tone wished to break the connection with England. In his pamphlet The Spanish War, he advocated that all Irish people stand together as Irish people, rather that Catholic,Protestant or Dissenter, for Ireland to be neutral and not take part in bloodshed. That was his dream. The first peace conference was held in Ireland in 1824. Slavery was ended in the British colonies in 1834. The Anti-War Crusade was founded in Ireland in 1936 and contact was made with War Resisters’ International and Peace Pledge Union, and the Peace News paper was sold on Dublin streets. That newspaper is still going strong.

The European “treaties” that were foisted on us, are trying to wreck our neutrality and “progressively increase our military capacity “. The account is on page 279. Global disarmament is what is needed. No need to read this in one go, you can dip in and out, and every short chapter reveals a very interesting and lively story. I found it a very pleasant read and the second reading can be more revealing.

– – – – – –

Is abolishing war possible?

Introduction

While we may or may not see the origins of war in the USA in terms as black and white as those below, the following thought-provoking short piece asks important questions about the circularity of the Military Industrial Complex there – and elsewhere. – Ed.

By Robert C Koehler (Transcend Media Service)

If we can end, let us say . . . slavery — the legal “ownership” of other human beings — can’t we also end other great social wrongs? Can’t we also end war?

As I ask this question, I am suddenly bludgeoned by an unexpected irony, since the United States ended slavery through a brutal war, with a death toll of perhaps three quarters of a million people.

But it was worth it, right?

Well, that’s what history tells us. It has essentially “made peace” with the war and now celebrates the moral objectives of the winning side, with all its carnage forever reduced to a statistical abstraction.

The topic of this column is the abolition of war — the urgent necessity of doing so — so, how odd it feels to begin by referencing a “good” war, which ended an enormous wrong . . . or at least forced the wrong to morph into a different, less legally blatant form of racism known as Jim Crow. (And when Jim Crow was defeated by the nonviolent civil rights movement a hundred years later, the nation’s racism morphed into such things as the “war on drugs” and an expanding prison-industrial complex.)

In any case, the Civil War — or at least its reduction to the simplicity of good vs. evil —is the manifestation of war’s staying power and principal talking point: War is always necessary, damnit! Both sides think so, and the winner is the one who gets to write the history. At least that’s the way it used to work.

In my lifetime, things have changed significantly, at least from the point of view of the United States, the world’s primary military power (at least for now). While war is bloodier and more devastating than it’s ever been, it no longer has much to do with winning and losing — at least from the U.S. point of view, which has basically “lost” (whatever that means) every war it has started since the Vietnam era. And that hasn’t seemed to matter. Winning isn’t really the point anymore, at least from the point of view of the moneyed interests of war. What matters is waging it — that is to say, what matters is keeping the profits flowing.

Or to put it more politely: What matters is keeping the sanctity of war alive and well.

Indeed, I’m reminded of George H.W. Bush’s comment in 1991, after the success of the first U.S. Gulf War.

“It’s a proud day for the USA,” Bush declared. “And, by God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam Syndrome once and for all.”

That is to say, the US public’s antiwar cynicism after Vietnam was now just more wreckage to be found on the Highway of Death. War is good again in the US! We no longer have to be content simply arming contras and fighting proxy wars. We can get back to the real deal. The Military Industrial Complex, which was born in the wake of World War II, has returned, front and center.

And that’s where we’re at today. As David Vine and Theresa Arriola write:

“Those two forces, the military and the industrial, united with Congress to form an unholy ‘Iron Triangle.’ . . . To this day those three have remained the heart of the MIC, locked in a self-perpetuating cycle of legalized corruption (that also features all too many illegalities).

“The basic system works like this: First, Congress takes exorbitant sums of money from us taxpayers every year and gives it to the Pentagon. Second, the Pentagon, at Congress’s direction, turns huge chunks of that money over to weapons makers and other corporations via all too lucrative contracts, gifting them tens of billions of dollars in profits. Third, those contractors then use a portion of the profits to lobby Congress for yet more Pentagon contracts, which Congress is generally thrilled to provide, perpetuating a seemingly endless cycle.”

This is the secret context of war — at least US war. The context is hidden behind the enormously effective public relations of war, whose headline slogans over the past few decades have mutated from “war on terror” and “axis of evil” to “Israel has a right to defend itself” — turning thousands and, ultimately, millions of deaths (deaths of civilians, deaths of children) into abstractions: collateral damage. We had no choice.

Knowing the illusions hiding behind the heroism and glory of war — the grotesque profits for some, the horrific toll taken on so many others — is crucial to establishing the urgency of its abolition. And then there’s the cost on the environment: how war poisons our ecosystems; how it murders the planet’s biodiversity; how it diverts our focus (financial and otherwise) from putting our money and energy into saving the planet, to making planetary destruction our primary effort.

And beyond all this, waging war requires the ever-presence in our national minds of . . . yeah, an enemy. War simplifies conflict, which is always inevitable and could be constructive, and turns it into “us vs. them.” And since nations spend so much money and effort preparing for war, they are always predisposed to turn conflict into the wrong kind of opportunity: an opportunity to define and kill an enemy. And step one is always this: dehumanize the enemy. That makes the killing of the bad guy (and all the collateral civilians who are in the way) totally fine, totally necessary.

And when we grow accustomed to the dehumanization of others — the refusal to listen, to acknowledge they have a point of view, let alone a soul — we simplify and diminish ourselves, essentially turning ourselves into our imagined enemy. And thus we’re always living in fear because war always comes home: Enemies always retaliate. Or their children grow up and retaliate.

So was the Civil War a “good” war, a necessary war? Ending slavery was certainly absolutely necessary, just as never creating it in the first place was necessary . . . but happened anyway.

The only lesson I can draw is that we’re not going to succeed at abolishing war unless we first succeed at transcending our exploitative interests. What does this mean in today’s world? Let the conversation begin.

– Taken from Peace Media Service https://www.transcend.org/tms/2024/06/is-abolishing-war-possible/