Ireland

Bobby Sands 30 years later
by Gianni Sartori

National liberation struggles, grassroots movements, embezzlement by the extreme right. From Ireland to Che Guevara.

 

On disturbing scenes those of Belfast and Derry in the second half of last century raids, arbitrary arrests, apartheid discrimination, extrajudicial executions and death squads. With The Diary of Bobby Sands - the story of an Irish boy (Castelvecchi ed) it fills a gap. With three authors, Silvia Calamati writer, Laurence McKeown Former prisoner and the journalist Denis O'Hearn, the revolutionary icons of the hunger strikers regain their human, historical and social scale. From the biography emerge a common proletarian condition. Young workers, often unemployed, forced to leave school in their teens, victims increasingly aware of an economic system in Ireland which was manifested in its colonial form. For them, the British government moved with the logic of annihilation. The goal, far beyond law enforcement, was to break the spirit of the prisoners. Subdue them, make them fall into line. Political and social isolation if they did not give up. No alternative for the prisoners. Capitulate or resist. Sands and others chose a form of resistance that comes from the Gaelic tradition, the hunger strike to the bitter end. The introduction of internment without a time limit in 1971, while in 1976 was withdrawn the status of political prisoners. Since then the Republicans were arrested in segregated blocks H. On October 27, 1980 began a hunger strike, that after a break in December, will resume in March 1981. Bobby Sands died on May 5. After a week, May 12, is the time of Francis Hughes. Raymond McCreesh and Patsy O'Hara died May 21. Between July and August of 1981, the same fate will befall six other prisoners.

Bobby Sands

As Jan Palach as Salvador Puig Antich

One of the three authors of the book The Diary of Bobby Sands, Laurence Mc Keown, was a prisoner in hell for sixteen years in Long Kesh. Destined to become the eleventh victim, his hunger strike stopped the seventieth day, when it was already in coma. The family agreed to do it artificially food because the British government had hinted that the prisoners' demands were accepted.
As for Jan Palach Prague (1968) and Barcelona for Salvador Puig Antich (1974), so the Catholic neighborhoods of Belfast more than usual livid with anger greeted the news of the death of Bobby Sands. The indignation was manifested in many parts of Europe and the world, from Bilbao to Beirut, from Barcelona to Rome. In Italy to protest outside the British embassy was especially the extra-parliamentary left, the "autonomous" Lotta continua per il comunismo ...
But who remembers the time her eyes at the writings and posters of the Third Position (TP), praising the example of Ireland and signed with the rune "wolf teeth". An attempt of the "new right" to appropriate the national liberation struggle of the Irish people. Some neo-fascists were arrested in house with posters, papers and books on Republican and Bobby Sands. If you do not schizophrenia, it was at least ideological confusion, since hiding in Britain were helped by elements known to the National Front fielded teams with "loyalist" Protestant-filo English, the ones that are periodically made responsible for sectarian killings (Catholics murdered as such, regardless of their political affiliation). The links between the right and the far-right British Protestant Ulster emerged dramatically in Dublin February 15, 1995 during a friendly between the national soccer in England and Ireland. The match took place between Nazi salutes, slogans against the IRA and chants against the peace agreements, throwing of objects at the Irish public and violent clashes. Budget: fifty wounded and the death of an Irish fan. It turned out that many hooligans, the British fans more frantic, they were part of the neo-Nazi organizations (in particular C18, where C stands for Combat and the number indicates the first and eighth letter of the alphabet, the initials of Adolf Hitler). Northern Ireland had reached the supporters of groups like the Ulster Volunteer Force who was photographed the celebrations with Flemish and French neo-Nazis, those of Ordre Nouveau. Recognizable because they used the so-called "Celtic cross". In reality, the symbol (referred to as "Celtic" only in recent times, not at the origin) is reminiscent of a rune (though the neo-fascist rule it out) and was used by French collaborators during World War II. In 1944, volunteers decorated the insignia of the "Flak Company, a unit of the Waffen-SS Charlemagne Division who fought to Berlin, in defense of Hitler's bunker. Perhaps it would be more correct to call it "cross circled o the France SS."
When it was adopted by the Youth Front (FDG) in the seventies, knowing full well what was the reference, came the "scolded" by Almirante. Evidently the author of "Memoirs of a gun" had caught the neo-Nazi call, and feared for his policy of politically correct double-breasted. Nothing to do anyway with the true Celtic cross towering over the ancient tombs in Ireland (the historical ones that express a Gaelic syncretism between Christianity and religion) and also on the graves of many IRA and INLA volunteers who died in combat.

A mural representing Bobby Sands in Belfast

Willing to learn, in Italy the "the SS France circled cross" had already been adopted in the early sixties by Giovane Europa, the Italian branch of the movement Jeune Europe founded by Jean Thiriart who had fought in the Waffen-SS (and who said he had chosen that symbol of recognition because "it was easy to draw on the walls"). This movement, in 1963, joined a group of Florentine MSI (including: Attilio Mordini, Franco Cardini, Marco Bersacchi, Amerino Griffin ...) and some ex-ordinovista (Massimo Marletta ...). In what seems a fit of self-review, one of the founders claimed that it was to "get away from the gloomy and bellicose neo-fascist and neo-Nazi symbols" (... and thus we take a symbol of waffen.ss ?!?). It 'much more likely to be a way to reclaim those origins, that they belong, without suspicion of public opinion and at the same time wink to the initiated. Remember that Giovane Europa was characterized by an ambiguous "equidistance" between the U.S. and the USSR (third position?) who knew a lot of "intoxication." Among the scholars of the symbol must also be underlined Claudio Mutti and Adriano Romualdi. Around 1975 it was adopted by youth mission organizations (FDG Fuan), while a few years earlier (apparently in 1970) had proposed the rautiani within the MSI with the addition of a tricolor flame in the background. Say, how does Alemanno, is a reminder that Christian love seems a little risky.
Returning to Cardini, the historian of Florence, his goodness, he admits, "a sentimental bond with the French literary fascism, but - minimizes - this is one to which he joined Pierre Drieu la Rochelle, very close to the far left" (emphasis added , nda). Surely maquisards should think otherwise. In October 1941, together with Brasillach, Chardonne, Jouhandeau and other French writers, Drieu la Rochelle accepted the invitation of Goebbels and took part in a "Congress of the European intellectuals" in Germany. The trip and the conference was an opportunity to visit the Reich Chancellery and start that journey of collaboration that ultimately would cost him dear.
Who chose that symbol (the "the France SS cross circled, mistakenly called" Celtic") knew what it represented! With the historical precedent of Charlemagne, it is clear that after the war became the preferred emblem of French neo-Nazi and neo-fascist organizations. In France it was taken over by the Parti Nationaliste formed in 1958 by veterans JN and later by the Front de l'Algerie francaise and the Front National pour l'Algerie francaise under the guidance of Jean-Marie Le Pen. Most of the members will then join the 'Organisation de l'Armée secrète (OAS), the organization of the pieds-noirs, French settlers in Algeria, a terrorist group opposed to decolonization. Go down in history, among other misdeeds, the putsch in Algiers (see General Salan). Each path from the oasis slogan on the walls of Algiers was regularly accompanied by the "the France SS cross circled." From a side of Oas, between May and September 1961 and September 1962, about 2,700 people were killed, of which 2400 were Algerians. As an offshoot of the Oas was born in Lisbon Aginter Press that he worked mainly in Africa by sending mercenaries, fascists (French, Belgian, Italian ...) and secret agents (Portuguese and U.S.) in Congo, Angola and Namibia against the struggles of liberation. The Press Aginter then played a significant role in the "strategy of tension" that has bloodied Italy, from Piazza Fontana on. Meanwhile, the controversial hex symbol was inherited from Ordre Nouveau.
As I mentioned, the double ax taken from our "New Order" (to Rauti, Signorelli, Concutelli, ...) was a symbol of French collaboration (Marshal Petain), although ordinovisti tried to ennoble it with references to 'ancient Cretan civilization. Probably, prohibited the use of the swastika and the beam, our nostalgic resorted to a form of mimicry, borrowing the symbolism of their comrades across the Alps.

Ernesto Che Guevara

Obsession of the far right

It is known that many Irish republicans had fought in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War. Some of them are commemorated in the plaque for the fallen of the Battle of Brunete (8-9 July 1938). Others at the memorial on the island of Achill, Ireland. There is also a plaque to Tommy Patten, who died in Madrid in late 1936 near the place where a few days before, had been killed Buenaventura Durruti.
Some Irish would have been eliminated by the Stalinists. In May 1937, for denouncing the interference of the GPU, Gould Verschoyle was kidnapped and transported by sea to Leningrad. He would die in 1945 in Karaganda, where he had been deported during an escape attempt. Less well known that at the end of World War II, the Irish Republican Army has militarily trained against the British Jews who came to Palestine after having escaped the Holocaust.
To credit in some way against the national liberation struggles for self-determination and was, periodically, an obsession of the far right (from On a Tp, to "new force"). But generally poorly paid back. Bernadette Devlin in 1985 still interviewing, I asked what he thought of the sympathy shown by so-called "radical right" for the Irish cause. Lapidary response: "Certainly these are one way sympathies". All this is past tense now, purely academic to the survivors, if he did not return current at the time of the official presentation of the book of Calama, and O'Hearn McKeawn under the banner, indeed, of the European Parliament. To do the honors, the current vice-president of the European Parliament, Roberta Angelilli, early supporter of youth in Tp, then secretary of the Youth Front, An MEP since 1994. But, also, a friend of that Andrea Insabato in December 2000 was wounded in the explosion of his bomb before the drafting of Il Manifesto, on the stairs of the old headquarters in Via Tomacelli.
For the older comrades remembered a similar episode of April 1973. In the toilet of the train, the sanbabilino Nico Azzi (double militancy, MSI and Rognoni's "La Fenice", a subsidiary of Milan On) detonated a bomb between his legs. Not until they have made extensive note with Lotta continua in hand in the various compartments. At his funeral in 2007 in St. Ambrose of Milan, the delegation of Forza Nuova and the Larussa family.
The Angelilli is known to have strongly attacked the partisans calling them "murderers", and because she too (not just Alemanno) is wearing the "the France SS circled cross", but silver. Noblesse oblige.
A curious coincidence (just a coincidence, nothing to "sync"). The attack on Il Manifesto was directed in particular against Stefano Chiarini who took care of the Palestinian issue and with whom Insabato had tried to get in touch. Previously Chiarini had devoted himself to Ireland, both as editor and as a journalist.
After careful investigation, he also had to recognize that many leftists (especially anarchists and trotzchisti) of the Irish question do not give much. Someone claimed that we are facing a further confirmation of the nature "objectively reactionary nationalism." Even when it comes to national liberation.
The fact remains that the story of Sands has assumed a larger value, in time becoming a witness against the special prisons, against torture, against the emergency legislation. A "cry against injustice," as well as popular resistance, in all its various forms, in class neighborhoods of Belfast and Derry, the Bogside in Falls Road, between the sixties and nineties. Some national liberation struggles (Ireland, Basque, Paisos Catalans ... just to stay in Europe) expressed, for better or worse, a strong desire for social liberation, sometimes radical environmental defense (in Corsica).
The right has tried to appropriate it (see the case of the former ordinovista, now the League, through its unsolicited interventions Borghezio, on the Basque issue) as well as they did with the struggles against nuclear power and against globalization, ecology and, more recently, with the animal liberation and anti-specism. Legitimate to want to "keep their distance from these Catholic nationalists and a bit 'bigots' (as I was said by a companion.) However, in my opinion, should also be able to recognize, in addition to folklore, a method (a style?) that points out that the infiltration of the sixties. O above the "free corps" in Germany after the world war I.
Today it's up to Bobby Sands, while Alemanno tries again with Che Guevara. Tomorrow someone could groped to "recover" from the right Barry Horne (and perhaps in the north-east are already doing it), animal rights and anarchist, who died ten years ago in prison for the consequences of certain hunger strikes against vivisection. He, like Bobby Sands and Patsy O'Hara "died because others were free."