Whilst
hunting for a piece I wished to respond to I came
across a letter from Cathal
Donnelly, April 20 2004.
I
admit I am slow to respond but since my sons now
have laptops I can really see what is going on in
this small world of comment, conversation, exchange
and discussion.
"Laptops,"
I hear the begrudgers say, "well for them",
their father has a good job, does good work and
that is more than can be said for many who have,
and own more.
Cathal
makes those awful, low esteem remarks like, "come
in from the cold". Republicans were never out
in the cold, our position was always clear, and
clearly right. I was never in the cold. I was always
in the heat of the struggle. You fall into the old
trap of feeling that you must belong to the Establishment
before being kosher. It is that awful inbred sense
of servitude and subserviance that causes you to
make such remarks.
Republicans
never knocked at the door of the Establishment,
rather we placed a device at that door to remove
it; those who choose to cross the door, invited
by the enemy (whether in sheeps clothing or not)
do no service to the Republican Cause. They make
our Struggle harder because they join the enemy.
Cathal
refers to "building from the ground upwards"
to establish the Republic we want. What ground and
upwards to where?
"Empowerment",
this has become a very "in" word in Sinn
Fein spake. The people must be "empowered"
(i.e Sinn Fein must win elections).
And,
Cathal says that "dissidents" (I argue
his choice of termenology) must come up with an
alternative. But Sinn Fein came up with the alternative:
join the system, recognise the partition of Ireland,
the Unionist veto and go hell for leather for political
power in a partitioned Ireland. As I see it, only
the "dissidents" remained true to the
Republican principles as laid down after the disaster
of a Treaty signed away the six Counties to Britain.
Believe
me, Cathal, the Brits do not want to stay, the people
who want them to stay will have the last word and,
by God, "beidh linn an la". I looked deep
into their eyes at Burntollett and I knew then,
sixteen years old and I knew then who would make
all the decisions about the six Northern Counties.
I made my mind up then to fight for what was rightly
mine and stolen by blackmail and brinkmanship, not
to mention the possibility of an illegitimate son
born from Michael Collins! The plot thickens!
Unity
in the North, Power sharing, if you believe that
will ever happen then you are away with the fairies.
