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Recently,
in regards to the Provisional army's open apology,
the US media has engaged a campaign boasting of a
declining support within the Irish-American community
towards the Republican movement. Employing sensationalist
headlines and rhetoric, some have gone so far as to
suggest an outright abandonment. Indeed, the abrupt
reality of the September 11 atrocities stunned America.
As such a tragedy predicts, membership throughout
the various political prisoner support organizations
were shaven of both fair-weathered activists and others.
Events were rescheduled or outright cancelled. And
when President Bush adopted a McCarthyite 'either-or'
approach to foreign policy, legitimate opponents towards
American-aligned governments became targets. Irish
Republicanism was marked.
Yet
the movement advances. Challanging the hysteria of
the media and the gullable, many within this community
still hold true to the traditions of their Fenian
forefathers. Far from being exhausted, these people
within their various organizations continue to exercise
the political freedoms guaranteed under the first
and fourth amendments to the US Constitution. Their
efforts to raise awareness of the issues and increase
activism are progressively met with success as the
weeks go by. The death threats, harassments, and campaigns
of humiliation against Irish Republican prisoners
of war and their families is not lost on them. And
will never be so.
In
this same breath, however, it is unfortunate that
the largest of these organizations, Irish Northern
Aid, has for some years withdrawn itself from leadership
by example. It is in the general silence of their
membership that the US media finds the grounds for
its charges. The refusal of Irish Northern Aid members
to recognize the more than seventy political prisoners
incarcerated in Portlaoise, Maghaberry, Wheatfield
and Belmarsh Prisons speaks volumes to those with
anti-nationalist agendas. Irish Northern Aid, cowing
blindly to their Sinn Fein masters, have unabashedly
adopted the constitutional nationalism which they
so ferverently opposed the previous three decades.
No.
Irish-American support for political prisoners will
not abandon the very legitimacy under which the American
colonies defeated the British, and under which the
Easter Rising signatories died. These groups working
today hold firm to the illegality of Britain's occupation
of Irish soil. Their efforts are an integral form
of political activism which challenges the repetition
of a historic failure. And, in light of the deliberate
campaign against Irish Republicanism in the US, Irish
Northern Aid supporters and members of all Irish-American
organizations need now to justify the terms of their
charter with that of their Fenian ancestry. The tradition
of O'Donovan Rossa, James Stephens, and John Mitchel,
amongst others, will not forgive any Irish Republican's
failure to recognize all political prisoners of war
currently incarcerated.
The
author is a member of the Irish Freedom Committee
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