Proclaiming a Republic

POBLACHT NA hÉIREANN THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT OF THE IRISH REPUBLIC TO THE PEOPLE OF IRELAND

IRISHMEN AND IRISHWOMEN: In the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom.

Having organised and trained her manhood through her secret revolutionary organisation, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and through her open military organisations, the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army, having patiently perfected her discipline, having resolutely waited for the right moment to reveal itself, she now seizes that moment, and supported by her exiled children in America and by gallant allies in Europe, but relying in the first on her own strength, she strikes in full confidence of victory.

We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible. The long usurpation of that right by a foreign people and government has not extinguished the right, nor can it ever be extinguished except by the destruction of the Irish people. In every generation the Irish people have asserted their right to national freedom and sovereignty; six times during the past three hundred years they have asserted it in arms. Standing on that fundamental right and again asserting it in arms in the face of the world, we hereby proclaim the Irish Republic as a Sovereign Independent State, and we pledge our lives and the lives of our comrades in arms to the cause of its freedom, of its welfare, and of its exaltation among the nations.

The Irish Republic is entitled to, and hereby claims, the allegiance of every Irishman and Irishwoman. The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts, cherishing all of the children of the nation equally, and oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien Government, which have divided a minority from the majority in the past.

Until our arms have brought the opportune moment for the establishment of a permanent National Government, representative of the whole people of Ireland and elected by the suffrages of all her men and women, the Provisional Government, hereby constituted, will administer the civil and military affairs of the Republic in trust for the people.

We place the cause of the Irish Republic under the protection of the Most High God, Whose blessing we invoke upon our arms, and we pray that no one who serves that cause will dishonour it by cowardice, inhumanity, or rapine. In this supreme hour the Irish nation must, by its valour and discipline, and by the readiness of its children to sacrifice themselves for the common good, prove itself worthy of the august destiny to which it is called.

Signed on behalf of the Provisional Government:

THOMAS J. CLARKE, SEAN Mac DIARMADA, THOMAS MacDONAGH, P. H. PEARSE, EAMONN CEANNT, JAMES CONNOLLY, JOSEPH PLUNKETT

Proclomation read on the steps of the General Post Office, Dublin, 24th April 1916

At Last, Justice Has Been Seen To Have Been Done

'I hope that those responsible burn in the hottest corner of hell.'

Those are the words of the UN's refugee chief in Yugoslavia in 1995. Over the last four years, the country had disintegrated, torn apart in brutal clashes between different ethnic groups. And in the summer of 1995, the horrors had reached a new height. The Bosnian town of Srebenicia fell to Serbian forces. The UN peacekeepers were overwhelmed. And 5000 Bosnian Muslim civilians were slaughtered in cold blood.

The world was shocked into a response. NATO went to war with the Yugoslavian government and the Serbs. Under the onslaught of Western air attacks and the the threat of ground invasion, the Serbs were forced to sue for peace. The USA forced all sides to accept the Dayton Accords, and an uneasy peace settled over the Balkans.

But the legacy of Yugoslavia was not over. The Western world had been shocked at the savagery on it's doorstep, especially the return of genocide to Europe. The 'never again' of the Holocaust had failed.

And so those responsible were made wanted men. They would stand trial for crimes against humanity, and the rest of the world would see that genocide does not go unpunished.

It has not been a resounding success. It has proved very hard to get the culprits to trial. The trials themselves have been lengthy and complex. The main Serbian leader, Slobodan Milosevic, died during his trial.

But today, the verdict has been passed against Radovan Karadzic, the leader of the Bosnian Serbs during the 1990s. When he was first indicted, he disappeared. It took until 2008 for Karadzic to be caught, and another eight years to get to a verdict.

But the length of time is not important. Frustrating, yes. But today is the chance for the world to see that those who carry out appalling acts in the name of nation, people, or religion will not go unpunished.

I don't know whether Karadzic will indeed burn in a corner of hell, as the UN official hoped. But he will spend the rest of his life behind bars. Justice will always be done. Occasionally, amidst the horror, we do get it right.

An Anniversary Never to be Forgotten

Regular readers will know that I like anniversaries. Especially those that mark something significant, something that changed either this country or the wider world.

At first glance, the anniversary that falls this week isn't one of these. Instead, it appears to be one of such an appalling nature that it would be better to forget it.

On March 13th 1996, sixteen Scottish primary school children and their teacher were shot dead during a PE lesson in the school gym. After opening fire, the gunman turned the gun on himself. With the exception of one six year old, and their teacher, all those children were five. They were the same age as me. The headteacher, Ron Taylor, summed it up. Evil had visited the town of Dunblane.

The motive has never really been properly established. There had been rumours about the gunman for years; he had been expelled from the Scout Association, and various levels of officialdom were uneasy about the youth clubs he used to run. But there were no charges ever brought, and he legally owned the handguns he used to commit mass slaughter on that March morning.

It would be easy to pass off the actions of Thomas Hamilton as that of a deranged madman, which cannot be explained. A tragedy, yes. But an isolated one. Yet it was not an isolated event. The effects of the Dunblane shooting live with us today.

A campaign was quickly launched to ban all handguns, and in 1997 Parliament did just that. The ownership of handguns in Mainland Britain has been illegal ever since. There were howls of protest from thousands of gun owners, all of whom enjoyed a perfectly legitimate sport. But public pressure was too much, and all of those weapons had to be handed in to the police and melted down. The UK Olympic pistol shooting team have to train abroad. The very competition in which they won a gold medal in 2012 was only held with special permission from the Home Secretary.

But the strangling of a sport has been a small price to pay for the benefits. Since 1996, not a single British school child has died in school because of a shooting. The UK has one of the lowest rates of gun crime in the Western World. In the USA, a quick glance at Wikipedia says that number is well over 250, and rising. The NRA's much vaunted 'good guy with a gun' has failed to stem the tide of killings. And last year we were reminded of the dangers of guns in terrible scenes on the streets of Paris.

So, remember the children whose PE lesson was interrupted on that horrific morning, twenty years ago. The senseless slaughter of the innocents led directly to a safer Britain. And for the terrible price it took to achieve that, they deserve to be remembered.

100 Years of Harold Wilson

Yesterday marks what would have been the 100th birthday of Harold Wilson.

The reaction of most people has probably just been 'Who?' Beyond a dwindling number of older people, historians and political nuts, the name is shrinking from the public consciousness. Wilson was Labour leader in the 1960s and 1970s, and Prime Minister from 1964-1970 and again from 1974-1976.

Wilson's rise to power was a symbol of the changing face of Britain. Born in Huddersfield, he went to his local grammar school, and later made much of his ordinary origins during his fight against aristocratic Conservatives. Frighteningly intelligent, Wilson got what was then the highest ever grade in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from the University of Oxford in the late 1930s. At the age of 21, he became an Oxford academic. At 31, he became the youngest member of the Cabinet in the 20th century, as part of Clement Attlee's radical post-war government. But it was not meant to be. Four years later, Wilson resigned, rather than have to support the introduction of charges for eye and dental tests in the fledgling NHS.

As Prime Minister, Wilson faced some horrendous challenges. The economy teetered on the edge of collapse, symbolised by the humiliating devaluation of the pound in 1967. His failure to reform trade union controls in 1969 arguably opened the road to Margaret Thatcher's onslaught against the unions a decade later. On Wilson's watch, Northern Ireland descended into bloodshed and chaos. The end of Empire was complicated by the mishandling of Rhodesia, which became an international pariah, but still resisted attempts to end whites-only rule. Wilson's style of government was criticised as being cliquey and inspiring constant plotting and conspiracy.

But despite all this, Wilson was one of our better Prime Ministers. He laid the groundwork for a social revolution. When he came in to office, homosexuality was a criminal offence, it was perfectly legal to discriminate in pay, jobs and housing on the grounds of gender and race, millions were trapped in failed marriages, thousands of women risked their lives to end unwanted pregnancies, hundreds were killed by drunk drivers, criminals were routinely executed, and the fate of every child in Britain was determined forever at the age of eleven.

By 1976, the Wilson governments had acted to solve these issues. Easier divorce, abortion, equality legislation, the end of hanging, the introduction of the breathalyser, the end of theatre censorship, comprehensive schooling. We have Harold Wilson to thank for these things. They were, and remain, controversial. But they all helped to create the Britain we live in today, and make it a more civilised society.

But arguably, Wilson's greatest achievement was something he did not do. The USA promised to solve all his economic problems at a stroke. They would give him all the money he needed to sort out the country, and spend on improving the lives of millions. But Wilson refused; the flipside was that he would have to commit British soldiers to the war in Vietnam. Given the national tragedy that Vietnam was for the United States, Wilson made the right call.

Above all, Harold Wilson was a politician, and his greatest achievement was for the Labour party. His ability as a campaigner and vote winner was second to none. He combined this with an ability to hold Labour together, at a time when it was riven with divisions between hard left and more moderate members. Wilson's populist appeal and everyman image saw Labour win four general elections under him, an achievement not matched by any Prime Minister since the introduction of truly universal suffrage.

The success of Harold Wilson at creating a winning coalition can be seen with what happened next. He was the last Labour leader to win an election for almost a quarter of a century. When Wilson stood on the steps of Downing Street, after his fourth victory in October 1974, Labour's next election winner was still an undergraduate student in Oxford. Many of those who helped to vote in the next Labour government weren't even born.

So, happy 100th birthday, Harold Wilson. May fewer people say 'Who?' in the future.

https://thelionandunicorn.wordpress.com/2016/03/11/our-harold/

(The man in his own words, and the words of others)

Harold Wilson, aged 8, on a trip to London, standing where later he would stand again and again as Britain's Prime Minister

On the same spot, in 1964 having just become Prime Minister

R.E.M. explain why Trump will not be President

Do you believe they put a man on the moon?

Another good night for the Donald. He was the biggest Republican winner in the Super Tuesday primaries yesterday, carrying seven states. These seven states were spread across the USA, and do not represent any section of the country or population. His challengers are struggling to break through. The message is that Trump wins, wins everywhere, and is beginning to look unstoppable.

Is he really? In the seven states that he carried, Trump took 38.6% of the vote. His best winning result was in Massachusetts, with 49.2%. His worst was in Arkansas, which he carried despite only getting the support of 32.7% of Republican supporters. When you factor in the states that Trump lost, his vote share for yesterday was 34.6%. Nearly two-thirds of the Republican party is voting against him. Only a badly divided field is allowing Trump through. Presuming that Trump continues with this broad average, he will enter the convention with the lowest support for a Republican frontrunner since the modern primary system was introduced in 1972.

The Democrats have slightly more experience of picking their candidate from a split field. George McGovern in 1972, Jimmy Carter in 1976, Walter Mondale in 1984, Michael Dukasis in 1988, and Barack Obama in 2008 all became the Democratic nominee with a primary vote share near Trumps. Three of these lost in landslide elections. One was narrowly elected President, despite facing a Republican party imploding under the weight of scandal and economic crisis. And Barack Obama, who had the good fortune of campaigning against the Republicans in the midst of the Great Recession and banking crash.

My point is, with two exceptions, no one becomes President when their party is so badly divided. Trump is the frontrunner, yes. I think he will become the Republican nominee.

Trump may be coming across as an all-conquering, election winning machine. But this is where R.E.M come in. 

Trump is supported by between 30% and 45% (give or take) of the Republican electorate. Which amounts to about 6%-8% of the total US population. 

Which, rather brilliantly, is about the same proportion of the US population who think that moon landings were faked.

That is not enough to enter the White House. It's not enough for him to stand a chance in November.

So, do you believe they put a man on the moon? That's about the current level of support that Donald Trump has.

He hasn't got a hope in hell.