Final Draft
SPEECH AT INDEPENDENT BLACK FLAG VIGIL
40TH ANNIVERSARY DUBLIN / MONAGHAN BOMBINGS
MALACHY STEENSON – 17/05/2014
Thank you Chairman
At 5.28 pm during rush hour on Friday, 17 May 1974, three no-warning car bombs ripped through the heart of Dublin.
Parnell Street, Talbot Street and South Leinster Street were devastated.
Twenty-six people (including a French and Italian citizen) and an unborn baby lost their lives, including in Parnell Street an entire young family.
Ninety minutes later, a fourth car bomb exploded in Monaghan town where a further seven people died.
This has been the greatest loss of life in a single day of the latest phase of conflict beginning in 1969.
The bombings occurred during the Ulster Workers’ Council strike, which brought down the power-sharing executive at Stormont established by the Sunningdale Agreement. The arrangement collapsed on 28 May – 11 days after the bombings.
The bombings on this day 40 years ago were the same in population terms as the 9/11 attacks in New York. We saw a swift response from the American Government, a response which we would argue was wrong and immoral, but their stated aim after 9/11 was to protect American citizens at home and abroad, contrast that response to the response of the quisling Dublin Government, who have failed consistently to protect Irish citizens at home and abroad from British Forces.
There was no National day of mourning as there had been for Bloody Sunday. A decision was even taken, but quickly reversed, that the National Flag should not be flown at half-mast.
The Blueshirt Taoiseach, Liam Cosgrave, the leader of the Law & Order Government of Fine Gael & Labour sought to lay the blame at the door Republicans.
Speeches by Ministers Cooney; Conor Cruise O’Brien; Tully; Fianna Fail Leader Lynch and the Attorney General, Declan Costello, all gave this message loud and clear, they claimed that any Irish citizen who had even entertained the thought of supporting the continuation of the war in defence of the Republic was every bit as guilty of the slaughter of the victims of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings as were those who had, cold-bloodedly and without any warning, planned and carried out the atrocity.
What happened on this street was an act of war and should have been dealt with as such. The targeting of civilians in indiscriminate bombings is a War Crime under the Geneva Convention, the then Prime Minister of Britain Harold Wilson should have been tried as a war criminal.
You may wonder why 40 years later we are still here remembering that fateful evening, they will tell us – forget about it, it’s in the past.
Until those who were responsible for ordering this attack are brought to Justice it’s not over. We are not naive enough to think that the current Blueshirt Government care, we know their history, we know where their loyalty lies……and it’s not to the Irish Republic.
Let us also be clear this attack did not happen in isolation Between 26 November 1972 and 20 January 1973, there were four British bombings in the centre of Dublin. Three civilians were killed and 185 people were injured
We are told that there was collusion between British Intelligence and Loyalists, let us be very clear this was a war crime carried out against a civilian population by British Intelligence services under the direct control of the British Cabinet. There have been numerous enquiries over the years but none have confronted that basic fact.
The actual group or organisation that carried out the attack is irrelevant, they were ordinary Working Class men sent out to do the dirty deeds of a higher power by those who had a very clear agenda, just as on the Republican side men were sent out to kill or die by a leadership who had a different agenda and indeed we know now that those two agendas were the same, the copper fastening of partition and the further subversion and defeat of the Irish Republic.
Let us remember that the murder of innocent civilians by the British Government is not confined to Ireland or to the past. In the past number of years they along with their American Allies and their proxies have murdered hundreds of thousands innocent men women & children in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and many other places.
Let us also remember that collusion is not confined to The British, we have seen in this Bankrupt Corrupt Banana Republic the collusion between the State Police and Criminal elements particularly Drug Gangs.
This no more clearly evident than in the Kieran Boylan Case where Gardai under the direction and control of the former Garda Commissioner were controlling and importing huge quantities of heroin & cocaine which was sold to young people in working class communities like this one and others around this State, yet we see almost complete silence from the political and media class about something that should rock this state to the core.
We also now from the revelations in Leinster House this week by Mick Wallace a current assistant Commissioner appointed by disgraced former Minister for injustice Shatter was up to his neck in it.
He has claimed that a retired Garda has submitted a 27 page dossier to the Confidential Recipient stating that there were opportunities to arrest the boss of a criminal gang but the Garda failed to do so because he had a senior Garda in his pocket.
He also was aware of an incident in Rosslare when a drug runner was returning with a shipment of drugs. A customs officer stopped him and was about to search his vehicle when two plainclothes gardaí commandeered the car and drove out of the terminal at speed. Customs officers followed but the gardaí lost the pursuers.
The drug runner told Mr Doyle about bringing in cocaine, ecstasy, cannabis, and firearms.
He has further claimed that massive amounts of drugs were coming in and quantities were allowed to get into the hands of the criminal gang, the retired Garda claimed that the drug runner told him that he told me how he was being well looked after financially by both the criminal gang and the gardaí.
The drug runner also spoke of leaving a handgun in a wooded area in Cork. He contacted a detective sergeant about the gun’s location and gardaí then added a number of firearms to “beef up the find” and the media reported it as a subversive arms find.
This was done to “further their careers”, the drug runner told the retired Garda.
Mr Wallace said one of the Garda involved is now an assistant commissioner. He was appointed by the former minister, Alan Shatter. This same individual has been involved in the Boylan case.
As we stand in this part of Dublin ravaged for decades by unemployment, drug addiction and poverty, we know only too well the truth of these claims.
Let us compare that to the demonization of Republicans when they stand up against those who ply death on our Streets.
So corrupt is this State that it will allow its own agents to be killed, it is now widely believed that those who killed Garda Adrian Donohoue last January were and are allowed carry out their drug dealing and other criminal activities as they are valuable assets to both the British & Irish Intelligence services.
But let us be clear this State could never have ended up in any other way that than the bankrupt, immoral ruin that it is, it was born not out of the sacrifices of the leaders of the revolution but out of their defeat. This State was born in the corruption of the will of the people. It needed for its survival to deny the very existence of the Republic and the corruption of its administrators.
Remember it’s the very same parties in Government now as in 1974.
As we begin the decade of centenaries we will see an increase revisionism and rewriting of history, a new version will show that we the Irish people were the guilty ones, and that those who carried out attacks against the Republic and attacks like the one we remember today were the good guys.
Earlier today the families of the victims held a wreath laying ceremony at this spot, and a wreath was laid by current Taoiseach Edna Kenny the current leader of Fine Gael whose party stood by and covered up a war crime committed in this street, he and others attended on this spot as hypocritical as usual, having welcomed the war criminal commander in chief of those who carried out this attack to this city three years ago and have invited them back in 2016 for the centenary celebration of 1916.
They recently dined at Royal Palaces in England and I think the last thing on their mind was the innocent civilians butchered on this street by those operating under the command of the British Royal Family.
They don’t appear see any contradiction in their quisling position
They fail to see that by their activities and those of their predecessors that they are just as guilty as those who directed this operation, by their silence they are culpable.
They think that they can stand here and remember the dead and ignore their own role, but then we know that those in power in Ireland only care about themselves. By their presence here they are adding further insult onto the bereaved.
The families have this week announced that they are bringing a Civil Action against the British Government because they have failed to have the files opened and disclosed. Unfortunately this type of case can only award financial damages. This War Crime must be prosecuted in Geneva and the government of this quisling State should immediately do so. But they will not, they are incapable of standing up against the Imperialist power and will carry on in their subservience.
If the same thing were to happen again their response would be the same.
It is important those of us here today particularly our young people learn our history and study these events and are then in a position to counteract the new revisionism which is increasing around us daily. We must ensure that they are educated in history and Republicanism and ignore what they read in the establishment media.
It is up to us all here today to keep the truth alive and to spread it as widely as possible, our revenge on those who carried out this attack will be the re-establishment of the Irish Republic coupled with the implementation of the Proclamation and of the democratic programme of Dáil Éireann, it is then that we can say that the innocents taken on this day 40 years ago did not die in vain.
And finally while our numbers are small here today, it is important that people of honour and principal remember these events and correct the political narrative written by others and let us end remembering the words of hunger striker Terence Mc Sweeney when he said-
“If but few are faithful found, they must be all the more steadfast for being a few.”
We are that few we must be resolute in our determination we must be active on a daily basis to defend and re-establish the Irish Republic.
Go raibh maith agat.