Three letters,including one from Jack Lane and Pat Muldowney attacking
Martin Mansergh in today's Irish Examiner (The other is by Brendan Cafferty,
criticising Mansergh but defending the Pearsons).
http://www.irishexaminer.com/irishexami ... qqqx=1.asp
I doubt this is a coincidence.
The anti-divorce movement used to deliberately send in dozens of letters and
phone calls to intimidate their political opponents (see Emily O'Reilly, "Masterminds
of the Right"). I suspect Aubane does the same.
For every Aubane style letter sent to the papers
there would be five at least putting a more manistream opinion,
I don't know how this could result in intimidation. I don't think B.I.C.O
ever had a paramilitary wing (as the guy in the hole in the wall gang
used to say" so then what good are you")
I myself suffered intimidation during the Divorce referendum in 95
and I can assure you it was a different class of people we were dealing with
there in other words groups with big membership a nationwide structure
and plenty money behind them.
Do you want to defy pigeon holes and at the
same time avoid designer synicism Laugh with
rage!
Perhaps B&ICO never had a "paramilitary" wing, but it is known
that B&ICO members met Loyalist paramilitaries during the 1970s:
"B&ICO actively sought contact and discussion with both the
UDA and UVF, regarding them as having much more progressive
potential than any republican group. When the
IRA killed 21 people in Birmingham and
Irish people in the city were attacked in response,
B&ICO argued that such a reaction
was ‘not totally unjustified’ because most
Irish emigrants had refused to break from Irish
nationalism, the ‘vicious ideology’ that bred
‘Ireland’s right wing terrorists."
Danny McGrain, From Peking to Aubane.
For instance, it's a fact that David Fogel of the UDA met 2 B&ICO members in the 1970s (Crimes of
Loyalty, Ian S. Wood, pg. 17, see also the B&ICO's
magazine "Communist Comment", 10th Feb. 1972).
They can't claim to have "clean hands" in this period.
One of B&ICO/IPR's contributors seems to have put up a "What we stand for now" list on
Wikipedia:
And the Aubane....In recent years BICO has defended the historic role of Fianna Fail in creating and maintaining the Irish state; it has argued that the allegedly corrupt practices of Charles Haughey were a necessary cost of modernisation and has accused its critics (including the Irish Times) of Anglophilia bordering on downright treason.
[We'll pass over the fact B&ICO strongly emphasised the "Positive role" of Oliver Cromwell
in Ireland and the Anglo-Irish in books like "Against Ulster Nationalism".]
BICO has always emphasised the role of the state as an integrative force in society, and favoured European-style corporatism when this was opposed by many British leftists as involving state control over the labour movement. (In The Left Against Europe Tom Nairn states that in the early 1970s BICO was the only far-left group known to him to support British membership of the European Community.) In recent years it has adopted a more Eurosceptic approach, claiming that the Gaullist-Christian Democrat-Social Democrat tradition within the EU has been eclipsed by neoliberalism....
From the late 1980s Clifford and his associates argued that James Connolly's expressions of sympathy for the Central Powers in the First World War had not been merely tactical but represented genuine conviction and were essentially correct; the Kaiserreich represented a superior social model and the world would be a better place had it been victorious [Tell that the Poles and the Namibians]. Clifford has argued that the First World war was deliberately precipitated by Britain in a plot to cripple Germany, and that the long-term fallout from this mean that Britain is morally responsible for Hitler's accession to power and hence the Second World war also.
BICO strongly criticised the Western response to Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, saying that Saddam had been given no chance to back down.[13] They also argued that removing Saddam was a bad idea, on the grounds that pan-Arab nationalism was a historically progressive force and that its accomplishment required the leadership of a powerful state (comparable to the role of Prussia in German unification and Piedmont-Sardinia in the Italian Risorgimento. It remained sympathetic to Saddam throughout the 1990s and opposed the Second Iraq War.
At one time BICO was pro-Israeli, but since the late 1980s it has become fiercely pro-Palestinian.[14]
BICO has also supported Robert Mugabe in what it calls "the Zimbabwe Land War" (by analogy with the Irish Land War of the 1880s); it argues that Mugabe's opponents are manipulated by white commercial farmers (whom it compares to nineteeenth-century Irish landlords) and other neo-colonial interests....
.The Aubane Historical Society (Aubane is an area of North Cork where some BICO members, including Brendan Clifford and Jack Lane, originate) has published numerous pamphlets on local history matters, often in relation to the Home Rule politician William O'Brien, the novelist Canon Patrick Sheehan, and the local poet Ned Buckley. Favourite preoccupations include attacks on Peter Hart, whom it regularly accuses of falsifying interview material, denunciations of Roy Foster, Paul Bew, and Henry Patterson and attacks on Hubert Butler (whom it accuses of being a quasi-racist defender of Protestant Ascendancy) and Elizabeth Bowen, whom it claims acted as a British spy in Ireland during the Second World War. AHS/BICO has worked with some writers who might be seen as representing a more traditional republican perspective, including Desmond Fennell, Brian P. Murphy, Eoin Neeson and Meda Ryan. BICO has also denied that the murder of Protestant farmers at Coolnacrease, Co. Offaly in 1921 was sectarian (it claims they were legitimately executed for resisting the forces of the legitimate (Dáil) government) and has been associated with commentators who argue that the diaries ascribed to Roger Casement were forged by British Intelligence.[When the IPR group stated this on an Indymedia article, they were criticised by
some posters who claimed their attempts to disprove Casement's homosexuality were anti-gay] It often presents itself as a group of amateurs speaking for the plain people of Ireland as against academic historians, whom it presents as elitist snobs with sinister political agendas.[Nobody does "sinister political agendas" quite like a
group of Stalinists turned Haughey worshippers ]
Hey Starkadder, why the seeming obsession with these BICO guys?
Signature removed as it breached the signature rules
It's a strong interest of mine. Rather like FutureTaoiseach and his interest in the LisbonOriginally Posted by Cogadh
Treaty.
What do you think of the B&ICO/Aubane group, Cogadh?
they are an articulate but highly perverse group . Their primary raison detre is 2 nationism . They spent most of their previous incarnation supporting 2 nationism from a loyalist standpoint , at one point even calling for loyalists to take revenge upon the nationalist population. Following the GFA and the abandonment of articles 2&3 theyve switched tack completely and are now engaged upon a 2 nationaist propaganda exercise on behalf of the southern state and fianna fail in particular . Despite being tiny in number the volume of the propaganda they churned out pointed to some considerable financial backing from as yet unidentified sources . Its been a long held suspicion that the British intelligence agencies funded them through that period .. Many of their pamphlets were districuted surreptitiously by the car bootload during the 70s in particular . After the dropping of articles 2&3 though they became obsolete from a British point of view and confine their analysis now to south of the border where theyve been actively courting fianna fail .
they are quite simply nuts and charlatans engaged in an historical digging match with their former allies on the unionist side . But all for the same purpose , promoting the 2 nationist agenda . Effectively theyve cornered the historical debate on revisionsim at present which is catastrophic from the view of those of us who consider Ireland to be one nation . Because they certainly do not . As always theres a method to their apparant madness .
To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
Good post, Merle. Brendan Clifford often used Athol Books to get back at his
political opponents in a very nasty and underhanded way-he would publish whole books
aimed at trashing Michael Farrell, Thomas Kinsella,the International
Socialists, John Hume, Pádraig Ó Snodaigh and that guy in Sliabh Luachra who served
him a bad pint. This backfired on him at least once-Mary McAleese took
legal action against him in the 80s'. forcing the temporary closure of Clifford's
"Belfast Magazine" (see the bios of McAleese by Mac Anais and Mccarthy).
EDIT: Didn't their new buddy Des Fennell support "two-nationism" from the
viewpoint of a conservative Catholic FFer?
rarely any shortage of money though , if i dont like somebody ive neither the time nor the finance to write a bloody book about them
To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
They're a strange bunch. It's curious how they made the inverse ideological journey to the Cruiser and Harris, going from promoting the two nations theory to defending FF although they would argue they stayed consistent. I find some of their stuff interesting due to the fact it offers a different angle to the usual mainstream bolloxology. Although their style is a bit tiresome in that while they raise interesting points rather than actually develop or expand them in a concise form they seem to veer off on meandering tangents which cloud their arguments. Also the Aubane group (haven't read much from the BICO days so can't say if it holds true from then) seem terribly inbred always citing other members and their work as if they are the be all and end all of the particular subject they are addressing which also makes them appear kinda cult like and also detracts from their argument.It's a strong interest of mine. Rather like FutureTaoiseach and his interest in the Lisbon
Treaty.
What do you think of the B&ICO/Aubane group, Cogadh?
Signature removed as it breached the signature rules
LinkBack URL
About LinkBacks
Reply With Quote