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parkhead_rfb · Getting on a bit! Joined: 13 Oct 2005 Posts: 1974

Sunday 1st

I am standing on the threshold of another trembling world. May God have mercy on my soul.

My heart is very sore because I know that I have broken my poor mother's heart, and my home is struck with unbearable anxiety. But I have considered all the arguments and tried every means to avoid what has become the unavoidable: it has been forced upon me and my comrades by four-and-a-half years of stark inhumanity.

I am a political prisoner. I am a political prisoner because I am a casualty of a perennial war that is being fought between the oppressed Irish people and an alien, oppressive, unwanted regime that refuses to withdraw from our land.

I believe and stand by the God-given right of the Irish nation to sovereign independence, and the right of any Irishman or woman to assert this right in armed revolution. That is why I am incarcerated, naked and tortured.

Foremost in my tortured mind is the thought that there can never be peace in Ireland until the foreign, oppressive British presence is removed, leaving all the Irish people as a unit to control their own affairs and determine their own destinies as a sovereign people, free in mind and body, separate and distinct physically, culturally and economically.

I believe I am but another of those wretched Irishmen born of a risen generation with a deeply rooted and unquenchable desire for freedom. I am dying not just to attempt to end the barbarity of H-Block, or to gain the rightful recognition of a political prisoner, but primarily because what is lost in here is lost for the Republic and those wretched oppressed whom I am deeply proud to know as the 'risen people'.

There is no sensation today, no novelty that October 27th brought. (The starting date of the original seven man hunger-strike) The usual Screws were not working. The slobbers and would-be despots no doubt will be back again tomorrow, bright and early.

I wrote some more notes to the girls in Armagh today. There is so much I would like to say about them, about their courage, determination and unquenchable spirit of resistance. They are to be what Countess Markievicz, Anne Devlin, Mary Ann McCracken, Marie MacSwiney, Betsy Gray, and those other Irish heroines are to us all. And, of course, I think of Ann Parker, Laura Crawford, Rosemary Bleakeley, and I'm ashamed to say I cannot remember all their sacred names.

Mass was solemn, the lads as ever brilliant. I ate the statutory weekly bit of fruit last night. As fate had it, it was an orange, and the final irony, it was bitter. The food is being left at the door. My portions, as expected, are quite larger than usual, or those which my cell-mate Malachy is getting.

Bobby Sands

Wed 1st March 6-8pm Candle Lit Vigil in commemoration of the 10 Hunger Strikers who died in 1981 and to demand that the British Government adhere to the Good Friday Agreement. Opposite Downing Street (Nearest tubes Westminster and Charing Cross)
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'There are praises of flowers who epitomise the unconquerable spirit of Irish womanhood. Let no man dare to scorn these women and let your weeds of indifference and sleeping roses blush in everlasting shame.'

- Bobby Sands

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"our revenge will be the laughter of our children" bobby sands MP

"there is no equality in a society that stands upon the political and economic bog, if only the strongest make it good or survive" bobby sands MP

Aventinian

The motive for a crime is irrelevant to the law. A criminal is a criminal - and he was one.

Unlike him I don't believe in God - and if I did, I certainly don't think he'd be gracing cultural fictions with some right to fight each other, yet turning his back to famines in Africa.

The GFA was undemocratic at best (not a totally bad thing) and its death was obvious from the moment it was signed. No state can be run in such a way - particularly while one of the parties to it is a criminal gang out for their own interests.

parkhead_rfb · Getting on a bit! Joined: 13 Oct 2005 Posts: 1974

it may be irrelevant to british law but thankfully as republicans we do not recognise british law in Ireland and lets not forget that the woman you quoted there was a friend of pinochet as well as her secret service colluding with loyalists to kill lawyers who dared defend republicans. crime is crime is crime eh maggie.
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"our revenge will be the laughter of our children" bobby sands MP

"there is no equality in a society that stands upon the political and economic bog, if only the strongest make it good or survive" bobby sands MP

Aventinian · Posted: Wed Mar 01, 2006 10:39 pm Post subject:

I wasn't even aware that I was quoting Maggie. Obviously she's brighter than I thought.
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The resident pantomime villain.
'Socialists cry "Power to the people", and raise the clenched fist as they say it. We all know what they really mean—power over people, power to the State.'

kalashnikov · No Longer a Wean Joined: 17 Sep 2005 Posts: 93

azzuri · 'Our Scotland' Fossil Joined: 12 Sep 2005 Posts: 3776

very good point kalashnikov.
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Aventinian · Posted: Sun Mar 19, 2006 6:39 pm Post subject:

SLG · Posted: Sun Mar 19, 2006 7:45 pm Post subject:

kalashnikov · No Longer a Wean Joined: 17 Sep 2005 Posts: 93

What is "Natural Law", I too would be interested in seeing such a list.
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If you remove the English army to-morrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organisation of the Socialist Republic your efforts would be in vain. - James Connolly

Aventinian · Posted: Sun Mar 19, 2006 8:49 pm Post subject:

The concept of Natural Law is a legal philosophy discussed primarily in religious circles. In Christianity, Islam etc it is held that earthly law should be a reflection of God's law which is never changing. The law is never made, it is simply 'revealed' and applied to new circumstances. National laws are simply an attempt to define the Natural Law in these countries.

Not being religious, I do still hold certain principles very highly - liberty, equality, human rights. I believe all of these are constant and unchanging and that all law should be subject to them. While it does require a certain leap of faith to hold that these are essentially noble aspirations, I am quite willing to make that leap. If you want to see Natural Law in action, see the Claim of Right or the Declaration of Arbroath... particularly the former makes reference to the fundamental liberties which no King has the right to violate.

No true list can exist as they are merely reflections of something that is not solid. The value of our common law system is that it can recognise and rule according to these principles - for example, these liberties can be upheld in court as a matter of common tradition and are noted in detail by the Institutional Writers of Scots Law.
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The resident pantomime villain.
'Socialists cry "Power to the people", and raise the clenched fist as they say it. We all know what they really mean—power over people, power to the State.'

kalashnikov · No Longer a Wean Joined: 17 Sep 2005 Posts: 93

So in other words you were talking rubbish when you said "crime is crime" ?
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If you remove the English army to-morrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organisation of the Socialist Republic your efforts would be in vain. - James Connolly

Aventinian · Posted: Sun Mar 19, 2006 11:52 pm Post subject:

kalashnikov · No Longer a Wean Joined: 17 Sep 2005 Posts: 93

But what is a "real law", surely that is a matter of individual opinion? In which case who is to determine that their opinions seperate "real laws" from "unreal laws" ? Confused

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If you remove the English army to-morrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organisation of the Socialist Republic your efforts would be in vain. - James Connolly

Aventinian · Posted: Mon Mar 20, 2006 9:01 am Post subject:

Well yes, all law is going to have an aspect of personal opinion to it - after all, one could argue that it's not actually some self-evident wrong to kill another human being and eat them.

However what should happen is that the state should be involved in this determination, but it does involve the law being firmly stripped back, us being left with a few underlying and common sense principles and the courts being able to apply these principles to whatever situation it finds itself in.

I still hold my original opinion about the irrelevance of motive - which has long been a concept in the law of this country (at least until our legal system was vandalised by the Labour Party)
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The resident pantomime villain.
'Socialists cry "Power to the people", and raise the clenched fist as they say it. We all know what they really mean—power over people, power to the State.'