#Sinn Féin University

[stairnaheireann]

#OTD in 1916 – Irish prisoners interned at Frongoch are released.

Frongoch Internment Camp at Frongoch in Merionethshire, Wales was a makeshift place of imprisonment during the First World War. Until 1916, it housed German prisoners of war in an abandoned distillery and crude huts, but in the wake of the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin, the German prisoners were moved and it was used as a place of internment for approximately 1,800 Irish prisoners, among them such…

[camisoledadparis]

THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY

based on: The White Crane Institute's 'Gay Wisdom', Gay Birthdays, Gay For Today, Famous GLBT, glbt-Gay Encylopedia, Today in Gay History, Wikipedia, and more … January 30

January 30, 1965

Historical Context

Winston Churchill's funeral was on a scale befitting his place in history as the prime minister who guided Britain to victory during World War II. He died on January 24, 1965, having lived to the age of 90. The government had been planning extensively for his funeral in the years before his death, and it had to be revised several times as Churchill kept living, leading Lord Mountbatten to remark that "the pallbearers kept dying and Churchill kept living." It became the largest state funeral in history. Representatives from over 120 countries attended the ceremony in London, including Queen Elizabeth II, for whom Churchill was reportedly her favorite prime minister. The funeral itself was watched by 350 million people on television. After his death on January 24, the Queen sent his wife Clementine Churchill a letter saying "The whole world is the poorer by the loss of his many-sided genius while the survival of this country and the sister nations of the Commonwealth, in the face of the greatest danger that has ever threatened them, will be a perpetual memorial to his leadership, his vision and indomitable courage". Vast numbers of dignitaries attended the funeral, including wartime colleagues Dwight D. Eisenhower and Charles de Gaulle as well as several past British prime ministers.

1859 – Edward Martyn was born on this date. (d.1923); Martyn was the first president of Sinn Féin, the Irish republican movement's political party, which he co-founded with Arthur Griffith, serving from 1904 to 1908. He was homosexual and the son of a wealthy Catholic family from Tillyra Castle in County Galway.

A pillar of the Celtic Renaissance, in 1899 Martyn co-founded, with the poet W.B. Yeats, what became Ireland's famous national theater, The Abbey,��the Irish Literary Theatre (1899), which was part of the nationalist revival of interest in Ireland's Gaelic literary history. He was a cousin and friend to George Moore, the Irish novelist, though their relationship was often antagonistic.

Violently opposed to British rule in Ireland, he was the center of a court case in 1905 as the result of an off-the-cuff remark in which he stated that "All Irishmen who join the English army ought to be flogged". He died in 1923, unmarried, and after donating his body to science, was buried at his own request in a pauper's grave.

Martyn was outed by his friend George Moore, a prolific novelist, critic, and polemicist, in his three-volume memoir "Hail and Farewell" (published between 1911 and 1914), which entertained its readers but infuriated his former friend. Moore himself said of these memoirs, "Dublin is now divided into two sets; one half is afraid it will be in the book, and the other is afraid that it won't".

Moore, who was attracted to the handsome young Yeats, later fell in love with the celebrated French painter Edouard Manet, who painted three portraits of him. Moore was influenced by the homosexual Oxford critic Walter Pater, and Moore's 1886 work, A Drama in Muslin, contained references to Lesbianism. Moore's 1887 novel, A Mere Accident, also has a homosexual theme and its central character is again based on Martyn.

1889 – Joseph Fielding Smith (d.1964) was presiding patriarch and a general authority of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) from 1942 until 1946.

Smith was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, the son of a LDS Church apostle. He went to school at the University of Utah. In 1929, he married Ruth Pingree. Together they had 7 children.

At the age of 43, Smith was ordained a high priest and Patriarch to the Church on 8 October 1942 by Church President Heber J. Grant. He served but four years before it was reported by the church that he had requested to be released from his position. His request was granted by Church President George Albert Smith on 6 October 1946, with the church announcing that Smith was released for reasons of "ill health." After Smith's death it was discovered that the patriarch had been involved in a homosexual affair with a 21-year-old U.S. Navy sailor, who was also a Latter-day Saint.

After being released, Smith took his family to Honolulu, Hawaii, where he continued to raise his family. For a time, Smith was not allowed to hold any position in the church, but reportedly was "treated with compassion." In 1957, Smith was again allowed to serve in the church after he had forsaken his homosexual behavior.

1948 – Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated in New Delhi, India by a Hindu religious extremist. Gandhi had ended British rule in India through nonviolent resistance.

"Non-violence is not a garment to be put on and off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our very being," he stated in 1926.

His teachings were used during many of the Gay demonstrations of the 60s and 70s and were a major influence on Martin Luther King, through his gay cohort and fellow organizer, Bayard Rustin, who studied with Gandhi and brought the idea of satyagraha (a synthesis of the Sanskrit words Satya (meaning "truth") and Agraha ("insistence", or "holding firmly to") back to the American civil rights movement Today, the Gay Christian group Soulforce continues the uses Gandhi's non violence practices in its demonstrations against Christian churches that discriminate against GLBT people.

1951 – A California appellate court upholds the oral copulation conviction of a man based on police looking into the window of a restroom.

1961 – The New Mexico House of Representatives votes 37-28 in favor of a revised criminal code that includes a repeal of the state's sodomy law. This is the first vote by a U.S. legislative body to repeal a sodomy law. This bill refers to sodomitical relations as "variant sexual practice," something unique in U.S. history.

1981 – Fernando Grostein Andrade, born in São Paulo, is a Brazilian filmmaker, director, producer, screenwriter, director of photography, and media entrepreneur. He is a columnist for VEJA magazine and the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo.

His best-known work is the documentary Quebrando o Tabu, which discusses alternative policies to the War on Drugs and features former Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso as well as former US presidents Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, infectologist Drauzio Varella and writer Paulo Coelho.

In 2012, in partnership with Sun Dog Pictures, owned by British entrepreneur Richard Branson, the documentary was adapted into an international version which was narrated by actor Morgan Freeman. The project has spun off into the largest online platform in defense for human rights, with over 15 million followers between Facebook and Instagram.

Abe, his most recent movie, was selected to the Sundance Film Festival in 2019, and stars Noah Schnapp and Seu Jorge.

Fernando was also selected a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2019. He is a founder of Spray Media, which produces content for cinema as well as YouTube and branded content. Other works include the documentary Wandering Heart, with Caetano Veloso, and a number of publicity campaign for big brands such as Nestlé, Coca-Cola, and Volkswagen.

Fernando is the son of PhD urbanist Marta Dora Grostein and journalist Mario Escobar de Andrade, director of Playboy magazine in Brazil, who died in 1991. He is brother, on his mother's side, of the TV host Luciano Huck. He currently resides in Los Angeles with his husband, actor Fernando Siqueira.

2003 – On this date Belgium became the second country in the world to legally recognize same-sex marriage, with some restrictions. According to the Belgian Official Journal, approximately 300 same-sex couples were married between June 2003 and April 2004 (245 in 2003 and 55 in 2004). This constituted 1.2 percent of the total number of marriages in Belgium during that period. Two thirds of the married couples were gay male couples; the remainder were lesbian couples. On 22 July 2005, the Belgian government announced that a total of 2,442 same-sex marriages had taken place in the country since the extension of marriage rights to same-sex couples two and a half years earlier.

[batshit-eirepol]

The Whos and Whats of Irish Politics

So one of the disadvantages (read: advantages) of our use of actual Irish terms in politics - and not much anywhere else - is that it can make the more close-minded Brits (and Yanks) combust on sight. Rather than clean that up or leave a translation every time I have to use na fóclóirí seo, I'm going to make this glossary post which can explain both the Irish terms we use and whatever else you ought to know about this country's politics.

(Information correct at time of writing - 26th January 2025)

Political Offices and Assemblies

Taoiseach (pronounced tee-shock) - the top job, leader of the government. Has to date been held only by two parties. Currently Micheál Martin. Deputy is the Tánaiste (taw-nish-ta) - currently Simon Harris, who was the last Taoiseach and may well be the next one too. Appoints a few dozen ministers and junior ministers to run the government.

President - a largely ceremonial role over here; the head of state, whose job is to neutrally represent Ireland and (mostly) give speeches in hundreds of places. Directly elected every seven years. Currently Michael D. Higgins; due to term limits there'll be a new President at the next election in a few months.

Oireachtas (uh-rock-tas) - the parliament/congress/legislative body of Ireland, which has elections every five years (or sooner if the government falls apart). Consists of the President and two houses:

Dáil Éireann (doyle air-in; usually just the Dáil) - the lower house, and the one with basically all the power. Responsible for electing a Taoiseach, approving their government, and passing budgets. And of course creating and passing laws, in nearly all cases. Directly elected; its members are called TDs (short for Teachta Dála). Presided over by Ceann Comhairle (kyown core-la), a theoretically neutral adjudicator - currently Verona Murphy.

Seanad Éireann (shannad air-in; usually just the Seanad) - the upper house, which has relatively few powers. It can create bills for the Dáil to pass, delay passing of laws and suggest amendments, and that's about it. Elected through a complicated method involving local and national politicians, a couple of universities, and direct nomination by the Taoiseach (this means the government will basically always have a majority). You might be surprised to learn that there are regular calls for its reform or abolition.

Political Parties

Fianna Fáil (fee-na foyle) - the current largest party in government, historically big-tent populists and now settled into the mainstream centre-to-right. Has had the most seats in nearly every Dáil except during the 2010s, when their popularity nosedived following horrific mismanagement of the 2008 financial crisis. Currently led by Micheál Martin (also the Taoiseach).

Sinn Féin (shin fane) - the main opposition party, and an uncommon example of a nationalist-populist party which is also left-wing. Historically tied to the Irish Republican Army (IRA), a pro-Irish reunification paramilitary which participated in terrorism during Northern Ireland's Troubles period. This ended with their disarmament near the millennium following the Good Friday Agreement, and the party have transformed themselves into a major political force north and south of the Irish border. Currently led by Mary Lou McDonald.

Fine Gael (finna gale) - the other major governing coalition partner, who have been members of every government for almost fifteen years. For decades competed with Fianna Fáil to form governments, before the two began to govern together by the end of the 2010s. Both parties have also become close in ideology in recent years; previously Fine Gael were regarded as moderate conservatives with very slight progressive influences. Though its impact on the party disappeared quickly, they also have never lived down that Ireland's first fascist movement (the Blueshirts) were among their co-founders. Currently led by Simon Harris.

Labour - centre-left party which has frequently been a junior coalition partner over the years. While never large enough to lead the government, on several occasions its candidates for President have been elected. Has ebbed and flowed in popularity for years, often suffering sharp declines following time in government due to highly compromising its policies. Currently led by Ivana Bacik.

Social Democrats - another centre-left party, formed in 2015 by former Labour and independent TDs. Has a less established but younger and fast-growing support base [full disclosure: myself included ::) ]. Currently led by Holly Cairns.

Independent Ireland - again a newer party, this time a right-wing and pro-rural one. Formed from independents (surprise!) in 2023 and led by Michael Collins. No, not that one. No, not that other one either.

People Before Profit-Solidarity - an alliance of several anti-capitalist parties/movements, which mainly coalesced from protests over water charges in and around 2014. Generally considered the furthest left of the parties in the Dáil. While averse to naming a leader of the alliance for fear of splitting again, its de facto leader is Richard Boyd Barrett.

Aontú (ain-too) - a party formed and led by Peadar Tóibín, formerly of Sinn Féin, over his opposition to abortion (which was only legalised here in 2018; they formed in 2019). They have much the same nationalist tendencies as Sinn Féin but with a conservative bent.

Green Party - environmentalist party just left of centre. Like Labour, they have been through the cycle repeatedly of going into government, facing electoral drubbing and gradually recovering. Currently led by Roderic O'Gorman.

And then there are the independents - the system of election here in Ireland allows for non-party politicians to gain prominence. Naturally, their viewpoints vary from left to right, though many rely on localism for their support in elections. Over the years, many governments have either included or been supported by numbers of independents - this is true of the current one, which includes several in junior minister roles.

Well, that's most of the key info sorted out. Feel free to consult this whenever in a spot of Irish politics-related confusion. Thanks also to everyone who's shown interest in this blog - I've gotten this big info post done now, so hopefully the regular batshit content will follow soon enough.

[captaindibbzy]

Didn't even occur to me to do this cause it wasn't overly unexpected. XD

Overwhelming Labour Victory, a super majority. Worst defeat the Conservatives have had in a VERY long time. This is a Left Gain. Not hard left, but moderate.

SNP (Scottish National Party) are down to single digits, and have lost their place as the 3rd largest party in the UK.

LibDem's are now the third biggest party. They are the Default Third Party who usually have a candidate running in your area but what they stand for can wildly change depending on who is incherge, and who they are trying to court. Famously promised abolition of university fees then helped to triple the fees.

Sinn Féin are now the largest party in Northern Ireland by virtue of not losing any seats. I do not know enough about Northern Ireland's politics to comment about this. I don't know if they are left or right or what.

Sadly, Reform have gained 4 seats. They're the "Conservatives aren't right wing enough for me" party, and among those seats is Nigel Fucking Farage who badly wants Senpai Trump to notice him. He has been trying to be an MP for 8 general elections. This is his first successful run. I wish him a very get fucked I hope the expenses form kills you on sight.

Greens have 4 seats which is good. Up 3 on the last election.

Lettuce Liz has lost her seat so she can fuck off.

The way the UK election process works is you vote for your local representative then they go to parliament on your behalf.and speak for your area on the issues that matters to you. As a result the number of people who vote for a party does not always match the number of seats cause, like the American system, it depends largely on where the lines are drawn and those can be interesting.

Two seats have yet to be announced.

But as a general rule? Good day. Hopefully this government can manage to RAISE THE FUCKING TAXES and SPEND MONEY ON HEALTH CARE!!! But we will see how it goes.

[dhampiravidi]

john wick/assassin OC

form adapted from this template!

Name: Jasmine Grey

Aliases: Artemis Kelly, The Traitor

DoB: September 15th, 1989 (age 33 as of January 2023)

Height: 5'3"

Hair: naturally dark/curly and braided

Eyes: dark green

FC: Kat Graham

Equipment

Weapons: garrote (hidden in wristwatch), knives, handguns

Fighting Style(s): Boxing, Kickboxing, Capoeira, Taekwondo, Hapkido, Jujutsu, Karate

Skills: disguises, seduction, pickpocketing

Languages: English, Irish, French, Spanish, ASL

Health

Mental Health: suffers from PTSD; tends to get irrationally violent when roughly restrained or around large amounts of blood

Physical Health: fairly muscular for a woman her size/build; has many shiny scars often covered by makeup, plus a burn on her left wrist

Family

All family deceased, save for a grandfather in Botswana

Background

Jasmine's happy life ended when she was fifteen. Armed men came into her house, shot her parents where they were sitting next to her on the couch, and taunted her for what seemed like forever before they finally left. She made it through boarding school in a daze, but once she got into a decent university (thanks to her parents' influence, as they'd been politicians), she woke up. Nightmares made it too hard to sit in a classroom, so she decided to study abroad, learning what she needed to find her parents' killer. She worked her way up a chain of corrupt officials until she finally got the person who had ordered the hit. Now she spends her time tracking down hired hands. To her, nothing is worse than a person who kills for money, except maybe the coward who hired them. Jasmine faked her death not long after ending secondary school. She has befriended the Bowery King, and the High Table knows about her.

(Specifics; mostly notes for me)

Jas's mom, Honora, was a Teachta Dála (TD) aka a member of Dáil Éireann, the lower house of the Oireachtas (the Irish Parliament). She was the leader of Sinn Féin, the strongest opposition party that advocates for the unity of Ireland, welfare, the right to abortion (up to 3 months), and generally rejecting any connections to the UK. Her dad, Declan, was a a Bhreithimh, a judge who served on the An Ard-Chúirt aka the High Court, which deals with serious criminal and civil cases. Both of Jas's parents were executed based on their political influence, which some believed could be used to oust the Taoiseach (Prime Minister), as he needs to have a majority of the Dáil supporting him to stay in office. When Jas's parents were killed, it was November, and she'd hardly begun Third Year of her Junior Cycle at Scoil Chaitríona. She went to St. George's International School in Switzerland until she was 16, old enough to end her education.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 6.10 (after 1940)

1940 – World War II: Fascist Italy declares war on France and the United Kingdom, beginning an invasion of southern France. 1940 – World War II: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt denounces Italy's actions in his "Stab in the Back" speech at the graduation ceremonies of the University of Virginia. 1940 – World War II: Military resistance to the German occupation of Norway ends. 1942 – World War II: The Lidice massacre is perpetrated as a reprisal for the assassination of Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich. 1944 – World War II: Six hundred forty-two men, women and children massacred at Oradour-sur-Glane, France. 1944 – World War II: In Distomo, Boeotia, Greece, 218 men, women and children are massacred by German troops. 1944 – In baseball, 15-year-old Joe Nuxhall of the Cincinnati Reds becomes the youngest player ever in a major-league game. 1945 – Australian Imperial Forces land in Brunei Bay to liberate Brunei. 1947 – Saab produces its first automobile. 1957 – John Diefenbaker leads the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada to a stunning upset in the 1957 Canadian federal election, ending 22 years of Liberal Party government. 1960 – Trans Australia Airlines Flight 538 crashes near Mackay Airport in Mackay, Queensland, Australia, killing 29. 1963 – The Equal Pay Act of 1963, aimed at abolishing wage disparity based on sex, was signed into law by John F. Kennedy as part of his New Frontier Program. 1964 – United States Senate breaks a 75-day filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, leading to the bill's passage. 1967 – The Six-Day War ends: Israel and Syria agree to a cease-fire. 1977 – James Earl Ray escapes from Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary in Petros, Tennessee. He is recaptured three days later. 1980 – The African National Congress in South Africa publishes a call to fight from their imprisoned leader Nelson Mandela. 1982 – Lebanon War: The Syrian Arab Army defeats the Israeli Defense Forces in the Battle of Sultan Yacoub. 1987 – June Democratic Struggle: The June Democratic Struggle starts in South Korea, and people protest against the government. 1990 – British Airways Flight 5390 lands safely at Southampton Airport after a blowout in the cockpit causes the captain to be partially sucked from the cockpit. There are no fatalities. 1991 – Eleven-year-old Jaycee Lee Dugard is kidnapped in South Lake Tahoe, California; she would remain a captive until 2009. 1994 – China conducts a nuclear test for DF-31 warhead at Area C (Beishan), Lop Nur, its prominence being due to the Cox Report. 1996 – Peace talks begin in Northern Ireland without the participation of Sinn Féin. 1997 – Before fleeing his northern stronghold, Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot orders the killing of his defense chief Son Sen and 11 of Sen's family members. 1999 – Kosovo War: NATO suspends its airstrikes after Slobodan Milošević agrees to withdraw Serbian forces from Kosovo. 2001 – Pope John Paul II canonizes Lebanon's first female saint, Saint Rafqa. 2002 – The first direct electronic communication experiment between the nervous systems of two humans is carried out by Kevin Warwick in the United Kingdom. 2003 – The Spirit rover is launched, beginning NASA's Mars Exploration Rover mission. 2008 – Sudan Airways Flight 109 crashes at Khartoum International Airport, killing 30 people. 2009 – Eighty-eight year-old James Wenneker von Brunn opens fire inside the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and fatally shoots Museum Special Police Officer Stephen Tyrone Johns. Other security guards returned fire, wounding von Brunn, who was apprehended. 2018 – Opportunity rover, sends it last message back to earth. The mission was finally declared over on February 13, 2019. 2019 – An Agusta A109E Power crashes onto the AXA Equitable Center on Seventh Avenue in Manhattan, New York City, sparking a fire on the top of the building. The pilot of the helicopter is killed.

[redstarnotebooks]

"‘Got Fuck All’: Brendan ‘The Dark’ Hughes’ Dissident Republicanism." Tom Blackburn. Ebb Magazine.

"Returned to Long Kesh, Hughes was facing a total of 20 years inside. But by this period, the cages at Long Kesh were a hotbed of political education and intellectual ferment. ‘The British labelled it, or nicknamed it, “the university of terrorism”’, he reminisced in a 1991 documentary. ‘Long Kesh, to me, was the university of freedom; the university of revolution.’ Prisoners taught themselves the Irish language, studied the history of their country's long and lonely struggle to free itself from the British yoke, and acquainted themselves with revolutionary thinkers from around the world. Bobby Sands’s reading list, for example, included Che Guevara – also Hughes’ greatest hero – Frantz Fanon, Amílcar Cabral, George Jackson and liberation theologist Camilo Torres, as well as homegrown revolutionaries James Connolly, Patrick Pearse, and Liam Mellows.23 The H-block men also educated themselves about and made common cause with other national liberation struggles, including that of the Palestinians, whose cause Hughes would hold dear for the rest of his life.

All this stood in stark contrast to the situation just a few years earlier. In the early 1970s, by Hughes’ own admission, IRA recruits had scarcely been political at all, motivated as they were by the immediate need to defend their communities and fight the British occupiers. Though Sinn Féin was nominally the political arm of the Republican movement, it offered little in the way of ideological leadership. By the middle of the decade, however, a new brand of political militant was on the rise as younger IRA volunteers recognised that it was insufficient to struggle for a 32-county republic without having some idea of the kind of society they wanted to build once that battle was won. They began to chafe at the restrictions imposed on them by the IRA’s more conservative, Dublin-based leadership, and a select few commenced plotting to overthrow it."

[thxnews]

Stormont Agreement: Unraveling Legacy Myths

Lord Caine's Insightful Challenge to Irish Government's Stance on Legacy Issues

Just over nine years ago, on December 23, 2014, a series of political negotiations culminated in the creation of the Stormont House Agreement. Observers hailed this agreement as a significant achievement, as it covered a range of issues, including the sensitive topic of legacy. But, as Lord Caine recently pointed out, the consensus surrounding the legacy provisions of this agreement might not be as unanimous as often portrayed.  

The Initial Promise of Stormont House

A Look Back at the 2014 Agreement Many considered the Stormont House Agreement a considerable accomplishment, as it prevented the collapse of the Northern Ireland Executive through its financial provisions. As a participant in the eleven-week talks leading to this agreement, I recall the optimistic spirit that permeated the negotiations. However, even then, the legacy proposals were not universally accepted.  

The Crumbling Consensus

Divergent Views Among Parties The Ulster Unionists outright rejected the legacy proposals, while the SDLP saw them as a dilution of previous ones. This lack of unanimity was evident even as the First and Deputy First Ministers persuaded the Secretary of State to legislate at Westminster, given the devolved nature of the proposed new institutions.  

The Role of the Irish Government

A Critical Perspective Lord Caine's challenge brings to light a key concern: the role of the Irish Government under the Stormont House proposals. Unlike the UK Government, which showed commitment to pursuing Troubles-related investigations, the Irish Government did not make similar commitments, especially considering the cross-border nature of many incidents during the Troubles.  

Evolving Legacy Proposals

From Consensus to Controversy As efforts to transform the legacy paragraphs of the Stormont House Agreement into detailed legislation began, the fragile consensus gradually started to wane. Subsequently, Martin McGuinness of Sinn Féin vetoed the inclusion of substantive commitments on legacy in the Fresh Start Agreement of November 2015. This led to a statement from the Victims and Survivors Forum, expressing concern that those who suffered the most during the Troubles were being forgotten.  

The Path Forward

Addressing Legacy Issues in a Changing Landscape Despite these challenges, the UK Government continued its efforts to address legacy issues. The Legacy Act, which includes and builds upon the Stormont House Agreement, aims to provide more information to victims and survivors. Importantly, it acknowledges the slim chances of successful prosecutions and the complexities involved in addressing a conflict that began over fifty years ago. Furthermore, in retrospect, Lord Caine's reflection on the legacy proposals underscores the need for a renewed examination of the roles both governments have played. Consequently, as he rightly points out, the time may have come for the Irish Government to address its role in these legacy issues. In conclusion, understanding the intricacies of the Stormont House Agreement and the varied perspectives on legacy issues is crucial. The path to resolving these matters is complex and requires a balanced and thoughtful approach, one that considers all sides and seeks to find common ground in the interest of peace and reconciliation.   Sources: THX News, Northern Ireland Office & Lord Caine. Read the full article

[stairnaheireann]

#OTD in 1922 – De Valera and Collins agree to a pact whereby a national coalition panel of candidates will represent the pro- and anti-Treaty wings of Sinn Féin throughout Ireland in the forthcoming general election.

As in the Irish elections, 1921 in the south, Sinn Féin stood one candidate for every seat, except those for the University of Dublin and one other; the treaty had divided the party between 65 pro-treaty candidates, 57 anti-treaty and 1 nominally on both sides. Unlike the elections a year earlier, other parties stood in most constituencies forcing single transferable vote elections, with Sinn…

[ausetkmt]

In the past two decades, historians have given us an increasingly complete picture of the intellectual pasts of black anti-colonialism. Including Robin D. G. Kelley’s recently reissued Freedom Dreams, Minkah Makalani’s In the Cause of Freedom, and Adom Getachew’s Worldmaking after Empire, this body of work has forged a deep understanding of the “Black Atlantic” tradition in particular.

These scholars have shown us that the political horizon of black anti-colonial thinkers — from communist cadres organizing port workers in interwar Marseille to the reformist postcolonial statesmen who plotted the New International Economic Order — was not limited to national liberation in a narrowly conceived sense but rather encompassed globe-spanning forms of transformation.

Musab Younis, a lecturer at Queen Mary University of London and essayist for the London Review of Books, has produced a debut book that does much to enrich our understanding of this history. The title of his study, which focuses on the interwar period and is underpinned by research in French, British, and West African archives, neatly captures its central argument: black anti-colonialism was conceived “on the scale of the world.”

Thinking Globally

Across five chapters, Younis aims to show how “a wide-angle focus came to dominate Black Atlantic political thought in the 1920s and 1930s.” In his account, interwar anti-colonialists subverted imperial conceptions of globality to forge a “counterpolitics of scale.” As Younis writes:

Many Black intellectuals rejected the notion that the domain of the global was restricted to an imperial elite. They saw a theory of global order as necessary for the liberation of Africa and its scattered diasporas. By thinking on the scale of the world, they developed a distinct strategy for considering the problem of imperial rule.

Crucially, he argues, political thinking on this sweeping scale enabled an understanding of “race as a form of global hierarchy rather than a natural division of humanity.” Younis hopes that reconstructing this subterranean intellectual history might help with “rethinking the problem of human agency on the scale of the world” amid our current “planetary predicament.”

On the Scale of the World opens with a rereading of Marcus Garvey’s movement, with Younis suggesting that more cosmopolitan and solidaristic impulses tempered or sat alongside its racialist, inward, and chauvinist dimensions — which have been critiqued by Paul Gilroy and others. He digs up some intriguing snippets from the print archive to substantiate this argument.

In a 1923 editorial for his Negro World newspaper, Garvey focused on the Moroccan and Algerian troops who were taking part in the occupation of Germany. The North Africans had been “declassified from blackness” by the French state, he observed, appealing to them to recognize that their destinies were “linked up with all other men of color throughout the world.” The Moroccans and Algerians needed only to understand that “their first duty and interest” lay together with “the four hundred million Negroes of the world.”

Younis points also to the ambiguous meaning of the tricolor flag — red, black, and green ؅— that Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) adopted, which was apparently deliberate. On at least one occasion, Garvey explained its logic as follows: “Red showed their sympathy with the “Reds” of the world, and the Green their sympathy for the Irish in their fight for freedom, and the Black — the negro.”

This reflected the influence of Hubert Harrison, the West Indian–born radical who edited the UNIA newspaper. Harrison held up Ireland’s Sinn Féin and India’s Swadeshi movement as exemplars for the black freedom struggle.

Younis seems to be making two distinct claims about Garveyism. First, he wants to locate “a powerful, anticulturalist, deeply political strand of critical thinking about race within the shell of an apparent embrace of racial ideology.” But judging from the archival evidence that he lays out lucidly in this chapter, this strand of anti-essentialist thinking seems to have been more incidental — a residue of the early influence of Harrison and others on Garvey — than fundamental.

On the other hand, Younis argues that Garveyite nationalism — the question of cosmopolitan inflections aside — entailed a rejection of “naturalized international hierarchy” through its insistence on the immediate possibility of black sovereignty. This second claim seems much more convincing.

Before Dependency Theory

In the second chapter, Younis traces conceptions of the world in Anglophone West African thought, focusing in particular on the turn to understanding the region’s place in “the machinery of global order.” This meant transcending narratives that sought to valorize the African past and vindicate Africans as historical actors by shifting toward a recognition that they also had to confront the world “in which freedom was to be obtained.”

The core of Younis’s argument is that “structuralist” thinking was very much in evidence in interwar West Africa. Such thinking concerned the region’s subordinate place in the hierarchy of the “world system” as well as the centrality of racialized economic exploitation to colonial rule all over the world. These ideas were therefore not, he is eager to stress, an intellectual gift to Africa from Latin American dependency theorists several decades later.

One case study is J. W. de Graft-Johnson, a Gold Coast intellectual who studied law in London before penning Towards Nationhood in West Africa in 1928. Younis shows that De Graft-Johnson took a global conception of race and imperial subjection from his reading of the white supremacists Lothrop Stoddard and Maurice Muret — the notion of a world defined by a “disequilibrium in human destinies.”

E. Casely Hayford, editor of the Gold Coast Leader, also plays a prominent role in Younis’s reconstruction. Hayford, he writes, pointed to “the tragic impossibility of economic accumulation under a rigged system” and exposed “the racist doctrines propounded in Europe and implemented in Africa.”

Younis insists that the analyses put forward by the likes of De Graft-Johnson and Hayford did not simply reflect the thinking of the international communist movement at the time. These West African thinkers, he argues, were distinguished by “virtually always [stressing] the importance of race in the overall system of exploitation.” As the African Morning Post declared in 1938, after surveying labor conditions in Jamaica and the Gold Coast, “All over the world the fate of the negro race is identical . . . helpless before hydra-headed, inexorable and self-centred capitalism.”

There is no reason to doubt that this school of West African thought had its own intellectual provenance. Yet Younis doesn’t really demonstrate that it ascribed greater importance to race than, for example, a figure such as Trinidad’s George Padmore while he was a Communist International (Comintern) member.

Whether or not the West African tendency was distinctive in this respect, it is still of considerable interest in its own right. The fact that Marxist and non-Marxist thinkers in different places appeared to reach similar conclusions in parallel is notable in itself, and tells us something about the history of colonial capitalism and the way it was theorized.

White World, Black Labor

In another chapter, Younis recounts how black intellectuals based in Paris challenged arguments about the possibility of progress and assimilation within the French imperial system by focusing on race as a global structure. These critics dismissed the idea that the system “could possibly evolve to include their racialized populations on equal terms.”

Again, black intellectuals gleaned subversive political insights from reading white supremacist texts. La Race Nègre, the paper founded by Senegal’s Lamine Senghor after he broke with the French Communist Party, interpreted Stoddard’s writing as reflecting the centrality of white dominance to Western imperialism in all its guises.

Younis stresses that a new conception of scale was central to this form of politics. These black intellectuals argued that the “spatial limits of a racial and colonial order” were “impossible to contain within any individual imperial system” and emphasized the “transnational affinities” between different empires. This meant that it was vital to think and practice anti-colonialism on the same global scale as the empires it aimed to negate.

In chapter four, which may be the book’s most creative, Younis argues that thinkers such as Senghor, Tiemoko Garan Kouyaté, and others around La Race Nègre “conceptualized how the world was ordered by race” in the form of a “body-world dialectic.” This involved two propositions: “First, the idea that colonialism was eliminationist, leading ineluctably to the destruction of Black people; and second, the idea that the Black body was defined at once by its loneliness and its labor.”

There was thus no contradiction between thinking on the intimate scale of the human body and on the grand scale of the world. In fact, the two were inseparable.

Paul Gilroy argued in his foundational 1993 book The Black Atlantic that a key point of divergence between the Black Atlantic tradition and Marxism was that “in the critical thought of blacks in the West, social self-creation through labour is not the centrepiece of emancipatory hopes.” Yet this was certainly not true of Padmore and C. L. R. James, nor of the West African thinkers Younis uncovers.

Indeed, much remains to be written on just how central conceptions of racialized proletarianization (and the emancipatory laboring subject it was seen to have produced) were to many visions of black anti-colonial politics. On the Scale of the World marks a useful contribution to this endeavor.

Past vs. Present

There is a tension running through the book, between the imperatives of intellectual history and the demands of political theory oriented toward the present, that becomes especially clear in sections like this. It is hard to avoid the sense that Younis is selecting archival fragments and retrospectively imbuing them with coherence and unity so that the history works more seamlessly for his theoretical intervention.

He argues, for example, that while Senghor and Kouyaté may not have been “writing directly about the body,” their thought anticipated “a reading of colonial sovereignty as necropolitical.” In one sense, this is a useful framing: showing how interwar thinkers might have prefigured the themes of today’s theorists draws our attention to overlooked intellectual antecedents.

But there is an attendant danger of stripping concepts of their meaning and historical specificity. In his suggestion that thinkers who developed theories about the centrality of black labor to the interwar global order were really writing about the body, foreshadowing the contemporary work of Achille Mbembe, Younis risks obscuring something of the intellectual history.

Flowing from these methodological dilemmas, it isn’t always clear whether Younis is arguing that the worldly scale of colonialism was the precondition of interwar Black Atlantic political thought or whether the thinking itself was global in scope. He mostly succeeds in demonstrating the latter, elegantly reconstructing the scalar shifts within anti-colonial thought.

At times, however, the argument about scale slides towards the first of these arguments and thus appears tautological. For example, he writes that the world was not “directly invoked” by the Gold Coast Leader, “but its scale implicitly made the whole argument possible.”

Overall, these are minor quibbles about an excellent study. The originality of the book’s construction is all the more impressive considering how many studies of Black Atlantic thought we already have at hand. Ultimately, Younis’s mission — “to sift through the globalisms” of the past and “locate those that can form the basis of world-encompassing collective action” — seems more worthwhile than a project of strict and faithful historical reconstruction.

It is, finally, worth asking how serviceable the interwar archive really is for our novel moment of ecological breakdown and resurgent “great power” rivalry — whether, as David Scott has considered, we can any longer think of futures in the terms developed by past anti-colonial militants.

There is, no doubt, much “buried intellectual treasure” to be excavated from the history of anti-colonialism. But this work cannot stand in for the grimmer and more challenging task of facing, and thinking anew about, our global order — one that, unlike the pasts that produced Kwame Nkrumah and Fidel Castro, is lacking clear emancipatory horizons or world-systemic alternatives.

The Black Anti-Colonial Tradition Fought for a Global Revolution

[seachranaidhe]

Damning new film destroys DWP dishonesty over Universal Credit | The Canary

https://www.thecanary.co/uk/analysis/2019/11/03/damning-new-film-destroys-dwp-dishonesty-over-universal-credit/

[corkcitylibraries]

Betty Friedan and Second Wave Feminism in the USA and Ireland

by Deirdre Swain

The Cork City Reference Library holds a large collection of books about feminism, particularly Irish feminism. BorrowBox also possesses a range of eBooks on feminism that were published in the last 7 years. In this article, I will discuss Betty Friedan, a well-known American feminist who was born in February 1921, and the second-wave feminist movement in Ireland. I will then introduce a reading list of books on feminism which are available on BorrowBox. I will also provide a reading list of books on feminism which will be available in the Reference Library once it re-opens to the public.

Betty Friedan and Second Wave Feminism in the USA

The recent TV drama, Mrs. America depicts the struggle to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment in the USA in the 1970s. The popularity of this TV series demonstrates a renewed interest in the women’s liberation movement and certain prominent and influential American feminists, namely Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Shirley Chisholm and Bella Abzug.

February 2021 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Betty Friedan, one of these second wave feminists and author of the seminal feminist text, The Feminine Mystique. She was born Bettye Naomi Goldstein to a Jewish family in Peoria, Illinois on 4 February 1921. Her mother, Miriam Horwitz, was an unhappy housewife whose parents, Hungarian Jewish immigrants, did not allow her to go to university. Miriam encouraged Betty to do the opposite, and she strongly supported her daughter’s education. Betty went to university in Smith College, graduating in 1942. She then studied Psychology in the University of California, Berkeley, for a year. Thereafter, she worked as a journalist in New York, writing about the Jim Crow laws and anti-Semitism. Later, she worked as a women’s magazine writer. In 1949, she married Carl Friedman (later Friedan), and they had 3 children. They got divorced in 1969.

In 1957, Betty attended the 15th anniversary of her graduation from Smith College. At this reunion, she conducted a survey on her former fellow students (females) to explore the direction of their lives since graduation. She was perturbed by the amount of discontent among them. This revelation about the lives of her peers led to the writing of her book, The Feminine Mystique. This publication recounts the dilemma of suburban housewives, who are expected to spend all of their time on domestic duties and the rearing of children. They are overshadowed constantly by the thought, “Is this it?” They feel guilty for not being satisfied with their role, but they cannot deny the fact that they are unfulfilled. The “feminine mystique” of the book’s title is the societal assumption that household duties and motherhood alone will give women a sense of achievement. Friedan coined the phrase “the problem with no name” to describe women’s unhappiness with and inability to live up to this feminine mystique. She contended that women could have a successful career as well as a family.

The book sold three million copies and resonated with many suburban women because it showed them that they were not alone in their feelings of dissatisfaction. It was also strongly criticised for its homophobic language and for excluding Black and working class women. It spoke from a standpoint where every American housewife was white and middle class. Her solution to the problem of “the feminine mystique” (delegating housework) were also criticised for being inadequate and for failing to tackle the problem fully.

Friedan was aware of some of the shortcomings of The Feminine Mystique, and she wrote a second book to tackle some of the problems not resolved in the first one, including the double enslavement of working women who still had to do all the housework. The title of this book is The Second Stage. She also wrote numerous other books, including It Changed My Life: Writings on the Women’s Movement, which was published in 1976 and Beyond Gender: the New Politics of Family and Work, which was published in 1998.

Betty Friedan was a women’s activist and fought for reproductive rights, equal pay, equal representation and equality in hiring. She co-founded the National Organisation for Women (NOW) in 1966. In 1969, she launched the National Association for Repeal of Abortion Laws (NARAL Pro-Choice America). She co-founded the National Women’s Political Caucus (NWPC) with Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug and several other women in 1971. The NWPC is a US organisation which supports and trains women who seek elected and appointed offices in all levels of government. Betty was quick-tempered, and she tended to lash out at people, including other feminists such as Gloria Steinem, even though they had similar aspirations for women. She was also quite disparaging in her treatment of lesbian women, referring to them as “the lavender menace”.

Later in her life, Friedan became a Zionist and fought to expose Anti-Semitism in the women’s movement. She received the Eleanor Roosevelt Leadership Award in 1989 and was awarded honorary degrees by the State University of New York and Columbia University. She died on her birthday, 4 February, in Washington DC in 2006, aged 85.

What advances for women were taking place in Ireland during the time of Betty Friedan’s activism in the United States?

The Irish Women’s Liberation Movement

In the summer of 1970, five women met in Bewley’s café in Dublin and decided that it was time for some drastic changes in Irish women’s lives; time to fight for equal rights. That day, these women held what was to be the first meeting of the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement (IWLM) group, the first radical women’s liberation group in Ireland. Although the group lasted little more than seven months, its legacy changed women’s lives significantly and positively. As proof of the success of the IWLM, the two injustices that this group fought hardest against – the marriage bar, which was abolished in 1973, and the illegality of contraception – are unimaginable in today’s world.

Margaret Gaj owned the restaurant, Gaj’s, on Baggot Street, where the IWLM would meet every Monday night. Margaret Gaj was passionate about women’s rights. Her circle of friends included Sinn Féin official Máirín de Búrca, journalist Mary Maher, who was interested in socialist issues, Máirín Johnston, who was a member of the Communist Party and who was also active in the Labour Party and Dr. Moira Woods, who was in an organisation called Irish Voice on Vietnam, which protested against the war in Vietnam. These five women started the IWLM group that day in the summer of 1970 in Bewley’s café, but around a dozen women were actively involved in the founding of this women’s organisation, the majority of them journalists. Nell McCafferty and Mary Kenny, both journalists, were two prominent founders of the IWLM.

Chains or Change was the title of the IWLM charter. It was put together in the form of a booklet which detailed the goals and ideals that the IWLM strove for. There were 6 demands: equal pay; an end to the marriage bar that kept women from working after they got married; equal rights in law; justice for widows, deserted wives and “unmarried mothers”; equal education opportunities; and the legalisation of contraception. Neither abortion nor divorce were mentioned at all in Chains or Change. When the most basic civil rights for women were being fought for, abortion and divorce did not even arise because they were not considered to be a priority. The booklet was a milestone in the history of women’s rights in Ireland, because it was the first time that anyone had published a comprehensive list of the injustices that church, state and social code perpetuated against women.

Nell McCafferty

Nell McCafferty was born in Derry. She got her degree from Queen’s University in Belfast and trained as a teacher, but she could not get a job in Derry, because the Protestant schools knew she was Catholic, and the Catholic schools did not think she was a real Catholic but, rather, a communist. She moved to Dublin to work as a journalist for the Irish Times. Nell writes in her autobiography of an incident from when she first moved to Dublin; she wanted to buy a record player on hire purchase but was told that no woman could sign an agreement without the co-signature of a male guarantor. A male stranger signed for her because she did not know any men in Dublin. This man was unemployed, and her own earnings amounted to five times more than his welfare entitlements.

Nell was a founding member of the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement (IWLM). In the IWLM, Nell was someone who could be depended upon to put forward forceful arguments that were backed up by accurate facts, and she could convey them both in writing and in person.          

Nell’s journalism was objective, and she used it to bear witness to the struggles of the oppressed. She did not even have to give her opinion; her writing style and her description of what she observed in society were enough to expose hypocrisy and injustice without her having to comment on the issues herself. As well as being a feminist activist, Nell was also a civil rights activist on issues in Northern Ireland. When she started to work at the Irish Times, she joined the “women’s page” staff. Initially, she was fearful that this would involve writing about fashion, cooking and babies, but it actually enabled her to write on issues regarding women’s liberation and women’s rights.                    

The Contraceptive Train

In May 1971, the IWLM founders organised what became known as the “contraceptive train”, which was a protest against the fact that contraceptives were illegal in the Republic of Ireland. Nell McCafferty said that she had got the idea for the contraceptive train when she was in Northern Ireland at a civil rights march. The march went from North to South, and at the border, a student activist called Cyril Tallman held up a copy of Edna O’Brien’s novel Country Girls in one hand and a Durex condom in the other, saying that both were banned in the South. Nell was initially indignant about the condom, but the following year when the IWLM was talking about contraceptives, Nell got the idea of reversing the journey from Dublin to the North.

There was a ban on contraception in the Republic of Ireland, which was enshrined in the 1935 Criminal Law Act. This made the importation, distribution and sale of contraceptive devices a criminal offence. Advertising contraceptives was also illegal. The contraceptive pill was available in Ireland only on prescription, as a “menstrual cycle regulator”.

There were 47 founders and members of the IWLM on the contraceptive train on 22 May 1971, just enough to fill two carriages. However, when Nell McCafferty asked for a packet of contraceptive pills in a Belfast pharmacy, she was asked for a prescription, and the same happened when she asked for a coil, loop and Dutch cap. It turned out that the only contraceptives that were available in Belfast without prescription were condoms and spermicidal jelly. Nell was not happy with the prospect of taking a stand at Dublin customs with just condoms and spermicidal jelly, so it was decided that packets of aspirins would be bought, since they were similar enough in appearance to contraceptive pills that it was hoped they would pass for same! When the women arrived at customs in Dublin, the customs officers told them they were breaking the law, but let them through, because arresting them was not an option for them. The contraceptive train accomplished what it set out to do; the state refused to lift the ban on contraceptives, but it also failed to enforce it. The IWLM exposed this hypocrisy and proved that women would be free to import contraceptives from the North into the Republic from then on without any interference from law enforcement officials. Nell McCafferty made a statement at the train station, and two of the women went on the Late Late Show on TV to talk about the experience.

Mary Robinson failed in March and May of 1971 to get the Senate to add her Contraceptive Bill to its order paper. Despite Mary Robinson’s and the IWLM’s efforts to legalise contraceptives, it was not until 1979 that the government passed the Family Planning Act. This Act allowed solely married couples to get access to contraceptive devices other than the pill with a prescription. Family Planning clinics were already selling condoms, but the government was turning a blind eye to this because they were accepting “donations” in exchange for the condoms. In 1990, the Irish Family Planning Association was fined £500 for selling condoms in the Virgin Megastore in Dublin. Finally, in 1992, the government extended legislation to allow supermarkets and retail stores to sell condoms. The contraceptive train literally set the wheels in motion regarding the legalisation of contraceptives, but it took a long time before the law was changed for the benefit of women.

References

-Code, L., ed. (2000). Encyclopedia of Feminist Theories. London: Routledge.

-Parry, M. (2010). ‘Betty Friedan: Feminist Icon and Founder of the National Organization for Women’, American Journal of Public Health, 100 (9), pp. 1584-1585.

-Shteir, R. (2021). ‘Why We Can’t Stop Talking about Betty Friedan’, New York Times, 3 February. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/03/us/betty-friedan-feminism-legacy.html (Accessed: 9 February 2021).

McCafferty, N. (2004). Nell: a Disorderly Woman. Dublin: Penguin Ireland.

Stopper, A. (2006). Mondays at Gaj’s: The Story of the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement. Dublin: The Liffey Press.

Reading list of books on feminism

Available on BorrowBox:

-Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (published in 2017): https://fe.bolindadigital.com/wldcs_bol_fo/b2i/productDetail.html?productId=HCU_469861&fromPage=1&b2bSite=4813

-Feminist Fight Club, by Jessica Bennett (published in 2016): https://fe.bolindadigital.com/wldcs_bol_fo/b2i/productDetail.html?productId=PRU_398091&fromPage=1&b2bSite=4813

-Feminists Don’t Wear Pink (And Other Lies), by Scarlett Curtis (published in 2018): https://fe.bolindadigital.com/wldcs_bol_fo/b2i/productDetail.html?productId=PRU_574840&fromPage=1&b2bSite=4813

-Give Birth Like a Feminist, by Milli Hill (published in 2019): https://fe.bolindadigital.com/wldcs_bol_fo/b2i/productDetail.html?productId=HCU_655895&fromPage=1&b2bSite=4813

-We Should All Be Feminists, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (published in 2014): https://fe.bolindadigital.com/wldcs_bol_fo/b2i/productDetail.html?productId=HCP_402800&fromPage=1&b2bSite=4813

Available in the Reference Library, Grand Parade

-Code, L., ed. (2000). Encyclopedia of Feminist Theories. London: Routledge.

-McCafferty, N. (1984). The best of Nell: a selection of writings over fourteen years. Dublin: Attic Press.

- Stopper, A. (2006). Mondays at Gaj’s: The Story of the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement. Dublin: The Liffey Press.

-Pierse, Mary S. (ed.) (2010). Irish Feminisms, 1810-1930. Abingdon: Edition Synapse/Routledge (5 volumes).

-Owens, R. (2005). A social history of women in Ireland, 1870-1970. Dublin: Gill & Macmillan.

-Connolly, L. and O’Toole, T. (2005). Documenting Irish Feminisms: the Second Wave. Dublin: The Woodfield Press.

-Connolly, L. (2002). The Irish women’s movement: from revolution to devolution. Dublin: Lilliput Press.

-Rose, C. (1975). The female experience: the story of the woman movement in Ireland. Galway: Arlen House.

[warsofasoiaf]

The Celtic Tiger - A Kaiserreich Ireland AAR Worldbuilding Appendix: Erin go Bragh!

Ireland, the great survivor of the Second Weltkrieg, confounded the world when they survived both the Black Monday crisis and an invasion by a coalition of Great Powers. Military and economic analysts across the world study the successes of Ireland in an attempt to replicate them in their own countries. The spirit of Ireland is found nowhere else, and the different techniques they have attempted in order to solve the problems that plagued them create a unique political climate, cultural climate, and military.

Politics 

Ireland is a federal multi-party parliamentary democratic republic with a bicameral legislative branch named the Oireachtas. The lower house is called the Dail, and holds most of the political power, while the upper house is named the Seanad. Ireland offers universal suffrage to all citizens of adult age, who are permitted to participate in elections at both the federal and provincial levels. The Irish head of state is the President and carries significant executive power. A Prime Minister, called the Taoiseach, is nominated by the President and submitted for approval by the Dail. Since Michael Collins left office, his final act as President was to issue an executive decree that states that the President and Taoiseach must be separate people, to split the power between them and prevent one man from enacting sole executive power as he had during the early years of Irish independence. The President is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and has traditionally been held by a former member of the military, but as Collins held the position for so long and the political elite of Ireland were veterans of the IRA and the Irish Independence War, this is not an established rule or social construct but rather a de facto state of affairs. 

Ireland has four regional parliaments in the four historical provinces of Ireland, Connacht, Leinster, Munster, and Ulster. These regional parliaments possess significant powers on intra-provincial affairs, including police powers, while the Federal parliament carries out powers on inter-provincial affairs such as commerce along with national matters of concern such as foreign policy, treaty ratification, and declarations of war. The regional parliaments hold elections in offset years, and send members to the upper house of Seanad, which acts as an advisory body to the Oireachtas and has little political power on its own.

Ireland has many political parties, but elections typically revolve around five political groups. The largest party is Fine Gael, holding itself as the “Party of Collins,” a party that favors high defense spending, a neutral foreign policy, and high levels of public-private partnership. The National Center Party, led by Frank McDermott, is a frequent ally of Fine Gael on defense spending but advocates a pro-Entente foreign policy and is more conservative on social issues. Seán Lemass is the leader of the Cumann Poblachta na hÉireann, which frequently allies with Fine Gael on economic issues but advocates for stronger democratic principles and reduced size of government. The chief point of contention between Fine Gael and Cumann Poblachta na hÉireann is in regards to Mitteleuropan membership, the former supports the Mitteleuropan reform and the strengthening of the Dublin SEZ, the latter wishes Ireland to leave Mitteleuropa and enact strong bilateral trade agreements with the Imperial Economic Development Council of the Entente and the Co-Prosperity Sphere. Fianna Fáil is the largest and most significant of the opposition parties, led by Eamon de Valera. Fianna Fáil champions itself as the loyal opposition and is a haven for politicians dissatisfied with Fine Gael. Fianna Fáil champions a center-left position on social issues and advocates a pro-German and pro-Reichspakt foreign policy and more economic protectionism. The outlawed Irish Labour Party joined Sinn Féin, a social democrat party. Officially led by Cathal Brugha, Sinn Féin largely looks to its younger members for leadership and Brugha is largely a ceremonial head of the party to provide political clout and legitimacy; an arrangement that Brugha is not fond of. This two-headedness has often been blamed for Sinn Féin’s poor showing at the polls, though other political observers find that lingering anti-syndicalist sympathies have been a larger stimulus for partisan antipathy toward Sinn Féin.

Foreign Policy

Ireland is known as the “Great Neutral” and is not aligned with the three Great Power blocs of the Co-Prosperity Sphere, Entente, and Reichspakt. Ireland maintains healthy trade relationships and embassies with all three alliances, and has established diplomatic and trade relationships with the Somalia-led ALDI, the African League for Democratic Independence. High-level diplomatic summits are frequently conducted in Dublin with Ireland as a mediator, owing to Michael Collins’s conduct during the Halifax Conference. This foreign policy idea is meant to avoid Irish involvement in trade wars or border disputes, as the Irish economy benefits significantly from open trading with the various Great Power blocs. 

Of all countries, Ireland’s closest ally is the United States, and the American-Irish Special Relationship means that the two countries frequently cooperate in areas of mutual defense, intelligence sharing, and favorable trade treaties. This relationship is young but has proven to be exceptionally strong, borne out of Irish support for the United States in the Second American Civil War and the Dídean refugee initiative. Travel between the two countries is strong which leads to a thriving tourism sector, and America fulfills a significant amount of Irish demand for steel, tungsten, and aluminum. 

Ireland is one of the six nuclear powers, along with the Kaiserreich, France, Great Britain, Japan, and the United States. While the Irish nuclear program is not as large as the German or British program, the Irish do maintain a nuclear deterrent. The Irish nuclear policy, dubbed “The Atomic Lance,” calls for bombing of large cities and military bases with strategic bombers in an overwhelming first strike. This policy was considered to create the highest likelihood of deterrent value as well as being the most cost-efficient method of defense. Ireland maintains that its nuclear weapons are only used for defensive purposes but refuses to sign any accord swearing that they will only be used if nuclear weapons were used by another party. Ireland maintains a nuclear facility in a classified facility in Leinster, enriching uranium for its small nuclear weapons program as well as providing nuclear engineering capability for nuclear power generation. 

Economy

The Federal Republic of Ireland is a highly-developed knowledge economy. In the wake of the Black Monday stock market collapse, Ireland embarked on a series of reforms that have transformed it into a highly effective and efficient economy. It is considered an attractive place to do business, with high levels of access both in the Mitteleuropan economic bloc and without. Foreign investment is common, and countries see Ireland as a gateway between Europe and North America. While Ireland is not formally a member of the Imperial Economic Development Council, the Ulster Parliament typically sends a representative to occupy an observer seat with the IEDC to conduct trade and development deals with the Entente. This action has caused significant stress in Germany and the Mitteleuropan Economic Council, but the French Republic has endorsed the action and Germany is unwilling to fight an economic war with France and Ireland.

The Atlantic Trade Commission, an independent body of Irish and American economists and trade experts, had been established in the wake of the Lend-Lease Program. After the conclusion of the war, the body took on a renewed strength coordinating trade between the two nations. This bilateral economic relationship is one of Ireland’s strongest ties with the United States, and serves as a model for other bilateral trade agreements made following the end of the Second Weltkrieg.

Dublin occupies a unique position in the economic world due to the development of the Dublin Special Economic Zone. The Open For Business Initiative took advantage of ambiguously-worded clauses within Mitteleuropa regarding domestic subsidiary partnerships. This provision, which Germany had used for its benefit in German monopolies in the capitals of southern and eastern Europe to generate lucrative profits while exempting itself from taxes, had been exploited by Ireland to open similar business constructs in 1937. Following this, Deutsche Bank, Barclay’s, JP Morgan, and the Yokohama Specie Bank invested heavily in Irish industry, hoping to reap the reward of Ireland’s position caused by the collapse of the United Kingdom. As a result, Ireland is considered one of the financial capitals of the world despite having a smaller GDP than the great powers, and its neutral status makes it a valuable intermediary, allowing Ireland a healthy profit as a middleman.

Ireland boasts a modern railway network with both overland and subterranean railway routes. The TransÉireann Transit Network is considered by engineers to be an effective mass transit system. Primarily used in freight shipping, the TTN allows for the rapid transit of goods across the country. Irish businesses have developed the Díreach model of inventory management, known as just-in-time inventory in the United States. This process involves running light inventory stockpiling and using goods as they come in, increasing efficiency and reducing warehousing costs. This process does require accurate demand forecasting, but also reliability in transit and delivery, and the TTN is able to service those requirements to the benefit of Irish operations managers. 

The agricultural sector of Ireland has undergone a series of modernization reforms. Cattle and related industries such as beef and dairy form a cornerstone of primary sector economic activity in the western and center sections of the country with abundant land devoted to pasturage. Ireland is also a significant exporter of salmon, trout, and saltwater cod. Farms primarily grow root vegetables and grains, including barley, potatoes, turnips, and wheat, and measures by Seán Lemass have resulted in a small but thriving sugar beet industry. The agricultural sector have undergone significant mechanization efforts since the IEAA efforts led by Patrick Hogan, and farming output has increased massively as a result. Under the slogan “Never Another Hunger,” the Ministry of Agriculture has looked to ensure Irish food security and labors extensively on research and equipment acquisition to achieve that end.

Assisting in the development of the rural sector, Ireland founded the Rural Renovations and Maintenance Board to better organize the mechanization rollout and to provide training on servicing the new farm equipment. After the beginning of the Union campaign of strategic and terror bombing, the RRMB had been expanded to the construction sector to coordinate improvements to damaged buildings and infrastructure, as the RRMB’s recordkeeping systems were already equipped to catalogue damage and required repairs, dispatching workcrews to trouble spots, and ensuring proper transport of requisite materials. The RRMB regularly inspects and surveys regions and administers an independent examination board, which in practice also acts as an effective secondary auditing arm to prevent contract fraud for work on government roadways.

The scars of the Union’s terror bombing campaigns have been seared into the minds of the Irish population. Construction crews have implemented new guidelines for buildings deemed to be critical infrastructure, including all military factories. These new techniques call for reinforced roofing and buildings to be built partially underground so as to protect them from bombardment from the sky. Borrowing insights from Japanese architects used in earthquake protection, Ireland now employs a variety of construction techniques to make their buildings more robust. All buildings are built with air raid shelters, and with the advent of nuclear weapons, these shelters are being retrofitted to act as fallout shelters to protect Irish civilians in the new Atomic Age.

Ireland has a small mining and quarrying sector, producing lead and limestone. The notable exception is zinc mining, where Ireland has an abundance of mines located throughout the island. The zinc deposits contribute significantly to Ireland’s development of its electronics industry and the development of Irish radar stations. The zinc needed to manufacture aerial detection systems has been credited as one of the factors that led to the successful defense of Ireland in 1939, as Ireland was able to manufacture radar stations without the need to import raw materials across the Atlantic during the Union of Britain’s naval blockade.

Ireland’s industrial sector has blossomed under steady growth and successful trade. Belfast’s steel mills are highly efficient, allowing low-cost steel to prop up expansion of both civilian and military construction. Dublin boasts a small aluminum manufacturing center, allowing for the creation of aircraft to light-weight metal frames. Owing to the lack of natural rubber, Irish and American chemists developed a process to develop synthetic monomers that could be successfully polymerized into a rubber that could service as truck tires. In Connacht, Irish engineers developed a plant that combined coal with hydrogen gas to develop synthetic fuel, solving the resource crisis that plagued Ireland during 1938 far more efficiently than the coal liquefaction process that had been championed in the Kaiserreich.

The most productive and lucrative sector in Ireland has been electronics and computing. The first digital computing machine was created in Ireland in 1938 under top secret conditions. It was a terrifying monolith, built using thousands of vacuum tubes. This model would later be used to design improved digital computing machines and cryptanalytic code-breakers under the direction of Richard James Hayes of the G-2 military intelligence service. Hayes designed the Fionn, named after the giant from Irish mythology, to assist in the breaking of the Union cyphers. The insights gleaned from the construction of this computer greatly assisted Irish electronic development, and Ireland currently leads the world in the design of electronic systems like guidance systems and automated temperature regulators for hazardous material containment.

Ireland avoids investing in highly specialized production lines, owing to a lack of geographical space. Irish engineering prides flexibility and refit capability as key components of industrial doctrine, allowing for quick restructuring of industrial layouts and rapid installation of mechanical components to change factory lines to new materials quickly. This has allowed Ireland to respond quickly to changing markets and new inventions, allowing for Irish companies to remain agile on the world market and adapt new techniques into their manufacturing process quickly and effectively.

This flexible process also has enhanced worker safety throughout the Federal Republic of Ireland. The Ministry of Labour regularly conducts surprise inspections, and occupational health and safety rating is among the highest in Mitteleuropa. Ministry inspectors have a reputation for scrupulous ethics and meticulous attention to detail, and legislation mandating anonymizing workplace safety concerns and outlawing reprisal acts is universal across all sectors of employment. These acts were borne out of political compromise with the Belfast Shipwright and Marine Workers Association following the labor disputes in Ulster, and have given Irish workplaces a sterling reputation.

Ireland, as an island nation, has a robust naval engineering sector, and the largest company within Ireland is the venerable Harland and Wolff. While infamous for building the Titanic, the shipyards in Belfast have built everything from civilian fishing ships, massive freighters, and warships for the an tSeirbhís Chabhlaigh. The company boasts a massive naval facility, revitalized early in 1936 as an early attempt to shake off the failure of Black Monday. Harland and Wolff engineers have been hired as consultants from London to Vladivostok, and ships bearing the Harland and Wolff logo have sailed every sea and waterway on the planet.

Belfast also boasts a specialized shipyard for large vessel construction. Smaller facilities dot the island, but Belfast’s shipyards are considered to be one of the most highly-advanced facilities for vessels of significant tonnage.

The Irish aviation sector is led by the Short Brothers PLC, the oldest private aviation manufacturer in the world. Fleeing the collapse of the United Kingdom in 1925, the company received substantial investment from the Michael Collins government and headquartered itself in Belfast. The Short Training Area, located outside of Derry, saw some of the first test flights of jet and rocket engines in the world, continuing the Short tradition of aviation pioneering.

The need for Ireland to rapidly modernize its technology had led to the formation of the Éireann Scientific Innovation Council, a body predominantly made up of Irish scientists with consulting chairs with scientists from friendly foreign nations. Well-funded by the Irish government as well as Irish businessmen and private investors, ESIC has become a highly respected academic foundation. ESIC researchers regularly speak at academic conferences, and ESIC has sponsored academic coordination with the Reichspakt’s Kaiser Wilhelm Society and the Entente’s Imperial Scientific Advisory Council, particularly in the fields of medicine and mathematics.

The Special Relationship with the United States is present within ESIC. Many of the largest donors for ESIC’s projects are wealthy Irish-Americans, both those who remained within the United States with the outbreak of the Second American Civil War and those that left to seek refuge in Ireland under the Dídean refugee program. Irish-American owned businesses are among the most frequent partners and sponsors of research initiatives within Ireland. The impact on Irish academia and research has been noticeable, with one of the most significant areas of Irish-American partnership being in the areas of nuclear and particle physics. 

Ireland has an efficient tax structure that strives to eliminate waste and corruption. The tax rate in Ireland is slightly lower than in other developed countries, but there are fewer exemptions. Ireland’s low poverty rate contributes to a larger tax base overall, which has kept Ireland in the black and avoided the devaluation of currency that had plagued countries suffering from the effects of Black Monday.

Culture

Starting in 1937, Ireland has relatively relaxed immigration policies in an attempt to shore up their manpower shortage in its industrial sector. Most migrants settle in Dublin or Belfast, and small neighborhood enclaves have sprouted within Dublin that provide emigrants and foreign laborers with a sense of community, including restaurants and shops that import goods that remind migrants of their home countries. Ireland is not as popular a destination as the United States or Argentina due to space, but migration continues even as world tension reduces following the successful conclusion of the Second Weltkrieg.

Ireland has three national languages: English, Gaelic, and Scots-Irish. The Irish government promotes the use of Gaeilge through primary schooling and low-to-no cost adult education programs, and bilinguality is the norm rather than the exception. The use of Gaeilge has caused a second Celtic revival movement, with traditional Irish sports, artwork, and literature being immensely popular. Modern interpretations of Insular Irish fashion and designs, including adaptations of the four great cycles of Irish mythology. The most popular of these include the Hollywood epics Brian Boru, King of Ireland with Clark Gable and the tragedy Frenzy of Suibhne starring Gary Cooper. Scots-Irish, raised to the status of officially-recognized dialect as a means to solve the Ulster crisis, is primarily only spoken in the Ulster province, on official government business, or by Ulster heritage groups in the other three provinces. English is common, and is often used as the lingua franca for international affairs such as business or diplomacy. 

Roughly two-thirds of Irish people are Roman Catholic, but the Federal Republic of Ireland is officially a secular state, not establishing a state religion and guaranteeing freedom of religion in the Irish Constitution. Notable other religions include the Anglican Church and Presbyterianism, both of which have a strong presence in Ulster Province, and Neo-Druidism, a modern revival movement of the ancient Celtic religion which enjoys a small presence in Ireland and Scotland, and is attempting to formally be recognized in the French Republic within Brittany as a fully-licensed religion permitted to operate its own labor union.

Women’s rights have been enshrined in the Irish Constitution thanks to the efforts of the Cumann na mBan in the Irish War of Independence. Ireland had largely been a socially conservative nation, but the Collins government had enacted several significant reforms out of genuine support for the liberation movement and practical considerations in the Internationale War. By encouraging women to join the workforce, Ireland was able to maintain industrial production and avoid a labor shortfall during the era of mass conscription for the Armed Forces. The Irish Republican Army had frequently worked with the Cumann na mBan, and that relationship translated into the establishment of the Women’s Auxillary divisions, opening the military up to women for support and administrative roles. The one exception to the general prohibition on women in combat is found in the An tAerchór, where women are permitted to serve in piloting roles throughout the IRAF. 

Ireland also employs an extensive youth scouting program which teaches a variety of skills relating to outdoorsmanship and even support roles as paramilitaries. Both boys and girls scouting programs teach team-building, leadership, and the basics of military service, which has strengthened the cultural cohesion of Irish society and acts as a junior ROTC and military outreach program. 

Military

The an tArm was the first modern professional army to fully mechanize. The idea to fully commit to a mobile force had been the brainchild of the veterans of the Irish War of Independence to merge the tactical speed of the War of Independence with the professional equipment and discipline of a modern army. Irish military doctrine stressed rapid response and deployment, following the model of the Irish flying columns, using specially designed combat vehicles instead of improvised fighting platforms. Rory O’Connor developed an integrated signal corps to coordinate between units at the divisional level, and supported the rollout of field engineering corps for every division to improve their ability to take fortified structures. 

Irish infantry doctrine is characterized by the use of the IV-series of half-tracked infantry fighting vehicles. Frequently nicknamed the “Ivy” due to its initials and green coloration, the IV is a true infantry fighting platform. The IV is typically equipped with a 12.7mm heavy machine gun, but can be equipped with a 37mm autocannon if greater firepower is needed. The IV can act both as infantry fighting vehicle or as an armored personnel carrier, and serves to provide Irish ground forces with exceptional speed, used to exploit breakthroughs and wreak havoc in the enemy’s operational depth. The Cór Meicnithe, or Mechanized Corps, provides heavy firepower in the use of the IV-FA, nicknamed the “iffa,” the Feithicil Airtléire is a half-tracked variant that carries a 105mm howitzer capable of providing significant fire support to the infantry in the field. Scout companies utilize the six-wheeled Taiscéalaíochta vehicle, an armored car with a 2cm light cannon capable of firing both high-explosive and armor-piercing composite rigid rounds to give scout companies the capability to defend themselves against infantry, light tanks, and other armored cars. 

The Cór Armúrtha, or Armored Corps, form the primary armor divisions of the an tArm. In the Second Weltkrieg, Ireland almost exclusively used the Collins medium tank, though the Cór Armúrtha retains some small scout tanks as a reconnaissance vehicle. A tenacious tank prized for its reliability, the Collins carried a 76mm main gun meant to emphasize its capability as a multi-role combat platform, that could fire an anti-tank or high-explosive shell as necessary. The Collins was first introduced in 1939 during the invasion of Ireland as an upgrade to the earlier Skoda tanks produced on lease from the Danubian Federation, and achieved marked success against the Internationale forces landing on Irish shores. Following Irish flexible industrial doctrine, the Collins tank chassis was modified to support a variety of different armaments. Early variants of the Collins equipped the same 105mm howitzer cannon to function as self-propelled guns, named the Saint Barbara. With a few modifications to the chassis and some slight reduction in armor functions, the Saint Barbara was able to keep pace with the Collins tank, firing and moving to prevent counter-battery fire. Facing stiff resistance from heavy Union and Communard tanks when the Second Weltkrieg began to push into syndicalist home territories, the Collins chassis was equipped with a German 88mm anti-tank gun. Further modifications created the Marú tank destroyer variant. Marú crews often called themselves Maiges, after the mythological Irish battle of Maige Tuired, where a sling stone killed the giant Balor of the Evil Eye, and gained a reputation for fearlessness. The Maiges fear their time is ending, as Irish developments in recoilless rifles and other man-portable anti-tank weaponry along with improving bombing and missile technology has made a dedicated platform for fighting armored units less necessary.

When the Irish needed to invade Cornwall, Michael Collins authorized the creation of the Muirsaighdiúirí, a special operations force that would act as a marine corps for amphibious landings. This unit has been built as a fully mechanized amphibious invasion force, using amphibious tracked vehicles to provide protection for the soldiers inside until they can reach land firm enough to disembark and fight. The Muirsaighdiúirí have created a variant of the Collins tank, officially named the Collins ALSV but unofficially named the “Puddler.” The Puddler is a Collins tank reinforced with a synthetic rubberized canvas and modified to include propellers linked to the engine to provide forward motion in water, meant to provide armored support for hostile beach landings. 

The Irish Armed Forces also employs the Army Ranger Wing, named the Sciathán Fiannóglaigh an Airm, as a special operations paratrooper division. The Rangers are among the most elite of the Irish Armed Forces, hand-selected from across the services and trained in commando tactics, sabotage operations, and irregular warfare. The Sciathán Fiannóglaigh an Airm claims that they more than any other division maintains the traditions and conduct of the Irish War of Independence, and have proven their aptitude against overwhelming odds. While the Rangers are not a separate branch of the army, they report directly to the Chief of Staff and exist outside the traditional command structure of the An tArm.

The an tSeirbhís Chabhlaigh maintains a green-water naval mission primarily dedicated to the defense of Irish territorial waters, maintaining both an armed naval force and a merchant marine. The Irish navy maintains that spotting and speed can facilitate a strike at the opportune time to maximize damage, and so invests heavily in surface and undersea detection systems and eschewing slow battleships for faster cruisers.

Ireland has one aircraft carrier which is considered the flagship of the an tSeirbhís Chabhlaigh and the pride of the fleet. The LÉ Delbáeth is a high-capacity aircraft carrier with a full complement of fighters and bombers to support naval missions. The vessel boasts the latest in compound armor designs and torpedo detection capabilities to act as a floating fortress, anchoring the naval battle line. The Delbáeth saw limited action in the Second Weltkrieg, as the European battleground was capable of being supported by land-based aircraft flying out of Dublin and Derry, and naval coverage in Siberia was provided by the Transamurian and Japanese carriers operating out of Golden Horn Bay. The Delbáeth’s gunnery loadout is modest, relying instead on its aircraft as the primary attack arm and its escort vessels for defense and ship-to-ship combat.

The Manannán-class heavy cruiser is considered the primary heavy naval gunnery craft of the an tSeirbhís Chabhlaigh. A modern, sleek design, the Manannán is equipped with heavy 20 cm deck guns, smaller 138mm secondary guns, and 40mm anti-aircraft guns meant primarily to engage carrier-based aircraft. Equipped with an improved floatplane catapult and a powerful engine, the Manannán is one of the fastest capital ships in the world, specializing in attacking and overwhelming a naval battle group while out of position as opposed to the naval linear tactics of earlier eras. Work is underway to refit the Manannán with guided missiles, which exceed naval gunnery ranges, as the primary ship-to-ship platform for the an tSeirbhís Chabhlaigh going into the post-war era.

The Sinann-class light cruiser is an escort vessel and primarily equipped to provide a wall of anti-aircraft fire in support of naval groups to prevent the establishment of naval air supremacy. Smaller but faster than the heavier Manannán, the Sinann exists as a heavy screen ship and possesses light surface armament, relying instead on numbers and heavier attack vessels to provide ship-to-ship firepower. The armor on the Sinann is much lighter than the armor on the Manannán, and the Sinann is not considered a capital ship for the purposes of naval arms limitation treaties.

The Boann is a destroyer and the smallest armed surface ship in the an tSeirbhís Chabhlaigh. The Boann acts as a screen ship for the larger cruisers and the Delbáeth, but it is also a specialized sub hunter. The Boann is equipped with highly sensitive sonar and 360 degrees of depth charge mortar coverage, permitting it to detect and destroy enemy submarines at a great distance and eliminate their threat before closing to torpedo range. Some Boann-class destroyers are equipped with advanced minesweeping gear. Boann-class destroyers were the primary path-clearing vessels that cleared the landing paths for the Union of Britain in 1941, and the “Boann Boomers” were among the most celebrated sailors, personally commended by Michael Collins for their daring in mine-clearing operations both during and after the Second Weltkrieg.

The Selkie-class submarine is a stealthy ambush submarine that was considered the main attack vessel against the Union of Britain during the Internationale War. Originally designed by Gio Ansaldo Irish Sea Shipwright, the Selkie is the latest iteration in Irish undersea warfare. Heavily-equipped with advanced torpedoes, the Selkie was designed for exceptional endurance missions under the waves, in order to allow ships too heavily-defended to pass by unnoticed before surfacing and striking. During the Second Weltkrieg, the Selkie primarily looked to sink Union trade convoys to starve the Internationale’s war machine of Chilean imports. Early in the Second Weltkrieg, the Selkie also carried out mine-laying operations in the North Sea, and the potential remains for Selkies to be quickly refitted with minelaying rails in the event that another waterway needs to be denied to the enemy. Theoretical designs for a variant ballistic missile carried on a Selkie have been theorized and discussed by Irish naval engineers, with the intent of creating a second-strike capability for nuclear missiles to improve deterrence and solve the first strike security crisis currently plaguing foreign policy debates.

The An tAerchór is responsible for the air defense of Ireland and to provide air support to the An tArm. The An tAerchór during the Second Weltkrieg flew small-frame aircraft, specializing in fighters for air support, close attack support aircraft to attack ground targets, and naval bombers to attack fleets at sea or in port, in an attempt to weaken the Union of Britain’s naval supremacy. The shortcomings of this pursuit were identified by Dan McKenna during the Siberian campaign against the Russian State when covering large stretches of territory. The An tAerchór’s solution was to start investing in jet engines, creating an entire line of high-speed fighters and bombers. These new aircraft were designed too late to see use during the Second Weltkrieg, but Ireland is increasingly moving toward an air force fully powered by the jet engine.

---

Image List:

Header

Irish-American Trade

Atlantic Trade Commission

Dublin Reborn as the SEZ

TransÉireann Transit Network

Mechanized Farming Reforms

Rural Renovations and Maintenance Board

Industrial Defense Plan

Irish Zinc Mining

Irish Medium Industry

Industrial Flexibility

Safety Reforms

Harland and Wolff

Belfast Capital Shipyard

Short Brothers Aerospace PLC

ESIC

Irish-American Research

Moderate Taxation

Gaeilge, the National Language

Secular State

Women in Industry

Youth Scouting Program

Mechanized Infantry Template

Armored Division Template

Marine Template

Ranger Paratrooper Template

Aircraft Carrier Design

Heavy Cruiser Design

Destroyer Design

Submarine Design

Alright folks, the Celtic Tiger writing project is over. Sad to see it end, but that’s the way of things. The alternative is a project which never ends and runs out of things to write about. Let me know what you think, of the worldbuilding appendix and of the project in general. Did you like the idea of a worldbuilding appendix for AAR’s, or was it too distracting? What projects would you like to see next? Character analysis? Worldbuilding essay? Video Game Reviews? Let me know

-SLAL

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Pioneers may be picturesque figures, but they are often rather lonely ones.

- Nancy Astor, the Viscountess Astor

Nancy Astor was an American-born British politician who was the first female MP to take her seat in the House of Common. Viscountess Astor had won the constituency of Plymouth Sutton in 1919, and after Irish Sinn Féin’s Constance Markievicz had refused to take her seat the previous year, became the first woman to sit in the House. So in effect Astor became the second female Member of Parliament but the first to take her seat, serving from 1919 to 1945.

Nancy Witcher Langhorne was born in 1879 in Virginia to a prosperous  railroad businessmen.

Following the American Civil War, prosperous Southerners who had relied on slavery fell on hard times. Such was the fate of her father, Chiswell Dabney Langhorne, who had been a successful railroad businessman before the war. So when Nancy, his eighth child was born on May 19th, 1879 he was still struggling to recover. However by the time that daughter, who had been christened Nancy, was thirteen, he had re-established his fortune.

Nancy Langhorne had four sisters and three brothers who survived childhood. All of the sisters were known for their beauty; Nancy and her sister Irene both attended a finishing school in New York City.  She finished successfully and in 1897.

In New York Nancy met her first husband, a wealthy socialite Robert Gould Shaw II, a first cousin of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, who commanded the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, the first unit in the Union Army to be composed of African Americans. They married in New York City on 27 October 1897, when she was 18.

The marriage was an unhappy one. For Nancy it was not such a success, since she left her husband for the first time during their honeymoon and after a turbulent and troubled four years and a son, they separated permanently.

Nancy Shaw took a tour of England and fell in love with the country. Since she had been so happy there, her father suggested that she move to England. Seeing she was reluctant, her father said this was also her mother's wish; he suggested she take her younger sister Phyllis. Nancy and Phyllis moved together to England in 1905. Their older sister Irene had married the artist Charles Dana Gibson and became a model for his Gibson Girls.

Nancy Shaw had already become known in English society as an interesting and witty American, at a time when numerous wealthy young American women had married into the British aristocracy. Her tendency to be saucy in conversation, yet religiously devout and almost prudish in behavior, confused many of the English men but pleased some of the older socialites.

She did marry an Englishman, albeit one born in the United States, Waldorf Astor - 2nd Viscount Astor, an American-born English politician and newspaper proprietor.

While crossing the Atlantic to Britain, Nancy had met Waldorf Astor, the son of the American magnate William Waldorf Astor. Waldorf had been born in New York on the same day as Nancy, but when he was ten years old his father had moved the family to Britain to raise his children as English aristocrats. Waldorf had been educated at Eton College and Oxford University.   In May of 1906 Nancy and Waldorf were married and moved into their wedding gift – the 375 acre Cliveden Estate and its 400-foot-long mansion in Buckinghamshire, which Nancy modernised and had electrified.

The Astors moved into Cliveden, a lavish estate in Buckinghamshire on the River Thames that was a wedding gift from Astor's father. Nancy Astor developed as a prominent hostess for the British social elite.

The Astors also owned a grand London house, No. 4 St. James's Square, now the premises of the Naval & Military Club. A blue plaque unveiled in 1987 commemorates Astor at St. James's Square. Through her many social connections, Lady Astor became involved in a political circle called 'Milner's Kindergarten’. Considered liberal in their age (but in reality very conservative), the group advocated unity and equality among English-speaking people and a continuance or expansion of the British Empire inspired by the vision of Cecil Rhodes. 

Nancy encouraged Waldorf to enter politics and he became a Member of Parliament in 1910 for the Conservative Party, although he broke ranks with his party and tended to vote for social reforms. When his Liberal friend David Lloyd George became Prime Minister of the wartime Coalition government in 1916, Waldorf became his parliamentary private secretary and part of his circle of advisors. In 1916 his father William was made a peer - Viscount Astor. When William died in 1919, Waldorf tried unsuccessfully to avoid taking the title, but was forced to surrender his seat in Parliament and enter the House of Lords as the 2nd Viscount Astor.

This triggered a by-election for his Plymouth seat, which Nancy contested and won. Women had only recent been granted the right to vote. Her American informal style was new to the British and seems to have charmed them in an age where campaigning was very much about personality.

Nancy Astor was a very remarkable woman: determined, witty and accomplished. She was also the beneficiary of considerable privilege, through birth and marriage - none of which is generally looked on with forgiveness in our age.

Her sharp wit hid a cold, aggressive, paranoid and illiberal personality.

She also clashed with her contemporary, Sir Winston Churchill and there’s a famous exchange between the two that goes along these lines “Winston, if I were married to you I’d put poison in your coffee”….”Nancy, if I were married to you I’d drink it.” This supposedly occurred during a weekend house party at Blenheim Palace in the early 1930s.

Nancy Astor's accomplishments in the House of Commons were relatively minor. She never held a position with much influence, and never any post of ministerial rank, although her time in Commons saw four Conservative Prime Ministers in office. The Duchess of Atholl (elected to Parliament in 1923, four years after Lady Astor) rose to higher levels in the Conservative Party before Astor did. Astor felt if she had more position in the party, she would be less free to criticise her party's government. She did gain passage of a bill to increase the legal drinking age to eighteen unless the minor has parental approval.

During this period Nancy Astor continued to be active outside government, supporting the development and expansion of nursery schools for children's education. She was introduced to the issue by socialist  Margaret McMillan, who believed that her late sister helped guide her in life. Lady Astor was initially skeptical of this aspect, but later the two women became close; Astor used her wealth to aid their social efforts.

Left out of the boy’s club within the all male atmosphere of Parliament, She worked hard instead to use her wealth and influence to recruit women into the civil service, the police force, education reform, and the House of Lords.

Lady Astor chaired the first ever International Conference of Women In Science, Industry and Commerce, a three-day event held London in July 1925, organised by Caroline Haslett for the Women's Engineering Society in co-operation with other leading women's groups. Astor hosted a large gathering at her home in St James's to enable networking amongst the international delegates, and spoke strongly of her support of and the need for women to work in the fields of science, engineering and technology.

Her legacy though remains very controversial as she was intimately bound to the upper-class appeasement movement of the 1930s. She was a fierce anti-Communist and like many others saw the rise of Germany as a bulwark to thwart the Bolshevik menace.

Astor was critical of the Nazis for devaluing the position of women and opposed the idea of another war. But as Harold Nicholson (among others) noted in his diaries, she was perfectly willing to indulge in the kind of ugly, reflexive anti-Semitism that was thought to be “clever” in aristocratic circles in those days. She exchanged anti-Semitic letters with the then American ambassador to Britain, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. and entertained prominent members of the Nazi government. She herself asserted she was not an anti-Semite; she said in 1947, "I'm not anti-Jewish but gangsterism isn't going to solve the Palestine problem".

When World War Two did break-out Nancy Astor admitted that she had made mistakes and supported the war effort, although still causing controversy by, for example, opposing the entry into Britain of Communist refugees at a time when Russia was an ally in the war.

As her views became more extreme and eccentric she became an embarrassment to the Conservative Party and with them facing defeat by the Labour Party in the 1945 election, Waldorf Astor was persuaded to force her to step down. She did, but with anger and bitterness which she continued to express for many years.

She and Waldorf drifted apart and his movement to the political left did not help their marriage. They began to live separate lives and travel apart, although there was a reconciliation before his death in 1952.

During the 1950’s she added racism to her other views and became notorious for, among other statements, proudly announcing to the white minority Rhodesian government that she was the daughter of a slave owner and telling a group of Afro-American students that they should be more like the servants of her southern childhood. As her brothers and sisters died and she became estranged from her children, loneliness took over.

Nancy Astor died in 1964.

A statue commemorating her life was unveiled in Plymouth in November 2019 by Prime Minister Theresa May - and her future successor Boris Johnson also posed by the statue of the former Tory MP. The unveiling was one way to commemorate the centenary of women being involved in Parliamentary politics in the UK.

Theresa May said at the unveiling: “For two years Nancy Astor was the only woman in a House which was not designed for women. A place of Honourable Gentlemen, somking rooms and no ladies’ loos. She ignored the jeering, the patronising and the bawdy jokes, and began to make the Commons an easier place for the many –but all to few – women who have followed her.”

The statue was the culmination of a popular public campaign started by Labour MP for Plymouth and Sutton and Devonport, Mr Luke Pollard. The campaign enjoyed cross political party support. All of Plymouth’s living former MPs were present at the unveiling  - Alison Seabeck (now Raynsford), Linda Gilroy, Baroness Janet Fookes and Liberal peer Lord David Owen.

Prime Minister Theresa May said the whole country should be “proud of the great strides Nancy Astor made for equality and representation”. The inscription on the statue’s plinth reads: “Real education should educate us out of self into something far finer - into a selflessness which links us all with humanity.

In June 2020, her statue was placed on a target list of Black Lives Matter movement and other activist groups to campaign for its removal.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 5.22 (after 1920)

1926 – Chiang Kai-shek replaces the communists in Kuomintang China. 1927 – Near Xining, China, an 8.3 magnitude earthquake causes 200,000 deaths in one of the world's most destructive earthquakes. 1939 – World War II: Germany and Italy sign the Pact of Steel. 1941 – During the Anglo-Iraqi War, British troops take Fallujah. 1942 – Mexico enters the Second World War on the side of the Allies. 1943 – Joseph Stalin disbands the Comintern. 1947 – Cold War: The Truman Doctrine goes into effect, aiding Turkey and Greece. 1957 – South Africa's government approves of racial separation in universities. 1958 – The 1958 riots in Ceylon become a watershed in the race relations of various ethnic communities of Sri Lanka. The total deaths are estimated at 300, mostly Tamils. 1960 – The Great Chilean earthquake, measuring 9.5 on the moment magnitude scale, hits southern Chile, becoming the most powerful earthquake ever recorded. 1964 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson launches his Great Society program. 1967 – Egypt closes the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping. 1967 – L'Innovation department store in Brussels, Belgium, burns down, resulting in 323 dead or missing and 150 injured, the most devastating fire in Belgian history. 1968 – The nuclear-powered submarine USS Scorpion sinks with 99 men aboard, 400 miles southwest of the Azores. 1969 – Apollo 10's Lunar Module flies within 8.4 nautical miles (16 km) of the Moon's surface. 1972 – Ceylon adopts a new constitution, becoming a republic and changing its name to Sri Lanka. 1972 – Over 400 women in Derry, Northern Ireland attack the offices of Sinn Féin following the shooting by the Irish Republican Army of a young British soldier on leave. 1987 – Hashimpura massacre occurs in Meerut, India. 1987 – First ever Rugby World Cup kicks off with New Zealand playing Italy at Eden Park in Auckland, New Zealand. 1990 – North and South Yemen are unified to create the Republic of Yemen. 1992 – Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Slovenia join the United Nations. 1994 – A worldwide trade embargo against Haiti goes into effect to punish its military rulers for not reinstating the country's ousted elected leader, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. 1996 – The Burmese military regime jails 71 supporters of Aung San Suu Kyi in a bid to block a pro-democracy meeting. 1998 – A U.S. federal judge rules that U.S. Secret Service agents can be compelled to testify before a grand jury concerning the Lewinsky scandal involving President Bill Clinton. 2000 – In Sri Lanka, over 150 Tamil rebels are killed over two days of fighting for control in Jaffna. 2002 – Civil rights movement: A jury in Birmingham, Alabama, convicts former Ku Klux Klan member Bobby Frank Cherry of the 1963 murder of four girls in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing. 2010 – Air India Express Flight 812, a Boeing 737 crashes over a cliff upon landing at Mangalore, India, killing 158 of 166 people on board, becoming the deadliest crash involving a Boeing 737 until the crash of Lion Air Flight 610. 2010 – Inter Milan beat Bayern Munich 2–0 in the UEFA Champions League final in Madrid, Spain to become the first, and so far only, Italian team to win the historic treble (Serie A, Coppa Italia, Champions League). 2011 – An EF5 tornado strikes Joplin, Missouri, killing 158 people and wreaking $2.8 billion in damages, the costliest and seventh-deadliest single tornado in U.S. history. 2012 – Tokyo Skytree opens to the public. It is the tallest tower in the world (634 m), and the second tallest man-made structure on Earth after Burj Khalifa (829.8 m). 2014 – An explosion occurs in Ürümqi, capital of China's far-western Xinjiang region, resulting in at least 43 deaths and 91 injuries. 2015 – The Republic of Ireland becomes the first nation in the world to utilise a public referendum to legalise gay marriage. 2017 – Twenty-two people are killed at an Ariana Grande concert in the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing.

[ao3feed-fitzsimmons]

civility is a facade

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/39qF7qD

by rathxritter

May 2015: The posh boys are back in power. Prime Minister David Cameron forms a majority single-party government with a working majority of 12 (increased to 15 due to Sinn Féin’s MPs’ abstention). He promises an in-out referendum before the end of 2017 and to respect the outcome.

The year marks the tenth anniversary of the Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act 2005, Achd na Gàidhlig (Alba) 2005, an act that provides an official framework to the efforts to preserve and sustain the Gaelic language and culture.

Meanwhile, Fitz and Simmons plan their future.

Words: 4772, Chapters: 1/2, Language: English

Series: Part 3 of dearbh-aithne chultarail is phearsanta, dualchas, brexit

Fandoms: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: F/M

Characters: Leo Fitz, Jemma Simmons

Relationships: Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons

Additional Tags: 2015 UK General Election, GE: Conservative manifesto, Brexit, Established Relationship, Alternate Universe - No SHIELD (Marvel)

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/39qF7qD