Working on the last few pages of a chapter for a book edited by Colin Coulter and Angela Nagle. I’ve just been rigid with anger over the last couple of weeks - more than usual - and I think the process of writing this chapter is the reason why. This little paragraph sums it up I think:

“There is a truism in Ireland that emigration acted as a safety value for social pressures. It is impossible to prove whether this was (or is) the case, but one thing is for certain: with the industrial schools, Magdalene laundries, a Catholic-Church dominated education system and an anti-working-class judiciary with a passion for incarcerating the poor, the Irish ruling class was not taking any chances. The history of Ireland since 1922 is a history of class violence and coercion.”

It’s is hard to delve into the history of the Irish State and not come out despising the Irish bourgeoisie. It’s really fucking difficult.

Speaking tomorrow in Galway before Donal O’Kelly’s performance of Bat the Father, Rabbit the Son.

The title of the talk is: All the Devils are Here - A Short History of the Irish Entrepreneur.

All welcome.

This is the story of veteran Republican Liam Sutcliffe who joined the IRA in 1954. Within a few months he was an IRA agent in Gough barracks Armagh during `operation Harvest’. Sutcliffe later left the IRA and operated with the breakaway Joe Christle group during the 1950s Border campaign.
In 1966, on the 50th anniversary of the 1916 Easter rising he was involved in an operation to blow up Nelson’s Pillar in O’Connell Street Dublin.

In 1970 Sutcliffe joined Saor Eire. He was instrumental in organising the funeral in Mount Jerome Cemetery of Saor Eire member Liam Walsh, who was killed in a premature explosion at the rear of McKee army base in Dublin.

Laughed my ass off at this from the EU Commission, signed by Michael Noonan. The issue is NOT tax evasion. The issue is tax avoidance, and Noonan knows that.

The full letter is here.

And this is from the Guardian earlier this month:

…many of such structures were simply legal devices designed to conceal. The real beneficial owners proved often to be the so-called “settlors” or “protectors” of offshore trusts, and those holding legal powers of attorney which enable them to exert secret control over the bank accounts.

And for a small insight into the world of tax avoidance in Ireland, there’s Al-Jazeera:

And on 14 January, first day of the research.

Just got word from the publisher of Sins of the Father. They want to go with a second edition. Updated and with a new chapter. Hopefully out by the end of the year.