"We didn’t expect to win so easily," said Jim Slaven, a leader of the James Connolly Society which is organizing the June 8 action. "The council saw it was politically difficult to defend their position if we were determined to challenge it. This comes from developments in Ireland. They can no longer be seen to say that the Irish flag is provocative in itself."

James Connolly, born in Scotland, was a revolutionary socialist and central leader of the 1916 Easter Uprising in Ireland. On Easter Monday, 1916, in the middle of World War I, some 1,200 members of the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army seized the General Post Office and several other sites in Dublin. They were led by Patrick Pearse, a leader of the Irish Volunteers and of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and by Connolly, a workers’ leader who founded the Citizen Army.

Under conditions of deepening opposition to British colonial rule and to the imperialist war, the rebels had counted on setting off a national revolt. While uprisings did erupt elsewhere in Ireland, the hoped-for general insurrection did not transpire. After five days of bitter fighting, the survivors surrendered to overwhelming British force. In the course of the battle British artillery leveled a large part of Dublin. Pearse, Connolly, and 13 other Irish leaders were sentenced to death and shot.

The Connolly Society’s challenge to the 12-year-old restriction on the march caused problems for the ruling class in the city. After some hours of debate the Council ended up requesting the opinion of the Chief Constable, who was accompanying Elizabeth Windsor on her visit to Edinburgh to celebrate the monarch’s Golden Jubilee.

After rightists attacked the Connolly march in 1991, police said the action posed a threat to public order and banned it for two years. In the early 1990s the police would allow Loyalists--those "loyal" to the union of Ireland with Britain--to gather near the start of the march. Slaven explained the cops would stand back while the rightists launched their attacks. "In 1991 it was particularly bad. There was serious violence and we only just managed to keep the march going," he said.

Despite the ban, supporters of Irish freedom held the demonstration in 1993, leading to the arrest of 50 people by the police. Many were convicted of taking part in an "illegal march." Slaven was jailed for a week for refusing to pay a £400 fine (£1=US$1.40) for organizing the protest. But the arrests and convictions were "a political disaster" for the city officials, he said, and "after that we were allowed to have the march."

While allowing the action to take place, the city placed restrictions on the organizers, such as limiting to one the number of Irish flags marchers could display on the grounds that the flag would provoke attacks. "It was a spurious claim," commented Slaven. "No trouble was ever caused by the tricolor. It was caused by Loyalists."

On May 5 Irish in Glasgow organized a similar march, which drew some 2,000 people. The action was overwhelmingly working class, with many young people joining in. Maggie Lafferty, from Cumbernauld, said she "saw the advertisement and came to lend my support." Lafferty said she also came to "support the hunger strikers and the sacrifice they made." She was referring to the 1981 battle by Irish freedom fighters imprisoned by the British government who were demanding they be accorded the status of political prisoners. Ten men died from starvation in the course of the strike.

Lafferty’s daughter, Rhiannon, 15, had recently made her first trip to South Armagh in Ireland where she had learned about Ray McCreesh, one of the hunger strikers. "It was exciting, "she said. "Now I understand why people are always going on about the hunger strike and what Margaret Thatcher did." Thatcher was prime minister of the United Kingdom at the time and refused to accede to the demands by the imprisoned Irish.

Last year the organizers of the march in Glasgow led thousands of people through the center of the city for the first time since 1979, when rightists attacked them. The city subsequently banned the march from the city center.

Historically, the ruling class in Scotland used systematic discrimination against Irish people to divide and weaken the working class, particularly in the wake of substantial Irish immigration to industrial areas after the 1846–50 "potato famine" in Ireland.  
 
‘Irish need not apply’
The bosses and landlords posted signs such as "Irish need not apply" and "No Irish" through 1939, as Irish workers, including those born in Scotland, were excluded from skilled trades and better housing. In 1923 the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland approved a report on "The Menace of the Irish Race to Our Scottish Nationality." The anti-Irish tract blamed the Irish Catholic population for the capitalist economic crisis at the time. It called for control of immigration from the Irish Free State and the deportation of "undesirable elements." In the summer of 1935 an anti-Catholic street movement mounted orchestrated attacks on Catholics, including the disruption by 10,000 thugs of a reception of the Catholic Young Men’s Society and the stoning of coaches carrying children to the Catholic Eucharist Congress in Edinburgh.

Catholics organized all night vigils to protect their chapels. Overt institutional discrimination is uncommon today, but its legacy remains. In a study two years ago, researchers at Glasgow University found that men with Irish surnames were 26 percent more likely to die prematurely than other males in West Central Scotland. The study concluded, "Discrimination in the workplace plays a significant role in the current disadvantage of those of Irish origin."

In the Irish Republic, which consists of the 26 counties of Ireland free of British occupation, Sinn Fein made significant steps forward by winning five seats in the Irish parliament in the May 17 elections. Sinn Fein is leading the struggle to get the British out of the six occupied northern counties and champions the struggle for a united Ireland. Elections last year in the six counties saw the party score substantial gains. The party currently has four members in the British parliament, 18 members of the Legislative Assembly in Belfast, 118 local councillors, and two ministers in the Executive and the all-Ireland Ministerial Council.

In the Irish Republic, the party made its biggest gains in Dublin, where it won two seats. The party retained the seat it won in 1997 in Cavan/Monaghan.

Martin Ferris topped the poll for Sinn Fein in Kerry North, despite a fierce political attack and hostile media coverage culminating in his being assaulted and arrested by cops.

In Louth, Sinn Fein won a seat last held in 1981 by Paddy Agnew, who was "on the blanket" in the Long Kesh prison during the hunger strike. As part of their struggle for political status, imprisoned Irish freedom fighters refused to wear prison-issued clothing and had only their blankets for covering.

Sinn Fein leader Martin McGuinness noted the party is "now the third largest political party on the island. We are the only 32-County political party."

In a speech to 300 participants in a demonstration in London commemorating the lives and contributions of James Connolly and hunger strike leader Bobby Sands, Sinn Fein leader Pat McNamee said that while "the nature of the struggle has changed, the form of the struggle changed, we are the same republicans as we’ve always been." McNamee is an elected member of the Northern Ireland legislative assembly for South Armagh. The spirited demonstrators had been chanting "Ireland, Palestine: one struggle, one fight."

In a May 22 statement, Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams said the party’s "only interest in increasing our political strength is to utilize that strength to bring about equality, to end poverty, and factor equity and justice into the rights of citizens in their entitlements to decent jobs, a public health service, education, and housing."

Joyce Fairchild in London contributed to this article.  
 
 
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