5, sometimes 6, days a week I would use the gym for an hour a day. I did different training programs, changing program every couple of months. I mostly did a mi...x of weightlifting and cardio, for cardio I mainly did jogging on the treadmill, usually for about 3 or 4 miles. Sometimes i wouldn't do any weights for a few months and would only do jogging, the longest I jogged was 12 miles, but I know of 2 prisoners that ran marathons on them. One INLA prisoner ran a marathon on a treadmill for charity. All the prisoners in E-Block, and all the teachers, donated money to the prisoner and the money raised went towards Autism Ireland.
Most prisoners in the block would go to the gym. Each landing had their own gym, the equipment in each gym was basic, some free weights, benches, boxing bag, treadmill, cross trainer, bike, and some old weight machines.
[ This is part 2 of this piece, for part 1 see yesterdays post to this page or www.wsm.ie for the entire text ]
It's good to have a gym routine, a person will get enjoyment reaching their goals in the gym. Whether that is to jog or cycle a certain amount of miles or whether it's to be able to bench press a certain amount of weight. It gives people a sense of satisfaction.
When working out it unleashes endorphins from your brain which make you feel good and give you a buzz. It's the same as when a person takes drugs, the drugs will activate endorphins in the brain. If a person is having a bad day, it's good to go to the gym and work through it, it will help a person get rid any aggression in their body from being in a bad mood.
Some people enjoy it so much they will go to the gym twice a day. Every few months I would do training twice a day. For the first session I would do weights and for the second session I would jog, sometimes I would do other types of cardio like skipping with a rope or boxing the punching bag. For a few months I got mad into skipping, I was able to do it for 30 mins non stop, but another prisoner, one of the guys that jogged marathons on the treadmill was able to do it for 2 hours non-stop.
The same fella was a boxer. For the first year I was in jail a few of the prisoners in E-block would do boxing in the hall that was attached to E1. These boxing sessions were held twice a week, on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. As prisoners got released, numbers fell in the boxing sessions, eventually everyone that had been attending got released.
Another form of exercise is walking in the yard. It is good to go outside for a walk regularly throughout the week. It can be very easy to get stuck in a routine where you don't go outside. There were many times throughout my sentence when I didn't go outside for weeks on end. It’s very easy to change from one routine to another without even realizing it.
The idea of walking up and down the yard or walking in circles can seem monotonous. But it can be a social experience also, when out in the yard there can be people from other landings walking in the yard. You might only see some people when you are out in the yard. This can give a you a chance to talk to someone you don't usually talk to.
Visits
Getting a visit is probably the highlight of the week for a prisoner (that's if they get a visit). Visits break the monotony of prison day. They can make the day go by a lot faster. Most prisoners would get a visit either once a week or every second week. Visits give a prisoner something to look forward to. A visit gives the prisoner a chance to talk about something different than you might normally talk about (in jail you tend to have similar conversations a lot, speaking about the same subjects a lot). It gives the prisoner the chance to hear about how life is going on outside.
I remember one time when I was in my teens, a person I knew that was in and out of jail told me, "The only people that will visit you when you are in jail will be your family. Your family will be the only ones to give a fuck." I learned my friend was right, for the vast majority of people that get visits, they will be from either their family or a loved one. Although occasionally prisoners do get visits from a friend or an acquaintance.
I suppose it's not that people don't give a fuck, it's more to do with the fact that people are living their own lives and probably don't have the time to visit. My family visited me regularly, coming down every weekend; after a year in jail I said to just come down every second week, there was no point coming down every week. Besides my family coming down I had two staunch Republican women comrades that visited me every month right from the start of being in jail right up till I was released. The two comrades every month would leave plenty of books, magazines, and other reading material and CDs and DVDs. Each month they would travel from Dublin to Portlaoise, bringing me news of all the different events that had happened in Dublin over the month. I really enjoyed hearing about the different protests and struggles going on outside.
Visits in Portlaosie were nice for a prison. Since we were political prisoners we could have tea and snacks on visits. The visiting area was made up of rows of rooms (they would have been cells a few years previously), on the doors to the visiting rooms there were large windows. These windows were for screws to look in, a screw would walk up and down the visiting area looking in the windows throughout the whole visiting time.
When going on a visit each prisoner would have to walk through a metal detector and then would get patted down by the screws, the process was repeated when returning from visits. Visitors would go through a worse search. Women visitors weren't allowed to wear bras with metal in them, when being searched the female visitor would have to pull their bra forward off their chest to show nothing is hidden behind it. All visitors would have to take off their shoes and then go through a metal detector. The screw would then give the visitors a test to see if there were any explosives or drugs on them. How this is done is a sheet of paper is moved around the body then the paper is tested for any traces of explosives or drugs. If there is a baby going for a visit the baby’s nappy is searched. This process can be particularly intimidating for people if they’ve never experienced anything like this before.
For the prisoner that has a partner and children the visit is the one chance they will have to spend an hour in their company. Some prisoners’ partners will have to travel from the far off corners of Ireland. If a prisoner’s partner lives in let’s say Belfast and they don't have a car, they will have to get a taxi from their house to the bus or train station in the early hours of the morning, get a bus to Dublin (which takes between 2 hours and 30 minutes to 3 hours, then get a bus from Dublin to Portlaoise (which takes about 1 and a half hours). Then repeat this journey later in the day on the way home. Then you have to take into account the price of all this traveling, you’re talking the best part of £100. This is done each week, week in week out, for years.
For prisoners that are aligned with a group they will receive £80 euro a month, if the prisoner has a partner and child, the partner will be given £80 a month. It takes a lot of work and effort for the prisoner support groups to raise the funding they need to give out to the different prisoners and their families. But through no fault of their own this isn't anywhere near enough to make up for money needed by families. For families that don’t have much money they might not be able to afford to come regularly. There are also prisoners that aren't aligned with any group, these prisoners don't get any help or support from the different prisoner support groups.
Visits give the prisoner, the father, the chance to see their child grow. One visit a week might be the only chance the prisoner gets to spend time with their child. It must be a terrible experience only being able to see your child or children for an hour a week (if lucky enough) and then having to watch them leave every time, and then having to return back to your cell for another week before seeing them again. (There are some prisoners that don't get to see their children at all, the family might refuse to bring them to visit as they might not agree with the reasons why they are in jail. Instead these prisoners might have to make do with a photo to see their child).
Boredom
For the first 12 months of being in jail I would count time I was there. At first it was the days, then it was the weeks, then the months. After a while I just stopped counting.
Prison is the closest to being dead while at the same time being alive. While in jail, life outside passes you by, visits, letters and phone calls are when you hear about different events or problems that are happening outside. If something negative is happening outside that involves your loved ones there's not a single thing you can do about it.
A person in jail can experience being like some type of spirit looking over their loved ones from the afterlife. You hear about the good times and the bad times, but you can never take part in them, you just sit on the side watching and listening.
The main thing that changes in prison, besides people leaving the jail and new people arriving, is the changes in the season. In the summer it is roasting hot within the block, in the winter it’s freezing cold. In the summer you walk in the sunshine and heat in the yard. In winter you walk in the yard in dark evenings and grey, gloomy days. During the summer you look out your cell window (if you are up high enough in the block to be able to see out over the wall of the prison) you can see the countryside of the midlands of Ireland off in the distance, you can see the green of the country, plants, hills, and smell the scent of the countryside and nature. In the winter (likewise if you are up high enough in the block) on the other side of the block you can see Portloaise town in the dark, you can see the Christmas lights on people's houses and, far off in the distance, you can see the bright lights of a star shape on the steeple of a church.
Prison can be like a soap opera, at other times it can be like a comedy. Everyone knows each other's business, some people try to go out of their way to find out all of your business, some of these people are just nosey and are just looking for a bit of gossip. Others are trying to find out information about you that they may want to use against you at some point. The information they might find out they may use to create drama for you. Or a person may create drama and blame it on you. Drama can be created just out of badness or it might be because of power plays between people or groups.
Some people like seeing drama so they might shit stir to start a bit of drama. This all to break the monotony of prison life. Some people study, some people read, others go to the gym, but some stir shit to try help pass the time.
Some people take part in wind ups. These wind ups aren't usually out of badness, it’s mainly just for fun. I remember one wind up, one fella got out on TR (temporary release) for the weekend. While he was out, we went into his cell and glued his cutlery, piss pot and other items to the ceiling of his cell.
Another time, one guy had a favorite cup he’d had for years. He loved the cup, he drank tea from it every day. The cup had a picture of his favorite team on it, Manchester United. One day he left his cup on the long dinner table that was on the landing on E4. Someone got his cup and super glued it to the table. When the fella that owned the cup came back up to get it, he walked casually up to the table to get it, he obviously didn't expect it to be stuck to the table. When he first went to grab it he was in shock not realizing what was going on that he couldn't pick his cup up for a split second before it dawned on him what was going on.
There were loads of wind ups always going on. One of the best ones I saw was one guy got sentenced to 9 months (extremely short sentence for a person in Portlaoise).He could never get his head around getting the 9 month sentence, he done the time hard. A few weeks before he was due to be released someone managed to get a legal document from his cell that was from the state about his case. The person who took the letter went into the computer room, scanned the letter and doctored it and wrote in it that the state was taking an appeal against the leniency of the sentence against him that they wanted to put more time on his sentence.
The lad that doctored the letter gave it to a screw to give to him as a wind up. When the screw gave him the letter the fella nearly broke down, you could see his world was shattering. The OC of the landing had to calm him down and tell him it was just a wind up.
This same wind up was repeated about 2 or 3 years later on another prisoner. But the prisoner that got the letter went further in his panic, thinking he was getting extra time he rang up his solicitor's office demanding to talk to his solicitor, the secretary told him the solicitor was going away on holidays. Shouts and roars could be heard echoing around the block screaming, "Do not get on the plane, do not get on that plane". With eruption of laughter following.
Summer in jail
Summer is a particular boring season in jail, I found it very boring mainly because the school was closed for the summer. Instead of going to classes most people would sit outside in the sun, or lie on yoga mats in the yard taking in the sun. This time of year the yard is in use all day by most of the prisoners.
Depending on what time it was the sun would be shining in one yard but blocked out in the other. During the morning the sun would be in the big yard east of the block. Then in the afternoon it would be in the small yard west of the block.
The different landings would also play different sports games together in the yard. The game mainly played was volleyball, the odd time soccer would be played. The volleyball games in the yard were comical, while walking or sitting in the yard as a game was going on, all of a sudden you could hear bursts of laughter and slaggings, usually if a teammate missed a shot or hit the ball too hard out of the box giving the other team an extra point as a result. One or two people took these games very seriously and would lose the plot the odd time giving out to people. When someone lost the plot sometimes what would happen is everyone playing laughs and taunts the person. But it was all always in good humor
In the summer, inside the block would be roasting, people would wear shirts going around. In the evening when we got locked in for the night the cells would be roasting. I can remember one particularly hot summer I had removed glass from the window in my cell and I also had an electric fan. Both made no difference to my comfort. No wind came in the window, the fan just blew hot air around.
Another bad thing in the summer is early in the morning you could be woken by birds chirping and singing. On the outside wall of every cell there is an air vent just above the windows. They are tiny air vents and on some of them the covers are missing. When this is the case birds tend to go into them and make nests. This can be particularly annoying being woken up by birds every morning.
Organize
In Portloaise prison the Republican prisoners had a lot more privilege and way better conditions to do their time compared with the social and gangland prisoners. In E-Block the Republican prisoners had a lot more freedom in the block than the other prisoners elsewhere in the jail or any other jail in Ireland.
When prisoners were not banged up in their cell they could go to the gym, go to the rec area, go to the yard, all whenever they wanted, work/art and crafts area. In the other blocks and other jails you can only go to these places at certain times. If a Republican prisoner wants to stay in their cell all day, they can if they want. Whereas in other blocks and jails at certain times you can't just stay in your cell, you will either have to go to the yard, work if you have a job, go to a class, go to the library, all this at certain times of course.
Republican prisoners have longer visits, a visit can be up to 1 hour 30 minutes, in other jails it can be for just 20 minutes. Republican prisoners also had more access to using the phone and longer phone calls. In other jails a prisoner will only have one phone call a day for 7 minutes.
But why are Republican prisoners allowed these extra privileges? The jail administration didn't give the Republican prisoners these extra privileges out of their hearts. The conditions republican prisoners have is because of struggle against the prison system over decades. The privileges were won from hard struggle.
It proves strength is in numbers and strength is in being organized to fight and struggle against an enemy. All prisoners could have these privileges in all jails if they got organized and struggled for them. Its an easy thing to say this, it’s a lot harder to put this into action. It’s a harder task for the social prisoners to organize themselves. Prisoners come from all sorts of backgrounds and this can make it harder to organize.
It’s a lot easier for the Republican prisoners to organize because most of them were groups or movements before going to jail. So when in jail the prisoners can be organized a lot easier, they are in jail because they are trying to bring the struggle to a head.
Whereas for a lot of social prisoners their struggle is a personal struggle, a struggle to live, a struggle of life. A lot of the social prisoners are in jail because of the social conditions created by capitalism.
The way each group, each landing, works in Portloaise is if the jail try to undermine one prisoner or undermine the landing, every prisoner on that landing will go on protest. The Republican prisoners have a network of support and groups outside the jail, so if a group or landing inside the jail go on protest, there will be people protesting outside the jail. There is one thing that the prison governors hate and that is protests. If there is a protest outside the gate, the governor will get onto the prisoners trying to sort it.
One time when I was on E1, I and my comrades went on a 48 hour fast in solidarity with Republican prisoners in the north that started a protest in Maghaberry. The first day we were on it we refused our dinner. After the bang-up a high up screw came to speak to our OC to see what the matter was, the jail administration was worried we were on protest because of something in Portlaoise.
Another beneficial aspect to having prisoners and landings organized was that it gave structure to prisoners and landings. Each landing on E-Block had its own structure. The structures gave people the jobs that needed doing, such as cleaning different areas of the landing. The cleaning jobs were divided up amongst the prisoners, and, as a result the cleaning jobs are more or less given out evenly, every few months the different jobs rotate. The structure can also help with disputes between different prisoners if a dispute arises. There is a rule that the first person to throw a punch or hit another prisoner is exiled off the landing; I think this rule stopped a lot of arguments from getting violent. While I was in Portlaoise in E-Block there was pretty much no violence carried out by prisoners to each other.
INLA prisoners protest
In 2009, INLA prisoners went on protest against the prison administration, because of bad treatment they were getting. A plan was put in place for their protest action. One morning when the governor came onto the landing as they regularly do, one INLA prisoner had the task of throwing the contents of a piss pot over the governor. The prisoners for the previous week had saved their piss pots and filled them with human waste and stored them in an empty cell.
As the governor went into the screws’ office on the cell the prisoner threw in the contents of the bucket, emptying it over the governor, as this happened the other prisoners threw piss pots of waist all over the place. Human waste was flowing down the stairs like a river. The governor and screws left the landing.
The riot squad was then sent in. The prisoners pulled up planks that were on a bridge that went from one side of the landing to the other. They made their escape from the riot squad by jumping down onto E3. The governor didn't want to extend the matter, bringing the E3 prisoners into the problem.
Negotiations were made between the INLA prisoners and the governor. The INLA prisoners would return to their landing if the jail stopped harassing their prisoners, the governor agreed. Also, during the protest 2 INLA prisoners were dragged off to the seg (segregation, it,s basically solitary confinement), so part of the deal was to bring the 2 prisoners back from the seg, and the INLA prisoners agreed they would do their punishment in their own cells instead of in the seg.
When you are in the seg you are kept away from the rest of the prison population, you are segregated. The only people you see are screws. Occasionally you might catch a glimpse of another prisoner. You are locked in a cell 23 hours a day, you get 1 hour of exercise in a yard on your own. A prisoner can be kept in the seg for 53 days at a time.
The INLA prisoners won 3 victories here.
1) They stopped the harassment to themselves by the prison administration
2) they forced the prison administration to bring back 2 prisoners from the seg, this had never happened before, and
3) the jail stopped using the seg when putting republican prisoners on punishment.
After the protest all of the INLA prisoners still had to do punishment but they had to do it in their own cells, where they had tv, their books and own property; they would not have had this in the seg, they still got to mix with their comrades when they weren't locked into their cells.
The INLA prisoner protest against the prison administration proves that collective organized action against the administration can work and extra privileges can be won.
Releases
In Portlaoise when you are coming to the end of your sentence you will be eligible for temporary release (TR). This is where the prison grants a prisoner a few days out, it’s usually a weekend. A prisoner gets 1 TR for every year they do in jail, and a prisoner usually gets granted a TR for their final Christmas in prison. For me, since I was sentenced to six years and four months, I had to do four years and eight months. Every prisoner gets remission, whatever sentence a person gets straight away they can take 1/3 off their sentence.
So I was entitled to four TRs. On my final Christmas I was granted TR, it was a long TR, every prisoner getting TR that Christmas was given five overnights. This means you have to come back on the 6th day.
It was a surreal feeling getting to walk outside the gate, then being picked up by my father, sitting in a car for the first time in years, walking into a house after not being in one for a good while feels really strange, everything feels shrunken and tiny. I sat in the house feeling fidgety not able to sit easy. I felt like I should be doing something and not just sitting there, I had a feeling of guilt not doing anything, but I didn't know what I should be actually doing. My comrade was back in prison, I felt I should have been doing something to enjoy myself, but I didn't know what that was.
There was only one thing I really wanted to do and that was to walk down the beach looking at the ocean. Before jail I wasn't much of a lover of nature, I didn't really care too much for it. But, at the same time I did enjoy walks in nature. Before jail I didn't realize I liked it so much. For the years in jail I would daydream about being in nature, being in the mountains, being by the seaside.
Dollymount beach is a short walk from my parents’ house, to get there I'd have to walk through St. Anne’s park. As I walked through the park, even though it was winter there was still a lot of colour. A lot of the big tall trees in the park are evergreen trees so they still had their colour. As I walked through the park my head and eyes were darting around around taking in the landscape, walking under the tall trees, their canopy blocking out the sky. It was an amazing feeling being hit in the face with so many different colours, different shades of green.
When I reached the beach I walked just for a little bit and then sat on a sand dune for about 2 hours looking out into the vast ocean of green, reflecting in my thoughts.
On my final night on TR, my sister and her friend brought me on a drive. We drove up to the view point in the Dublin mountains. It was pitch black when we got there. We sat in the car looking out over Dublin. It was a fantastic sight, seeing all the lights of Dublin lit up.
When I got back to jail I had six months left to do, for the final four months I was granted a TR out for a weekend each month.
After about a year into my prison experience I could not imagine ever getting out. I could not imagine not being in jail, I couldn't imagine being outside doing normal things. I felt like this right on up till I was released. But, at the same time I would daydream about stuff I could be doing.
When I was out it didn't take long for me to realize that there was only so much I could actually do. This dawned on me as I was in the welfare office queuing to sign on the dole. After queuing for a time I finally reached the hatch. I said to the man behind the hatch and told him I wanted to sign on the dole, straight away his snotty attitude came out. He gives me the paper. It takes me a while to fill out some of the questions that I can understand, some of the questions didn't make sense in my head as my mind was racing.
I handed back the paperwork. The man said to me that I didn't fill in parts of the form. I tell him I didn't know what to write in them. He started asking me the questions. Eventually he came to, "If you haven't been on the dole for five years and haven't been working, what have you been doing?" I told him I was in prison. He asked me "What was your prison number?" "I was never given one" I said, "Well if you were in prison you would have been given a prison number", I told him again I didn't get one. "You could not have been in jail for that amount of time and never given a prison number" he says smartly and matter of factly in his voice. I told him "Political prisoners aren't given a prison number." He looked at me in amazement like I had two heads. "What jail were you in?" he said with an attitude. I told him. He reached over and pulled the office phone across the table closer to him. He called Portloise jail and they filled him in. He put the phone down and looked at me. "Look, this is not up for debate, you would have been given a prisoner number at some point." he said very slyly. He then got the paperwork I filled in, opened it and stamped the boxes. "You can collect your payment tomorrow" he said without making eye contact.
After a few days of being out I had a deep feeling of anticlimax. It took me about a year to get used to being outside again. When out in public, especially in shopping markets, being in places that had a lot of people, my mind would race, my body would fill with anxiety. I found it hard to stand in a queue in a shop, I hated the feeling when people were standing or walking too close to me.
When in prison I could see people when they were coming down the landing or walking near me. When outside in packed places people will come from every direction going about their business. One of the first days I was out I went into town to have a look in the shops, I was walking up Henry street, it was jammed with people. After a few minutes of walking before I could even go into a shop I had to turn back and go home.
When I got out of jail I had to get used to being outside, I was still waking up at the same time every morning. When I'd get up and after having breakfast I wouldn't know what to do with myself. A lot of the time I would go for a jog, the length of the coast road. I liked this route, when I was in jail jogging on the treadmill I would imagine I was jogging down the coast road on Sunday.
What I needed was a new routine. After two months of being out I applied for a course and got accepted onto it. The course was to last till May. Doing this course helped me a lot to adjust back into life. It gave me a routine to do each day, I got to meet new people, have normal conversations. When in jail the main conversations I had with people were mostly highly political. I got massive enjoyment from having normal conversations just about every day life. It was a breath of fresh air.
When I got out of jail it was like when I went in, I had to transition from one way living to another.
What I noticed most when I got out of jail was that there was no support groups or information on how to go about things. There was nowhere to find out about rent allowance, or how to get grants for college or any other information on what an ex prisoner's rights are, or what they are entitled to (such as a clothing grant for example). I didn't know much about any of these things.
I gradually found out all these things by investigating them myself or if an ex-prisoner happened to tell me. This process of trying to find out this information can be stressful.
Some people spending years in prison can develop mental health problems, because of this they may turn to drink or drugs as a way of self medicating. People have different experiences in prison some people do longer sentences, some people have a harder time. All these things can prey on a person's mental health. A person may do 10, 20, 30 years in jail, whatever the time it will have an effect on a person whether big or small. After a person does 20 years they may not be able to cope with the outside world, they might become homeless, they might become alcoholics.
Prisons were set up to (supposedly) reform offenders. But the reality is that prisons are for the punishment and revenge by bourgeois society. If you fuck with private property they will have their vengeance. An armed robber robs a bank or a bookies and gets 10 years if caught, if they get away they will have a few thousand euros; a banker swindles and robs millions, helps to destroy a country's economy, forcing many to live in poverty, the banker gets a promotion if caught. What bourgeois society shows is that what matters when robbing property is what class you are in when doing the robbing.
The person that robs with a pen and fancy office will rob and wreak a lot more people than the person that robs by using a gun.
When a prisoner is finished their sentence they are just fucked out on the street, discarded. In a lot of cases the prisoner will have family or friends that will help them get back on their feet when they are released. But there are many prisoners who, when they are released, have no support from family or friends. These prisoners will find it way harder to get back on their feet, some of them may not ever get back on their feet at all.
From Republicanism to Anarchism
While in Portlaoise I didn't read half as many books on Anarchism as I did on Marxism, but the few I did read helped to shape my mind towards bringing me closer to anarchism. Before reading anything by anarchists I thought Anarchism was an individualist philosophy where no one would be accountable to anyone. My understanding of what I thought what Anarchism is was from Lenin, Trotsky, Marx, Engels and other Marxists
So when I first read writing by an anarchist I was surprised to read that there is a lot more to Anarchism than I’d previously thought. I first read an introduction to Anarchism (I think it was by Wayne Price). Contrary to what I had thought, anarchists do believe in organizing and having organizations and movements. Anarchists emphasise organizing in a non-hierarchical, non-authoritarian and democratic way.
This stuck out at me as I’d seen how other groups organize, which was a hierarchical way, tasks being fed down from above, people being given positions from above.
Republicans are like Leninists in how they organize. By this I mean they organize in the Leninist "vanguardist" way. Vanguardist Leninists set out wanting to lead people; they think the people aren't "class conscious" enough or don't understand economics, social structures, etc, enough. Leninists see themselves as being educated in all the different revolutionary theory and as being "class conscious" enough to wage struggle, and wage the struggle in the correct way, they believe they have the right answers on how to approach the struggle and what tactics to use (it's generally never up for discussion. And any talk to counter their view is shouted down.) The "vanguardist" movement or party sees itself as being the saviour of the people, they are the movement truly fit to lead the people to liberation.
Since they see themselves as having the right answers they also see themselves as the one true force to bring the people to liberation. The movement wants to be the people's voice and speak for them (because of this they actually take the people's voice from them).
Because of the structures of the groups and parties, there is a leadership, a top table. The people that sit on the leadership table are seen as being the most educated, experienced, and class conscious of the whole membership of the group or party. To be on this table you will have to be a part of the elite, this generally means having spent many years in the movement and/or having prestige. As a result, other members of the group or party assume these older members have far better knowledge on the struggle and how to approach it. In essence it is the leaders of the movement who become the voice of the movement. All this can lead to the leaders making decisions (whether big or small) for the movement without the input of the membership. This is the nature of elitist, authoritarian and vanguardist methods of organizing.
Although Communists and Republicans can differ greatly on ideology, their ways of organizing can be similar. For example, Gerry Adams’ rise to power within the Republican Movement can be described as being stalinist. He understood the structure and the ways to organize within the movement. Through political maneuvers within the movement he climbed his way up the ladder. On his way up the ladder he brought his allies with him. Eventually, from years of power struggles within the movement with the other different power factions, Gerry Adams and his clique gained dominance of the leadership positions in the movement. And, because of this (whether one agrees or not), his power clique could bring the movement down the road they saw as what best suited the struggle for national liberation.
Later I read about Bakunin and his critique of Marxism and how Marx's theories on socialism and how to create it, if it ever came into fruition would be a bureaucratic nightmare and how the marxists would become the rulers. This sounded familiar to me from reading Trotsky's writings on the Soviet Union and Stalinism. Also Mao had similar arguments in writings about the Soviet Union under Khrushchev.
When I read Trotsky's and Mao’s critiques I felt there was a connection between what they were saying. Trotsky wrote about the party bureaucracy that hijacked the revolution. Trotsky's solution on how to get rid of this would be by creating actual soviets that were organised by the workers and by having a multi-party system instead of the one party dictatorship. What Mao wrote about was how the communist party in the USSR had turned into the ruling class exploiting the Russian workers and how the Chinese Communist Party was starting to do this too.
From reading Trotsky's and Mao’s critiques I still felt there were parts missing. When i read of Bakunin and what his critiques were of Marxism which he wrote decades before the creation of the USSR it got me thinking more about organizing and tactics used in struggles, and how these can determine what the outcome of the struggle might be.
The Marxists/Leninists want to take state power and transform the state into a workers’ state. What happened in reality was that Marxist/Leninists took state power in Russia and instead of giving power over to the people they placed themselves in charge of the state (the party saw itself as the vanguard of the workers’ revolution, because of this the party thought it would be better for the revolution if they took the power of the state and organized and ran it for the workers because the party saw itself as being way more conscious of the tasks needed to be carried out in order to create socialism in Russia than the workers) and would make decisions for the people on how best to reorganize society, the people didn't really have a say. The Marxists/Leninists being in charge of the state said what was ok and wasn't ok to say or do. Anyone who objected ran the risk of being jailed, put in a labor camp, or executed.
This reflects on how Marxists/Leninists organise in groups and parties for struggle, the people in leadership positions make decisions for the group or party. The groups and parties that organize in this way go into other organizations such as trade unions or community groups and try to take them over (in lots of cases they do). They use these tactics because they think the struggle needs to be centralized with them being the leaders of the struggle. Positions that are gained in trade unions or community groups by these groups are manipulated to try to push these groups in a direction they see as being best. And likewise they try to get their party members into as many positions as possible in these other organizations and groups in order that they can better influence the decision making with these groups and organizations.
From my reading and studying, what I got at this point was Republicanism was pointless without socialism. There would be no point at all in having a Republic as there would still be capitalism, exploitation and oppression. In order to get rid of this and have a truly free Ireland it would need to be a socialist society. And likewise Socialism without freedom is pointless, there is no point trying to build a socialist future if it's not the people building it themselves and the faith of society left in the hands of some “revolutionary party” or “revolutionary movement”.
Also what I got was that there needs to be a deeper look into tactics, ways of organizing and strategies; and that armed struggle was not the main tactic, there are many other forms of struggle.
I thought a lot about what Ireland would look like if one of the republican groups ever got into power. What I could imagine I didn't like. A question I asked myself a few times was how can you make a government accountable (no matter how revolutionary or well intentioned the government)?
When I was released, the water charges struggle was just beginning. I attended demonstrations and protests in Edenmore and Coolock. These were held in housing estates and outside Garda stations (after people got arrested). What I noticed at these events was that it was always the politically aligned members of groups that were doing the talking. They would stand in front of the crowds speaking, preaching to the people.
This brought me back to what I was reading about the Marxists wanting to lead the people and how the Anarchists wrote about how the people don't need party leaders they can lead themselves.
The people speaking were from different groups and parties, there were Socialists and there were Republicans. What made these groups think they had the right answers? Why were they doing the speaking and why wasn't it the people at the demonstrations and protests doing the speaking instead? After all, the reason they are out on the streets affects them the most.
This got me thinking more about how groups and parties organize, and how the ones I was involved with in the past organised. I knew shady deals and decisions get made for "The better good of the party" without the consent of the membership. It made me distrust leaderships, no one person or group of people can have the right answers all the time.
It properly clicked in my head that it's the people that have to organise themselves for their own struggles. How can a person, group or party look after your interests any better than you can yourself? From this point I am an Anarchist, and what brought me to this point influenced me to be an Anarchist.
Joe C
This is one of a series of biographical accounts from members, supporters and contact about what brought them to anarchism. If you want to tell your story contact us Via the Contact Us link at the top of the page
[ This is part 2 of this piece, for part 1 see yesterdays post to this page or www.wsm.ie for the entire text ]
