Timeline of Irish republicanism

Mostly taken from my “Timeline of the Pretanic Isles, in context”, this focuses on the history of republicanism in Ireland and outside events immediately affecting that direction of that.

UNITED IRISH

(when Irish republicanism was Protestant)

1778 – Establishment of the first Irish Volunteers, which remain as a force until 1793; in the beginning the members are almost entirely Protestant and Dissenter, with Protestant Ascendancy leaders, but gradually Catholics are admitted as well.

1782 – Henry Grattan persuades the London Parliament to grant the Dublin Parliament greater powers.

1784-1786 – Third wave of Whiteboy activity in Ireland.

1784 – Organization of the Catholic Defenders and of the Protestant (Anglican) Peep O'Day Boys in Co. Armagh.

1789-1794 – French Revolution.

1791 – Publication of Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man. 

Society of United Irishmen founded by Theobald Wolfe Tone and Thomas Russell, both from the Established Church of Ireland, at the invitation of a group of Belfast Presbyterians. 

1792 – Two groups calling themselves the Friends of the People Society are organized in London and in Edinburgh respectively, the latter by Thomas Muir, under the inspiration of Thomas Paine.

1795 – United Irishmen change their goal to complete sovereignty. 

The Peep O’Day Boys reorganize as the Orange Order to oppose both the United Irishmen and the proposed Union of the Dublin Parliament with that of London; membership is limited to members of the Church of Ireland.

1797 – Organization of the United Englishmen. 

Rising of the United Scotsmen.

1798 – First Rising of the United Irishmen, under Tone.  It includes the short period of the Republic of Connacht.  After the defeat of the main forces, those left continue as guerrillas in some places until 1804.

1800 – United Irish Rising in Newfoundland.

1801 – Act of Union, uniting the Parliaments of Great Britain and Ireland.  The realm is now known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

1803 – Second Rising of the United Irishmen, under Robert Emmet.

YOUNG IRELAND

1817 – The Ribbon Society first makes its presence felt in the countryside of Ireland.  Their activities continue past mid-century.

1822 – The Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) is established.

1823 – Daniel O’Connell establishes the Catholic Association in Dublin for emancipation from the Penal Laws.

1829 – The Catholic Relief Act passed this year (there have been others in previous years) removes most of the remaining Penal Laws.

1830-1836 – The Tithe War in Ireland against the Church of Ireland, primarily supported by the Ribbonmen.

1834 – Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and other “Dissenters” first admitted to the Orange Order.

1836 – Organization in New York City of the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH), which later spreads to Ireland.

1840 - O'Connell founds the Repeal Association with an aim toward repealing the Union of Parliaments of 1800.

1841 – Repeal of the Union Movement is formed; Young Ireland Movement is later formed for more radical goals and actions.

1845-1849 – The Great Irish Potato Famine.  Due to a blight on the potato crop, the staple of the Irish diet, between 1 1/2to 2 million Irish starve to death even while enough food to feed the entire country twice over is exported from the country by the corporate interests which control the island’s trade, with another 1 million emigrating to other countries.

1847 – The Irish Confederation is organized, with Young Irelanders as its backbone.

1848 – Young Ireland Rising, part of the Springtime of Nations, the revolts in France, Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, Venetia, Italy, Sicily, Rome, Baden-Wurttemberg, Bavaria, Saxony, Prussia, Denmark, Poland, Lithuania, Schleswig, Wallachia, Moldavia, and Rumania.

FENIANS

1858 – Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa begins organizing the Phoenix National and Literary Society, which later merges with the IRB.

The Fenian Brotherhood (FB) is organized in America and the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) in Ireland.

1862-1865 – The American Civil War.  Immigrant Irish, many of them republican, fight on both sides of the war, mostly for the Union.

1866 – FB splits into the O'Mahony (or Presidential) Wing and the Roberts (or Senate) Wing.  The O'Mahony Wing is later known as the Savage Wing.

1866-1871 – The Fenian Raids into Canada by the U.S.-based and FB-sponsored Irish Republican Army.  The first of these in 1866 led directly to the formation of the Dominion of Canada, uniting the previously independent colonies of British North America.

1871 – The Church of Ireland is at last disestablished by Parliament. 

1873 – Home Rule League founded.

1876 – The CnG, the IRB, and the Australian Irish community establish the Revolutionary Directory, with three representatives each from the CnG and IRB, plus one from the Australian Irish expat community.

1879 – Irish Land League founded.

1880 – Fenian Brotherhood finally collapses.

1882 – Irish National League reorganized as the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP); Irish Unionist Party founded in opposition.

1882-1883 – Campaign of the Invincibles, led by O’Donovan Rossa.

1884 – Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) founded.

1889 – The Socialist International is organized in Paris.

1892 – John Redmond assumes leadership of IPP.

1893 – Gaelic League founded by Douglas Hyde, a Protestant from County Roscommon.

1896 – Irish Socialist Republican Party founded by James Connolly.

1899-1902 – Nationalist and Unionist Irish and Irish-Americans fight on the side of the Afrikaaners against the British during the Second Boer War in the Irish Transvaal Brigade and the Second Irish Brigade.

1900 – Maud Gonne organizes Inginidhe na hEireann to promote Irish culture and nationalism among Irish women.

1901 – The United Irish League of America is founded to support the goals of the Irish Parliamentary Party. 

1905 – Sinn Fein Party founded.  Ulster Unionist Council founded.

1907 – The Ancient Order of Hibernians splits between the AOH (Irish-American Alliance), mostly in America and tied to Clan-na-Gael (and known simply as AOH-American Alliance in Ireland), and AOH (Board of Erin), mostly in Ireland, which came to support the IPP.

IRISH VOLUNTEERS

1908 – Irish Transport and General Workers Union (ITGWU) founded by James Larkin.

1909 – Na Fianna Eireann founded by Constance Markievicz and Bulmer Hobson to promote nationalist ideals among boys and adolescent young men.

James Larkin founds the Irish Transport and General Workers Union (ITGWU).

1910 – Clan na Gael Girl Guides founded by the Kelly sisters May and Elizabeth with the same purpose for girls and adolescent young women as Na Fianna Eireann for boys.

1911 – Delia Larkin, her brother James, and Rose Hackett organize the Irish Women Workers Union (IWWU) in Dublin.

1913 – Ulster Volunteers founded by Edward Carson and James Craig under the Ulster Unionist Council.  Irish National Volunteer Corps (INVC) is founded by John Redmond in response to Carson and Craig.  Irish Citizen Army founded by Jack White, James Larkin, and James Connolly.  The Hibernian Rifles are also started by J. J. Scollan of AOH (AA) this year.

1914-1919 - The Great War, also known as the First World War.

1914 – INVC splits into the “National Volunteers” under Redmond, who supports Great Britain during WWI, and the “Irish Volunteers” under Eoin MacNeill.  Cumann na mBan is founded by Kathleen Clarke, Shora MacMahon, and others, with Jennie Wyse-Power is elected President; two years later CMB officially becomes the women’s auxilary of the Irish Volunteers.  The Citizen Army Scouts youth adjunct to ICA is organized by Seamus MacGowan based on his group the Irish National Guard, a breakaway from the Fianna Eireann, with help from Constance Markievicz and Michael Mallin.

1916 – The Easter Rising by the Provisional Government of the Irish Republic (“Saorstat Eireann”) and the Army of the Irish Republic composed of the Irish Volunteers, Irish Citizen Army, Fianna Eireann, Cumann na Bann, AOH’s Hibernian Rifles, and a single company (Craughwell, Galway) of the National Volunteers.  Though most of the major action takes place in the City of Dublin, provincial units rise in Cos. Louth, Meath, Wexford, Galway, and Cork, with members of Cumann na mBan providing support in every area of operation and every post or garrison inside Dublin City.

After the Rising, the Friends of Irish Freedom is founded in America to support the republican prisoners-of-war from the Easter Rising in the aftermath of the sixteen executions which follow.

1919-1922 – Irish War of Independence, with the Irish republican side directed mostly from behind the scenes by the IRB under its President, Michael Collins.

1919 – Irish Volunteers officially become the Irish Republican Army, and includes a Scottish Brigade.

1920 – The RIC organizes the RIC Reserve Force (Black and Tans), the Auxiliary Division (Auxies), and the Ulster Special Constabulary (A-, B-, and C- Specials, USC) to provide support against the IRA.

1921 – Anglo-Irish Treaty; Partition of Ireland into Northern Ireland and the Irish Free State or “Saorstat Eireann”.  The Supreme Council of the IRB, with one exception (Liam Lynch) votes to accept the Treaty.  The CnG does likewise; however, it splits into a Devoy wing and a McGarrity wing called Clan na Gael Reorganized.

1922-1923 – Irish Civil War.

1922 – The IRA divides into the Free Staters and the Irregulars, both using the names IRA until the Free State forces officially change their English designation to Irish Defense Forces; however, both continue using the Irish designation Óglaigh na hÉireann.  Redmondites returning from service with the British army on the continent are recruited en masse into the IDF.  The Royal Ulster Constabulary is established in Northeast Ulster.  Michael Collins dies in a firefight in County Cork.

IRISH REPUBLICAN ARMY

1923 – The IRA reorganizes itself as a clandestine organization, allied with Sinn Fein as its political arm.  Pro-Treaty former members of Sinn Fein under William Cosgrave form the Cumann na nGaedheal.

1924 – The IRB votes to dissolve, after which the Devoy wing of CnG does likewise; the McGarrity wing, however, continues on as the sole CnG.

1925 – The IRA severs its relationship with Sinn Fein. 

1926 – CnG formally associates with the reorganized IRA. 

Eamon DeValera establishes the Fianna Fail to contest elections, which later separates completely from the IRA.  The A- and C-Specials of the USC are disbanded.

1927 – The London government changes its name to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

1929 - Roddy Connolly organizes the Workers Defense Corps, which is proscribed two years later.

1931 – Peadar O’Donnell and others organize Saor Eire as a left-leaning nationalist political party, but the effort fizzles.

1932 – Hundreds of working-class Catholics and Protestants across Northeast Ulster unite to form the Outdoor Workers Relief Committee; in spite of massive assaults by the B-Specials on Shankhill Road and Falls Road, the resulting strike is successful and the movement spreads.  Richard Mulcahy and others form the Army Comrades Association, made up of former IRA men who supported the Treaty side during the Civil War, to provide support for former Free State soldiers and to protect Cumann meetings from attack by members of the IRA.

1933 – Eoin O'Duffy is expelled from his post as head of the Garda Síochána, then takes over the ACA and changes its name to the National Guard (aka Blueshirts).  When that is banned a few months later, the former ACA members, Cumann na nGaedheal, and National Centre Party band together to form Fine Gael.

1934 – O’Donnell and his allies reorganize under the name Republican Congress and are expelled from the IRA, which splits down the middle.  The RC eventually gains adherents even in the Shankill section of Belfast, and includes a delegation from Shankhill calling themselves the James Connolly Club in its march at Bodenstown this year, but collapses two years later due to lack of funds.

The RC included as its armed wing a revived Irish Citizen Army, which split into two factions the following year, both of which faded with the parent organization.  

1935 – O’Duffy loses control of Fine Gael and withdraws from it, founding the National Corporate Party (aka Greenshirts).

1936-1939 – Republicans and loyalists fight in the Spanish Civil War in the same unit of the International Brigades (many in the Connolly Column), while Blueshirts and Greenshirts under O’Duffy fight on the side of Franco’s Nationalists.

1939-1945 – The Second World War.

1939-1940 – IRA’s Sabotage Campaign in England.

1942-1944 – IRA’s Northern Campaign in the Six Counties.

1946 – On the heels of the Second World War, IRA leader Sean MacBride organizes the leftist republican Clann na Poblachta.

1949 - Brendan O'Boyle, formerly of IRA's Northern Command, organizes Laochra Uladh, which ended with his death in action in 1955.

1950 – An Irish Republican Brotherhood is formed in Dublin and disbanded by Cathal Goulding the next year.

1951 – Liam Kelly organizes Saor Uladh after being expelled from the IRA.  Raymond O'Cianain's Arm na Saoirse is absorbed into IRA.

1953 – Kelly establishes Fianna Uladh as the political wing of Saor Uladh.

1955 - The Christle Groups forms around its eponymous founder, Joe Christle, after he is expelled from IRA.  The group allies with Saor Uladh.

BORDER CAMPAIGN

1956-1962 – IRA’s Border Campaign.

1956 – IRA publishes its first Green Book, in which individual members are referred to as Guerrillas. 

Ian Paisley forms the Ulster Protection Action (UPA).

1957 – Richard Behel founds the Saor Eire Action Group.

1966 – Gusty Spence establishes the (new) Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF).  

UPA (1956) becomes the Protestant Unionist Party (PUP).

Ian Paisley forms the Ulster Constitution Defense Committee (UCDC) and its paramilitary arm, the Ulster Protestant Volunteers (UPV).  The UPV dissolves in 1969.

William McGrath organizes the loyalist paramilitary Tara.

1967 – Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association is organized.

Saor Eire, with a Trotskyite orientation, is organized by former IRA members headed by ex-Dublin Brigade OC Frank Keane.  Not the same as Saor Eire Action Group.

THE TROUBLES

1969-1998 – The Troubles.

1969 – The Battle of the Bogside. 

The IRA splits into two, the Official Irish Republican Army (OIRA) and the Reorganized IRA following the “Provisional” Army Council (later called the Provisional IRA or PIRA). 

Foundation in the USA of the Irish Northern Aid Committee (NORAID) by Martin Galvin.

John McKeague forms the Shankill Defense Association (SDA), the major forerunner to the later UDA.

1970 – A split in republican ranks over policy in Northeast Ulster and the turn toward Marxism-Leninism results in an Official Sinn Fein and a Provisional Sinn Fein. 

The Ulster Constabulary's B-Specials are dissolved and most former members join the new Ulster Defense Regiment (UDR).

George Green organizes the Ulster Special Constabulary Association (USCA) as a pressure group then paramilitary from former members of the B-Specials.  It goes defunct by 1977.

The small loyalist paramilitary Protestant Task Force (PTF) forms.  It disbands in 1976.

1971 – The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) succeeds the PUP (1966). 

Beginning of internment of both republican and loyalist suspects in the cages at Long Kesh.

Provos wishing to carry out sectarian attacks against Protestants organize the Red Flag Avengers (RFA) in Belfast, and remain active thru 1976.

The Ulster Defense Association (UDA) forms as an umbrella for groups such as the SDA, with the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) as its paramilitary arm.

Billy Hull organizes the Loyalist Association of Workers (LAW) to work within the trade unions.  It ceases to exist in mid-1974.

The Irish Citizen Army (2) forms in Belfast and Newry, but dies out by the mid-1970s.

1972 – The 1st Battalion of the Royal Parachute Regiment fires on a NICRA civil rights march in the city of Derry, killing fourteen and wounding many others, an incident now known as Bloody Sunday.

John McKeague organizes the (new) Red Hand Commando (RHC), largely made up of personnel from his former group, the SDA.  Later in the year, it affiliates with UVF but remains a separate organization.

The Army Council of the Official IRA declares a unilateral ceasefire.

Tinnelly's Brigade forms in south Co. Down out of OIRA volunteers opposed to the Official Army Council's ceasefire.  It remains active for two years.

Bob Marno organizes the Orange Volunteers (OV1) paramilitary vigilante group from militant members of the Orange Order.  It is defunct by the 1980s.

William Craig forms the Vanguard Unionist Progressive Party (VUPP), or Ulster Vanguard, from dissidents of the UUP, with a paramilitary wing, the Ulster Volunteer Service Corps (UVSC).

Peter Brush organizes the loyalist paramilitary Down Orange Welfare (DOW), but it is defunct by the end of 1977.

1973 – Harry West organizes the United Ulster Unionist Council (UUUC), with the UUP, DUP, and VUUP as the main member organizations, with several others such as the LAW and the DOW.

The Ulster Army Council (UAC) forms as an umbrella for loyalist paramilitaries.  Its members are UDA, UVF, RHC, UVSC, OV (1), DOW, and USCA.

The Ulster Citizen Army (UCA) forms from members of UDA who want to pursue a less anti-Catholic and more left wing loyalist ideology, but it doesn't last the year.

The Sunningdale Agreement attempts to establish a power-sharing Northern Ireland Executive and a cross-border Council of Ireland.  It is supported by the SDLP, the UUP, and the Alliance Party.  It is opposed by republicans, loyalists, and all other unionists.

1973-1978 – Activities of the South Derry Independent Republican Unit, which includes Francie Hughes, Dominic McGlinchey, Thomas McElwee, Joe Sheridan, Ian Milne, et al.

1974 – Three simultaneous bombings in Dublin and another in Monaghan one and a half hours later, the work of the UVF, kill 33 and wound over 300.

Seamus Costello organizes the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP) and the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA).

Harry Murray forms the Ulster Workers Council (UWC) to replace the defunct LAW.

The Ulster Workers Council Strike destroys the Sunningdale Agreement.

In the wake of the strike, the UAC reconstitutes as the Ulster Loyalist Central Co-ordinating Committee (ULCCC).  It includes the members of its predecessor and later the USC (1977).

The UVSC collapses later in the year.

The Armagh People's Republican Army (APRA) is founded in Co. Armagh and remains active into 1977.

1975 – A group from Saor Eire breaks away, calling itself Saoirse Eire, when the former decides to dissolve itself.

An independent republican outfit called the South Armagh Republican Action Force (SARAF) becomes active and remains so for the next three years.

Near the end of the year, secret talks take place between the ULCCC and the PIRA Army Council through intermediaries Desmond Boal and Sean MacBride, with the top leaders on both sides fully informed; the talks eventually reach an agreement to a mutual ceasefire and joint demand for British Army withdrawal, but are scuttled by a second workers strike orchestrated by Paisley for unrelated reasons.

1976 – Under recommendation from the Gardiner Committee, British Secretary of State Merlyn Rees orders an end to Special Category Status for political prisoners in Northern Ireland beginning 1 March. Kieran Nugent, the first prisoner to arrive in the H-Blocks at Long Kesh under the new rules, refuses to wear prison clothes, beginning the blanket protest, which many loyalists join.

1977 – Official Sinn Fein becomes Sinn Fein-The Workers’ Party.

The Provos issue a new Green Book which refers to members as Volunteers, revives the term Oglaigh na h’Eireann, and reorganizes the order of battle from brigades and battalions into smaller Active Service Units.

Frank McManus, Fergus MacAteer, and John Turnley establish the Irish Independence Party (IIP), which is largely a merger of the Unity Party and the Nationalist Party.

The United Unionist Action Council (UUAC), a subcommittee of the UUUC (1973), establishes the loyalist vigilante group Ulster Service Corps (USC).

1978 – Beginning of the no wash protest and later the dirty protest in the republican wing of the H-blocks and of Armagh Women's Prison, where many of the inmates have already joined the blanket protest.

VUPP (1972) dissolves.

UDA chairman Andy Trie initiates the organization of the New Ulster Political Research Group (NUPRG), with Glen Barr as chairman.

1979 – Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) is organized in the Shankill as the political arm of the UVF. 

1981 – The Hunger Strike for political status takes places in the republican wing of the H-blocks at Long Kesh, with seven PIRA and three INLA prisoners dying. 

The Ulster Democratic Party (UDP) is organized as the political arm of the UDA/UFF.

The loyalist paramilitary Tara collapses at the end of the year due to seizure of its major arms cache and involvement of its leader, McGrath, in the Kincora scandal.

1982 – SF-WP becomes simply the Workers Party.

1983 - The Catholic Reaction Force of INLA dissidents forms in Co. Armagh.

1986 – The Gerry Adams wing of the Provisional Republican Movement launches a successful coup d’etat against the national leadership, which then forms Republican Sinn Fein (RSF) and the Continuity IRA (CIRA) to oppose Adams’ abandonment of abstentionism. 

The DUP founds Ulster Resistance in opposition to the Anglo-Irish agreement. 

Persons expelled or forced to resign from the INLA form the Irish People’s Liberation Organization (IPLO), which serves mostly as a vehicle for criminal profit.

About a hundred Provo prisoners in the H-Blocks resign in protest over the movement's abandonment of abstentionism, and later in the year many of these form the League of Communist Republicans (LCR), which last about five years.

The Ulster Movement for Self-Determination forms, calling for an independent Ulster including the Six Counties of Northern Ireland, plus Cos. Donegal, Monaghan, and Cavan in the Republic of Ireland.  It dissolves into the UIC in 1988.

1987 - Formation in America of the National Irish Freedom Committee (NIFC) by Michael Flannery, George Harrison, Joe Stynes and others, to provide American support for RSF.

Dessie O'Hare forms the Irish Revolutionary Brigade (IRB) as a splinter from INLA.

Revolutionary Struggle, a small leftist republican outfit with paramilitary capability, forms in Dublin.

1988 – The Ulster Independence Movement (UIM) forms in Northern Ireland, initially as the Ulster Independence Committee (UIC) until 1994.

1989 - At the end of the year, the Irish National Congress (INC) is organized to commemorate the Easter Rising, but after that continues as a non-party, non-sectarian vehicle to campaign on various left republican issues.

1991 – The Combined Loyalist Military Command (CLMC) forms as an umbrella group for UDA, UVF, and RHC.  Its governing board includes liaisons from those paramilitaries as well as from UDP and PUP.

1992 – The UDR is amalgamated with the Royal Irish Regiment. The IPLO is wiped out by PIRA after a number of clashes.

1994 - The Irish National Republican Army organizes this year, but later dissolves to join the CIRA.

The CLMC, led by Gusty Spence, announces a cease-fire.

1996 – Billy Wright secedes from UVF and organizes the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF).

Frank Curry, expelled from the RHC, and other dissidents loyalists begin operating under the name Red Hand Defenders (RHD), but they don't really organize until an influx of dissident loyalists from UDA and LVF opposed to the GFA join them in 1998.

1997 – A group of OIRA members secede to form the Official Republican Movement over the direction the Workers’ Party is then taking. 

THE GFA AND AFTER

1998 – The PIRA and the INLA both announce cease-fires, ending The Troubles.

The Good Friday Agreement (GFA) is signed by the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, Sinn Fein, UUP, DUP, SDLP, Alliance, PUP, UDP, the Labour Coalition (in Northern Ireland), and the cross-community Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition.

The Real IRA (RIRA) forms under Michael McKevitt from PIRA dissidents opposed to the GFA, with an allied political arm, 32 County Sovereignty Movement (32CSM).

The CnG splits into Republican CnG and Provisional CnG factions; eventually both fade into virtual nonexistence.  A group calling itself by the old name Fenian Brotherhood later organizes hoping to replace the two dying organizations, but its efforts never amount to much.

Dissident loyalists opposed to the GFA from the Orange Volunteers.  Members are believed to come from UDA, LVF, and the Orange Order.

Formation in America of the Irish Freedom Committee (IFC), based on the former Chicago camp of NIFC, to support the 32CSM. 

A bombing carried out by RIRA in Omagh, Co. Tyrone, kills 29, including one woman pregnant with twins, and injures 220.

2000 – The UIM (1988) dissolves, with most members joining David Kerr's new Ulster Third Way (U3W), publisher of Ulster Nation.  U3W, loosely affiliated with the neo-Confederate movement League of the South in the U.S., dissolves in 2005.

2001 – The RUC is incorporated into the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI). 

The magazine The Blanket is founded in Belfast to provide alternative views from across the political spectrum to not only events in the Northeast and the rest of Ireland, but in the rest of the world as well.  It is published in print and online.

The UDP dissolves near the end of the year.

2002 – At the beginning of the year, the Ulster Political Research Group (UPRG) is organized to replace the UDP.

32CSM/RIRA dissidents, including Michael McKevitt and Bernadette Sands-McKevitt, renounce violence and along with others form the New Republican Forum.

2005 – Former members of the CIRA form the Oglaigh Na hEireann (Continuity ONH or ONH1), but it disappears by 2009.

The PIRA disarms.

Disaffected republicans in the Belfast area. mostly ex-Provos, form the paramilitary Saoirse na hÉireann (SNH).

2006 – Dissidents from PIRA, INLA, and CIRA form the Irish Republican Liberation Army and the Continuity Liberation Movement.  

Dissidents from PIRA form an Independent Republican Unit, modelled on the one from South Derry in the early days of the Troubles.

Republican socialist dissidents from Sinn Fein form “eirigi”.

The Republican Defense Army (RDA) breaks away from PIRA.

2007 – A group calling itself the Real Ulster Freedom Fighters appears.

The UDA/UFF and the UVF both announce the demilitarization of their respective groups.  The UDA's East Antrim Brigade breaks away from its parent unit, but continues to use the name UDA in its title.

The Republican Network for Unity (RNU) forms to oppose the PRM’s support for the PSNI.

The Republican Defense Association forms from volunteers expelled from the 2006 RDA.

The (new) Irish Republican Brotherhood forms in Dublin.

2008 – The Republican Defense Association and Republican Defense Army are formed in Northeast Ulster.  The Blanket ceases publication.

The Republican Action Against Drugs (RAAD) forms in Derry from former PIRA volunteers.

Saor Uladh forms in West Belfast and North Armagh.

The print and online magazine The Blanket is replaced by The Pensive Quill.

2009 – The Irish National Liberation Army disarms.

The UVF announce they have destroyed  their entire armament while the RHC and UDA announce they have destroyed a large part of their arsenals and will continue until they are all gone.

A split in the RIRA leads to the formation of Oglaigh na hEireann (Real ONH or ONH2), a name available since ONH1 has by this time ceased to exist.

The 1916 Societies begin to form around the slogan, "One Ireland, One Vote".

The Real Continuity IRA (RCIRA) breaks away from CIRA and allies with RSF.

The 1916 Societies form to push for Irish Unity as outlined in the Proclamation of 1916.

2010 – The Official IRA decommissions its arms.

2011 – The PIRA dissolves.

The Occupy movement begins at Liberty Square in Manhattan, then spreads world-wide, including Dublin, Belfast, Galway, Cork, Letterkenney, Limerick, and Waterford.

2012 – The RIRA, RAAD, and disaffected former Provos in East Tyrone come together in summer as the New Irish Republican Army (New IRA or NIRA).

2014 – Gerry Adams, current leader of Sinn Fein, former COS of PIRA, former commander of PIRA’s Northern Command, and former leader of the Belfast Brigade’s security unit, is arrested in connection with the murder of Jean McConville, a widowed mother of ten killed in 1972, a few days after the arrest of Ivor Bell, OC of the Belfast Brigade at the time of the murder.  He is subsequently released.

2015 - The IRSP publishes a paper from an internal discussion declaring that the CIRA, RIRA, and ONH should end their armed struggle.

Action Against Drugs, made up of former Provos, announces its presence with the assassination of former Provo and ex-DAAD member Kevin McGuigan and formally in the Irish News.

A series of unfortunate events forces the PSNI to admit that not only does the PIRA still exist, but that it is still armed.

2016 - The political party Saoradh, supported by the New IRA, is established.

2018 - The ONH (Real ONH or ONH2) announces an end to its armed campaign.

Mostly taken from my “Timeline of the Pretanic Isles, in context” (http://notesfromtheninthcircle.blogspot.com/2012/02/timeline-of-pretanic-isles.html).

Socialist Sunday Schools and the Socialist Ten Commandments

If America has its socialist movement to thank for its Pledge of Allegiance and its flag cult, so too do Protestant churches in both America and Great Britain have their respective socialist movements to thank for the existence of Sunday School.

The Socialist Sunday School movement began in the same place as the original Sunday schools, on the island of Great Britain.  The latter began in early 19^th century as places of educational instruction for children of working class parents, many of whom themselves worked six days a week alongside their fathers and mothers.  It then spread to the U.S.  After the increase in availability of public education, the Sunday schools, here and in the United Kingdom, became more strictly religious.

In 1892, Mary Gray of the London chapter of the Social Democratic Federation began the first Socialist Sunday School after serving on the line of a soup kitchen during a dock workers strike that year.  She started it to give the children a basic education and to teach them important socialist values.  From there, it spread to the rest of the United Kingdom and eventually crossed the pond to America.

In order to counter the chauvinistic political indoctrination in public schools increasingly conservative churches during the Progressive Era, the Socialist Party of America (SPA) organized Socialist Sunday Schools wherever it had chapters of its Young People’s Socialist League.  The party’s literary and collegiate arm, the Intercollegiate Socialist Society (ISS), provided most of the oversight.

The brainchild of Upton Sinclair, the ISS was co-founded by him, Jack London, Clarence Darrow, Walter Lippman, Helen Keller, Sinclair Lewis, Upton Sinclair, Norman Thomas, Harry Laidler, Florence Kelley, Jack Reed, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, B.O. Flower, abolitionist hero Thomas Wentworth Higginson, J. Graham Phelps Stokes, and Owen R. Lovejoy.  London was elected president and Sinclair first vice president.

In 1921, the society changed its name to the League for Industrial Democracy (LID), and established a youth wing in 1930, the Student League for Industrial Democracy (SLID).  The SLID changed its name in 1958 to Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), which was to become one of the key organizations of the New Left movement in the 1960’s.

The purpose of the SPA’s Socialist Sunday Schools was “to contest more directly the overly individualistic, competitive, nationalistic, militaristic themes prevalent in contemporary public schools and other social institutions, and help in supplanting capitalist social and economic relations with a more equitable and cooperative form.”* 

The schools had strong support from the highest ranks of the party, including Eugene Debs. They had their own textbooks, their own songbooks, even their own Socialist Ten Commandments for the children to memorize:

1.  Love your school companions, who will be your co-workers in life.

2.  Love learning, which is the food of the mind; be as grateful to your teachers as to your parents.

3.  Make every day holy by good and useful deeds and kindly actions.

4.  Honour good men and women; be courteous to all; bow down to none.

5.  Do not hate or speak evil of any one; do not be revengeful, but stand up for your rights and resist oppression.

6.  Do not be cowardly. Be a good friend to the weak, and love justice.

7.  Remember that all good things of the earth are produced by labour. Whoever enjoys them without working for them is stealing the bread of the workers.

8.  Observe and think in order to discover the truth. Do not believe what is contrary to reason, and never deceive yourself or others.

9.  Do not think that they who love their own country must hate and despise other nations, or wish for war, which is a remnant of barbarism.

10.  Look forward to the day when all men and women will be free citizens of one community, and live together as equals in peace and righteousness.

These were composed in England, perhaps by Comrade Gray herself, and they spread west to America along with the Socialist Sunday School movement.

From 1900 to 1920, the heyday of the American socialist movement, there were some one hundred Socialist Sunday Schools in sixty-four cities and towns across the nation. 

In their homeland on the island of Great Britain, there were some 200 Socialist Sunday Schools in England and Scotland, and the movement lasted to the latter half of the 1920’s.

*quote from Kenneth Teitelbaum's Schooling for “Good Rebels”: Socialist Education for Children in the United States, 1900-1920, published 1993.

Socialism in America and the Birth of Nonviolence

Q: Why capitalism?  A: Because the greed of the few (the 1%) overshadows the needs of the many (the 99%).

Q: Why socialism?  A: Because the needs of the many should outweigh the greed of the few.

Socialism, real socialism, is not some invasive foreign import but is as American as baseball, hot dogs, and apple pie, or life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Real socialism (as opposed to what the Bolsheviks erected after their coup d’etat known as the October Revolution) is not the end of democracy but the beginning of true democracy.  Without economic, social, and industrial democracy, political democracy is but a farce, an opiate for the people, especially in an oligarchy masquerading as a republic where corporations are people with citizenship and bribery equals speech.

Other than those who followed the line of Lenin and his ideological offspring, most American socialists never wanted to set up anything like a “People’s Democratic Socialist Workers Republic” or a “dictatorship of the proletariat” controlled by a party “vanguard”.  No, their idea, their goal, was a Cooperative Commonwealth.

Lenin, by the way, never made any attempt to introduce socialism to the USSR.  He and his acolytes set up what he himself called state capitalism modeled upon that of the Prussian Junker capitalists against whom Marx and Engels struggled with the Communist League. 

It was Lenin who introduced the idea of a “vanguard party”, Lenin who replaced democracy with “democratic centralism”, Lenin who used the Taylorism that was the bane of American labor to micromanage workers in the USSR, and Lenin’s chief lieutenant Zinoviev who made the newly-established Communist International a mere puppet of Russian policy.  Leninism and its ideological offspring (Trotskyism, Stalinism, Maoism, Fidelism, etc.) are an aberration rather than fulfillment of the vision of Marx and Engels.  Their true heir was not Vladimir Lenin but Karl Kautsky, which Engels made explicit.

The deepest roots of socialism live in the soil of America.

Many today recognize as progenitor of modern socialism the very same activist recognized as godfather of Irish, Scottish, and English republicanism, hero of the French Revolution, and father of American independence: Thomas Paine.  Paine cut his political teeth on a letter to Parliament protesting the working conditions of officers of excise in the United Kingdom.  It was the quality of that writing which led Ben Franklin to conscript him for the movement in America.

To most Americans, the name Thomas Paine means Common Sense and The Crisis, while to the rest of the world it means Rights of Man and The Age of Reason.  The first major advocate of independence in the British colonies of North America, Paine may very well be called the First American, in the sense of “American” being a citizen of the United States. 

His Rights of Man was a defense of republicanism and of the French Revolution against former ally Edmund Burke’s advocacy of constitutional monarchism and condemnation of events in France.  His The Age of Reason defended freedom of thought and the creation of an atmosphere in which that can grow against ideology, superstition, sectarianism, and theocracy.

Not as well known is Paine’s staunch advocacy of the rights of workers as first evidenced in the above-mentioned letter.  He also wrote essays against slavery, illiteracy, poverty, and other social evils, as well as for equal rights for women, public education, universal suffrage, old-age pensions, a guaranteed income, and the fair distribution of land.  In many respects, Paine was far ahead of his time.

The very first socialist party (which also functioned as a labor union) in the world was founded in New York City and Philadelphia in 1828.  It lasted only five years but left its mark on America and the rest of the world.

When Marx and Engels put together their first organization, they called it the Committees of Correspondence, the same name used by the Patriots of revolutionary America.  Marx strongly supported the cause of the Union as a reporter in New York City during the Civil War, despite his sharing of Lincoln’s misgivings about the “money power of this country”.  In the question of imperial capitalism versus planter slavocracy, the choice for Marx was easy.

In 1864, Marx and Engels helped found the International Workingmens’ Association (the First International, or IWA), anticipating the horrific abuses of the Second Industrial Revolution that began around 1867 and continued into the Gilded Age (“Belle Epoque” in Europe).  The IWA gained its first American section in 1867 and by 1870 had enough sections to support an IWA Central Committee for North America. The 30+ sections in America formed the North American Federation of the IWA the next year.

The NAF included such figures as pioneer suffragette Victoria Woodhull and former slave Frederick Douglas.  These two ran for President and Vice President respectively on the Equal Rights Party ticket in 1872.  When the followers of the anarchist Mikail Bakunin left the IWA after its Congress at The Hague that year to form their own group, the IWA’s international headquarters moved to New York City.  There it remained until its congress voted to dissolve in 1876.  The American sections joined together with other groups to form the Workingmens Party of America, which later became the Socialist Labor Party of America (SLPA). 

In 1884, a socialist writer named Laurence Gronlund published an examination of Marxist doctrine aimed at the American worker called The Cooperative Commonwealth in its Outlines, an Exposition of Modern Socialism.  It gave American socialists a name for what they wanted to achieve, but a more popular and influential book was the utopian science fiction novel Looking Backward.  Written by Edward Bellamy, cousin of the author of the Pledge of Allegiance, the novel tells the story of the protagonist going to sleep in his basement in the late 1990’s and waking up in the year 2000 in a Cooperative Commonwealth. 

The novel, the third-best seller of the 19^th century after Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Ben Hur, launched a movement based on the hope of achieving the Cooperative Commonwealth visualized in the book’s pages that came to be called Nationalism.  “Nationalism” in this case signified the Nation, common citizens, vis-a-vis Capital, society’s plutocrats, oligarchs, and their loyal, subservient supporters.  Gronlund himself was so impressed he withdrew his own work from publication, at least for several years.

The American socialist movement’s attraction to a work of fiction is anything but unique in this country.  Much earlier, Harriet Tubman’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin helped spur abolitionist sentiment in the pre-bellum years.  The work of Horatio Alger hangs like a yoke around the necks of the poor and middle class along with Ayn Rand’s bad fiction aggrandizing sociopathy.  The silent film “Birth of a Nation” gave rise to the birth of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

The two foremost leaders of the American socialist movement at the dawn of the 2oth century, Eugene Debs, leader of the Socialist Party of America, and Daniel DeLeon, leader of the SLPA after 1890, frequently referenced the Founding Fathers.  For instance, one of DeLeon’s earliest essays was “The Voice of Madison”.  In spite of their rivalry, Debs and DeLeon respected each other and worked together on several projects, such as joining with Bill Haywood to organize the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or Wobblies) in 1905.

Jack London, best known for literary expressions of man’s rugged individualism in the face of wild nature such as The Call of the Wild and White Fang, was one of the leading literary lights of the SPA.  His socialist writings include the dystopian future history novel The Iron Heel and the nonfiction novel People of the Abyss.  Along with Clarence Darrow, Walter Lippman, Helen Keller, Sinclair Lewis, and others, London founded the SPA’s Intercollegiate Socialist Society, the party’s literary arm.

The growing American socialist movement of the early 20^th century foundered in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution due to persecution by the government, splits within its ranks, and the direction of the revolution in Russia once Lenin and his acolytes had achieved full control.  At first, praise for their accomplishment in the October “Revolution” (actually a coup d’etat) was well nigh universal among socialists world-wide. 

There were actually two revolutions in Russia in 1917, a February Revolution, a true mass uprising, and an October Revolution, really a coup d’etat by the Bolshevik faction under Lenin’s leadership.  Ironically, one of the more moderate Bolsheviks, the only major figure in Russia at the February Revolution and one willing to work with Mensheviks, liberal democrats, and others, was Josef Stalin.  Returning exiles like Lenin, Trotsky, and Zinoviev were far more extremist.

Once news began to trickle out about the lack of real democracy, the increasing centralized control by the Party with no input from below, various atrocities, and the emasculation of the soviets (workers’ councils), respected socialist leaders spoke out loudly.  Germany’s Rosa Luxemburg was one of the first.  From America, Debs, DeLeon, and virtually every American socialist not part of the new Communist Party joined such international voices as Scotland’s John Maclean in condemning the Bolshevik coup once it became apparent that’s what it was. 

Kautsky remarked at the time that, “Socialism without democracy is unthinkable,” echoing Luxemburg’s earlier statement that, “There is no democracy without socialism, and there is no socialism without democracy.”  One can easily imagine Marx looking at the events in Russia, shaking his head, and saying, “If this is Marxism, all I can say is that I am not a Marxist”.

In the early twentieth century, socialism, and American socialism at that, gave the world nonviolence as a means of mass social protest.

Nonviolence civil disobedience as a mass social protest tactic began in Spokane, Washington, in 1908, during the Free Speech fights of the IWW with the municipal government there. Wobblies were perturbed by the fact that whenever one of them gave a speech in the street, he or she was arrested for disturbing the peace while the Salvation Army went unmolested doing the same, even when doing so to the music of a brass band.

The Wobblies sent out a call to all men willing to be arrested. One would take the soapbox, literally, speak until arrested upon which another would take his place. So many volunteers showed that soon both the city and county jails were packed, and eventually the city surrendered.

It was from the Wobblies that Gandhi derived the practical application of his principle of nonviolence, and, of course, from Gandhi that King derived his own. Ironically, one of the chief developers of the Wobblies’ tactics was none other than Irish socialist James Connolly, who eight years later was shot in Kilmainham Jail in Dublin, Ireland while tied to a chair because of wounds he received helping to direct the Easter Rising.

Connolly started his socialist political career in his Scottish hometown of Edinburgh before moving to Ireland, then to America (where he worked with both the SPLA and the IWW), before returning to Ireland.

Of the two methods of a “weaker” opponent carrying out a war of attrition against a superior foe, guerrilla war and nonviolence, nonviolence is the only one that permits eventual reconciliation while allowing both sides to save face.  Historical experience has shown that when a minority gets into power using violence, it never ends well.  Take, for example, the Montagnards (usually but incorrectly called Jacobins) of the French Revolution, the Bolsheviks of the Russian Revolution, or the Khomeinists of the Iran Revolution.

At Tyner Junior High School, there was a small group of us who got picked on a lot. Then one day we decided, “Hey, an injury to one of us is an injury to all of us”. So, when one of us got picked on, we all would go meet the bully and tell him he would have to fight each of us one at a time, or he could quit.  We never picked fights or pushed anyone around, but we did stand up for each other and even kids outside our group. And we never had to fight, not even once. We were the runts, but not even the biggest bully wants to fight 100 runts, even one at a time.

“Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living things, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on the earth. I said then and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.” – Eugene Debs, 18 September 1918

Laicity in the American Republic

“I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one Nation, indivisible, with Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, and Justice for all.” – Pledge of Allegiance as originally written by Francis Bellamy, vice president of the Society of Christian Socialists and chief spokesperson for the socialist Nationalist Clubs movement.

The “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” part of this earliest form of the pledge, never submitted for approval, derives from the slogan adopted by the Third Republic of France.  This hendriatris, or tripartite motto, dates back to the Club de Cordeliers in the French Revolution, whose slogan was “liberté, égalité, fraternité ou la mort” (liberty, equality, fraternity or death).

During the French Revolution, several tripartite mottoes floated around the country, almost all of which had both “liberté” and “égalité”, including “liberté, égalité, justice”.  An example of a hendriatris even closer to home might be “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”, or perhaps “baseball, hot dogs, and apple pie”.

Besides “liberté, égalité, fraternité”, another ideal of the Third Republic (and succeeding incarnations) since 1905 has been “laïcité”, often translated as “secularism”.  Secularism does not necessarily mean anti-religion; in politics, what we would now call political science, secularism simply means exclusion of religion from interference in government affairs.

Laïcité in France before 1905 was only partial and sporadic, though always there since 1789, and only became “official” that year.

It is from the French word laïcité that laicity derives, a word rarely used in English but a valid word nevertheless.  That laicity, that separation of church and state, was America’s unique gift to the world, for never before in written history, certainly not in the modern era, had a country existed without an official religion.

There is absolutely no question whatsoever that America was “not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion.”  While few were hostile to religion itself, nearly all the major leaders were very hostile toward religion in the hands of government and government as a thrall of religion.

Growing up Episcopalian amongst the deluge of Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians who inhabit the American South and living next to a family the husband and wife of which became our Jewish godparents, I really took to heart the separation of church and state upon which our republic was founded and learned to be fiercely resistant to any attempt to have the yoke of someone else’s religion placed around my neck, knowing that such a yoke would not be easy nor its burden light.

As I grew up and began thinking about eventually entering seminary, which I thought about as far back as junior high school and started planning to do in high school, I began to see that imposition of religion on a governmental level was not only unfair to those not of that particular faith but damaging to and corrupting of both government and religion.  In fact, the reason I listed the establishment of the Christian Church as the official religion of the Roman Empire as one of the five great tragedies of world history in that class my junior year at Tyner High was because of the way that corrupted Christianity.

I should add here that throughout my time at East Brainerd Elementary School, first through sixth grades, a teacher from outside came into our class once a week for Bible lessons.  Part of the reason I didn’t see a conflict at the time was that my teacher in first and second grade at the school was also my Sunday School teacher at St. Martin’s Episcopal.  Both, incidentally, were within easy walking distance of our house on Walnut Grove/North Joiner Road.

Now we’ve come to the part of this essay that is its main focus.

Founding Fathers

First, let’s look at some quotes from some of those Founding Fathers themselves, including our first four POTUSes (POTUS= President of the United States).

If we look back into history for the character of the present sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been persecutors, and complainers of persecution. The primitive Christians thought persecution extremely wrong in the Pagans, but practiced it on one another. The first Protestants of the Church of England blamed persecution in the Roman Catholic Church, but practiced it upon the Puritans. They found it wrong in Bishops, but fell into the practice themselves both here (England) and in New England. -- Benjamin Franklin, letter to the London Packet, 3 June 1772

As to religion, I hold it to be the indispensable duty of government to protect all conscientious protesters thereof, and I know of no other business government has to do therewith. -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776

Persecution is not an original feature in any religion; but it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law. -- Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man, 1791

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.  It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe. -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, Part I, 1794

I am persuaded, you will permit me to observe that the path of true piety is so plain as to require but little political direction. To this consideration we ought to ascribe the absence of any regulation, respecting religion, from the Magna-Charta of our country. -- George Washington, response to Presbyterian clergymen from Massachusetts and New Hampshire protesting the Constitution making no mention of Jesus Christ, 2 November 1789

We should begin by setting conscience free. When all men of all religions ... shall enjoy equal liberty, property, and an equal chance for honors and power ... we may expect that improvements will be made in the human character and the state of society. -- John Adams, letter to Dr. Price, 8 April 1785

The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion. -- John Adams, from the Treaty of Tripoli, 1797, passed by the U.S. Senate unanimously

The impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time: That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical... -- Thomas Jefferson, debate in the Virginia General Assembly on the Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom, 1779

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for is faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church and State. -- Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, 1 January 1802

Christianity neither is, nor ever was, a part of the common law. -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, 10 February 1814

In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own. It is error alone that needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.  -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Horatio G. Spafford, 17 March 1814

During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution. -- James Madison, Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments to the Virginia General Assembly, 20 June 1785

What influence in fact have Christian ecclesiastical establishments had on civil society? In many instances they have been upholding the thrones of political tyranny. In no instance have they been seen as the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty have found in the clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate liberty, does not need the clergy. -- James Madison, Memorial and Remonstrance, 20 June 1785

Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects? That the same authority which can force a citizen to contribute three pence only of his property for the support of any one establishment, may force him to conform to any other establishment in all cases whatsoever? -- James Madison, Memorial and Remonstrance, 20 June 1785

Congress should not establish a religion and enforce the legal observation of it by law, nor compel men to worship God in any manner contrary to their conscience, or that one sect might obtain a pre-eminence, or two combined together, and establish a religion to which they would compel others to conform. -- James Madison, speech in Congress, 15 August 1789

The appropriation of funds of the United States for the use and support of religious societies, [is] contrary to the article of the Constitution which declares that 'Congress shall make no law respecting a religious establishment'. -- James Madison, vetoing a bill granting federal land in Mississippi Territory for a Baptist church, 2 March 1811

(This was about two weeks after Madison had vetoed a similar bill granting federal land to an Episcopal church in Alexandria, District of Columbia, on 21 February 1811)

Having always regarded the practical distinction between Religion and Civil Government as essential to the purity of both, and as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, I could not have otherwise discharged my duty on the occasion which presented itself. – James Madison, in a letter to Baptist churches in North Carolina, 3 June 1811

The civil Government, though bereft of everything like an associated hierarchy, possesses the requisite stability, and performs its functions with complete success, whilst the number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people, have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the State. -- James Madison, in a letter to Robert Walsh, 2 March 1819

Every new and successful example, therefore, of a perfect separation between the ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance; and I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together. -- James Madison, letter to Edward Livingston, 10 July 1822

Later 19^th century POTUSes

Now let’s check out what some of the later POTUSes in the 19^th century, both pre- and anti-bellum, had to say.

It is most interesting that both Grant and Garfield proposed that the federal government tax churches, presumably their property not strictly for religious services.

I could not do otherwise without transcending the limits prescribed by the Constitution for the President and without feeling that I might in some degree disturb the security which religion nowadays enjoys in this country in its complete separation from the political concerns of the General Government. - Andrew Jackson, refusing to proclaim a national day of fasting and prayer in 1832

We admit of no government by divine right, believing that so far as power is concerned the Beneficent Creator has made no distinction amongst men; that all are upon an equality, and that the only legitimate right to govern is an express grant of power from the governed. -- William Henry Harrison, inaugural address, 4 March 1841

The United States have adventured upon a great and noble experiment, which is believed to have been hazarded in the absence of all previous precedent — that of total separation of Church and State. No religious establishment by law exists among us. The conscience is left free from all restraint and each is permitted to worship his Maker after his own judgment. -- John Tyler, letter to Joseph Simpson, a prominent Jewish leader in Baltimore complaining of Gen. Winfield Scott addressing a missionary society, 10 July 1843

Thank God, under our Constitution there was no connection between Church and State, and that in my action as President of the United States I recognized no distinction of creeds in my appointments office. -- James K. Polk, diary entry of his response to a Presbyterian minister opposing Catholic army chaplains, 1846

I am tolerant of all creeds. Yet if any sect suffered itself to be used for political objects I would meet it by political opposition. In my view church and state should be separate, not only in form, but fact. Religion and politics should not be mingled. -- Millard Fillmore, address during Presidential campaign, 1856

The United States government must not undertake to run the Churches. When an individual, in the Church or out of it, becomes dangerous to the public interest he must be checked. --Abraham Lincoln, letter to Maj. Gen. Samuel R. Curtis, 2 January 1863

Let us all labor to add all needful guarantees for the more perfect security of free thought, free speech, and free press, pure morals, unfettered religious sentiments, and of equal rights and privileges to all men, irrespective of nationality, color, or religion. Encourage free schools, and resolve that not one dollar of money shall be appropriated to the support of any sectarian school. Resolve that neither the state nor nation, or both combined, shall support institutions of learning other than those sufficient to afford every child growing up in the land the opportunity of a good common school education, unmixed with sectarian, pagan, or atheistical tenets. Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church, and the private schools, supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and state forever separated. -- Ulysses S Grant, address to the Army of the Tennessee, Des Moines, Iowa, 25 September 1875

I would also call your attention to the importance of correcting an evil that, if permitted to continue, will probably lead to great trouble in our land before the close of the nineteenth century. It is the acquisition of vast amounts of untaxed church property.... I would suggest the taxation of all property equally, whether church or corporation. -- Ulysses S. Grant, message to Congress, 7 December 1875

We all agree that neither the Government nor political parties ought to interfere with religious sects. It is equally true that religious sects ought not to interfere with the Government or with political parties. We believe that the cause of good government and the cause of religion suffer by all such interference. -- Rutherford B. Hayes, speech in Marion, Ohio, 31 July 1875

The divorce between Church and State ought to be absolute. It ought to be so absolute that no Church property anywhere, in any state or in the nation, should be exempt from equal taxation; for if you exempt the property of any church organization, to that extent you impose a tax upon the whole community. -- James A. Garfield, speech in Congress, 1874

In my judgment, while it is the duty of Congress to respect to the uttermost the conscientious convictions and religious scruples of every citizen … not any ecclesiastical organization can be safely permitted to usurp in the smallest degree the functions and powers of the national government.-- James A Garfield, inaugural address, 4 March 1881

The public schools shall be free from sectarian influences and, above all, free from any attitude of hostility to the adherents of any particular creed. – Theodore Roosevelt, speech on “American Common Schools” in Boston, 30 November 1893

20^th century POTUSes

Now we arrive in the 20^th century.

I hold that in this country there must be complete severance of Church and State; that public moneys shall not be used for the purpose of advancing any particular creed; and therefore that the public schools shall be non-sectarian and no public moneys appropriated for sectarian schools -- Theodore Roosevelt, New York public address, 12 October 1915

The fundamental precept of liberty is toleration. We cannot permit any inquisition either from within or from without the law or apply any religious test to the holding of office. The mind of America must be forever free. -- Calvin Coolidge, inaugural address, 4 March 1925

I come of Quaker stock. My ancestors were persecuted for their beliefs. Here they sought and found religious freedom. By blood and conviction I stand for religious tolerance both in act and in spirit. -- Herbert C. Hoover, New Day, 1928

We have gone a long way toward civilization and religious tolerance, and we have a good example in this country. Here the many Protestant denominations, the Catholic Church and the Greek Orthodox Church do not seek to destroy one another in physical violence just because they do not interpret every verse of the Bible in exactly the same way. Here we now have the freedom of all religions, and I hope that never again will we have a repetition of religious bigotry, as we have had in certain periods of our own history. There is no room for that kind of foolishness here. -- Harry Truman, Mr. Citizen, 1960

And I should like to assure you, my Islamic friends, that under the American Constitution, under American tradition, and in American hearts, this Center, this place of worship, is just as welcome as could be a similar edifice of any other religion. Indeed, America would fight with her whole strength for your right to have here your own church and worship according to your own conscience. This concept is indeed a part of America, and without that concept we would be something else than what we are. -- Dwight Eisenhower, speech at opening of Islamic Center of Washington, D.C., 28 June 1957

It is my firm belief that there should be separation of church and state in the United States—that is, that both church and state should be free to operate, without interference from each other in their respective areas of jurisdiction. We live in a liberal, democratic society which embraces wide varieties of belief and disbelief. There is no doubt in my mind that the pluralism which has developed under our Constitution, providing as it does a framework within which diverse opinions can exist side by side and by their interaction enrich the whole, is the most ideal system yet devised by man. I cannot conceive of a set of circumstances which would lead me to a different conclusion. -- John F. Kennedy, letter to Glenn L. Archer, 23 February 1959

Whatever one’s religion in his private life may be, for the officeholder, nothing takes precedence over his oath to uphold the Constitution and all its parts — including the First Amendment and the strict separation of church and state. -- John F. Kennedy, interview, Look, 3 March 3 1959

I believe in an America where the separation of Church and State is absolute--where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be a Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote--where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference--and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him. -- John F. Kennedy, speech to Greater Houston Ministerial Association, 12 September 1960

We do not want an official state church. If ninety-nine percent of the population were Catholics, I would still be opposed to it. I do not want civil power combined with religious power. I want to make it clear that I am committed as a matter of deep personal conviction to separation.  -- John F Kennedy, interview on “Face the Nation,” CBS-TV, 30 October 1960

As you know, the separation of church and state is not subject to discussion or alteration. Under our Constitution no church or religion can be supported by the U.S. Government. We maintain freedom of religion so that an American can either worship in the church of his choice or choose to go to no church at all. -- Richard Nixon, telegram to E.S. James of Baptist Standard, 21 October 1960

Last year I was on Pat Robertson's show, and we discussed our basic Christian faith—for instance, separation of church and state. It's contrary to my beliefs to try to exalt Christianity as having some sort of preferential status in the United States. That violates the Constitution. I'm not in favor of mandatory prayer in school or of using public funds to finance religious education. -- Jimmy Carter, interview in Christianity Today, 2 March 1998

I believe in the separation of church and state and would not use my authority to violate this principle in any way. -- Jimmy Carter, letter to Jack V. Harwell, 11 August 1977

We establish no religion in this country. We command no worship. We mandate no belief, nor will we ever. Church and state are and must remain separate. -- Ronald Reagan, speech in Valley Stream, New York, 26 October 1984

From two major SCOTUS decisions

Lastly, here’re quotes from the majority opinions in two of the most pivotal cases in American jurisprudence regarding church and state separation.

There is no such source and cause of strife, quarrel, fights, malignant opposition, persecution, and war, and all evil in the state, as religion. Let it once enter into our civil affairs, our government would soon be destroyed. Let it once enter our common schools, they would be destroyed ... Those who made our Constitution saw this, and used the most apt and comprehensive language in it to prevent such a catastrophe. -- Supreme Court of Wisconsin, majority opinion, Weiss v. District Board (aka Edgerton Bible case), 18 March 1890

The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach. -- Hugo Black, majority opinion, Everson v. Board of Education, 10 February 1947

The laicity, the secularism, of our Founding Fathers and their Constitution has always been one of the guiding principles of my political and religious existence, no matter whether I was in a liberal phase or a conservative phase of political philosophy or holding strong belief, passive belief, nonbelief, disbelief, unbelief, or anti-belief in religious thought. 

I have only to look at the world around me to see the consequences of letting even a stray footstep cross that threshold from either side.  There is no such thing as a harmless amount of religion in government.  The phrase “a little bit of theocracy” is like saying “a little bit of pregnancy”.  Theocracy is the corruption of religion into ideology and the decay of government into totalitarianism.

All experience of humanity has shown, and most graphically since mid-20^th century, that no matter how much theocratists adhere to democratic processes in the beginning and deny that their ideology even is theocracy, their end is the same authoritarian rule as if it were established by an iron heel.

The word “theocracy”, incidentally, was coined by first century Jewish historian and former anti-Roman rebel Titus Flavius Josephus specifically to describe the government under which the Jews of his time suffered.  It was precisely that form of misgovernment and abuse of spiritual authority against which the Galilean prophet Jesus of Nazareth rose.  I always find it astounding that any person calling themselves Christian would advocate the very thing he hated most.

Abraham Lincoln, socialist at heart

Our 16th POTUS, Abraham Lincoln, was rightly cast by alternative history novelist Harry Turtledove as a former Republican turned leader of the Socialist Party, which in Turtledove’s Southern Victory series is the other major party opposite the Democratic Party, the Republican Party drastically losing support after the Confederacy’s victory in the Civil War.  A large part of the reason for Lincoln’s switch was the increasingly right-ward shift of the Republican Party in support of the economic oligarchy clashing with his own radical leanings.  Were there to be a Second Coming of Lincoln, he would undoubtedly make the same call in real life as his fictional counterpart did in Turtledove’s novels.

To illustrate his real leanings vis-à-vis the Fourth Branch of the U.S. government—the most important (at least since the early 1980’s), the Corporate Branch—here are three quotes, either verified by other researchers or plucked from a federal government website.  Not what one might expect from the first person elected president from the Republican Party, especially considering the corrupted version of the second decade of the 21st century.

From a speech in the Illinois legislature, January 1837:

“These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert to fleece the people, and now that they have got into a quarrel with themselves, we are called upon to appropriate the people's money to settle the quarrel.”

Sounds like what the Bush and Obama administrations did openly and secretly in the aftermath of global economic collapse of 2008 caused by the prolifigacy of the finance bourgeoisie, i.e. banks, lenders, venture capitalists, stock brokers, etc.

From his first State of the Union address, 3 December 1861:

“It is not needed nor fitting here that a general argument should be made in favor of popular institutions, but there is one point, with its connections, not so hackneyed as most others, to which I ask a brief attention. It is the effort to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor in the structure of government. It is assumed that labor is available only in connection with capital; that nobody labors unless somebody else, owning capital, somehow by the use of it induces him to labor. This assumed, it is next considered whether it is best that capital shall hire laborers, and thus induce them to work by their own consent, or buy them and drive them to it without their consent. Having proceeded so far, it is naturally concluded that all laborers are either hired laborers or what we call slaves. And further, it is assumed that whoever is once a hired laborer is fixed in that condition for life.

“Now there is no such relation between capital and labor as assumed, nor is there any such thing as a free man being fixed for life in the condition of a hired laborer. Both these assumptions are false, and all inferences from them are groundless.

“Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights. Nor is it denied that there is, and probably always will be, a relation between labor and capital producing mutual benefits. The error is in assuming that the whole labor of community exists within that relation. A few men own capital, and that few avoid labor themselves, and with their capital hire or buy another few to labor for them. A large majority belong to neither class--neither work for others nor have others working for them. In most of the Southern States a majority of the whole people of all colors are neither slaves nor masters, while in the Northern a large majority are neither hirers nor hired. Men, with their families--wives, sons, and daughters--work for themselves on their farms, in their houses, and in their shops, taking the whole product to themselves, and asking no favors of capital on the one hand nor of hired laborers or slaves on the other. It is not forgotten that a considerable number of persons mingle their own labor with capital; that is, they labor with their own hands and also buy or hire others to labor for them; but this is only a mixed and not a distinct class. No principle stated is disturbed by the existence of this mixed class.

“Again, as has already been said, there is not of necessity any such thing as the free hired laborer being fixed to that condition for life. Many independent men everywhere in these States a few years back in their lives were hired laborers. The prudent, penniless beginner in the world labors for wages awhile, saves a surplus with which to buy tools or land for himself, then labors on his own account another while, and at length hires another new beginner to help him. This is the just and generous and prosperous system which opens the way to all, gives hope to all, and consequent energy and progress and improvement of condition to all. No men living are more worthy to be trusted than those who toil up from poverty; none less inclined to take or touch aught which they have not honestly earned. Let them beware of surrendering a political power which they already possess, and which if surrendered will surely be used to close the door of advancement against such as they and to fix new disabilities and burdens upon them till all of liberty shall be lost.

From his letter to Col. William F. Elkins, 21 November 1864:

“We may congratulate ourselves that this cruel war is nearing its end.  It has cost a vast amount of treasure and blood. . . .I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. Corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavour to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless.”

The last of these quotations first appeared to the wider public in Jack London’s 1908 dystopian future history novel, The Iron Heel.  Subsequent research by several scholars through Lincoln’s papers has proven its veracity. 

And yes, the author of White Fang and The Call of the Wild was an avid socialist, a member of the Socialist Labor Party, one of the founders of the Socialist Party of America, a strong supporter of the Industrial Workers of the World, a founder of SPA’s Intercollegiate Socialist Society, which became the League for Industrial Democracy, which was parent of the Student League for Industrial Democracy, which became Students for a Democratic Society in 1958.

The Other (Revolutionary) Beatitudes

Most Christians are familiar with the Beatitudes from the version of the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew, which were written to be both uplifting and inoffensive.  Fewer know about the other version in the Gospel of Luke, probably older and much more revolutionary.  Found at Luke 6:20-26, the text here is from the New Revised Standard Version:

“Blessed are you who are poor,
    for yours is the kingdom of God.
“Blessed are you who are hungry now,
    for you will be filled.
“Blessed are you who weep now,
    for you will laugh.

“Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.

“But woe to you who are rich,
    for you have received your consolation.
 “Woe to you who are full now,
    for you will be hungry.
“Woe to you who are laughing now,
    for you will mourn and weep.

 “Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.

Lends credence to the version of the historical Jesus described in Reza Aslan's Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth.

A Modest Proposal for Peace with the Middle East

America’s image in North Africa and West Asia is often tarnished by the perception both here and east of the Atlantic of Islamophobia pervading all levels of U.S. society.  The degree to which “Islamophobic America” is a reality is up for debate.  For every Murfreesboro or Lower Manhattan you have one or more East Brainerds as in Chattanooga.  For every birther claming President Obama is a Muslim stands a legion of the less deluded.

John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison were the strongest proponents among the Founding Fathers for including Muslims (along with Catholics, Jews, and unbelievers) as equal citizens.  They were joined, believe it or not, by an overwhelming majority of Baptists in the new country, especially leading minister John Leland.

Together those men helped ensure the inclusion of the ban on religious tests for public office in the Constitution.  A little over a century earlier, the charter of the colony of Carolina prescribed freedom of religion and full citizenship to “Jews, dissenters, and heathen”, the “dissenters” specifically intended to include Catholics and Muslims.

To alleviate at least some of the tension present in the air between us and our neighbors to the east and to show that we Americans are bigger than our most small-minded citizens, I have a few modest proposals.

First, I move that the current Pledge of Allegiance be altered to: “I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Oligarchy for which it stands, one Nation under Allah, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

(“Republic” changed to “Oligarchy” to reflect the study recently released by Princeton and Northwestern Universities determining that as the American political reality since 1981.)

Furthermore, I propose that our official motto be changed to “In Allah we trust”, that all currency and coin of the United States of America display this on its obverse, and that all species of money with the current form of the motto be recalled for destruction.

I also propose that all official oaths at every level of government for elected and appointed office, for military induction, and for court testimony end with “So help me, Allah” instead of the words currently most common.

Yes, I know, many will decry this as the beginning of the Islamicization of America and the adoption of the United States as the western annex of the Caliphate under the idea that a little bit of theocracy is like a little bit of pregnancy.  But such a step would completely rob many of America’s enemies of one of their strongest rhetorical weapons. 

It would also endear us to the hearts of Muslims throughout the world in North and Sub-Saharan Africa and in West, Central, South, and Southeast Asia, as well as give hope to Muslims who are victims of violent and sometimes deadly persecution in the Central African Republic, Burma, and Thailand.  Arab Christians and Arab Jews, who use the name Allah for God at least in their daily speech, will likely welcome it as well, even if the government of Malaysia does not.

For those repulsed by the idea of using the Arabic word “Allah” instead of the more familiar “God”, you should know that the word translated into English as “God” in the books of Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah, and parts of Ezekiel is “Alaha”, the Aramaic equivalent of “Allah”.  In fact, Jesus himself would have used the word Alaha for God in daily life.

Arab-speaking Christians have used the word Allah for God since the third century CE, three-and-a-half centuries before Muhammad, the earliest to do so being the Nabateans of southern Palestine, followed by the Ghassanids and the Tanukhids of northern Arabia-southern Syria and the Lakhmids of southern Mesopotamia.