West Belfast Sinn Féin Sinn Féin -- Building an Ireland of Equals

Poem about Gibraltar Killings to be launched

Published: 17 December, 2008

The launch of the poem - Gib A Modest Exposure - will take place
this Saturday, 20th December, at 2pm in the Culturlann on the Falls Road.

The poem was written by Jack Mitchell, and the foreword to the poem booklet
has been written by Sinn Fein president, and West Belfast MP, Gerry Adams.

Everyone is invited to attend the public launch on Saturday.



The following is the foreword by Gerry Adams.



It's sickening to hear them jaw

Of human rights and rule of law;

Their favourite view of human rights

Is down a loaded Browning's sights;

And as for rule of law, by God,

Whose law ordains a murder squad?

And murder it was, there on the Rock,

Jack Mitchell's poem 'Gib - A Modest Exposure' pulls no punches. It is a scathing critique of the Thatcher government's execution of unarmed IRA Volunteers Mairead Farrell, Dan McCann and Sean Savage in March 1988 in Gibraltar .

It exposes the machinations of the British system. It recounts the lies told in the British Parliament and the response:

'the House resounds to songs of praise

Which threaten quite the roof to raise.'

The detail of the shoot-to-kill operation, and of the judicial and political cover-up are described in dreadful detail:

Mere killing-grounds for human grouse,

The street a common slaughterhouse,

A place of public execution

(That new-found, final solution)

Of state-endorsed assassination

Carmen Proetta who 'stood firm as the Rock of Gibraltar!' and told the truth of what she witnessed, is rightly singled out for praise in Song for Carmen.

They called her a liar, a whore and a criminal.

They said that a beauty queen's brains were but minimal.

How dare she cast doubt, this Hispanic sex-kitten,

On the honour and fame of imperial Britain !

And of course there is the media reportage of that dreadful event. For most journalists it was about trotting out the government spin but Jack reminds us that there were honourable exceptions in the 'hush, hush state/ no longer open to debate/ when parties of subversive views are banned from broadcast interviews.'

Thames TV's Death on the Rock brought down the full weight of an outraged Margaret Thatcher on the programme makers:

Mag ran amok,

Prohibiting comment on the affair

As unprejudicial to the fair

And unbiased course of an inquiry.

The Irish government also comes in for biting comment:

' Dublin ' emitted one short squeak,

Then meekly turned the other cheek,

Withering beneath the glare

Which Magwitch on them brought to bear

Jack Mitchell's poem is a powerful account of the corruption of the British state in its dealings with Ireland and of the violent and tragic consequences of that relationship.

Moreover it follows in a fine tradition of satirical writing and epic poetry which over the centuries have drawn attention to the disastrous consequences for the Irish people of British occupation of Ireland .

One of the best known is Jonathan Swift's 'A Modest Proposal: For Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public'.

Swift suggests that the poverty stricken Irish might solve their economic troubles by selling children as food for rich gentlemen and ladies..

Like Swift, Mitchell in 'Gib A Modest Exposure' is satirising the realities of life for Irish people living under British rule and is contemptuous of those in power who are responsible for this.

Seamus Deane in his introduction to the 1990 edition reminds us of Thomas Kinsella's 'Butchers Dozen' "a satiric and angry comment on the scandal of the Widgery Tribunal that could find no evidence of murderous intent on the part of the Paratroop Regiment that killed 14 unarmed civilians and wounded 16 others in January, 1972" in Derry.

Deane laments the fact that "very few poems or essays or articles have been written on this topic".

Bobby Sands in his epic poem 'The crime of Castlereagh' put it graphically.

The men of art have lost their heart

They dream within their dreams

Their magic sold for price of gold

Amidst a people's screams

They sketch the moon and capture bloom

With genius so they say

But ne'er they sketch the quaking wretch

Who lies in Castlereagh

Of course, Bobby would fully acknowledge that there were exceptions. Jack Mitchell is one of them.

His poem demands to be read. As well as commenting on the state murders and related events Jack Mitchell argues for another way.

FromtheMiddle East to El Salvador

The state of stalemate shows that war,

Once final arbiter of nations,

Solves nothing now. Negotiations

Become the order of the day.

The Age of Reason? Well, let's say

The dawning insight, rather late,

That humans share one common fate.

Where two sides are so closely matched

There's no sure victory to be snatched

By force of arms. Each local war

Drags on, becomes a weeping sore

Threatening to spark a head-on

Clash of the giants, and Armageddon.

And where is once-great Britain 's place

In this new venture of our race?

From her experience, long and ample,

Perhaps a positive example

Of getting down to the gritty bedrock

Of some old, ingrown, stubborn deadlock

To start things moving…? Ireland would be

The ideal case, it seems to me.

Unfortunately for Mairead and Dan and Séan, and all the others who died, it was some time before Jack Mitchell's advice on Ireland was heeded in Whitehall . Now years on we can see how far the people of Ireland have come. And how far we have to go.

We can also see how those in Downing Street, who took a more enlightened view on Ireland , continued with the old policies in Iraq and other places.

The imperial giant who's lost his grip

Needs the regular ego-trip

The republication of GIB A Modest Exposure in the year which marks the 20th anniversary of the events in Gibraltar is a potent reminder of the brutality and violence of Britain's role in Ireland and why our primary goal must remain the ending of partition and of the union with Britain and the establishment of a national democracy on the island of Ireland.

Beirigi Bua

Gerry Adams MP MLA