THE HANDSTAND

NOVEMBER 2005

 

Paris Notes 2

Frank Rynne

 

 

October began with the Nuit Blanche or the sleepless night. This was a night of performance, art, installations and projections on the streets of Paris. I spent most of the night at the headquarters of Louis Vuitton from where a TV broadcast was going out live. We were there as guests of Thierry Poiraud who had an installation as part of the event. His 2004 movie Atomik Circus starred Vanessa Paradis. Thierry gave a good account of himself, especially since he was on at the same time as the anorexic lunatic Karl Lagerfeld. It took a few minutes to locate the Green Room where champagne and other free things flowed for hours. There were some good opportunities for photos on the way out of the building in front of giant L.E.D. screens. Though one security guard attempted to cut the session short by punching me in the back. After this we took a taxi to see Thierry’s brother Didier’s projections rue Ramey.

 

 

Recently news reports from the U.K. are full of talk of A.S.B.Os (Anti Social Behavior Orders) and detention of suspected terrorists/people without charge for ninety days or longer. It used to be said that Northern Ireland’s policing methods and riot control using extreme measures like plastic bullets and shoot to kill were a training period for what would be eventually needed on “The Mainland”. This seems to have come to pass.

It is clear that agents of the secret services are serving along side the regular police. This had fatal consequences in Stockwell tube station recently. In the late 1980s I squatted in Tulse Hill near where police lay in wait for Jean-Charles de Menezes.

London is a city of all nations yet a melting-pot it is not.

In the Irish context the internment of suspected republicans in the early 1970s allowed the government to gain a unique understanding of the nationalist community in Northern Ireland. Internment and interrogation allow officers of the police and intelligence services to gain knowledge of the social structures in communities as well as the potential weak points common to members of those communities. The authorities need only one informer, transgressor or general weak link to gain insights necessary to crack the hardliners. An Irish example of this is the “Stakeknife” informer who was in the inner circle of the I.R.A. command from the early 1970s. There is now ample proof that the republican movement was riddled with touts and agent provocateurs. Indeed the current peace deal and I.R.A. decommissioning is probably the most profound proof of that H.M.G. infiltration.

However internment can have unfortold effects. It may nip revolution in the bud or it may prove to be a catalyst for revolutionary actrion.

Since the eighteenth century the suspension of habeas corpus or detention without trial has been a corner stone of British democracy when they dealt with India or Ireland. In the mid 1860s members of the Fenian Brotherhood who might have been interned in Ireland needed only to take the mail boat to Liverpool or Holyhead to avoid treatment they would have received in Ireland.
Fenian John Devoy as prisoner 1866. Devoy was instrumental in the organisation of 1916 on the fiftieth anniversary of his initial detention under th Haebus Corpus Suspension Act, 1866.

These days the British Labour Party is a brand leader in what might be termed “repressive democracy”. However this is not an innovation. Previous experience in Ireland should offer the U.K. government both encouragement and also a strong warning. Abondoning habeas corpus and criminalising large groups of people can have unpredicable consequences. By taking the road of internment in 1866 they slowed a revolutionary movement down. The process of revolt took longer than the Fenians had intended and traveled different routes through a Land War and the Gaelic cultural revival.. However revolution manifested itself in the Fenian/ Irish Republican Brotherhood organised Easter Rising of 1916. The internment which followed 1916 provided those locked up in Frongach prison camp in Wales ample time to reorganise and prepare for what became known as the “War of Independence”. Guantanemo style detention and solitary confinement do not allow for the same organisational opportunities among detainees as the Volunteers of 1916 were allowed. However they do provide cause célèbres for activists to rally round.
(
illustrationGeneral Michael Corcoran leading Fenian in 1860s)

 

October ends with some of my favorite Americans arriving in Paris. Bret Easton Ellis did a signing at the Virgin Megastore on the Champs-Elysées promoting his intriguing new novel Lunar Park. I went along to take some photos. I liked the ones of him on the in-store TV monitors. Later I took some shots of him on TV at home. He is playing large in Paris.

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* * * * * * * * * * * * * Saturday night I went to see Kid Congo Powers and his band The Pink Monkeybirds. The Kid was a founder of the Gun Club whose leader Jeffrey Lee Pierce I knew well in the early 90s. Jeffrey was supposed to produce an album for The Baby Snakes but between his camp followers and my own, the project went up in smoke. Sadly he died a year later as did Snakes’ drummer Nigel Preston who had linked us all up. Kid Congo has a cool band and a great guitar sleaze.




Nice to end a month with the revolutionaries of literature and rock’n’roll. Next month Ireland and Morocco
frankrynne@gmail.com
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