In Anglo-Norman law all land has been held from the sovereign or state. This is the nature of freehold possession since 1169. Various Acts passed by the Norman French and Acts of Saisin and the Act of Settlement steadily dispossessed the native Irish who held land communally until O'Neill was made Earl of Tyrone and O'Donnell and Maguire were made lords of Tyrconnell and Fermanagh in the 1560s. The landlords of English, Scottish and Welsh extraction who arrived were of adventurer-military stock and are today deeply involved in reactionary intrigues on behalf of the British Crown. A new Act of Saisin must be passed to bring their limited holdings back into state ownership and break up their cabals.
In 1169, the Normans received a so-called Papal Bull to invade Ireland from the Pope of Rome who claimed ownership of Ireland on some fastastical basis. In the thirteenth century King Henry II was given another papal bull. The Norman-Welsh established themselves in Leinster and Munster and introduced the Church-State symbiosis. They reorganised the Irish Church on parish lines and waged constant warfare against the Irish until they were assimilated.
In 1534, a Pope of Rome proclaimed Henry VIII Defender of the Faith and deigned to pass all of Ireland into his possession on a presumptive basis.
In the Elizabethan, Cromwellian and Williamite wars the conquest and plantation of Ireland was accomplished.
By 1715, 92% of land in Ireland was in English hands. Adventurers had been paid in land. Penal laws prohibited the Irish from holding land other than by a yearly tenancy.
In Norman law, land which is gained by force is not in the legal ownership of the adventurer. Nec vi, nec clam, nec precario - neither by force, neither secretly nor by putting in danger precludes the claim of adverse possession i.e. squatters rights. The English landlord class still occupy their land illegally in their own law. Force majeure establishes their possession not their title - the distinction in English law.
Most of the landlords land was sold off to tenants under the Land Purchase Acts 1886 to 1906. Today the landlords occupy their fine houses only during the winter months, their possession having passed to the National Trust in order to pay death duties and inheritance taxes introduced by Labour Governments in 1964. The transfer of illegally-seized land to farmers is therefore a fait accompli and cannot be reversed. Catholics and Protestants both joined the Land League agitation. There was no bad faith or violence on their part and they are the legitimate and legal owners of their land.
However, the landlords have established long leases and gain ground rents from their former possessions. The Irish and English courts have protected their claim to extract rents from lands which have passed into other hands and which have often been built upon.
The landlords represent the interests of the British society in the North; they co-ordinate intelligence-gathering, covert SAS and police operations and direct attrition against hostile interests.
It is imperative that they be dispossessed of their remaining holdings and claims to fishing, hunting and other rights.
Since all land is held from the sovereign power i.e. parliament, what is simply required is that the Dail or Northern Assembly pass a new Act of Saisin to dispossess the descendants of these interlopers and set them to flight. If the courts reject parliamentary authority and sovereignty, the Ministers of Justice must remove the prerogative of the legal profession to appoint judges and make it a democratic mandate requiring selection as has been the example in the United States since the Revolution of 1776.
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New thinking in Russia-its origins (2008) 12/8/08
ReplyDeleteIn 1983, before September of that year, I was asked by Michael Mc Manus, an officer in the republican movement to devise a slogan for Russia. He had earlier pointed to “logistical” problems and a large consignment of weapons had been seized off the Kerry coast. It is clear that in Russia itself Andropov had no new ideas of his own as is shown by his Speeches and writings. He chose Gorbachev as his party successor. In late 1983, Thatcher declared that she could “do business” with Gorbachev. In 1983 the liberal press carried numerous articles about stagnation in Russia. It was clear that the post war cycle of rapid economic expansion had come to an end. It was also clear that there were accumulated social problems which were the legacy of Stalin’s reign of terror. Under Reagan the United States forged strongly ahead although it had done so on the basis of indebtedness which has impeded years imperilled its progress and threatened its liquidity. I was studying for a law degree. It was insinuated by Bowyer Bell that the Russians had turned to a “junior Lenin limbering up” to come up with formulae and a slogan to solve the problems of authority and economic stagnation. Lenin and Marx were both law graduates so perhaps this was the acme of mechanistic Soviet thinking about Russia’s problems in late 1983 and in 1984. I came to the conclusion that openness of a political and historical nature was necessary to clear away the debris of Stalinism. The Great Terror had destroyed the moral authority of Communism and destroyed its appeal to western workers. The burden of the past had never been absolved. Looking at the economy and politics, it was clear that restructuring and reconstruction was necessary. I envisioned more industrial democracy on the Works Council model of western Germany. I was not aware of that at that that in first those work councils trade unions exercised a purely supervisory role. My final slogan in the triptych as demanded by Mc Manus was democratisation. It was clear that the Soviet Union needed broad political and economic democratisation with an emphasis on the former. I came under pressure from the FBI who declared me a communist in late 1984 and was the target of the RUC and UDR from December 1984 to January 1985 when the RUC encamped at the door of the student lodgings in Belfast I left my “Musings and Extrapolations” for safe keeping with Manus Maguire who was a fellow student on political charges. Only later did it become clear that he was an intermediary, a double agent, trying to buy time for himself. I perceived correctly that the Russians were prepared to pay for my intellectual work. In April 1986 Gorbachev announced his new policies of “Openness, Restructuring and Democratisation to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. I was stunned and told my tutor that it was like winning the jackpot without the money. The slogans were immensely popular outside the Soviet Union and set free the dead wood of history.
Copyright Joseph Paul Mc Carroll 2008