THE landmark August festival in Belfast, Feile an Phobail (the People’s Festival), is Ireland’s biggest community arts celebration, attracting and introducing a diverse range of people to our city’s extensive culture.

It grew out of the politics of the anti-internment campaign in the north of Ireland when on August 9 1971 342 men were interned without trial.

The Morning Star covered this event extensively at the time, including the stories about communists Terry Bruton and Sean Morrissey who were “lifted” in the winter of 1971.

Between August 9 1971 and December 6 1975, 1,981 people were interned 1,874 from republican backgrounds and 107 loyalists.

There were more loyalists interned after February 1973. And 19-year-old republican Liz McKee was the first women to be interned in 1973.

Statistics issued by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Office, based on Royal Ulster Constabulary returns, show that the number of deaths for the period during four months before internment were four British army men and four civilians killed. During the four months after internment the number rose to 30 army, 11 RUC and UDR and 73 civilians.

Following internment, on August 9 each year people in republican areas marked the date with riots, bus burning and other forms of action.

From this later grew the idea to create a cultural arts and political festival that would address the issues in a more positive way. It was established in 1988 as a relatively small venture and it has grown to be an enormous festival with music, debates, sports, historical walks and so on.

The festival has taken on a cross-community aspect with people from the Protestant community and well as Sudanese, Palestinians, South African, and others — even PSNI on the platform with republicans — plus a day of solidarity with Palestine is held each year in the Feile.

In 2009 the Communist Party organised an event in Conway Mill, showing the DVD of veteran Peadar O’Donnell meeting in Conway Mill in 1984.

In the chair on both occasions was Sean Morrissey and this year we are celebrating the “Life and Times of Sean Morrissey” with Professor Sinead Morrissey, Sean’s granddaughter, doing a lecture. In the chair this time will be Tommy Campbell, a long-time comrade of Sean’s, now living in Aberdeen.

Sean Morrissey was imprisoned in Derry on the prison ship HMS Al-Rawdah in for his republican beliefs. Historian Patrick Smylie writes about this: “In 1938, Morrissey was arrested for wearing an Easter Lily and received a six months’ sentence. This, he recalled humorously, made him believe ‘I was a real Irish martyr.’

He was interned by the unionist government in 1940 and remained imprisoned for most of the second world war. This was firstly in Derry jail where the internees received “brutal treatment.” Morrissey and 200 other republicans were then moved to the Al-Rawdah, moored off Killyleagh in Strangford Lough, Co Down.

Conditions were tough, and Morrissey remembered one older republican died after falling from a hammock. After eight months on board, the internees were moved to Belfast jail, where Morrissey’s real politicisation began.” 

Following his release Sean joined the Communist Party of Northern Ireland, as it was then.

Sinead Morrissey has a following in her own right, and has published several books, won a number of prizes, was former poet laureate of Belfast, and was a professor of literature in Queen’s University and is now at Newcastle University.

We are looking forward to this historic, political and cultural occasion and are pleased to be a part of the happening. If you are planning a trip to Belfast this summer, you could do better than to come at the beginning of August.

For more information visit feilebelfast.com.