Time-travelling reporting with the Guardian – news 24 hours in advance!
Oh well. Let us hope they are right and the NÍL side have it. But the turn-out in my local polling station this evening was self-evidently low, despite the traditional after-supper rush. You could hear the tumble-weed rolling.
And what will the Golden Circle make of that, TÁ or NÍL? Prepare for the spin-cycle, a chairde.
For all you hardcore geeks (myself included) the utterly obscure, utterly surreal Wizards and Warriors, a short-lived American television Fantasy series from the early 1980s. If you remember this you are definitely one of the fraternity. Well done! 
Just a quick post to note the strange events in the Basque Country, both Spanish- and French-ruled, where despite the declared cessation of operations by ETA (the Basque guerilla organisation) authorities in Spain and France have in fact intensified their counter-insurgency efforts. This has been coupled with a refusal to enter into any meanigful negotiations with the Basque nationalist movement, despite several separatist parties making significant electoral gains over the last year.
From the Irish Examiner:
“French police have arrested ETA’s military leader Oroitz Gurruchaga Gogorza and his deputy in a joint operation on the Basque separatist group with the Spanish police.
Gurruchaga and Xabier Aramburu were arrested in the southwestern French village of Cauna while travelling in a stolen vehicle with fake number plates, the Spanish interior ministry said, adding that both men were armed with guns.
Gurruchaga, 30, joined ETA in 2008 and rose through the organisation’s ranks to become its military and recruiting chief, according to the ministry.
The arrests come just over a year after those of then-ETA military boss Alejandro Zorbaran Arriola, known as “Xarla”, and three other suspected ETA militants at a rural house in northern France.
They bring to 15 the number of people arrested on suspicion of ETA ties since the group announced “the definitive cease of its armed activity” in October last year.”
And from the Hurriyet Daily News:
“Basque separatist group ETA’s outlawed political wing lashed out at France Monday for the arrest of a man authorities say is the ETA’s military commander, calling it a sign of ongoing repression.
The Batasuna party “condemns in the strongest terms” the arrests of Oroitz Gurruchaga Gogorza and his deputy Xabier Aramburu, spokesman Jean-Francois Lefort told AFP, after French and Spanish authorities announced the arrests Sunday following a joint operation in southwest France.
Lefort called on French President Francois Hollande’s new administration to “begin finding a solution to the issue of freeing Basque political prisoners” and to “immediately stop all forms of repression”.
“The Hollande government, rather than take a positive attitude on setting up a peace process, is managing the Basque issue by the old instruction manual, written by the Spanish government, whose objective is to continue solely down the path of repression, which is doomed to failure,” he said.
Batasuna is banned in Spain but legal in France.
ETA is pressing for direct talks with France and Spain, but both governments have rejected negotiations and called for the group to disband.
French Interior Minister Manuel Valls is due to visit Spain on Tuesday to meet with his counterpart Jorge Fernandez Diaz.
The French interior ministry said Monday the two would discuss joint police operations against ETA.
At a May 18 meeting of European interior ministers in Munich, Valls called ETA a “terrorist organisation” and said France’s crackdown on the group would not soften under Hollande’s administration.”
During the recent French general election Basque nationalists confronted the then French president Nicolas Sarkozy in Bayonne, forcing him to take refuge in a local café, surrounded by riot police. Since then the French state has been flexing its muscles throughout the French-occupied part of the Basque Country.
Well, better late than never I suppose. From the Hollywood Reporter (ooh-la-la!):
“TV viewers in Northern Ireland will be able to watch digital channels TG4 and RTÉ One and Two from the Republic of Ireland on digital terrestrial TV platform Freeview following Northern Ireland’s transition from analogue to digital TV, the U.K. government said Tuesday.
RTÉ, the Republic of Ireland’s national broadcaster, and Irish language broadcaster TG4 have joined forces to form a not-for-profit venture, which will be responsible for the installation of the new infrastructure.
Delivery of these channels will be supplemented by coverage from Saorview, Ireland’s equivalent of the U.K.’s Freeview service.”
Some more on this:
“[British]Communications Minister Ed Vaizey said:
“I’m delighted that the digital future for TG4, RTÉ One and RTÉ Two in Northern Ireland is now strengthened and secure. Today’s announcement is good news for viewers and continues our delivery on commitments set out in the Good Friday [Belfast] Agreement.”
Speaking in Dublin, Minister for Communications, Energy & Natural Resources, Pat Rabbitte, said:
“This announcement means that from Analogue Switch-off on 24 October, over 90% of viewers in Northern Ireland will be able to receive TG4 and the two primary RTÉ channels in digital on the Freeview service or by way of the overspill from the Saorview service. It is a hugely positive result in terms of practical cooperation resulting from the Good Friday Agreement.”
To ensure the new Freeview service covers as much of the population as possible, the new service will use the modern MPEG4 and DVB-T2 standards which can be received on Freeview HD equipment. Many of the TV sets, set top boxes and digital recorders currently on sale in the UK already meet these requirements, and more information will be made available to the public by Digital UK and broadcasters well in advance of the launch of the service.
Digital switchover completes in Northern Ireland on 24th October 2012. It is intended that the new multiplex will be launched at the same time. Switchover co-ordination body Digital UK and the Digital Switchover Help Scheme will lead on public communications on the availability of these new services. Both the UK and Irish Governments are committed to providing all possible support to meet the challenging timetable.”
No mention of British television channels being made available in this part of the country as part of this new arrangement, a commitment which is part of the original 1998 Belfast Agreement. But then perhaps the British know which way the wind is blowing. Who needs such arrangements in a Reunited Ireland?
So you think you live in an Ireland of equals? Think again. From Gaelport:
“My name is Niamh Ní Chadla and I am an ordinary girl, working and studying in Dublin, paying my taxes like everyone else. My passport had to be renewed last week and I decided to make it into a small research project to see how the might of the public service would deal with me, an Irish speaker on a daily basis.
As a student of Irish and, I chose to speak Irish for most of the day. I knew the Official Languages Act afforded some rights to Irish speakers and I knew that both the Gardaí and the Department of Foreign Affairs came within the scope of the Act. So passports and forms should be available in both languages, and I was hopeful I would get customer service in Irish also.
But would a fluent Irish speaker from Tallaght in Dublin, be afforded the same rights as an English speaker on an everyday basis?
Firstly I had to visit the Garda Station in Dundrum, Co Dublin and the objectives that I had were:
1. To get the Irish version of the passport application form
2. To get direction from the Garda as to how to fill the form out correctly
3. To get my form stamped and signed by a GardaIn Irish, of course.
When I walked into the Garda Station, I asked the Garda at the desk if he had any Irish, he said ‘not really’, so I asked him if there was anyone else who he could get for me because I wanted to do my business through Irish. He said that there wasn’t and reluctantly said ‘I’ll give it a bash then’.
The conversation wasn’t very successful with the Garda refusing to speak to me in Irish while I refused to speak to the Garda in English. It was a disaster of a conversation but very amusing to everyone else who was listening and I only got more annoyed when I spotted that they didn’t have an Irish language version of the passport application form either.
Although the Garda understood most of what I was saying he was visibly frustrated and angry and decided to abandon dealing with me while I was filling out the form. A different Garda came to me, who understood less Irish than the first and eventually, I decided to leave my questions unanswered and just take the signature that I needed from him.
I too left the Garda station angry due to the hostility of the Garda and the lack of help I received. Not only did I find that the Gardaí were unwilling to speak Irish but they were angry that I knew English and chose not to use it.
Passport Office
My trip to the Passport Office however, was much more successful. I walked in and said to the young girl behind the counter that I wanted to do my business in Irish. She replied “Are you speaking’ Irish, yeah? Oh my God, fair play to you, hang on and I’ll go get someone now.”I was waiting for maybe five minutes for the woman and when she came up to me, she was friendly, helpful and more than happy to go through the process in Irish. We managed to get through everything and she informed me that I needed two documents with my Irish name on them, that I have received within the last 2 years and then my Irish name will be printed on my passport.
I felt secure that I received the same high standard of service through Irish as I would have received through English but I was astounded when the woman told me that I was the second person in three years to ask for service through Irish.
I was utterly delighted that I could do my business in the Irish language. I may have had to wait an extra few minutes for the service but I didn’t mind at all, and it was the experience and service that I wanted to receive while practising my rights.”
Even the smallest of gestures can take real courage. And every revolution has to begin somewhere.
Thought you might like this one. Scottish comedian and (subversive) chat-show host Craig Ferguson has recently been presenting his US-based Late Late Show from Scotland and here is an interview with First Minister Alex Salmond:
Following on from my criticism of Gerry Adam’s speech at the 2012 Sinn Féin Ard-Fheis in Cill Airne for failing to address in any meaningful way the specific equality needs of Ireland’s Irish-speaking communities and citizens I’ve had a look through the motions passed at this year’s convention searching out those relating to the Irish language (yes, I know, but someone had to do it). Out of 176 motions debated on the floor a grand total of 9 (that’s nine) related to the Irish language. And even a couple of those were fairly tangential. The details are as follows:
“Motion 9
This Ard Fheis commends:
a) The work of Culture, Arts and Leisure Minister Carál Ní Chuilin in the promotion of the Irish language and the Irish-language strategy which is currently being brought forward by her department;
b) Her intent to pursue the creation of an Irish Language Act as a priority and the provision of resources necessary for its full implementation;
c) The minister for bringing forward the Líofa 2015 initiative which aims to create more Irish speakers by 2015 and calls on Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht Jimmy Deenihan to bring forward a similar initiative in the 26 Counties.
Motion 10
Go gcreideann an Ard Fheis seo gur cheart Oifig an Choimisinéara Teanga a choinneáil ag feidhmiú go neamhspleách mar atá, gur chóir don Rialtas na moltaí a rinne sé ina thuarascálacha bliantúla a chuir i bhfeidhm agus acmhainní cuí a chuir ar fáil do chun sin a dhéanamh. [ASF: “This Ard-Fheis believes that the Office of the Language Commissioner should continue to operate independently and that the Government should implement the recommendations made in his annual reports and sufficient resources should be put in place for that.”]
Motion 11
This Ard Fheis:
a) Supports the community campaigns to promote the Irish language by erecting Irish-language street signs and promoting Irish placenames and congratulates councillors and party activists on work done on this to date;
b) Calls on all Sinn Féin councillors to promote a bilingual street signage policy in their area and local cumainn to work to ensure that residents are surveyed in areas where there is a demand for Irish-language street signage.
Motion 12
This Ard Fheis proposes that Sinn Féin works to facilitate the development of larger geographic radio licences for Irish-language radio stations and seeks to develop a new all-Ireland, Irish-language radio station.
Motion 21
This Ard Fheis calls for the promotion of our Celtic heritage at national and European level for the following purposes:
a) Uniting the Celtic people;
b) Promoting an understanding rural Celtic settlement patterns and the rural way of life.
c) Promoting tourism and organic farming;
d) Defending rural communities under sustained attack.
Motion 73
This Ard Fheis calls on Sinn Féin to use the parallel text format when printing bilingual documents, including the Clár for the Ard Fheis. (This means that text in Irish is printed on the left and English text is printed on the right.) The advantage with this format is that it facilitates the learning of Irish and allows easily-read comparisons between both languages.
Motion 74
This Ard Fheis regrets the absence of the fada in many official publications. It urges Sinn Féin at all party levels to set an example in the correct use of the fada in all written and printed communications.
Motion 75
This Ard Fheis proposes that all departments or units in the party adhere to Sinn Féin policy of acknowledging the importance of the Irish language when naming the various units or departments so that we are seen to be Gaelicising the party.
Motion 126
This Ard Fheis notes that:
Cuts to the education system have had a detrimental effect on those children who are most at risk of educational disadvantage. These are children from disadvantaged urban areas, isolated rural communities or children with a special need;
Changes to the staffing schedule in schools with less than 86 pupils will result in the loss of 250 teaching posts and will further increase the pupil/teacher ratio. This will disproportionately affect small rural schools, Gaelscoileanna and schools in the Gaeltacht;”
Hardly earth-shattering stuff this, and the average Plaid Cymru or Parti Québécois activist would probably shake their head in amusement.
A Gaelic Revolution it is not.
[ASF: Gaelport has some more news on Irish-related matters from the 2012 Sinn Féin Ard-Fheis here]
From the Irish Times:
“Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams in his keynote address to the party Ard-Fheis called on delegates and voters generally to reject the “austerity treaty” on Thursday.
Over 1,000 Sinn Féin delegates gathered in the INEC centre in Killarney, Co Kerry this evening to hear Mr Adams declare, “austerity isn’t working and won’t start working on June 1st,” he said.
“Right now if you do not like the policies of the government you can sack them or re-elect them. You won’t be able to do that with unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats in Frankfurt and Brussels,” added Mr Adams
“That is undemocratic. Don’t give up your power. Don’t give your democratic rights away. And don’t write austerity into the constitution,” he said.
The Sinn Féin leader said voters must be wise and reject the treaty. “It is a good and patriotic and positive action to say No to a treaty that is bad for you, bad for your family and community, bad for society and entirely without any social or economic merit.”
Mr Adams, proposing a €13 billion three-year stimulus programme, called on the Government to implement a job creation strategy. This would create 130,000 jobs directly, he said.
“There are funds available – in the National Pension Reserve Fund, in the European Investment Bank, in the private pension sector and in Nama,” he added.
Mr Adams said 70,000 people were emigrating each year and this was “forced emigration, not a lifestyle choice”. Rural Ireland, particularly the west, was being devastated.
“It is an indictment of the two men from the west who lead this bad Government. Shame on you Taoiseach. Shame on you Tánaiste,” he said.”
Below is the speech in full:
“A chairde,
Tá failte romhaibh uilig chuig Ard-Fheis Sinn Féin i anseo i gCill Áirne, contae Chiarraí.
A special céad míle fáilte also to our Friends of Sinn Féin from the USA, Canada and Australia, to our comrades from the Basque country, from South Africa, Palestine and Cuba and to all foreign dignitaries.
Yesterday was Africa Day when that continent celebrated its freedom from colonialism.
But today western powers haggle while 20 million people in the Sahel region of north Africa face a severe famine.
Thus far the international community has not provided the money urgently needed.
This Ard-Fheis extends solidarity to the suffering people of Africa.
We urge our government to do its best to encourage the international community to help the people of the Sahel.
Solidarity also to the people of the Middle East and comhghairdeas to the Palestinian hunger strikers who secured a deal on prison conditions.
Everything is relative but in Ireland we also have our difficulties.
Over half a million are unemployed – almost 450,000 in this state.
Many citizens cannot pay their bills or mortgages.
Youth unemployment is especially high, north and south.
I recently spoke to one woman who told me that three of her brothers, all married, left two weeks ago for Australia.
Her distress was plain and is shared by tens of thousands of other families.
The policies of Fianna Fáil, and now Fine Gael and Labour are responsible.
Forced emigration is one of the huge damning failures of this state.
Citizens are angry.
Angry at the political and banking elite and the developers – the golden circle – that enriched itself through corruption, greed and bad policies.
Angry at the government for failing to hold these elites to account.
Angry at broken promises by Fine Gael and Labour not to pay one more red cent to bad banks and then handing over €24 billion.
Many citizens thought they were voting for change in last year’s General Election.
But what happened?
Tweedle dum has been replaced by Tweedle dee and Tweedle dumber.
Fine Gael and Labour were elected to change the disastrous policies of Fianna Fail leaderships.
Instead they embraced these policies.
They have cut public services and wages.
Attacked the rights of the most vulnerable.
And introduced new stealth taxes.
The household charge, water charges; septic tank charges; VAT and fuel increases.
What is the point of the Labour Party in this government?
What would James Connolly think of the Labour leaderships’ implementation of right wing austerity policies?
What would he think of the promises made and broken by the party he founded?
My commitment to you this evening is that Sinn Féin will not make any promises we will not keep.When Sinn Féin makes a commitment – as we demonstrated often during the peace process – we keep our commitments.
Creideann muidinne gur féidir le hÉirinn, idir Thuaidh agus Theas, theacht amach níos láidre agus níos rathúla as an ghéarchéim seo. We live in a great country.
Our history is replete with challenges, adversity and great injustice.
But our people have come through it all.
And in every generation brave men and women have come forward.
From 1798 to 1847, from 1913 to 1916 to 1981.
Visionaries have shown the way.
They made a stand.
Today workers at Vita Cortex in Cork, La Senza, Wilsons, in Game shops, and at Irish Cement have made a stand.
Today Lagan Brick workers are 164 days on strike.
Parents defending their children with disabilities, hospital campaigners, carers, teachers, health workers, defenders of our schools, turf cutters, citizens who are standing up for themselves and their families and communities, are showing the way.
So too are citizens who work in the community and voluntary sector, in our sporting organisations, in the arts, in environmental groups, in defence of our language, in support of our young people and our senior citizens.
Citizens who are supporting victims of abuse, including drugs and alcohol misuse and suicide prevention, are holding our communities together.
These active citizens, compassionate carers and community activists are the real Ireland.
Tá siad ag seasamh an fhóid do achan duine. Tá siad ag seasamh ar son Éireann. Agus tá muid fior buíoch daoibh.
We have to follow their example, all of us and demand our rights as citizens.
The right to a job, to a home, to a decent health service and education, to a clean environment, to civil and religious liberties, and to top quality public services.
We have to break the cycle of austerity and inequality.
We need to get citizens back to work.
We need fair taxation.
We need to eliminate wasteful public spending.
And yes, it is crucial that we deal with the banking debt.
But these policies must be accompanied by a plan to get citizens back to work.
And austerity won’t do it.
In the North, the absence of fiscal powers and cuts by the British Tory government, have made the Executive’s task more difficult.
In this state the government gives fiscal powers away!
This state needs a government led job creation strategy.
There are funds available – in the National Pension Reserve Fund, in the European Investment Bank, in the Private Pension sector and in NAMA.
Sinn Féin proposes a €13 billion stimulus.
This stimulus would run over three years creating approximately 130,000 jobs directly.
The projects are there.
Vitally needed schools, crèches, roads, regeneration projects; broadband and a water system that needs to be modernized.
Sinn Féin supports inward investment but we will also champion Small and Medium enterprises and homegrown businesses.
Upward only rent reviews, and the denial of credit by banks for our small and medium sector, doesn’t make economic sense.
It does make economic sense to replace imports with home-produced products and to target specific sectors for export.
It does make economic sense to expand the agri-food sector.
It does make economic sense to build on the potential of tourism.
Sinn Féin advocates a joined up all-island strategic approach to fully exploit this potential.
Sinn Féin will also change social protection to introduce a safety net for the self-employed.
Ireland does have the visionaries to develop our own industries.
That vision must be matched by government action.
Ní dheanann déine é sin.
Ní hí an déine an reiteach.Caithfidh muid daoine a chur ar ais ag obair.
In a real republic there is a duty to provide the highest quality of public services.
Better services delivered more fairly and paid for by direct taxation.
All citizens, throughout their lives, should have access to education at all levels based on their ability but the cost of educating their children is increasingly a challenge for many parents.
Education must give children, all our children, the best start possible. That also is good economics.
Tá Sinn Féin tiomanta do leasuithe sláinte – agus do infheistíocht in ár seirbhís sláinte poiblí. A public health service, free at the point of delivery which provides for citizens from the cradle to the grave, and also funded by direct taxation, is good economics.
The number of sick children awaiting hospital admission and on trolleys had increased by almost 700% in three years.
In the first four months of this year 26,106 citizens were left on hospital trolleys.
Almost 60,000 patients – adults and children – are on waiting lists – a 50% increase on 2010.
After one year of this government the health service is worse now because this government is doing exactly the same thing as Fianna Fáil.
And patients and their families are paying the price while those at the top award themselves obscene salaries and huge bonuses.
Citizens need to stand together against this. It is wrong.
It must be stopped.
Rural Ireland is also under attack.
Rural schools, post offices and Garda stations are being closed.
Rural people are told they can no longer cut turf where it has been cut for generations.
They are being compelled to pay septic tank and household charges.
Unemployment is driving young people to far off foreign shores.
In Leitrim I was told that half of those between the ages of 22 and 26 have left.
The heart is being torn from communities as a whole GAA generation leaves for Canada and Australia.
In this state around 70,000 people are emigrating each year.
That’s nine citizens every hour.
Mothers and fathers wonder who will leave next.
Rural Ireland, and especially the west is being devastated.
Forced emigration is not a life style choice.
But it is an indictment of the two men from the west who lead this bad government.
Shame on you Taoiseach. Shame on you Tánaiste.
Sinn Féin is engaging with people across rural Ireland and listening to their hopes for the future. We are looking at what rural Ireland has to offer rather than how it can be targeted for cuts.
There is anger too in Gaeltacht communities.
Gaeltacht schools are being targeted.
The 20-year strategy for the Irish Language is not being implemented.
Sinn Féin has recently appointed an Irish language officer to strengthen the use of Irish within our party and to direct our Irish language strategy.
Our Minister Caral Ni Chuilin is doing trojan work to support and develop the Irish Language.
This Ard-Fheis commends her successful Liofa campaign.
I want to turn now to the Austerity Treaty.
When considering what way to vote people need to ask themselves if the austerity of recent budgets led to jobs and growth?
The answer is obvious. The answer is no.
If you accept that, you should vote No.
Austerity isn’t working now and won’t start working on 1st June.
Neither will it bring stability or certainty.
Austerity means more cuts.
And increased charges.
Right now if you do not like the policies of the government you can sack them or re-elect them.
You won’t be able to do that with unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats in Frankfurt and Brussels.
That is undemocratic.
Don’t give up your power.
Don’t give your democratic rights away.
And don’t write austerity into the constitution.
Fine Gael, Labour and Fianna Fáil have not offered any positive arguments in favour of this Treaty.
The Taoiseach won’t even debate the issue!
That’s not leadership!
That’s not showing citizens the respect they deserve!
Instead Mr. Kenny, Mr. Gilmore and Mr. Martin are trying to scare people into voting Yes.
Whether it was British rule or a domineering church hierarchy, Irish citizens have had enough of being ruled by fear.
We are done with that.
The Irish government is also out of step with the rest of Europe.
Other EU states are delaying ratification because they know the mood in Europe is changing.
But not our government.
They settled for much less than anyone else, despite Sinn Féin’s clear warning about the foolishness of accepting this bad Treaty.
When the Taoiseach endorsed it in the Dáil he never mentioned growth or jobs.
Not once!
Or a write down of Bank debt.
The truth is Mr. Kenny and Mr. Gilmore are out of their depth.
This Government simply cannot be trusted on this Treaty.
It claims we will be locked out of funds if citizens vote NO.
That’s not true!
The legal mandate of the ESM is very clear.
Funding will be provided, and I quote, where it is ‘indispensable to safeguard the financial stability of the euro area as a whole and of its Member States.”
So don’t be fooled.
Remember what Fine Gael and Labour said during the election.
Remember all Fianna Fáil’s promises.
Don’t be fooled. Be wise.
Join with the millions across Europe who are demanding an end to austerity.
It is a good and patriotic and positive action to say NO to a Treaty that is bad for you, bad for your family and community, bad for society and entirely without any social or economic merit.
Next Thursday. Vote No.
It is five years since the historic deal between Sinn Féin and the DUP.
The business of delivering for citizens is continuing.
There are still outstanding issues including on the Irish Language, a Bill of Rights and other equality issues.
The British Secretary of State has also made a number of unhelpful and unwarranted interventions, including his decision to revoke the licences of Martin Corey and Marian Price.
The British Secretary of State should go back to England where he belongs.Marion Price and Martin Corey and Gerry McGeough, should be released immediately.
The political institutions in the North need to move to the next stage – the transfer of fiscal power to the Assembly and Executive.
The continuing exercise of fiscal power by the British Treasury will lead to more cuts in the block grant and more right wing welfare policies being imposed on us.
Despite the difficulties a huge effort by the Executive has resulted in jobs being retained and new jobs created.
Unemployment in the North has fallen and at 6% is less than half the level in this state.
Despite the lack of fiscal autonomy the Sinn Féin Ministerial and Assembly team have stood against cuts, and used public funds to invest in jobs and growth.
Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness has ensured funding for the A5, the new road linking Monaghan, Tyrone, Derry and Donegal, the expansion of Altnagelvin and Omagh hospitals and the freeze on Student Fees.
There are many good positive cross border developments.
For example, the new cancer unit at Altnagelvin in Derry will serve patients from Donegal.
And I want to commend DUP Health Minister Poots for ensuring that the new hospital in Enniskillen will be open to patients from Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan.
Sinn Féin Ministers have created a social investment fund to tackle disadvantage.
We have capped the domestic rate, established an Executive sub-committee on Welfare Reform to alleviate hardship and introduced new measures to address Youth Unemployment.
And at a time of tight budgets a Winter Fuel Payment was made to citizens
Sinn Féin refused to introduce water charges.
We stopped the privatisation of water services.
Education Minister John O’Dowd is progressing reforms to break down the social, economic and regional barriers to education.
These include free school meals, school uniform grants, extended youth services and early years provision, and an almost five percent increase in the budgets allocated directly to schools.
As well as growing the North’s agri-food sector to create jobs Agriculture Minister Michelle O Neill is also tackling rural poverty and isolation.
I want at this point to pay tribute to our outgoing poll topping MEP for the Six Counties, Bairbre de Brún.
This Ard-Fheis thanks you Bairbre for your work in many leadership positions over many years.
Tá muid fior buíoch duitse.
Agus beidh muid ag obair le chéile arís sa todhchaí.
And I thank Martina Anderson for her work as a Junior Minister and wish her well as she prepares to take up new challenges as an MEP.
I commend our Leinster House and Assembly teams, our MPs and Councillors and all our activists.Across Ireland Sinn Féin is building the political fightback against austerity.
Sinn Féin TDs and Seanadoirí and our other activists in Leinster House are leading the political opposition to this government.
But I want to single out and commend and thank Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin and Mícheál Mac Donncha who have just completed 15 years in the Dáil.
Go raibh maith agat Bríd.
I also want to pay tribute to Martin McGuinness for standing in the Presidential election.
It was a tremendous campaign for Irish Republicanism.
A decisive and defining intervention at the beginning, and most importantly at the end.
Tá athrú mór tagtha ar an Tuaisceart go háirithe le blianta beaga anuas mar gheall ar an proiséas síochána. Under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement the British Government has agreed to end its jurisdiction if a majority of people vote that way.
All of us — north and south, nationalist, unionist and others, need to plan for that.
In this state more and more people realize we do not have a real republic.
Sinn Féin wants to demonstrate to unionists that a united Ireland is also in their interests.
A United Ireland makes sense.
A single Island economy makes sense.
It does not make sense on an island this size and with a population of six million, to have two states, two bureaucracies, two sets of government departments, and two sets of agencies competing for inward investment.
Harmonising our systems will save money, improve efficiency and create jobs.
A new, agreed united Ireland will emerge through a genuine process of national reconciliation.
Through a cordial union.
Sinn Féin is for a new republic where the interests of citizens come first.
A new Republic that is inclusive and pluralist.
A new Republic created democratically and peacefully.
Sinn Féin is about nation building.
A nation rooted in harmony, equality and justice.
The people of Ireland are entitled to social justice.
Equality is achievable.
Irish people have the genius and the right to demand it.
In our time.
For all citizens, for all our communities.
So, now is the time for courage.
For commitment and patriotism.
For hope.
For all our children.
For our great country.
For Ireland.”
The section of the speech devoted to the Irish language was pitiable. But then again it matches the party’s policies on our native language in general: so no surprises there then. A few lines devoted to Irish affairs is simply insulting. Nor do airy-fairy aspirational fluff in policy documents, or fleeting Ard-Fheis debates and motions, make up for real, solid, thought-out language policies. The Irish-speaking citizens and communities of Ireland demand more, and deserve more.
We want a political party, whether it is Sinn Féin or any other, that will work to establish true equality between Ireland’s Irish- and English-speaking citizens, that will protect the legislative and constitutional rights of Irish-speakers, that will pledge to implement genuine and comprehensive language policies (and in the process root out the institutional discrimination that permeates the structures of the state), that will create a true bilingual Ireland with burgeoning space for monolingual Irish-speaking communities and families, that will reverse centuries of cultural colonialism and anglicisation, that will face down the bigotry and anglophone supremacism of some extremists, and that will take the early 20th century desire for an Irish Ireland into the early 21st century and turn it into a reality.
Everything else is mere window dressing: fine words hiding shallow inaction.
A quick post to mark a review by Theo Dorgan in the Irish Times of a new biography of the Irish poet Mícheál Ó hAirtnéide (Michael Hartnett), who also happens to be one of my favourite wordsmiths, not least for his legendary description of the English language from his collection “A Farewell to English”:
“The road is not new.
I am not a maker of new things.
I cannot hew
out of the vacuumcleaner minds
the sense of serving dead kings.I am nothing new
I am not a lonely mouth
trying to chew
a niche for culture
in the clergy-cluttered south.But I will not see
great men go down
who walked in rags
from town to town
finding English a necessary sin
the perfect language to sell pigs in.I have made my choice
and leave with little weeping:
I have come with meagre voice
To court the language of my people.”
Ironically enough it echoes my mother’s own dire linguistic condemnation from which there is surely no escape:
“Irish is the language of the gods; English is the language of the dogs…”
So to the IT review:
“BY 1974, AGED 33, Michael Hartnett had already built a considerable reputation as a poet in English and was widely accepted as a genuine talent. Then, unexpectedly and abruptly, on June 4th, from the stage of the Peacock Theatre, in Dublin, he announced that he proposed to abandon English and from then on write and publish only in Irish.
It was, in the eyes of many, a quixotic gesture. Hartnett was not a native speaker, although his grandmother, to whom he had been more or less fostered out as a child, was reared with Irish and would speak it at night to her neighbours when they gathered in. Hartnett often spoke later of listening from his bed to these voices that murmured, it seemed to him, from a vanishing world.
Pat Walsh’s book revolves around that pronouncement from the Peacock stage, ranging backwards and forwards through Hartnett’s life to examine his context and formation, attempting to arrive at a summary judgment of the poet’s life and writings, returning always to what he sees as the pivotal event in both life and work.
If Hartnett expected a big reaction to his grand gesture, he must have been disappointed. Some were bemused and puzzled, others inexplicably irritated, even hostile. Most, perhaps unsurprisingly, were indifferent. Walsh is good on these reactions: he records them in all their variety, so opening fertile ground for future scholars not just of Hartnett but of our troubled relationship with our native Gaelic tongue.
Hartnett’s election for Irish was essentially private, but, inadvertently or otherwise, by making his choice, and by making a public occasion of declaring his choice, he backed into a still unresolved politics, drawing attention to a psychic wound that has never healed, may indeed never heal. By opting to write in Irish, Hartnett found himself more or less forced into polemic.
A Farewell to English, announced as his last book in that language, is riddled with attitude-striking, with the ventriloquised anger of the 18th-century dispossessed. Even his poems excoriating our modern lack of vision could be read as projected forward from the values of that spurned Gaelic matrix. Reviews ranged from the gentle but sceptical (Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin) to the downright merciless and dismissive (Ciaran Carson), and Walsh does us a further service by gathering in so many of these first reactions. But, taken all in all, under and inside the protective rhetorical arguments of A Farewell to English, there is a genuine poetic impulse. What most commentators seem to miss, Walsh among them, is that Hartnett did not choose Irish: Irish chose him.
Michael Hartnett believed, very simply, that a poet is born, not made. Around his person there seemed to be always a certain psychic disturbance, giving rise to a feeling reported by many that there was something otherworldly about him. His grandmother saw it early. Equally, for all their meticulous craftiness and word-wizardry, there has always been in the best of his poems a sense of an otherwhere, as if he travelled between the world we say we know and some other contiguous but veiled reality. This, I believe, is the key not just to his character but to his poems.
There is something otherworldly, in several senses, about the first section of A Farewell to English, the title poem of the collection. Hartnett is sitting quietly in a bar when, unbidden, “like grey slabs of slate breaking from / an ancient quarry”, the words come tumbling into his mind: “mánla, séimh, dubhfholtach, álainn, caoin . . .”
A Rebel Act is an act of love, a book that surveys the life and achievements of Michael Hartnett with a workmanlike attention to detail. Pat Walsh has opened the ground, and done a good job of it. Neither full biography nor comprehensive exegesis, his book is a loving and valuable homage to a great poet. Nevertheless, to understand Hartnett there is no alternative to studying the poems, and studying the poems to remember: we do not write the poems; the poems write us.”
Unfortunately those poems are now difficult to acquire but for anyone interested in the Irish language, and what the language can achieve beyond mere utilitarian use, I urge you to seek them out.
Which reminds me of an ex-girlfriend and my copy of Ó hAirtnéide’s translations of the poems of the great Munster poet Aogán Ó Rathaille. She dumped me but kept the book. So she had some good taste then
Every now and again I have a look at news and current affairs from Belgium, that most interesting of artificial nation-states. Sometimes it is hard to believe that the country exists at all such is the degree of extreme separation that exists between the French-speaking Walloons and Dutch-speaking Flemish. With two national communities sharing one state (not to mention a tiny German-speaking minority), outside of a few regions like the communal, bilingual (and much disputed) capital city of Brussels, people from both sides rarely meet and rarely mix.
The country is rigidly divided along linguistic lines with each community living inside its own ethnic bubble: they have their own separate administrations, municipalities, political parties, societies, trade unions, professional associations, schools, radio and television stations, newspapers… the list goes on and on. There are a few things that bind the nation together. A shared monarchy (that now means more to French-speakers than Dutch), a federal social welfare system, a national economy (sort of), a national armed forces (though even that is not immune to inter-communal tensions), and a few other things that keep the mismatched jigsaw in place. Just about. Yet many believe the strain of holding the centre ground is beginning to show and it is only a matter of time before a breakup occurs. But then they’ve been saying that for the last three or four decades.
So to a good overview from Michael Palo in the EU Observer, reviewing a new book examining Belgium and the nationally crucial institution of monarchy:
“When the language census of 1947 indicated a growth in the number of French-speakers on the periphery of Brussels and led to an increase in the number of the city’s municipalities from 16 to 19, Flemings protested. Spearheaded by a new Flemish nationalist party – Volksunie (VU) (the People’s Union) founded in 1954 – the Flemings began marching on Brussels and boycotted en masse the language census of 1961. The renewed militancy among Flemings reinforced the feeling among Walloons, in the wake of the abortive strikes of 1961, that the only way to limit the impact of economic and fiscal policies that they perceived were detrimental to the industrial heartland of their region was to encourage further devolution of power to Wallonia. Such was the background to the so-called Gilson Language Laws of 1962-63, which fixed the linguistic frontier, so that the bilingual district of Brussels-Capital City was limited to 19 communes. In six communes surrounding Brussels – Drogenbos, Kraainem, Linkebeek, Sint-Genesius-Rode, Wemmel, and Wezembeek-Oppem – facilities for French-speakers, such as being able to deal with officials in French and having their children educated in the language of their choice, were to be provided. Language facilities were also guaranteed for the 70,000 or so German-speakers in the eastern part of the country.
More controversial, despite the guarantee of language facilities, was the transfer of the Voeren (Fourons) from the Province of Liège to the Province of Limburg. As Van Goethem writes: “Between 1970 and 1990 the Voer district was constantly in the news, largely because of the refusal of the local burgomaster, a farmer named José Happart, to use the Dutch language. . . . Happart’s principled stand not only led to street fights in the otherwise peaceful villages of the Voer, but also became a casus belli between the Flemings and Walloons, splitting national political life neatly down the linguistic middle and occasionally leading to the fall of the government.”
The state reforms of 1970 came at the end of a decade that saw the appearance of two new political parties – the Brussels-based Front Démocratique des Francophones (not the Front des Francophones as called by Van Goethem) and the Rassamblement Wallon, which won their first parliamentary seats in the general election of March 1968. At the same time, radical Flemish student organisations succeeded in getting the French section of the Catholic University of Leuven transferred to Walloon Brabant (specifically to Ottignies, now called Louvain-la-Neuve) after a vehement campaign “with their insulting (but nonetheless popular) slogans, such as Walen buiten (Walloons Out!) and Leuven Vlaams (Leuven for the Flemish!).”
The key constitutional changes took place in 1970, 1980, and 1993. They created three Regions and three linguistic Communities with their respective Councils and Executives that would be able to issue decrees and sign treaties with foreign countries in matters for which they had competence. Legislation affecting the linguistic communities from 1970 on had to be the consequence of ‘special majority law’ that ‘could only be passed if there was a majority in favour in both the Flemish and Walloon groupings in both the Lower House and the Senate, on condition that a majority of the members of each language grouping was present during the vote and on condition that the resulting number of votes in favour of the law exceed two-thirds of the total number of votes cast.’ In addition, there was an alarm bell procedure: “If a proposed law threatened to seriously disrupt relations between the Dutch-speaking and French-speaking communities, it was possible for the parliamentary passage of this law to be temporarily suspended if this was requested by a motion of deferment signed by three-quarters of the members of a particular language grouping. In this case, the proposed law would be forwarded to the ministerial council, which would issue its findings on the matter in 30 days.” As Van Goethem stresses, these measures were designed to protect the Walloon minority, as was the rule that “there would be equal numbers of Dutch-speaking and French-speaking ministers.”
Following the elections of November 1991, which saw the breakaway Vlaams Blok (Flemish Bloc) win 12 of 212 seats in the Chamber of Representatives, that is, two more seats than the VU, inter-party negotiations led to the signing of the St. Michael (St. Michel/St. Michiels) Accord on 29 September 1992. Article 1 of the Constitution amended in 1993 now read: “Belgium is a federal state, composed of different regions and communities.” From now on, members of the Regional and Community Councils were to be directly elected, while further responsibilities and powers were devolved to them.
In his “diagnosis,” Van Goethem stresses that Flemings increasingly see Wallonia as “a foreign country.” Hence, “it is indisputable that “Belgian-ness” belongs to a national past which is unlikely to ever return.” He cites a number of examples to make his point, including the fact that Flemings and Walloons almost never read newspapers or look at TV stations from the other community. Another feature that undermines Belgian national unity is the absence of national political parties.
In terms of what keeps Belgium together, Van Goethem lists public opinion itself, the monarchy, key government departments that have kept their “national” status, such as Social Insurance, trade unions, and lastly, Brussels. On the problem of Brussels, he admits that, “Flanders without Brussels would find it very hard to ‘go it alone.’” Still, Brussels and its peripheral communes, where French-speakers refuse to use Dutch even when they understand it, are destined, in our author’s opinion, to remain sources of dissension and division.
As for the future, Van Goethem states that, “Given the institutional and historical weaknesses inherent in the Belgian system, the maintenance of the status quo is not a viable option.” He sees some kind of ‘new confederal model à la belge,’ as the most likely scenario. He closes with a look at the situation in 2010 and concludes: “the nationality question is indeed still the gravest problem in Belgium.””
Bizarrely, looking at Belgium, one is struck once again by how united Ireland actually is, irrespective of one’s nationality or identity (chosen or otherwise). A shared British influence increasingly permeating all aspects of the country, a shared English-speaking Anglo-American culture, a shared Anglo-American neo-liberal view of society and the economy, a shared English-based sports following, a shared centre-right elite at the top of society, politics and the media. The only true markers of division in modern Ireland are in some ways language. Irish-speakers versus English-speakers.
But here is a twist to the Belgium story, via the Times of Israel:
“Few Jewish couples define their marriage as “mixed” just because bride and groom were born and raised 30 miles apart in the same country.
But Linda and Bernard Levy live in Belgium, a country whose long experiment in fusing two distinct cultures recently has been showing signs of breakdown. With the Dutch-speaking Flemish half of the country increasingly at odds with the French-speaking part, Belgium’s corresponding Jewish communities are finding themselves at loggerheads as well.
Linda was born in Antwerp, the capital of Flanders in the self-governing Flemish region. She rarely uses Flemish (similar to Dutch), the language of her youth, since she married Bernard, a Francophone from Brussels. They live just outside Brussels with their three children.
“Language is actually a non-issue in mixed marriages like ours,” she said. “Flemish Jews are usually bilingual.”
But a recent rupture in relations between Belgium’s Flemish and French-speaking Jewish communities, each with approximately 20,000 members, has exposed some profound ideological differences between the two communities, particularly on Israel.
The trigger was Belgium’s decision in March to join Austria as the only two EU countries to vote in favor of a UN-led investigation of West Bank settlements.
Belgium’s Flemish and French-speaking Jewish communities long have maintained a modus vivendi for cooperation under which they always approached federal authorities together. But on the vote on the UN probe, the two communities broke with each other.
Flemish Jews, represented by the Forum of Jewish Organizations, or FJO, met with Belgium’s justice minister and released a statement saying that “the Jewish community was shocked and appalled” by the vote.
By contrast, French-speaking Jews, represented by the Umbrella Organization of Jewish Institutions of Belgium — known by the French initials CCOJB — did not condemn Belgium’s vote.
The Jews of Antwerp and Brussels long have been different. Jews from Antwerp tend to be more religious, tight-knit and hawkish on Israel, while their Brussels coreligionists are more liberal, according to laymen and leaders from both communities. Antwerp has 13 Jewish schools compared to three in Brussels.
The split between the Jewish communities of Belgium mirrors what in recent years has become a national woe: the widening gulf separating Flemish and French-speaking Belgians.
One of the first big splits hit the Belgian Socialist Party in 1978, two years before the creation of the Flemish Region and the onset of Belgian federalism, when the party split in two. There not only are two socialist parties now representing Francophones on the one hand and the Flemish on the other, but two Christian Democratic parties, two liberal parties and even two green parties. The secessionist New Flemish Alliance wants the Flemish part of the country to pull out of Belgium altogether.
The very creation of a separate institution representing only Flemish Jews was itself a part of the same process. Founded 50 years ago, the CCOJB umbrella group used to represent — nominally, at least — Jews from both Flanders and Wallonia, the French-speaking region of the country. But in 1993 the Flemish community splintered off and formed FJO, reflecting the sentiment that Jews from Antwerp were not really represented in the main community umbrella group.
Michael Freilich, editor in chief of Belgium’s leading Jewish publication, Joods Actueel, says the two communities inhabit two distinct political universes.
‘It’s very difficult to lobby together when you inhabit two different, parallel political realities’
Due to the political system, “in Flanders you can only vote for Flemish parties and in Wallonia only for French-speaking parties, even though parties from both regions sit in government,” Freilich said. “This means politicians who matter to Wallonians don’t matter to Flemish and vice versa. It’s very difficult to lobby together when you inhabit two different, parallel political realities.”
Belgium’s political crisis resulted last year in a new world record: Belgium went for 541 days without an elected government because Flemish and Wallonian representatives could not reach a compromise. That was one of several crises since 2007 that has caused many in Belgium and elsewhere to doubt Belgium’s sustainability as a unified state.”
Miriam Smith present’s a good analysis on ipoltics.ca examining the influences behind the current turmoil in Québec as students face off against the country’s centre-right provincial government under the federalist Québec Liberal Party and its leader Jean Charest:
“Another important ‘big picture’ factor in the current crisis is the role of Quebec nationalism. Quebecers tend to have a different view of the state and of collective responsibility than other Canadians. In part because of the role of nationalism in Quebec society and the sense that the francophone minority is on its own in a sea of English, collective institutions such as the church (first) and the state (later), have been assigned the role of cultural and linguistic protection.
This has spilled over into other areas of social policy. Generally, the Quebec government has been more generous than other Canadian provinces in providing services such as day care. As well, groups such as the women’s movement, trade unions, and student organizations have regularly engaged in institutionalized consultation with provincial governments and party allies such as the Parti Québécois. Therefore, there is more of a sense of social solidarity or the social model, as it is sometimes called in Quebec, than in most other Canadian provinces.
It’s also important to recall that francophones in Quebec were disadvantaged in terms of higher education prior to the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s. The modernization of higher education in Quebec as well as various measures that encouraged the use of French in the workplace during the 1960s and 1970s contributed to an expansion of access to higher education for francophone students. Cutting off access to education has a different resonance in Quebec than in other provinces. While in Ontario higher education might be seen as a ticket to a middle class job or as a potential engine of economic growth, in Quebec, higher education is inextricably linked to cultural, linguistic and national identity.”
During the revival of the French language and culture in Québec in the 1970s and ‘80s it became noticeable that the stronger, and more widespread, the language became the stronger and more widespread the opposition from English-speakers. It’s was almost an inverse law of language revival in a bilingual context. As the minority community increases, and gains more social and political standing, so hostility to it from the majority community increases in direct proportion.
As long as the minority language remains that, and is publically seen as such, the majority seem content to simply ignore it (or if feeling fairly liberal, indulge it to a certain extent). But as soon as the minority threatens the absolute power of the majority, even if it is only a perception of a threat, then let loose the dogs of war.
That is certainly the case here in Ireland where the enormous strides made over the last 15 years in Irish medium education, broadcasting, equality legislation and social participation and “prestige” for the Irish speaking population of the country has led to an arguable “Anglophone backlash”. At a political level this can be seen in the moves by the Fine Gael – Labour Party coalition government to undo civil rights legislation for Irish-speaking citizens by threatening to rewrite the Official Languages Act of 2003, which puts into law a form of limited equality between Irish and English speaking citizens when accessing state services or resources, and abolishing the office of the Language Commissioner, the legal authority which oversees the implementation of that law (often in the face of fierce hostility from sections of the civil service which have simply refused to comply with their legal duties in this area).
In the Irish news media, particularly in the print media, the increased hostility towards Irish speakers is now sinking to the level of “hate speech”. Hardly a week passes without some story or opinion piece denigrating Irish speaking men, women and children in this country. This has spilled over into online discourse where the sort of violent and abusive language once confined to the anglophone extreme has become the norm amongst many contributors and commentators on Irish-based news or current affairs websites (thejournal.ie and politics.ie are both noticeable for their lack of sanction against anti-Irish bigotry).
The language of Anglophone supremacism in Ireland is almost uniform in its abusive nature. The same terms crop up again and again. Irish-speaking citizens, even children, are the “Gaeliban” (a crude play on the word Taliban). They are:
“backward”, “primitive”, “anti-modern”, “anti-global”, “opposed to multiculturalism” (an ironic one that), “petty minded”, “tribal” (a favourite term of abuse), “bog-savages”, “living in the Dark Ages”, “living in the past”, “medieval”, “extremists”, “fanatics”, “fascists”, “Gaelic Nazis”, “crypto-terrorists”, “hobbyists”, “militants”, “elitists”, “working class”, “rural class”, “upper class”, “uber-nationalists”, “racists” (not sure how that one works!), “bigots”, “child abusers” (a recent addition to the list), “liars”, “cheats”, “frauds”, “remnants”, “recidivists”, “lazy”, “indolent”, “arrogant”, “two-faced”, “deceitful”…
Do I need go on?
Lately we’ve been told that Irish-speaking men, women and children aren’t even Irish. No: they are “Gaels”. Their language is not Irish: it is Gaelic. And the Irish-speaking regions, the Gaeltachtaí? They are “Gaelic reservations”.
I wonder do these people, these modern English-speaking, English-reading, English-thinking Irish men and women know that their terms of abuse for Irish-speaking people apes that of the English colonial rulers of Ireland in times past? Not just for Irish-speaking people in Ireland, mind you, but for all of the people of Ireland. Have they become the new Anglo-Irish of 21st century Ireland? No longer defined by religion, or wealth or status, or even colonial ethnicity but simply by language and culture?
Is Ireland now divided between a small, Irish-speaking Native Irish minority, and an overwhelming, English-speaking Anglo-Irish majority? And what of those who look to both? A confusion of labels exist here with no easy guide to aid our understanding. It is not a matter of ancestry, since all ancestries in contemporary Ireland are blurred, but rather of identity, and often self-identity. One can choose to identify one’s self as indigenous Irish, irrespective of one’s actual background, simply by identifying with Ireland’s native language and culture and regarding it as your own. Arguably then the opposite must be true. That one can reject such a label and instead identify with Ireland’s Anglo-Irish (and increasingly Anglo-American) language and culture and see oneself in that context.
So, two communities, some of whom at least are diametrically opposed.
But at least we can see we are not the only ones who experience this. For as the Welsh-speaking population of Wales has grown, and asked for equal standing with its English-speaking peers, it too has faced an increased chorus of opposition. And the same confusion of identity exists. As In Ireland some Welsh people (correctly) claim that they and their ancestors never spoke the native tongue, no matter how deep their roots in the country, so why should they speak it now? Others, whose great-grandparents may well have spoken no other language but Welsh, still reject both language and culture as “alien” to them. In this Ireland and Wales face almost identical dilemmas (the irony of all these Hourihanes and Kennys hating the Irish language and culture is not lost on many of us, especially given the eager embrace of the de Buitléars and Rosenstocks).
In Wales this tension has exploded once again (and with greater furore than the time before, a sure sign of escalating “identity conflict”). From WalesOnline:
“FORMER Welsh Secretary Paul Murphy has warned that “excessive” spending on Welsh language schemes and untimely demands on public bodies and private firms at a time of tight budgets could damage the progress made on the Welsh language in the past decade.
The Torfaen MP issued a statement after reports yesterday about proposals under consideration to extend translation of Assembly proceedings to the written records of every meeting at a cost of hundreds of thousands of pounds.”
In fact the translations referred to above will cost in the region of £95,000 (not the £400,000 claimed by Anglophone critics of the policy), but that hardly matters. The truth is not the point here. This is simply yet another manifestation of the struggle for supremacy between Welsh Wales and English Wales in what is likely to become an increasing feature of politics and society in the country (just ask the people of Québec and Canada).
In Wales indigenous speakers are in a far stronger position than their cousins in Ireland. Which is why the Anglophone supremacists here have stepped in before the “natives” get any more uppity than they already have. Bye-bye Language Commissioner, bye-bye full Official Languages Act, bye-bye Irish medium education, bye-bye Gaeltachtaí, bye-bye civil rights legislation and equality for Ireland’s Irish-speaking citizens and communities.
So long and thanks for all the Gael.
So, it seems that the governing (and as we would say over here, “unionist”) Liberal Party in Québec is set on throwing away its chances of re-election in the upcoming provincial elections expected later this year or in early 2013. From the National Post:
“Montreal police brought the hammer down on student demonstrators Tuesday night, enforcing a controversial law that brought tens of thousands into the streets in a protest earlier in the day that drew international support.
By the end of a cat-and-mouse operation that marked the fourth straight night of clashes, police spokesman Simon Delorme said that at least 100 people had been arrested and two police officers had been injured.
Four other people were taken to hospital but the extent of their injuries was not immediately known.
Projectiles were thrown at police and gusts of pepper spray tinged the air as riot equipped police sent people scattering.
Skirmishes broke out in different sectors of the city, sending busloads of Montreal or provincial police to quell the disturbances. Police on horseback provided additional backup as did a hovering provincial police helicopter.
One of the tactics of the night-time marches has been to walk against the flow of traffic, which often gets honks of support but sometimes brings scowls.
Police declared the evening march — the 29th of its kind since the protest started 100 days ago — illegal when some projectiles flew through the air at them. And they invoked the controversial Bill 78 and a Montreal by-law that forbids masks during public protests.
Shortly before the evening demonstration commenced, supporters in central Montreal districts came out onto their balconies and in front of their homes to bang pots and pans in a seeming call-to-arms.
As well, the powerful Montreal transit union also gave protesters a boost when it called on its members to avoid driving police squads around on city buses during the crowd control operations. Montreal police have for several years used city buses as well as their cruisers to shuttle riot squad officers around to demonstration hotspots and as places to detain prisoners.
The night-time march snaked through several Montreal neighbourhoods after it kicked off from Parc Emilie-Gamelin, a spot where all the night marches begin and which is named for a beatified nun who gave comfort to condemned rebels in the 1837 Lower Canada Rebellion.
The chanting march had not gone far before pyrotechnical devices were thrown and were followed near the downtown core by beer bottles. Police flooded Ste-Catherine Street, the city’s commercial core where chain stores sit side-by-side with upscale boutiques and told everyone to get off the streets or face arrest for participating in a riot.
The daytime march was considered to be one of the biggest protests held in the city and related events were held in New York, Paris, Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver.”
Altogether remarkable and an electoral gift to the nationalists of Parti Québécois (and other nationalist parties) given recent events not just in Québec but in Canada itself.
Watch this space.
(More here)
Two disheartening news items from Celtic Britain, one from Cornwall and one from Wales, both making the headlines.
In Cornwall, in the run-up to the London Olympics and the “jubilee” celebrations for the British head of state, the famous tourist attraction of Penn an Wlas or Land’s End, the picturesque peninsula that juts out into the Atlantic Ocean, has suffered what can be only described as an act of cultural vandalism. From the BBC:
“The removal of a Cornish translation of “Land’s End” from above the entrance to the landmark has been criticised by Cornish language advocates.
The Cornish Language Partnership said that the removal of the words “Penn an Wlas” was an act of “linguistic cleansing”.
Maga, the Cornish Language Partnership, said there were about 300 fluent speakers in the county, but that “an awful lot more people than that” had a “smattering” of the language.
Maga development manager Jenefer Lowe said the partnership was “really surprised” the attraction had made the change.
She said: “The language is growing and we are getting more signage all over Cornwall.
“We also know from tourism statistics that visitors are interested in the language and supportive of it.”
Land’s End general manager David Bryans said the changes had been made during a refurbishment which was carried out to maximise the appeal of the attraction and “bring as much tourism to Cornwall as possible.”
He said: “Land’s End is an international tourist attraction and we have a multi-cultural ethos.
“In keeping with that, we have tried to make the entrance as welcoming as possible to as many people as possible.
“As visitors will see, our welcome in Cornish is still displayed prominently and proudly at the entrance alongside international languages such as German, Spanish and Italian.”
A “multi-cultural ethos”? What a laughable excuse. The original sign was in English and Cornish, side by side and of equal scale. Now the Cornish language has been relegated to a minor sign-board somewhere in the park. Multi-cultural? What she meant was “monoculture”, and English monoculturalism at that.
As always we have yet another case of discrimination dressed up as reasonableness. To make matters worse in the last few weeks a number of local people belonging to various Cornish nationalist groups, both political and cultural, have been visited at their homes and places of work by British police demanding to know what if any plans they have in relation to the Jubilee or Olympic celebrations in the country (of Cornwall, that is). Some of those who have been subject to this questioning have described it as being quite intimidating – which is, perhaps, the point.
Meanwhile the Welsh cousins of the Cornish have their own trouble with petty-minded Anglophones in a story that has engulfed a local English-language newspaper, The Western Mail, the self-styled “national newspaper of Wales”. In the London Independent Rob Williams presents a fair analysis:
“Who’d be a newspaper editor in the age of Twitter eh?
In the good old pre-digital era negative feedback on the morning splash would – if you’ve really upset people – start to filter in around lunchtime.
In the brave new world of social networking, however, your offerings are barely off stone before you’re having them handed back to you in a little package marked ‘how you got it wrong – and why I’ll never buy your newspaper again.’
This morning the editor of ‘The National Newspaper Of Wales’, the Western Mail, will be getting many such digital packages.
It’s an unusual occurrence, a Welsh newspaper getting attention outside of Wales – but at 8.30am the hashtag #westernfail was trending in the UK on Twitter.
It was doing so because of a front page editorial about the Welsh language.
It is sensitive, complicated and as one commenter put it this morning on Twitter – ‘tricky biscuits’ journalistically.
Said biscuits are especially tricky if you’re not a Welsh language speaker yourself.
Which is why it’s particularly difficult to understand the decision of the Western Mail editor to publish a front page comment article, written in what can only be politely described as intemperate language, attacking the cost of translation services in the Welsh Assembly.
The story summarized is this: Eight Welsh Assembly Ministers have proposed that the written records of every meeting that takes place in National Assembly be translated into Welsh.
The piece, by veteran Welsh political reporter Martin Shipton, cites a ’senior Assembly source’, as saying that the cost of this translation could be up to £400,000 a year.
The article is written as a comment piece and an editorial, stating with a confidence that I suspect is rapidly dissipating this morning that, ‘We say that at a time when budgets are squeezed and public services are being cut, this is a luxury we cannot afford.’
The front page, as pictured above right, also has a number of mug shots of the Assembly Members, above an exasperated headline (incidentally not used online) – ‘An astounding £400k on translation: What world are these AMs living in?’
There are a number of interesting questions that immediately come out of the article.
How accurate is the front page figure of £400k? And why was the issue handled in such a clunky way?
Rather than investigate the issue in depth posing the pros and cons the Western Mail decided it would be better to tell their readers what to think (a dangerous move at the best of times – particularly so with the Welsh), and to mock the Assembly members proposing the translation changes.
Predictably the response when the front page was Tweeted last night was in general furious – this unsurprisingly has continued this morning.
Some of the choice comments from politicians include,
Paul Flynn @Paulflynnmp
Western Mail commits commercial suicide. Nothing on the extraordinary expense of Olympics & Jubilee but gleeful on attacks on Welsh speakers.
Leighton Andrews @LeightonAndrews
Wasn’t the Western Mail editor recently campaigning to keep the Welsh Government spending public money on ads in a paper read by very few?
Alun Davies @AlunDaviesAM
I am appalled to see this morning’s Western Mail. As a Welsh speaker I do not want to waste money on a paper that attacks my language.
Elsewhere comments were equally scathing
Myfanwy Davies @DrMyfanwyDavies
What’s the point of self proclaimed national newspaper that undermines the national language? #westernfail
Jonathan Davies @jmd1004
400k spent on translators, 1.3bn spent on the Jubilee… enough said #Westernfail
melys @MelysMedia
The Western Mail will not be darkening the desks at Melys HQ in future. #westernfail
…and you know you’re in trouble when the weather girl gets involved:
Sian Lloyd @SianWeather
@WesternMail_Ed @Walesonline Have you lost your marbles guys? #westernfail
There is clearly a debate to be had over the cost of translation and how worthwhile a measure this would be, as Welsh political commentator Daran Hill puts it,
“Translation services always come with a cost. As a general rule I’ve always preferred that simultaneous verbal translation is prioritised over written translation if a choice has to be made.
But there is a big difference between translating obscure documents and the democratic proceedings of our national parliament.
The Committee members are not being extremist in suggesting committee proceedings of The Assembly be translated. It is a perfectly mainstream and principled position to take.”
Undoubtedly a complex issue then.
But Hill, like many others points out that the language of the article today was unusually strident, and that’s perhaps why the Western Mail is reaping the whirlwind…”
Dewi over on Slugger O’Toole reaches similar conclusions.
All in all a depressing few days for our Celtic cousins in the east.
UPDATE: Thanks to Daithí Mac Lochlainn for a link to this latest news from Cornwall, featured on An Helghyer.
From Easter Rising to Celtic Tiger. Which would we rather remember? Or, indeed, celebrate?
From the Irish Examiner.
“Campaigners have renewed calls for state intervention to stop the “disrespectful” demolition of the area surrounding the historic 1916 Rising battlefield site.
As Sinn Féin gears up to appeal for support from Government TDs to save and restore the monument in the Dáil today, James Connolly’s great-grandson said it was a modest demand.
James Connolly Heron, who has been fighting for the restoration of the Moore Street site for the last 10 years, said Nama-funded plans to tear down surrounding buildings to make way for a shopping centre need to be blocked.
“People are waking up to the fact that we have four years until the centenary,” said Mr Connolly Heron.
“We need something to show the Gathering in 2016. Are we going to show people a monument to the rising, or are we going to show them a shopping centre that is a monument to the Celtic Tiger?”
Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams has got behind the Moore Street campaign, which aims to restore the row of houses from 14 to 17 – where the rebel leaders met for the last time – and turn the area into “a cultural educational centre of excellence”.
Deputy Adams has secured backing from some Fianna Fáil and Independent TDs, while Labour has previously gone on the record in support of the initiative.
But Mr Connolly Heron warned the mission must not be eclipsed by political point-scoring.
“That would be dishonouring the people we are trying to honour,” he went on. “It doesn’t belong to any party, it belongs to the people.”
Sinn Féin will propose a Dáil motion during private members’ time tonight and tomorrow night.
The motion, which was drafted by descendants of the signatories of the 1916 Proclamation, including Mr Connolly Heron, already has the support of over 50 opposition TDs.
It asks for the Government to support the proposition to ensure the site is protected and preserved, and that the surrounding buildings, streets and laneways are retained with a view to developing the area as a historic and cultural quarter.
Sinn Féin will need the support from more than 30 additional TDs to gain a majority in the Dáil to pass the motion.”
On June 18th 1994 in the small Irish village of Loughinisland a number of Irish men and women gathered together in their local pub to watch the Irish national soccer team compete in a match against Italy which was being broadcast live from the World Cup in the United States. Encouraged by statements issued by several politicians from the British Unionist community in the North of Ireland condemning ”provocative” public displays of support for the Ireland team by the Irish Nationalist community in the north-east of the country, two gunmen from the British terrorist organisation the Ulster Volunteer Force entered the bar and opened fire with automatic assault rifles. Several people were wounded and six killed outright. They were Adrian Rogan (34), Malcolm Jenkinson (53), Daniel McCreanor (59), Patrick O’Hare (35), Eamon Byrne (39) and Barney Greene (87), the latter the oldest person to die in the northern conflict. Within hours of the attack rumours spread amongst local people, politicians and the press that elements of the then British paramilitary police force in the North, the Royal Ulster Constabulary or RUC, had facilitated the assault by terrorists from their community, allegations which continue to the present day.
Now the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) has announced that it has agreed to a request by family members and survivors of what is known as the Loughinisland Massacre to allow members of the Ireland team to wear black armbands at their match against Italy in their scheduled Euro 2012 game in Poznan on June 18th, the 18th anniversary of the atrocity. Niall Murphy, a solicitor for the families of Loughinisland, has expressed the gratefulness of his clients to the FAI:
“The families are touched that this tragic event can be commemorated on such a poignant day, the 18th anniversary of the atrocity. We would like to thank the FAI and UEFA for their assistance in providing a forum to recall the awful event that took place on that fateful day when Ireland played Italy.”
But what has been the reaction of the “Irish” media to this news? How have our “journalistic” classes responded?
Louis Jacob in the Irish Independent:
“It’s taken me a while to get my head around the FAI’s announcement that the Irish team will wear black armbands against Italy next month to commemorate the Loughinisland massacre in 1994, when six people were shot dead in a bar where they were watching the Ireland v Italy US World Cup game on TV.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who was taken aback.
But even though I know how popular this gesture will be with a large section of the Irish public, to me it smells like cheap tokenism on the part of the FAI.
But what’s worse is that no matter how much you feel for the families of the victims and no matter which way you look at it, the wearing of the black armband brings with it distinct political undertones… undertones which have no place at a major sporting event.
Anyone who believes otherwise should take a long, hard look at the following statement, released by Niall Murphy, solicitor for relatives of the victims of Loughinisland: “We would like to thank the FAI and Uefa for their assistance in providing a forum to recall the awful event that took place on that fateful day when Ireland played Italy.”
The word that alarms me in that sentence is ‘forum’ because a forum is a place where things are discussed. Surely, if it’s a forum they are looking for, then the nature of this gesture should be considered as entirely political.
On Thursday, FAI chief executive John Delaney stated: “I would like to thank Uefa for assisting us in commemorating this atrocity and take the opportunity to remember all those who lost their lives in the Troubles.” I wonder if the victims of Omagh and London and all the other places where innocent people lost their lives will buy this statement? I seriously doubt it.
The FAI should ask themselves if ‘divisive’ is really the business they want to be in.”
Eoghan Harris in the Sunday Independent:
“The FAI is foolish to back the wearing of a black armband to mark the anniversary of Loughinisland. To single out the suffering of one community in Northern Ireland will inevitably be seen as tribal by the other. Put yourself in the shoes of victims of IRA terror, exercise some empathy and you will find your feelings about the armbands are more complex.
The FAI decision dodges a number of serious questions. Why does the FAI single out Loughinisland, apart from the anniversary? Will the FAI facilitate black armbands on the anniversaries of IRA atrocities like Enniskillen, Omagh and the murder of Garda Jerry McCabe?
As my friend Tom Carew points out, June 18 is also the anniversary of the Provo bomb which murdered a Protestant police officer, John Harrison, while he was checking for bombs. Harrison was only 30 and married. Are his widow, his family and friends any less deserving of being remembered by the FAI?”
Brian O’Connor in the Irish Times:
“The depths of inadequacy that allowed human beings walk into a pub in Loughinisland 18 years ago and shoot dead six people watching the Ireland-Italy World Cup match just because they were Catholic can only be guessed at. Remembering the victims is an entirely good thing. The FAI’s decision to commemorate them by wearing black armbands for the Euro 2012 match against Italy next month isn’t.
Also on June 18th it will be 40 years since the IRA planted a bomb in a derelict house in Lurgan which killed three British soldiers. And since this is Ireland, with our nasty, bitter history of sectarian division, an obvious conclusion for those admittedly aching to arrive at it will be that the FAI views one group of victims as more important than another.
In the circumstances the football link is too tenuous. Yes, it’s Italy, and yes, it’s the same date. But this is Ireland. Politically every move is parsed to within an inch of its life.
It’s hard to credit the FAI hierarchy didn’t think of those wider political implications before going to Uefa with the idea. It’s even harder to believe UEFA didn’t twig the precedent being set.”
There is more like this but I’m sure you get the general point. Yet I wonder, has anyone forgotten Iceland in September 6th 1997 when the Ireland team unexpectedly wore armbands at an international match to mark the accidental death of Princess Diana in France, a member of the British royal family? Have you forgotten the reaction of the Irish press pack? Look it up. To say that they were effusive in their praise is to put it mildly.
It would seem then that in the view of the Irish print media some lives are worth more than others: especially if those lives are Irish ones taken at the hands of British terrorists or British soldiers. Then they are utterly without value.
So… you still want to buy that “Irish” newspaper?
From the Scotsman:
“SOME of Scotland’s “leading stars” will lend their support to the campaign for Scottish independence when it is officially launched this week.
The campaign, to be titled “Yes Scotland”, will try to appeal to a broad church by reaching out to those beyond the SNP.
Friday’s launch is to be held in Sir Sean Connery’s old stomping ground in Edinburgh, prompting speculation that the star, an SNP supporter, will make an appearance to boost Alex Salmond’s cause.
The “Yes Scotland” campaign will begin on Friday at Edinburgh’s Cineworld complex in Fountainbridge, near where Connery grew up. The launch invitation states that “Scots from all walks of life will join some of our leading stars and community and political figures” to sign a “Yes Declaration” setting out why being independent offers the best future for Scotland.
Yesterday, SNP sources refused to disclose who the “leading stars” were but Fountainbridge was chosen over more obvious symbolic sites such as the Bannockburn battlefield or Arbroath Abbey, where Scots noblemen declared Scottish independence in 1320.
On the invitation, Friday’s launch is described as “the start of the biggest community based campaign in Scotland’s history, designed to build a groundswell of support for an independent Scotland ahead of the 2014 referendum”.
Friday will also bring the unveiling of the campaign’s website and official anthem plus contributions from “some of Scotland’s leading cultural figures”. Other prominent SNP supporters and donors have included Sir Brian Souter of Stagecoach and, from the world of films, Brian Cox and Alan Cumming.”
Hmm…
A new survey of local secondary students by Derry City Council has found a fair degree of both use and support amongst pupils from both communities for the Irish language while providing scant evidence for the existence of the so-called Scots-Ulster language (the dialect of English invented by certain fringe elements from the British ethnic minority in Ireland which has contributed, amongst other things, this gem as the official term for children with intellectual special needs: “wee daftie weans”).
None of the children surveyed from either community could speak Ulster-Scots and only a handful of respondents said anyone in their family could speak it either. 88% stated that they had not heard or were unaware of hearing Ulster-Scots in relation to music, 62% said they hadn’t seen Ulster-Scots on road signs, 57 % said they hadn’t seen Ulster-Scots in place names and 56% said they hadn’t seen Ulster-Scots in use by politicians or in any publications. The majority, 55%, believed that Ulster-Scots should not be treated as a language in the same way Irish or English is.
In relation to the Irish language 72% of those who spoke and read Irish came from Irish-speaking families. Meanwhile 64% of all students believed the language was relevant for Roman Catholics and Protestants, another 64% had encountered the Irish language in classes, 46% said they had heard Irish in conversational use, 50% had seen it in use in publications and 35% had seen it on the internet. 84% of all pupils were aware of the influence of the Irish language on people’s names and place names.
I’m awaiting the details of the raw data from the survey and will publish them here when I can.
In the meantime a new website, Connect 3, has been launched by the city council in Derry based on the results of the poll to provide further resources for students and teachers engaging in language learning and training in the region.
Arthur Conan Doyle (Artúr Conán Ó Dúill) on the Western Front, Europe, WWI
I’ve always been a bit of a Sherlock Homes fan (or the much more impressive Irish form, Searbhlach de Hoilm!), especially since he was born of the imagination and pen of an Irish-Scots writer, one Artúr Iognáid Conán Ó Dúill or Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle. Doyle’s relationship with his ancestral homeland was problematic, to say the least, and there is a strong argument that he tapped into the anti-Irish prejudices of his day for the Sherlock Home’s stories, most tellingly in the Irish surnames he choose for Holmes’ two chief protagonists: Moran and Moriarty. He himself veered in his politics over the span of a lifetime from un-apologetic British Imperialist and Unionist to possessing somewhat more nuanced and socially liberal views of the world and Ireland in particular (by 1911 Doyle was convinced of the need for Home Rule or limited autonomy for Ireland within the so-called United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, though that is as far as he could bring himself to go).
Arthur Conan Doyle’s interests in Irish revolutionary movements and the covert (and at times not so covert) war between them and the British colonial state in Ireland clearly influenced his writing. The Fenians in particular, both the Irish and Irish-American arms of the movement, were a major concern to him and at times he allowed himself to be caught up in the hysteria of the late Victorian age and its obsession with “Irish secret societies” (the surnames of Moran and Moriarty were regularly identified in British newspaper reports with alleged Fenian officers operating in Britain in the late 1800s). In some ways the “Irish question” became central to the Sherlock Holmes canon, always implied though rarely stated.
Scholar Catherine Wynne details the Irish influences in the works of Doyle and his Sherlock Holmes’ tales in particular with her short study Mollies, Fenians, and Arthur Conan Doyle, which I highly recommend for any enquiring Sherlockian – or indeed anyone interested in how British society and culture viewed (and feared) the Irish people in the late 19th century. You can also read a full account of all this in her excellent book The Colonial Conan Doyle: British Imperialism, Irish Nationalism and the Gothic, especially the section Imperial War and Colonial Sedition (preview via Google Books).
All this has helped me in my own writing (with a nod to Kim Newman), in particular my subversion of the Sherlock Holmes tales by turning them on their head and writing them from the point of view of Professor Moriarty, or rather Séamas Ó Muircheartaigh, 19th century Irish famine-child and exile turned revolutionary (and the efforts of his arch-nemesis to thwart him: the conflicted British Imperial agent Sherlock Holmes, and his baleful older brother Mycroft). Whether those tales of mine will ever see the light of day is, of course, another matter
Jeremy Brett – Searbhlach de Hoilm (Sherlock Holmes)
But for now, a slight twist, as I turn to the Guardian and an excellent article on the late great Jeremy Brett, the British actor who for many of us was Sherlock Holmes. A true thespian (and a genuinely courageous person who overcame many personal problems and tragedies in his life until his untimely death), he defined what Holmes should look like, sound like and act like for a whole generation of television viewers (and still does). From the retrospective by Natalie Haynes:
“You can keep Basil Rathbone, fond as I am of him. You can keep Robert Downey, Jr, Benedict Cumberbatch and Peter Cushing. You can even keep Michael Caine in Without A Clue (my secret favourite portrayal of Sherlock Holmes on the big screen). You know why you can keep them? Because, in exchange, I get Jeremy Brett, the Sherlock for the connoisseurs.
Jeremy Brett is the Sherlock Holmes of my childhood, and perhaps (as with the Doctor or James Bond) we simply attach ourselves to the first one we see. But I don’t think so. In the ITV series which began in 1984, and ran until a year before Brett’s early death in 1995, Sherlock Holmes was as close to his literary roots as he has ever been on screen.
Brett understood completely how mercurial Holmes could be. And he could play every variant of him: loyal friend, relentless pursuer, bored logician, avenging angel and mischievous impersonator. Brett’s performance is an astonishing exercise in dynamics: he murmurs advice, whispers hints, bellows irritation, barks laughter. He is also the master of the subtextual glance. When the King of Bohemia (A Scandal in Bohemia, series 1, episode 1) wishes Irene Adler was his social equal, Brett turns to him with every facial sinew screaming contempt, for just a fraction of a second. Then he agrees, with such seeming politeness that the king is impervious to his real meaning, that Adler was indeed on a very different level. No wonder Adler leaves the country, declaring him too formidable an opponent, even though she knows she has beaten him in this encounter.
Even if Brett had not been so ill when filming the series, his Holmes is intrinsically fragile: he really looks like he forgets to eat for days on end, and that he carries the lead weight of ennui between cases.
In re-watching The Red-Headed League last week, I also detected a disdain for poshness that verges on the revolutionary. He describes John Clay (Tim McInnerny) thus: “His grandfather was a royal duke and he himself was educated at Eton and Oxford. So, Watson, bring the gun.” And because he is Jeremy Brett, he slightly rolls the r of “bring”, just so we know Holmes knows that he is funny.”
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson
This weekend I will be indulging my Brettian-Holmes passion by watching the British television drama The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes back-to-back (thanks to a lovely DVD collection grabbed – quite literally – for a ridiculously cheap 10 euros), but here, for the rest of you, is a mere taster:
Two Irish civilians forced to parade around a Waterford town by British troops with a British flag tied around their necks. Both men were beaten and dumped outside the town. The War of Independence, Ireland, 1920
Irish civilians forced to parade around a Waterford town by British troops with a British flag tied around their necks. Both were beaten and their bodies dumped outside the town. The War of Independence, Ireland, 1920
Just a quick post to highlight Protestant Cork 1911-1926, one of the best resources I’ve seen so far on the issue of the alleged decline in the numbers of Protestants living in the region of Cork City and County in the closing years and aftermath of the Irish Revolution. The reason this issue is so important is because of the claims made in relation to it by apologist historians and journalists on behalf of British rule in Ireland (the misnamed “revisionists”). This site is no simple Irish Nationalist or Republican one but follows a neutral line between both sides in order to maintain objectivity and scholarly standing. Meticulously researched, analytical, and with a host of primary sources both old and new, it is essential reading for anyone interested in this artificially contentious subject.
“It has been claimed that the Irish War of Independence from Britain in Cork turned into an ethnic pogrom driven by fear of mostly Protestant outsiders.
This site shows that the story is far more complex and nuanced that this simplistic view.
The Population declined by 14470 in 15 years, but 10,714 non-Irish-born Protestants lived in Cork in 1911.
Most were military, or government. Has this story been told properly?”
The conclusion is fair and balanced – even to a Republican:
“This article aims to correct our understanding of the issue through using new resources online to improve older research. As much written about this topic has either been incompletely researched, unverifiable, or supposition dressed up as fact, it is difficult to winnow out the fact from the fiction. It has often been necessary to return to the original source to examine its accuracy. To their credit those who have followed standard academic referencing to a verifiable source allowed this process to happen; the unverifiable sources should not be treated as being anything other than hearsay.
The War of Independence was driven by nationalism, and as 1921 continued it descended into the mire of a bloody war of reprisals. While this may revolt some people, and others may question the need for it, the people involved at the time had no idea if they were going to win or lose. If they had known the outcome they may have stayed their hand. Equally, if they had not pursued the savage course they took would the British have offered a truce? Was the impetus for truce the fact that the Ulster Unionists had secured partition? These are the questions that need answering.
The Dunmanway killings are different in that they occurred after independence. The Irish State failed to protect its citizens. No evidence has been produced to suggest that the IRA garrison attempted to leave the barracks and take control of the town, and at the very least this was a dereliction of duty. All we do know for certain is that 16 Protestants, and one Catholic, were shot or disappeared in West Cork over a three day period. Others of both main faiths were shot at or targeted for shooting. We know who shot four of them in Macroom, and we can suspect who may have shot the others. However, there was insufficient evidence to charge anyone with the killings. The murders were denounced by both sides of Sinn Féin, and vulnerable citizens were protected by the local Anti-Treaty IRA. Civilians and military were warned they would be shot if they didn’t hand in all guns to the local IRA commanders throughout the area. The killings resulted in the emigration of a small number of native Church of Ireland and other Protestant members from the county, but the contemporary Protestant sources stubbornly refuse to suggest a sectarian pogrom: Bolshevik certainly, agrarian definitely, nationalist undoubtedly but sectarian exceptionally.
There is no justification for the actual Dunmanway killings. Even if each and every one of the men shot were informers they had been granted amnesty by the Truce. If they had breached the Truce then they should have been brought before a court of law and tried. Whatever the reason for their killings, if the IRA were involved then it was a betrayal of their oath to the Republic. However to use this event to argue that there was a sustained campaign against Protestants because of their religion is not supported by any of the evidence from the time: Protestant, Catholic or Dissenter.
It is important neither to understate nor overstate what happened in the revolutionary period. This was a savage period in Irish history. A vicious war, using methods which eschewed the norms of war up to that point, was fought to a draw in July 1921. This was followed by an even more savage Civil War which led to a complete breakdown of law. Those with property, and known Treaty supporters were most at risk, and ex-Unionists fell into both these categories. The new Irish state did its best to protect all of its citizens, and yet there were appalling atrocities committed. The evidence does not support the theory that Protestants were targeted because of their religion. Historians are entitled to speculate, but in this case has the speculation run away with the story? Is it time to stop this pointless debate, and write true history?”
A column of Irish refugees fleeing the ruins of their homes following the Sack of Balbriggan by the British Occupation Forces during the Irish War of Independence, Ireland, 1920
Irish refugees hiding in the countryside following the Sack of Balbriggan, the destruction by the British Occupation Forces of the small village of Balbriggan during the War of Independence, Ireland, 1920
Some more analysis below.
Niall Meehan:
Irish Political Review, Vol. 27, No. 2, February 2012, ‘The Further One Gets From Belfast’, a second reply to Jeff Dudgeon
Irish Political Review, Vol. 26 No 11, November 2011, Reply to Jeffrey Dudgeon on Peter Hart
History Ireland, November-December 2011, Vol. 19 No 6 History Ireland letter on second edition of Gerard Murphy’s The Year of Disappearances
Spinwatch 24 May 2011, Distorting Irish History Two, the road from Dunmanway: Peter Hart’s treatment of the 1922 ‘April killings’ in West Cork
FINAL 16 NOV 2010 1 An ‘amazing coincidence’ that ‘could mean anything’: Gerard Murphy’s The Year of Disappearances
Spinwatch November 2010, Distorting Irish History, the stubborn facts of Kilmichael: Peter Hart and Irish Historiography
Irish Times Monday, October 12, 2009, Sectarian gloss on State’s early years is flawed
Dublin Review of Books, Issue Number 11 – Autumn 2009, Frank Gallagher and land agitation – A response to Tom Wall’s ‘Getting Them Out, Southern Loyalists in the War of Independence’ (drb, Issue 9 Spring 2009)
History Ireland, Vol 17 No 4 July August 2009, A response on use (and non-use) of sources to Professor David Fitzpatrick (TCD)
Irish Political Review, Vol 23, No3, March 2008, After the War of Independence, some further questions about West Cork, April 27-29 1922
Counterpunch, November 11/12, 2006, “The Wind That Shakes the Barley” Sends Revisionists Yapping at History’s Heels
Troops of the British Occupation Forces watch over Dublin City from rooftop machinegun-posts during the War of Independence, Ireland, 1921
David Fitzpatrick:
Dublin Review of Books (DRB): History In A Hurry
Troops of the British Occupation Forces watch over Dublin City during the War of Independence, Ireland, 1920
John Borgonovo:
History Ireland, Book Review: Gerard Murphy, the Year of Disappearances
The British Forces confront civilian protestors during a raid on the Regal Hotel in Dublin City, the Irish War of Independence, Ireland, 1920
Eugenio Biagini:
Reviews in History: Gerard Murphy, the Year of Disappearances
British Army vehicle checkpoint in Dublin City, the Irish War of Independence, Ireland, 1920
Three very short book reviews of my own:
Peter Hart’s The I.R.A. and its Enemies: Violence and Community in Cork, 1916-1923
Gerard Murphy’s The Year of Disappearances: Political Killings in Cork, 1920-1921
