Léargas

26/08/2009 Teddy Kennedy. I first met Senator Teddy Kennedy early in October 1994 in Boston. The IRA cessation was over a month old. I was in the USA for a fortnight long coast to coast visit – a frenetic city a day whirlwind tour. We started in Boston and Teddy was there to greet us at the airport. From our first meeting I was very taken by him. He had played a very crucial role in the build up to the cessation, in particular by supporting a visa for me. Then as the painstaking work of constructing a peace process continued in Ireland and as it created the possibility and opportunity of an IRA cessation he also intervened to support an immediate visa for the late Joe Cahill. Teddy’s sister Jean Kennedy Smith, US Ambassador to Ireland, played a pivotal role in the last minute tick tacking between Sinn Féin through Fr Alex Reid, the Taoiseach Albert Reynolds and her brother the Senator. The Cahill visa issue went down to the wire. Sinn Fein had our own contacts with the White House ...

24 LUNASA 2009. WET,WET,WET! Almost a year ago, on the cusp of your man’s last birthday a few friends informed him that they had gathered together their meagre monetary resources. They intended to buy him a fitting present as a sign of their great love and affectation for his aging personage. Your man protested, as one does, that there was nothing he wanted or needed. Although deeply moved by their generosity, he told them that he was also mindful of the poverty in which they existed. They had their families and other burdens to carry. Be that as may, he was told firmly, that his companeros had contributed to marking his lá breithe and it would be better that it be with something that he wanted instead of something that he would have no use for. Finally they wore him down. Friends can be like that sometimes. Trying. Very trying as your man observed to me. One particularly longstanding amigo of mine once remarked to me that you didn’t have to like your friends….. to be friends...

20/08/2009 This blog promised to return to the deliberate massacre by the British parachute regiment of 11 civilians - ten men, including a local priest and a mother of eight children - in Ballymurphy in the 36 hours following the introduction of internment in August 1971. Five months later the same Paras were on the streets of Derry and in an action similar in scale and scope they shot dead 14 people. These killings must rank as some of the worst events of the troubles. Evidence of that was all around me two Saturdays ago. The Ballymuphy Massacre Committee had organised a walk through Ballymurphy which stopped at the locations where their loved ones died. At each point a speaker stood on a small makeshift platform and told the story of the person or persons killed at that spot. No emotion was spared. The detail of how people were shot, where and how often they were shot, and how long it took them to die was told. The desperate efforts of their loved ones to locate those missing ...

August 16 09 Making Peace Work One day during a particularly difficult phase of the peace process I was walking with Father Alex Reid through a west Belfast housing estate. We were having a ‘secure’ discussion about the issues involved. ‘When?’ he asked ‘will we know the peace process is working?’ ‘When the people here have the prosperity they deserve’ I replied. That was before I became a blog. But it is as true now as it was then in those more troubled times. Take west Belfast for example. Areas like this have suffered grievously from years of institutional, social and political discrimination and disadvantage. Despite progress in the equality agenda there is still resistance to the delivery of citizens rights, particularly social and economic rights. The West Belfast and Greater Shankill Task Force reports were published in February 2002. Since then some progress has been made on a number of these projects like Conway Mill, the Colin Gateway Initiative, and the Shankill Peacewall Ar...

14/08/2009 BUILDING AN ALLIANCE FOR CHANGE. This blog will be speaking at the hungerstrike rally in Galbally, County Tyrone on Sunday. While marshalling my thoughts for that event I have also been reflecting on the challenges facing citizens on this island and particularly in the southern jurisdiction. The Irish government purports to be republican. There is nothing republican about its policies. It is not about equality or citizens rights. It is a bad government, taking bad decisions, in the interests of its money lender friends in the banks and among the developers. Instead of taxing the wealthy the Irish government is slashing public services and jobs and beating up on the unemployed, the elderly, the children and the sick. There is an urgent need to build opposition to the coalition government, and to the conservative forces in the state. They cannot be allowed to destroy the social fabric of Irish society. What is needed is a new politics delivering and implementing new policies ...

Memories of 69 The Falls area of west Belfast was a very different place in 1969. Then there was a multitude of small back to back red brick houses in row after row of narrow streets. Like many other parts of Belfast they had been constructed in the shadow of the Linen Mills. They housed the workers who slaved under the worst of conditions for the most meagre of wages. Most of those who worked in the Mills were women and children, mostly girls. They started work at 6.30 each morning and worked until 6 pm each night. On Saturday they worked until 12 noon. The quality of life was very bad. Wages were low, disease was widespread, the diet was very poor and the death rate was high. The growth of the city in the 19th century had witnessed an explosion of population with many Catholics traveling in from rural areas, some as far away as the west of Ireland, seeking employment. They were generally to be found employed in the unskilled jobs as navies and general labourers or working in the foun...

WRITE ON MA! This blog wandered into Saint Mary's University College on the Falls Road and through the main exhibitions. All of them are brilliant. That aspect of the Féile goes back to almost the first Féile an Phobail twenty one years ago. Paintings, art work, photographic exhibitions, sculptures, quilts. Every Féile has had unique and very striking examples of the visual arts. Robert Ballagh, a long standing friend of Féile exhibited his remarkable work here. So did Jim Fitzpatrick and many, many others. Some of the exhibitions are of times past. A good example of that this year is the exhibition about Belfast dockers. And there is Gerry Collins Bombay Street photos. And work by irish women artists. There is also an exhibition by the families of the eleven people killed in Ballymurphy between the 9th and the 11th of August 1971 when the British government introduced internment. These families are looking for: • An Independent international investigation examining all of the circ...

Joe McDonnell's grandson Caolan presents the Joe McDonnell Cup to Captain Gary Lennon of Sarsfields 3 Lúnasa 2009 FAIR PLAY. On Saturday afternoon this blog travelled to Saint Teresa’s Club in Belfast to watch the play offs in the Joe McDonnell – Kieran Doherty Football Tournament. Joe and Kieran who died on hungerstrike in the H Blocks in 1981 were Saint Teresa’s men. The very fine playing facility on the Glen Road bears their names, Páirc Mhic Dhomhnaill Uí Dhocartaigh. Each year the club organises a very competitive days sport for Under 16 players in their memory. Fair play to the organisers, the referees and most especially the players and mentors. Joe and Kieran would have enjoyed the day out. They were good Gaels. Joe, a wee bit older and a wee bit smaller than Kieran was a good sportsman, resourceful in a skirmish and inclined to play on the referee’s blind side. But always for the devilment of it. He was not a cynical player. In football or anything else. Doc was a big g...