Léargas

The news was about the weather. Blizzards and icy winds. Up to 20 inches of snow expected. Roads covered in black ice and the mercury dipping ever further. But still they came. The main hall in the Westenra Hotel in Monaghan Town was packed. Standing room only. As Jackie Crowe the Mayor of Monaghan said ‘this issue of uniting Ireland is too important for us to allow a little bit of snow and cold to deter us.’ ‘Bridging the Border-Reconnecting Communities’ is aimed at highlighting the problems pressing down on border communities. Many of these communities are separated and isolated from their natural hinterlands as a result of partition. This leads to economic and social hardships along that corridor. The Bridging The Border project will collate views from a wide spectrum of public and community opinion. These engagements with business and voluntary and community bodies, with rural communities and statutory agencies, will be led by our Mayors/Chairs within each council area. Sinn Féin...

This blog comes from the count centre at Stranorlar in County Donegal. Senator Pearse Doherty is about to be declared the new Teachta Dála for Donegal South West. Everybody here knows that. But before it becomes a reality the votes have to be counted. The place is buzzing. Over a hundred members of the media – some say as many as 153 – including many international media, are in attendance. This day has been a long time coming for some of the old timers. For decades they have been tramping up and down the highways and byways of this constituency arguing for republican politics and a united Ireland. Last time round in 2007 Pearse hit the cross bar. So too did Padraig McLaughlin in the adjoining Donegal constituency. The two of them narrowly missed out winning seats. But a by-election is a different creature. It’s even harder to win. This blog never doubted that we would be successful. There’s a great team here. There wouldn’t be a by-election at all if Pearse and Sinn Féin hadn’t gone t...

Almost 30 years ago the late Tom Cahill came to me with an idea for a unique and innovative project for west Belfast. Tom proposed that Conway Mill, which was then lying derelict, should be leased and turned into a community enterprise project providing education, self-help and local employment opportunities. Tom deserves great credit for his vision and foresight. A small businessman himself he could legitimately have developed the Mill in his own interests. I don’t think that even entered his head. Toms interest was in this community and its citizens. A management committee was organised which included many well known local republican and community activists, including Frank Cahill, Fr. Des Wilson, Liam Burke, Alfie Hannaway, Jimmy Drumm, Jean McStravick, Sean O’ Neill, Tom Cahill & Colm Bradley. The objective was to promote small indigenous economic enterprises. The committee was also keen to encourage adult education and establish an education programme that would supplement the...

This blog’s big achievement is to use the laptop in the back of the car while your man just about manages to keep us between the ditches as we wind our way through the highways and byways of Donegal South West in pursuit of a Dáil seat and the only candidate capable of taking it off the government, Senator Pearse Doherty. Today it is raining. In a way that only the rain in Donegal can rain. Yesterday was beautiful. In a way that only Donegal rain can be beautiful. It’s the light your man says and I can but agree. Even the rain has its own beauty. This is my kind of landscape. Hills and glens and mountains and rivers and lakes and deserted lonely beaches and magical sea scapes and big skies. And my kind of people. There is great spirit here. Especially in the Gaeltacht. That’s the good thing about elections. This blog gets to meet all kinds of inspiring people in the course of my work. But during an election and the compressed days of hyper activity that this involves, good and wo...

This blog comes to you from Donegal South West. I came here by way of Kerry which is a long way to travel even by Sinn Féin standards, but Steve MacDonogh my friend and publisher’s funeral was in Dingle. So I went there on Saturday. On the long way up the West afterwards someone told me that Sunday was the anniversary of the original Bloody Sunday when the Black and Tans gunned down 14 civilians in Croke Park. Luke Kelly Then I read that last Wednesday had been the late Luke Kelly’s birthday. He would have been seventy. Luke was a wonderful balladeer. His version of Dirty Old Town, Scorn Not His Simplicity, ASong For Ireland, and Raglan Road are unsurpassed. He also wrote Why Died The Sons of Roísín , a prophetic poem given the events this week in Ireland. This is my version of it gender proofed but otherwise unchanged. For What Died the Daughters and Sons of Róisín, was it fame For What Died the Daughters and Sons of Róisín, was it fame For what flowed Irelands blood in rivers, Th...

Alice Milligan While on hunger strike in 1981 Bobby Sands asked if we could get him some of the poems of Alice Milligan. Bobby was in the prison hospital. It was very difficult to fulfil Bobby’s request but due to the diligence of our friend Tom Hartley, that great magpie of our struggle, a small hardback book of her poems was liberated and sent into the H Blocks. Bobby was delighted. I’m sure Alice Milligan would have been delighted also. Many moons later Dr. Catherine Morris, who is now the Cultural Co-ordinator for National Library Ireland and Trinity College Dublin, wrote an article on Alice Milligan. She was researching a book. This blog wrote to her and told her this story. On Wednesday I was invited by Catherine to go to the National Library for a preview of an exhibition on Alice Milligan. It’s entitled ‘Alice Milligan and the Irish Cultural Revival’. Her exhibition is an impressive, informative and hugely fascinating account of a remarkable woman whose significant contribution...

Steve MacDonogh This blog is deeply saddened and shocked by the death of my friend and publisher Steve MacDonogh. My thoughts are with his family, particularly Meryem and their baby Lilya, his mother Barbara, sister Deirdre, and brother Terry, and the extended MacDonogh family. Condolences also to Máire and all who work at Brandon. Steve was a well loved and very decent Irish man. He ran a hugely successful, pioneering and progressive publishing business, Brandon from Daingean, Co. Kerry. Steve was deeply committed to free speech and against censorship, he campaigned in support of Salman Rushdie on the one hand and against the secrecy of the British state on the other. He breached the repressive ethic on this island at the time when he first published my writing in the early 1980’s. This blog learned a lot from him in the years since then and he has published twelve of my books.Brandon authors include Alice Taylor, whose “To School Through the Fields” sold more than any other book in I...

‘You’re mad!’ your man said. ‘What do you mean I’m mad?’ ‘Going to Louth – abandoning the people of west Belfast. It’ll all end in tears.’ ‘Well’ I said, ‘When you talk the talk you also have to walk the walk. The country’s in a mess. People are crying out for leadership and a way to regain our sense of ourselves’. ‘And you think you can do something about that? Who’s going to represent west Belfast?’ ‘The people will sort that out. And I’m not leaving west Belfast. I’m standing down from my public responsibilities here. But this is where I live. It’s where Colette and our family live. It’s my community. It’s where my church is, my GAA club, my county.’ ‘So, you think you’re going to get elected in Louth?’ ‘Well, that’s the intention. There’s no guarantees. Wee Arthur is a hard act to follow. And it is a challenge. Luk, Sinn Féin is the only all-island party. There are two different sets of policy position, currencies, political establishments because of partition. But the problems are...

This blog gets invitations to attend all sorts of events. Regrettably time and a busy schedule does not always permit me to accept. But on Friday I travelled to the Visitors Centre at Phoenix Park in Dublin to open a new exhibition by Eve Parnell. It was a very enjoyable event. Eve and her mother and father were very welcoming. And it was about trees. And as regular readers of this blog will know I have a great fondness for trees. ‘The Act of Enclosure’ is an exhibition of pencil drawings of trees on paper. They are remarkable and captivating images of trees which offer another view of the natural world and recognise and celebrate the beauty, strength and presence of trees. Every autumn this blog gathers up seeds and plant them. You can pick them up everywhere. Ash and acorns and Beech and sycamore. This blog has collected seeds from the Falls Park, the Belfast Hills, as well as farther flung places like Aras an Uachtaran and Chequers, the White House and Downing Street and other grea...

Dealing with the past and the issue of truth recovery arising from the conflict has become increasingly fraught. This is largely down to the failure of the British government to face up to this issue in a way that provides victims with the best opportunity to achieve truth. Regular readers will know this blog facilitated a meeting between the Ballymurphy Massacre families and the British Secretary of State Owen Paterson at the beginning of October. The families want truth and an international independent investigation. And like the Omagh families who met Paterson two weeks earlier, they left dissatisfied with the British government response. A Sinn Féin delegation also did a meeting with Paterson to discuss how the issue of the past and of truth recovery can best be dealt with. Our meeting was one of a series Paterson was doing with all of the parties as the British government prepares to set out its position on the Eames Bradley report sometime in the new year. Regrettably the fort...

This blog is high in the night sky on a plane bound from Pittsburgh to New York. Your man and me left Ireland on Tuesday on a long haul that had us travelling for over twenty two hours before we arrived at our first stop in the tidy town of Meadville, Pennsylvania. Bed thankfully beckoned and we collapsed, separately - though that’s none of your business - into jetlagged but much needed slumber. The next morning breakfast or what passed for breakfast in our accommodation, put your man in thoroughly bad form. ‘There’s no porridge’ he declared. ‘They call it oatmeal here’ I reminded him. ‘Well there’s none of that either’ he retorted. And he was right. Poor coffee in paper cartons. Multi coloured cereals, Cheerios, in polystyrene bowls. Mixed fruit. Plastic knives, forks and spoons. A machine for making waffles. ‘Remind me not to come here again’ your man grumped. ‘Maith go leor’ I said as I munched my way through the plastic fodder and hoped that he would get into bett...

Press Conference by Ballymurphy Families about submission to Attorney General On Friday morning this blog travelled down to Belfast City centre for a brief meeting with the Attorney General. My purpose was to hand over to him two large folders containing information gathered by the families of the Ballymurphy Massacre which are the bulk of a submission being made to the Attorney General asking him to hold new inquests into the deaths of their loved ones. The Ballymurphy Massacre happened 40 years ago next year. As regular readers will know in the 36 hours after the introduction of internment in August 1971 eleven people - ten men, including a local priest and a mother of eight children - were killed by the British Army’s Parachute Regiment in the Ballymurphy area. The accounts of how the 11 died bears a striking similarity to the stories told by the Bloody Sunday families. On Friday evening one local television news channel carried old black and white footage of the Henry Taggart Briti...