Léargas

‘It’s all over bar the voting’ said Your Man. That’s the most important part of the exercise – the people voting. We are in Drogheda. It’s a nice day. It is also the peoples day. Tomorrow the process of counting the votes will begin. Some results may not be known until Monday but the general shape of the next Dáil – the 31st Dáil - will emerge quickly. It’s been an exhausting, informative, and at times very enjoyable election campaign. This blog wants to thank all of those from far and near who expressed their support and solidarity to me on my travels around Louth and the rest of the state. Some directly on the streets and up the long lanes and byways and some via facebook, blog and email. Go raibh maith agaibh uilig. One of the memorable moments of the campaign for this blog was in the course of a debate on LMFM radio – that’s Louth Meath FM radio for the non locals – when this blog said that the southern state wasn’t a real republic. The other candidates began jumping up and down ...

As Fridays General Election approaches this blog was reflecting on other elections and in particular on next Tuesday’s, March 1st, 30th anniversary of the commencement of the 1981 hunger strike in which ten Irish republican prisoners died. That year was a defining one in recent Irish history for all sorts of reasons, and elections north and south played a major part in the campaign in support of the prisoners and had huge implications for the future. This blogs first experience of elections was shoving election literature into envelopes for the republican candidate Billy McMillan in 1964 when this blog was still at school. However the first election in which I had an organisational and leadership role was when my friend and comrade Bobby Sands, who had begun his hunger strike on March 1st, was nominated at the end of that month to fight the Fermanagh South Tyrone seat after the sudden death of Frank Maguire. For the duration of that campaign this blog and other activists criss-crossed...

The general election in the south of Ireland has entered its final week. This blog has tramped the byways and streets and lanes in many previous campaigns in this part of the country, including in local government, EU referendum and Dáil elections. Many years ago I campaigned in Louth when Paddy Agnew was the H-Block candidate and more recently for Arthur Morgan. But this is my first time as a candidate. Consequently the perspective is quite different. This blog is also used to drawing the fire of political opponents and others. That goes with the territory. But this time it took on an added intensity. Probably because as the FFers and Labour have been squeezed in the opinion polls – and this blog doesn’t take any great interest in such polls – they have each become increasingly desperate to prevent their votes slipping away toward Sinn Féin. This is one reason why Micheál Martin decided to let loose on this blog on the issue of the IRA. Elements of the media joined in also. Regular ...

There has been an avalanche of exposes in recent years of scandals in Church and state. Clerical sex abuse, the mistreatment of children in the industrial school system and the failure of the state to prevent all of this and to protect victims, has caused great distress. Citizens have been bombarded by tragic accounts of children whose childhood was brutally stolen by predatory clerics, and of vulnerable adults, especially young girls and women reduced to the status of slaves in some Catholic Church institutions. As the Ryan Report revealed great hurt was inflicted in the name of social conformity and religious doctrine. The Irish state was complicit in this. But the Catholic Church was not the only Church which ran institutions, in association with the state, and which abused children and adults. Niall Meehan, an academic researcher from Griffith College in Dublin has written extensively about the horrifying litany of abuse which took place in Bethany Home in Rathgar, in south Dublin,...

Despite the intensity of the general election campaign this blog has been watching the extraordinary events unfolding each day in Egypt. It has been a remarkable journey which culminated in the downfall of President Hosni Mubarak. Who would have thought it? A few weeks ago there seemed little evidence of dissent within Arab states about the absence of democracy. And then in January, in Tunisia, one person, an angry, unemployed young man Mohammed Bouazizi, burned himself to death. He was protesting at the dire economic conditions in his country and the dictatorship of President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. Weeks of protests and many more deaths led to the toppling of the regime after 23 years in power. Ben Ali fled the country. The media reporting of this, including the televising of images all across the Arab world of thousands of people on the streets, and of riot police and secret police beating and killing protestors, galvanised opinion in Egypt. In addition an internet campaign in Egyp...

This blog has written to the British Secretary of State, Owen Patterson setting my view of the review he is conducting into 5050 recruitment of the PSNI. The concern of this blog is that he is doing this at the behest of the unionist parties who have stridently opposed 50:50 from the outset. Given Patterson’s close links to the unionist parties and his efforts to construct a unionist electoral pact prior to the last Westminster election between the UUP, DUP and Orange Order, these concerns are justified. Policing reform was one of the great challenges of the peace process. It took years of hard work and very difficult negotiations to get republicans and nationalists to the point that we could feel confident about endorsing the policing arrangements. One of the key elements of the new arrangements was 50:50 recruitment. This is an affirmative action programme in the recruitment of the policing service. It has its roots in the Good Friday Agreement 1998 which set as the goal for polic...

‘Lá Feile Brigid faoi mhaise duit’ I said to your man. We were up in the low hills above Ravensdale with Jim Loughran the local Sinn Féin councillor. Jim is a wise man. This is his home patch. It is very beautiful. He knows every inch of it and every body in it. ‘Happy Saint Brigids Day’ I repeated to your man. ‘To you too mo chara’ he replied. ‘Brigid was a mighty woman’ I said. ‘we don’t know near enough about her. Today is the first day of Spring. The Celts marked February 1st as the festival of Imbolc. It announced the arrival of new life. A turning point in the Celtic year. February was the Mí na Féile Bríde. The month of the Festival of Brigid’. ‘That’s a terror’ Jim . They say that a lot around these parts. At least that’s what it sounds like. A terror. Or it could be a tarra. Anyway terror or tarra this blog hasn’t a notion about what it means. There was a friend of mine in New York who was coming home last year to visit his ancestral home in the Louth/Armagh border countr...

It was bitter cold in Derry on Sunday for the Bloody Sunday march. There were thousands of people there in solidarity with the families and in celebration of the lives of those killed and injured almost four decades ago. It was a poignant and emotional day for many people. The families of those murdered have decided that this will be the last Bloody Sunday march. So, Sunday was about completing the journey begun in the Creggan in January 1972. Bloody Sunday was a turning point in Irish history and a personal crossroads for many thousands of men and women. This blog wants to commend and congratulate the families of the 14 who were killed and those who were injured, their friends and neighbours, the citizens of Derry and the countless others around the world who together, courageously and relentlessly campaigned for truth and for justice for the victims. Their efforts made the Saville Inquiry possible and its report published last June represents a huge achievement. It was an extraordina...