Léargas

Today sees the publication of British and Irish government papers that are being released under the 30 year rule. There are hundreds of documents. Some are minutes of meetings involving the then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Others are reports of briefings of unionist politicians by the NIO. Some are letters written by former Taoisigh Charlie Haughey and Garret Fitzgerald and assessments of the political situation at different times in the course of that momentous year. This blog has read some but not all of the papers. Academics, historians and journalists will be poring over the detail of these for months to come and trying to fit the story they tell into what is already known. They deserve the closest scrutiny. There is of course the important health warning. These are government documents, written in their time with the bias of those political systems. So care is needed. The H Block/Armagh prison protest and the hunger strikes were watershed events in recent Irish hist...

Christy Moore is on the CD player. He is away from the island on his Honda 50. The rain is pelting down outside. The wind is whooooshing through the trees out the back. I have sliced the last of Teds ham and made a stew of sorts in a big pot with spuds, garlic, onions, tomatoes, organo, parsnips and carrots. And Teds ham. With meat balls. In the kitchen. And a splash of red wine. Luisne is beside me, in deep conversation with Peppa Pig, courtesy of the internet. Christy doesn’t seem to mind. Neither do I. We are cosy here. Thanks be to God. I used to have a Honda 50 but that’s another story. Christmas was nice. This blog was well looked after. So was the rest of the clann. We are very lucky. I am glad to get the rest. I haven’t seen your man for a wee while. Since before Christmas. Since he left me in Dublin. The next day I went to Drogheda. I wandered along West Street. There is a man who sells organic vegetables from a stall there on Fridays. West Street has a street market on Fri...

The New Year will be as bright as we chose to make it It is amazing the difference a year makes. 12 months ago this blog was the MP for west Belfast. Bar one brief interlude in the 90’s I was humbled and privileged to represent the people of that historic constituency as MP since 1983. I was and still am very attached to west Belfast. It is where I grew up. It’s where I went to school. It’s where as a young boy I played with my friends in the lanes and parks and streets and had wonderful adventures on the Black Mountain. It was where I first witnessed the brutality of sectarianism and the injustice of the northern state. It’s where I discovered republican politics. It’s where my family live. During the 70’s as a republican activist on the run this blog relied on the generosity of many families. I experienced for myself many times the solidarity of the west Belfast community. It was the same with my experience of elections. My first foray into electoralism was in the 1982 Assembly ele...

It’s the last week before the Dáil breaks for Christmas and the New Year. All across this state there are families reeling from the damaging impact of the scrooge-like budget that was delivered by the Irish government last week. Hard choices are being made by parents between presents and food and heat and the mortgage. James Connolly in 1915 in the Workers Republic said: “In the long run the freedom of a nation is measured by the freedom of its lowest class; every upward step of that class to the possibility of possessing higher things raises the standard of the nation in the scale of civilization.” On this basis the Irish Labour Party has abandoned its claim to Connolly’s socialist roots. To its shame the Irish Labour Party has bought into and is helping the conservative Fine Gael party to implement a budget that is severely hurting the low paid, the vulnerable in this society and the lowest class. The outcome of the budget means that lone parents; teachers; the disabled and carers; t...

Carlingford Lough Carlingford Lough with Narrow Water Keep in the foreground Carlingford Lough is a glacial fjord or sea inlet on the East Coast. It lies sandwiched between the Mourne Mountains to the North and the Cooley mountains in the South and is linked in the west through the Clanrye River and Newry canal into south Armagh and beyond. Both the Mournes and Slieve Gullion in south Armagh are designated areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty. This blog has spent a lot of time over the years in the Cooley’s walking the roads and lanes and hills. The people too are tremendous. Friendly and helpful, proud and independent. I am very gratified to represent the Cooley’s which are part of the Louth constituency. Carlingford Lough gets its name from the Vikings. It is a tourist’s dream bursting with geological wonders and historical sites from the Neolithic times. In the mid 9th century two Viking fleets fought a two day battle against each other with the Danish Vikings beating the Norwegian V...

The budget has dominated the news in the south for the last weeks. A series of leaks from Ministers had raised heightened fears around likely budget measures by the government. These fears were entirely justified for those on the receiving end of a series of swingeing cuts and stealth taxes. There is no disguising what has been a savage Budget which leaves struggling families and working people to carry the can for the greed, incompetence and corruption of others. In his broadcast on Sunday evening the Taoiseach talked about fairness and said, “You are not responsible for the crisis”, and then proceeded to make ordinary citizens pay for the greed and corruption of the political elite, the bankers and the developers. As this government has protected the wages and pensions of those at the top of the political system so too has it shielded bankers. Twenty two of the top fifty Anglo Irish Bank executives are still in place and nineteen of them are earning over €175,000 per year. During his...

Last week public sector workers in the north went on strike for one day against an effort by the British Tory Government to force them to pay more in pension contributions and to cut pensions. Sinn Féin supported this action and these workers. There are also many other people without jobs or pension provision who are being attacked by the Tories. And not just in the north. In the south we have our own little Tory government which is also inflicting inequality on citizens. This will be most evident next week when on Monday and Tuesday, our home grown Tories in Fine Gael and Labour will produce their first budget in government. Government statements and a series of planned Ministerial leaks have already given us a good sense of its shape. In addition, to the embarrassment of the government the detail on a two per cent VAT rise was passed to the German Parliament two weeks ago. German Parliamentarians had the opportunity to scrutinise this proposed increase to be announced in the budget b...