Skip to main content

BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME.

Image
By

This article comes to you from the USA. It’s an interesting time to be here. The mid-term elections for the Congress; for some Senate seats; and for governorship and state legislatures and a host of other elected positions will be over by the time you get to read this. And you will know the results. But at the time of writing on the eve of the election everyone I have spoken to is focussed on what is going to happen. Will President Trump consolidate his position? Or will he lose out? Will the Democrats take the Congress?
Sinn Féin steadfastly refuses to get involved in the domestic politics of the USA. Our cause here is the cause of Ireland. Of course we oppose many aspects of US foreign policy and I myself have raised these with previous administrations.
As I travel from New York to Nashville to Atlanta and back to New York I am also conscious of the homeless people I see in all these cities and the other signs of poverty sitting starkly alongside affluence. This is a time of political discord here. Perhaps it was always thus but there is an edge to it that wasn’t so obvious during other times that RG and I spent here.
The visits to Nashville and Atlanta were a reconnection with the Irish diaspora there. I got a sliotar from Nashville’s local GAA club. But the highlight of that visit was the meeting with veterans of the civil rights struggle last Saturday morning. We visited the Civil Rights Room in the Nashville Public Library. There I was honoured to meet with two former civil rights leaders Rip Patton and King Hollands. They and around 50 local people had come along to hear me talk about the connections between the Civil Rights Movement in the USA and the Civil Rights Association in the North in the 1960s.
The two civil rights leaders had participated in the famous Woolworths Lunchtime sit ins in 1960 and were among the freedom riders, many of whom were arrested and imprisoned. At that time black citizens were not allowed under the draconian segregation laws to sit at whites only lunch counters. There was also violent opposition to the integration of the interstate transport system. So some courageous women and men, black and white – freedom riders – took to the buses and trains to challenge segregation. Many were beaten and hundreds were imprisoned.
The Civil Rights Room is a time capsule of all of this, including imagery, photographs, and books of that dangerous time. Later I visited the Woolworths building and met up again with Rip and King, and with Judge Richard Dinkins, another veteran of those days. We briefly sat at the lunch counter where almost 60 years ago African American citizens were attacked. Later at a lunch they recounted their experiences of those days, including arrests and assaults, before we sang ‘We shall overcome’ to our surprised guests.
In Atlanta Richard and I visited the ‘Centre for Civil and Human Rights’. The filmed reports of those hard days can be watched on screens, including Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech along with the speeches of others. You can relive the sit-in protests at a lunch counter, by closing  your eyes, and putting on ear phones to  hear shouts of abuse which grows steadily until the voices are shouting and your seat shakes. It’s a very visceral experience.
On Tuesday evening I will address the Friendly Sons and Daughters of St. Patrick’s dinner before heading back to New York for the annual Friends of Sinn Féin New York dinner. This will be our 23rd annual dinner. The first was held on May 10th 1995 in the Essex House Hotel in New York. This year Mary Lou McDonald will be making her inaugural speech as Uachtarán Shinn Féin. I will be introducing her. She will then go on to do the same in Toronto in Canada.
Our party has been well served by the people who organise this key fundraising event, especially the Dinner Committee. We have also been well served by those who have worked with us in north America since Friends of Sinn Féin was established. Ciaran Staunton was our first representative. Followed by Mairead Keane. They did exemplary work. And the indominatable Rita O Hare has represented us diligently and tirelessly since then.
Friends of Sinn Fein has been led by Larry Downes, the founding President and mainstay of the organisation for a very long time. He was followed by the late Jim Cullen and we are now fortunate to have Mark Guilfoyle in that post. They have been ably supported by countless others in cities and states across the USA and Canada – too many to mention – who I have had the great pleasure and honour to work with. I have been uplifted, moved, inspired and encouraged by all of them. And I am confident that they will continue to work closely with Mary Lou as we enter a new phase of struggle, under a new leadership determined to secure Irish unity.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Turf Lodge – A Proud Community

By
This blog attended a very special celebration earlier this week. It was Turf Lodge: 2010 Anois is Arís 50th Anniversary. For those of you who don’t know Turf Lodge is a proud Belfast working class community. Through many difficult years the people of Turf Lodge demonstrated time and time again a commitment to their families and to each other. Like Ballymurphy and Andersonstown, Turf Lodge was one of many estates that were built on the then outskirts of Belfast in the years after the end of World War 2. They were part of a programme of work by Belfast City Corporation known as the ‘Slum clearance and houses redevelopment programme.’ The land on which Turf Lodge was built was eventually bought by the Corporation in June 1956. The name of the estate, it is said, came from a farm on which the estate was built. But it was four years later, in October 1960, and after many disputes and delays between builders and the Corporation, that the first completed houses were handed over for allocation...
2 comments
Read more

Slán Peter John

By
Sinn Féin MP Conor Murphy, Fergal Caraher’s parents, Mary and Peter John, and Sinn Féin Councillors Brendan Curran and Colman Burns at the memorial in South Armagh dedicated to Fergal Caraher It was a fine autumn morning. The South Armagh hilltops, free of British Army forts, were beautiful in the bright morning light as we drove north from Dublin to Cullyhanna to attend the funeral of Peter John Caraher. This blog has known Peter John and the Caraher family for many years. A few weeks ago his son Miceál contacted me to let me know that Peter John was terminally ill. I told him I would call. It was just before the Ard Fheis. Miceál explained to me that Peter John had been told he only had a few weeks left but had forgotten this and I needed to be mindful of that in my conversation. I was therefore a wee bit apprehensive about the visit but I called and I came away uplifted and very happy. Peter John was in great form. We spent a couple of hours craicing away, telling yarns and in his c...
2 comments
Read more

The Myth Of “Shadowy Figures”

By
Mise agus Martin and Ted in Stormont Castle 2018 The demonising of republicans has long been an integral part of politics on this island, and especially in the lead into and during electoral campaigns. Through the decades of conflict Unionist leaders and British governments regularly posed as democrats while supporting anti-democratic laws, censorship and the denial of the rights of citizens who voted for Sinn Féin. Sinn Féin Councillors, party activists and family members were killed by unionist death squads, o ften in collusion with British state forces. Successive Irish governments embraced this demonization strategy through Section 31 and state censorship. Sinn Féin was portrayed as undemocratic and dangerous. We were denied municipal or other public buildings to hold events including Ard Fheiseanna. In the years since the Good Friday Agreement these same elements have sought to sustain this narrative. The leaderships of Fianna Fáil, the Irish Labour Party, the SDLP and...
Post a Comment
Read more