Léargas

Sunday’s Business Post and The Irish Mail on Sunday opinion polls indicate a strong element of discontent with the politics of the two main conservative parties in the South – Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. They are attracting less than 50% of the vote. Despite a succession of polls identifying the same trends – and we should always acknowledge that opinion polls don’t always get it right – RTE has chosen to exclude Sinn Féin President Mary Lou McDonald from its leader’s debate in the last week of the general election campaign. Instead, like Virgin media last week, RTE’s ‘head to head’ will only involve Leo Varadkar and Micheál Martin – two leaders who have been partners in government for the last four years. Both parties published their election manifestos last Friday.  TheJournal.ie reviewed them and concluded that  “there are many ways the parties are broadly similar .” Professor Gail McElroy, from Trinity College Dublin, told TheJournal.ie that...

Recently, after almost three decades as an elected representative - first as a Councillor on Belfast City Council and then in the Assembly – Máirtín Ó Muilleoir announced his decision to step back from the Assembly and from electoral politics. Last Friday night Shinners and friends in south Belfast got together to thank Máirtín for his years of activism and I was pleased to join them. As our first Councillor into Belfast City Council Alex Maskey told how he first met Máirtín when he was an activist during the hunger strike campaign in 1981. He also recounted several very funny stories of Máirtín’s early experience with unionist Councillors who were determined not to treat Sinn Féin Councillors with respect.   When it came my turn I acknowledged Helen, who provided much need support to Máirtín during all of the difficult days. Máirtín is now joining an illustrious band of former Sinn Féin elected representatives including Martin Ferris, Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin, Danny Morrison,...

The national struggle for Irish freedom and independence is centuries old.  Our story is a history of revolts, resistance and uprisings. Ireland is often described as England’s first colony. It is that denial of Irish self-determination; of national sovereignty, that is at the heart of the long continuum of struggle for freedom. Those readers old enough will remember when this part of the island was deeply militarised. When the British were in occu pation of working class republican, urban and rural heartlands. During that time there was an ongoing effort by our opponents to demonise and criminalise and to treat republicans as pariahs. It was classic counter-insurgency – to physically, politically and emotionally break the connection between the freedom fighters and their support base. Most infamously this was attempted with the denial of political status which resulted in the hunger strikes in the 1980s. Sinn Féin put it up to Church hierarchies, political opponents and B...

Mise agus Liz and Mary Lou in Parliament Buildings As I sat in the public gallery at Stormont   last Saturday afternoon, alongside Liz Maskey, Mary Lou McDonald and Bill Groves, I had a birds-eye view of the proceedings in the Assembly chamber below me. The first business of the assembled Members of the Legislative Assembly was to elect a Ceann Chomhairle. I knew that Sinn Féin’s Alex Maskey would get that position, and I thought how fitting it was that his wife, Liz was there. She was the first woman interned in the 1970s. An activist in her own right Liz and Alex’s home was also the target of ongoing attacks by the RUC, British Army and Unionist paramilitaries. Alex was grievously wounded in one such attack and on another occasion, in May 1993, his friend Alan Lundy was a victim of state collusion when he was shot dead in Alex’s living room by a UDA gang. When Alex was first elected in 1983 as a Belfast City Councillor the Unionists refused to talk to him and tried to...

The leaders of the 1916 Rising were identified for Court Martial and Execution by the RIC Last week the Irish government announced a programme of centenary commemorations for 1920, and the events that year which saw an escalation  in the fighting between republican forces and the various British armed agencies – the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP), the Black and Tans, the Auxiliaries and the British Army. Much of the programme will be centred around Cork which witnessed many of the events of that year.  1920 saw the killing of Tomás MacCurtáin and the death on hunger strike of Terence MacSwiney, both Lord Mayors of the City. Other centenary events to be commemorated include the execution of Kevin Barry, Bloody Sunday in Croke Park in November 1920, the Mutiny in India by the Connaught Rangers, and there will be some support for reconciliation projects in the North.  However the decision by the government to hold a commemora...

Floorboards was my friend. Sorry.  Floorboards  is  my friend. As regular readers will know this column doesn’t believe that your friends cease to be your friends just because they die. No, they are still your friends. If a friend goes off to the USA or somewhere else that doesn’t mean they stop being a friend. No. You may not see them again but the friendship doesn’t cease. So with Floorboards. He died last month. All of a sudden. But he is still my friend.   So my solidarity and condolences to Frances and their daughters Joanne and Sarah and their spouses and children, and Joe’s surviving siblings. Frances is a great woman. Joe’s one and only love. Quiet. Warm. Calm. The centre of gravity in Floorboard’s life and the epicentre of the life of their family. I first met Floorboards in Long Kesh. His proper name is Joe Rafter. He is seven or eight years older than me. We invited him into Cage Eleven. He was in solitary in the Punishment C...