Léargas

This Sunday, August 2 nd , the 2020 National Hunger Strike Commemoration will take place online. Sunday will also be the anniversary of the death on hunger strike of Andersonstown man Kieran Doherty.   The national commemoration for the ten H-Block hunger strikers, as well as for Michael Gaughan and Frank Stagg, who both died in English prisons, takes place each August. However, like so many other events this year Covid-19 has disrupted long established commemorations and organizers have had to go online. I have watched all of the online events and participated in many of them. The organizers are to be commended for their efforts and their ingenuity. They have successfully combined music and song, poetry, news footage of the time, and interviews with friends and relatives to create informative, emotional and uplifting productions. The online events for the hunger strikers have been especially poignant. The memories come flooding back. The Fermanagh South Tyrone by-election and ...

Roger Casement Belfast has a long and proud tradition of opposition to slavery and colonialism. On 8 July we celebrated the birth in 1770 of Mary Ann McCracken a fierce opponent of slavery. She and her brother Henry Joe McCracken, one of the leaders of the 1798 Rebellion, campaigned against slave ships docking in Belfast port. In her late 80s Mary Ann was still a frequent visitor to Belfast docks where she handed out anti-slavery leaflets to those travelling to the USA where slavery still existed. Thomas McCabe, a United Irishman, from the Antrim Road, was another stalwart who opposed slavery and efforts to set up a slave trading company in Belfast. In the 1840s escaped slave Frederick Douglass was warmly received when he toured Ireland speaking about his experience of slavery. He visited Belfast and spoke there. Daniel O Connell was a leading opponent of slavery. This aspect of our history is especially relevant today as more and more people across the world speak out against modern...

There is unanimity of approach among the establishment parties in the Oireachtas when it comes to a referendum on Irish Unity – they are against it. Last week the Taoiseach Micheál Martin ruled out a referendum on a united Ireland because it would be too  ‘divisive’ . In December the Green Party leader Eamon Ryan dismissed calls for a referendum on the same basis. It would be ‘ divisive’ . And not to be outdone the then Taoiseach Leo Varadkar claimed that a referendum would be  ‘divisive’ . Of course, it is partition that is ‘ divisive’ . Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party assert that now is not the right time for a referendum. They also accuse Sinn Féin of seeking an immediate referendum. They are wrong on both counts. In 1998 the people of the island of Ireland voted by 2,119,549 to 360,627 to back the Good Friday Agreement. That overwhelming endorsement included voting for the provision within it to hold a referendum on Irish Unity. How can any Irish government and ...

The Falls Curfew 50 years ago last weekend was a tipping point in modern Irish history.. The previous August (1969) unionist mobs had burned out hundreds of nationalist homes in west and north Belfast, killed and maimed, and forced thousands of families to become refugees living in schools, or with friends and family, strangers who opened their doors for them, or in camps across the border established by the Irish government. The British Army were on the streets. Some nationalists welcomed them as an alternative to the violence of the RUC, B Specials and the unionist gangs. This columnist was not one of those.   Two events changed that perspective. The first was the attack on 27 June 1970 by the UVF and others on the nationalist enclave of the Short Strand in East Belfast. Following the events of August 1969 there had been widespread criticism of the IRAs failure to defend nationalist areas. There was a resulting split in republican ranks over this and political differences about h...

Last  Tuesday republicans buried our friend and comrade Bobby Storey. His death, after a long battle with illness, has left a void in all our lives. Big Bob was a larger than life character. For almost 50 years he was tireless in pursuit of Ireland’s long struggle for freedom. I was honoured and privileged to call him my friend. I want to dedicate this week’s column to his memory. The ideological and political differences between Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have now formally ended. On Saturday last, in the National Convention Centre in Dublin, Micheál Martin finally succeeded in becoming Taoiseach with a Fine Gael Tánaiste. The big spin from all of this is that civil war politics is dead and gone. But the truth is that for most career politicians they have been dead for decades. What we now have from Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael is the same old, same old – with the Green party propping it up. But there is one new significant historical difference. As Micheál Martin takes his place a...