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Creeslough:
Coming to terms will be so difficult
I know Creeslough well. I have friends who live
there. Outside the village. At both ends. My heart goes out to the families of
the ten people who were killed last Friday. The brave, generous and
determined efforts of neighbours and the emergency services to rescue victims
has been exemplary. It is difficult for anyone to come to terms with the
random awfulness of this disaster, even from a distance. How much more
harrowing and life changing is it for friends and family members? Our thoughts
and prayers are with them all.
Go deanfaidh Dia trocaire oraibh.
Face it Jeffrey: the old days are not returning
Last Saturday’s DUP party conference saw it
behave as unionist parties have usually behaved. Within their own little
bubble.
It’s the same old story. The DUP was established
50 years ago to oppose civil rights. It was openly sectarian. It pledged to
Smash Sinn Féin – and failed - founded its own paramilitary organisations and
set its face against power sharing. It successfully outmanoeuvred its unionist
electoral rivals and emerged triumphant as the largest party in the Assembly.
The largest northern party in Westminster. And an ally and confidant of British
Prime Ministers. It was all going swimmingly.
Until Brexit. The DUPs support for the Brexit
debacle; its willingness to act as a funnel for dark money to bolster the leave
campaign in London, and its desire for a hard border on the island of Ireland,
have all backfired stupendously. Then there was the Renewable Heating Incentive
scandal – with its evidence of gross incompetence and worse within the DUP. Its
unwillingness to operate the power sharing institutions in a good faith way
also led to serial crises.
None of this came as any great surprise to even a
casual observer of unionist politics. From partition the northern state was to
be theirs, to do as they chose. To treat non-unionists as they chose. And some
DUPers believe that’s the way it should still be.
In 1998 as the Good Friday Agreement was endorsed
by the people North and South and opposed by the DUP, I recall warning that there
would be a battle a day getting the Agreement implemented. 25 years later and
the DUP have effectively collapsed the Executive, the power sharing
institutions and the north-south strand of the Agreement. Other key elements of
the GFA remain unrealised, including the Bill of Rights. And the Agreement is
under threat as never before from the most extreme right wing Tory government
since Thatcher.
At the same time the DUP has set aside any
concern for households facing a cost of living crisis made worse by that
party’s adherence to the madness of Brexit. Families are struggling with
increasing bills for oil, electric, gas, and food. As the cold weather arrives
pensioners are facing a stark choice between heat and food.
In the midst of this crisis the Executive is
unable to take decisions on supports which might mitigate for citizens because
of the DUP. It continues to oppose investment in our health system,
rejects marriage equality, resists women’s health rights, and the rights of
Irish speakers.
Jeffrey
Donaldson’s first speech as leader of the DUP last Saturday saw him reiterate
all of this. He said: “Let me be clear – either the Prime Minister delivers the
provisions of the Protocol Bill by legislation or by negotiation and ensures
that our place in the United Kingdom is restored... or there
will be no basis
to re-enter Stormont.” The bold highlights are Jeffrey’s.
Of
course, there has been an electoral cost for the DUP’s obduracy. As a result of
its failure to read the electorate and the paucity of its leadership the DUP is
no longer the largest party in the Assembly nor do the Unionist parties
represent the Assembly majority. Michelle O’Neill is First Minister elect.
There are more nationalist MPs than unionist at Westminster. And in the recent
census 51% of the population self-identified as Irish/northern Irish. They
chose not to identify as British. That figure has dropped to 40%.
Jeffery should be in the Executive and working
with the other parties for the people who vote for the DUP and the rest of us.
Instead it seems he is looking to an Assembly election to restore the DUPs
fortunes and reassert unionist dominance. Mission Impossible my friend. We are
all in this together. The days of unionist domination are over.
Kavanagh’s 'Almost Everything' a
treat
I am a long time fan of Patrick Kavanagh. And a long time
supporter of Claddagh Records. Poet and
writer Patrick Kavanagh was born in rural north Monaghan in 1904. He
left school at the age of 12 and taught himself about literature. He went on to
become one of our leading poets. His early life was steeped in rural
ways. He felt, rightly or not, that there was an intellectual
barrenness to this existence. “Although the literal idea of the peasant is of a
farm labouring person,” he said, “in fact a peasant is all that mass of mankind
which lives below a certain level of consciousness. They live in the dark cave
of the unconscious and they scream when they see the light.” Though his native
area was poor, he felt that “the real poverty was lack of enlightenment,” and
he added, “I am afraid this fog of unknowing affected me dreadfully.”
Nobel Laureate Séamus Heaney was
influenced by Kavanagh. He was introduced to Kavanagh's work by the
writer Michael
McLaverty when they taught together at St Thomas's
School on the Whiterock Road, in west Belfast. Heaney and Kavanagh both
believed that the local could reflect the universal. Heaney said of
Kavanagh: “His instruction and example helped us to see an essential
difference between what he called the parochial and provincial
mentalities". As Kavanagh put it: "All great civilizations are based
on the parish". Kavanagh’s poems include; On Raglan Road, A Christmas
Child. October. In Memory of My Mother. The Great Hunger. Bluebells are for
Love. His novel Tarry Flynn is a gem.
Claddagh Records was founded in 1959 by Garech
Browne and his friend Ivor Browne, to record and popularise our indigenous
music. Claddagh famously brought us The Chieftains alongside other amazing
musicians like Leo Rowstone and Tommy Potts. I still have LPs from
that era. Claddagh also recorded Patrick Kavanagh and other poets, including
Máire Mhac an tSaoi. Now Claddagh Records has launched Patrick
Kavanagh-Almost Everything. It includes Kavanagh himself reading his own work
and reflecting on his life. He is joined by a range of other readers including
Bono, Liam Neeson, Christy Moore, Hozier, Kathleen Watkins, Michael D’, Jessie
Buckley and Sharon Corr. Listening to Kavanagh himself is a special
treat.
Garech Browne and others involved were
visionaries. He planned for a revival of Claddagh Records and hoped before his
death for the rerelease of some of its albums which were in storage at that
time. He said “ I would like the recordings to be available to anyone
interested in Irish music, poetry and the written word. They are no good to
anyone where they are now.”
I am delighted that Claddagh has been relaunched.
I am looking forward to the publication of a history of Claddagh Records which
Garech Browne was involved with.
James Morrissey, Chairperson of Claddagh Records
is centrally involved in these very positive and welcome initiatives. Claddagh
have secured a licensing deal with Universal Music Ireland. In
an interview with Siobhan Long in The Irish Times Morrissey says the aim is to
make Claddagh’s catalogue available everywhere. This is great news. So is the
release of Patrick Kavanagh’s Almost Everything. I have often thought that the
best way to understand poetry is to read it aloud. Thanks to Claddagh we can
now have one of our finest poets, Patrick Kavanagh, doing that for us. If you
want to see what’s available check out the link at:
https://claddaghrecords.com/collections/merchandise
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