Léargas

  Verbal Disorder When I was younger I used to have a stammer. I don’t know what age I was. Somewhere between seven and ten perhaps. A youngster ! I grew out of my speech impediment, and I have very little recollection of my stammering phase but I was reminded of it when I was on the phone to a friend in Ard Oifig in Dublin last week. . For no apparent reason   she told me that she sometimes has a stammer when she is on the phone.  “It isn ’ t obvious” I told her.   And it wasn ’ t.  “Its a nervous thing” she went on “it also happens   the odd time when I’m at a meeting and it ’ s coming to my time to speak. I sometimes get anxious and my stutter starts. Just as I begin to make my contribution.” I told her about my childhood stammer.  “ You will grow out off it , ” I said reassuredly. “I knew a guy in jail and he had an awful stoppage but he could sing like Tony Bennett. No sign of any impediment when he was leading us in   a singso...

  Presidential Vote is constitutional requirement   In a historic vote in the Assembly last week its members overwhelmingly passed by 46 votes to 25 - a motion calling on the Irish government to implement the recommendation of the 2013 Constitutional Convention on the Constitution to extend “the right to vote in elections for President of Ireland to all Irish citizens on the island of Ireland.” The reality of course is that successive Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael governments have deliberately refused to implement this recommendation despite having 12 years to do so. The right of Irish citizens to vote in Presidential elections has been a constant campaign issue for Sinn Féin and many others since the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. Article 2 of Bunreacht na hÉireann states: “It is the entitlement and birthright of every person born in the island of Ireland … to be part of the Irish nation. That is also the entitlement of all persons otherwise qualified in accordance with law...

  Swinger  I spent the last week in Dublin in the Four Courts as part of the outworking of my case against the BBC’s Spotlight programme nine years ago. But more of that when it’s over which could take another fortnight. On the morning that the case started our Gearóid phoned me to say that his father-in-law Paddy ‘Swinger’ McBride was dead. The news was a great shock. I had spent a half hour or more a few days before chatting with Paddy in his home. He was just out after a spell in hospital, and although he was ill his spirit was strong and he was full of craic and talk about the current politics, his son Patrick’s Man of the Match performance for Antrim against Armagh, the need to build Casement and how a son of Tony Benn could behave the way Hillary Benn does. “Principled politics skips a generation sometimes,” I said. “Aye’” he remarked in a Ballymurphy sort of way. “A Typical Brit”. That was Paddy. Or Swinger to all his old friends. A Murph man through and th...

  Statue of Bobby Sands to be unveiled On May 4 at 3pm, a statue of Bobby Sands will be unveiled in the Republican Memorial Garden in Twinbrook, where Bobby lived. The organisers of the event, all local republican activists and all inspired by the courage and self-sacrifice of Bobby and his comrades, have worked hard over recent years to raise the funds for the statue. Former hunger striker Pat Sheehan who spent 55 days on the 1981 hunger strike will speak about Bobby and his comrades who died. There will also be a Bobby Sands Mountain Walk that morning and the annual Bobby Sands lecture will be given that evening by Pat Sheehan in the Andersonstown Social Club. Bobby was the first of ten republican hunger strikers to die during the H-Block hunger strike of 1981. He died on May 5. The others were: Francis Hughes; Raymond McCreesh; Patsy O’Hara; Joe McDonnell; Kieran Doherty TD; Kevin Lynch; Martin Hurson; Tom McElwee; and Mickey Devine. Nor should we forget Michael Gaughan 19...