Léargas

  Unionist Unity? As the Assembly and Local Government elections loom on 6 May the Democratic Unionist Party, the Ulster Unionist Party and the Traditional Unionist Voice Party are increasingly speaking wistfully of unionist unity; a unionist electoral pact; of electoral co-operation, and of maximising the ‘pro-union vote.’ Last week Jonathan Buckley, a DUP MLA in Upper Bann, called for talks between the three unionist parties on the issue of unionist unity. Calling for unionist unity is easier than delivering it. Unionist unity has long been the holy grail for all shades of unionism going back decades. It has rarely occurred but elections are about winning votes and seats and each unionist party wants to make gains. That can only happen at the expense of their putative allies. Consequently, there are obvious divisions of approach from each. Currently, some want the DUP to crash the Executive by withdrawing Emma Little Pengelly from the Office of First and Deputy First Minister. So...

  Honouring Máire Drumm Last Sunday a series of events took place in South Armagh and in Belfast to remember Leas Uachtarán Shinn Fein Máire Drumm. Máire was shot to death by unionist gunmen in the Mater Hospital in Belfast fifty years ago. One of the Belfast events last weekend was at her grave in Milltown Cemetery. The other was in the grounds of the Roddy McCorley Heritage Centre. Órlaithí Flynn MLA chaired the ceremony and Carál Ní Chuilín MLA gave the main address. Seamus Drumm, Máire’s son, and I planted a tree in her memory. We were joined by George Stagg, brother of Frank Stagg who died on hunger strike in 1976. George was in Belfast for the play about his brother that was performed at the weekend in Ionad Eileen Howell/St. Comgalls. Máire was born Máire McAteer on Kelly’s Road, Killean, on 22 October 1919. It was the year before the British Government of Ireland Act partitioned Ireland.  I was fortunate to have known and admired Máire. She was a remarkable and formida...

  Up the Murph My mother was allocated a house in Ballymurphy in the mid 50’s. It was 11 Divismore Park, at the corner of Glenalina road. At around the same time, Maureen McKee was allocated a house in the same street, 20 Divismore Park. It was just across the street from us. Maureen and Josie ‘Boxer’ McKee had fourteen children. Rosie, Josie, Seamus, Packie, Ned, Martin, Cookie, Anthony, Chick, Delores, Bernie, Maureen, Maggie and Tessie. Big families were the norm in those days, there were 13 of us also. And they like us, came from the Falls. Maureen was from Ton Street, ‘Boxer’ was a boxing coach with the Immaculata Club. He was from Baker Street. Times were hard, Gerard ‘Chick’ McKee remembers six of them lying in their bed with Ned’s feet in his face and coats over them to keep warm. Like my brothers, the McKee boys went to St Aidan’s and later St Thomas’s on the Whiterock Road. Our national poet Seamus Heaney was a teacher in St Thomas’s. So was Michael McLaverty. His wonderf...