Catherine Pollock, Catherine Cooke and Alison Wallace in Derry We must listen to each other Efforts by the British government and the unionist parties to stymie the conversation on future constitutional change has actually brought a greater focus on the growing momentum around the upcoming unity referendum. The criticism of An Taoiseach Leo Varadkar by the British Secretary of State and a range of unionist voices for daring to suggest that a United Ireland will happen in his lifetime is the latest example of unionist and Tory efforts to delegitimise the goal of Irish Unity. In their view it is not acceptable to promote Irish Unity. This is presented by them as dangerous and destabilising and is criticised and condemned with contempt. The intention is to create a row so that United Irelanders will be quiet and to misrepresent republican and nationalist aspirations as second class. Nonsense, bluster and feigned outrage will not stop the conversation about...
Posts
Mid Ulster MP Francie Molloy at Lough Neagh Lough Neagh facing an ecological disaster Up the Shore i The lough will claim a victim every year. It has virtue that hardens wood to stone. There is a town sunk beneath its water. It is the scar left by the Isle of Man. ii At Toomebridge where it sluices towards the sea They’ve set new gates and tanks against the flow. From time to time they break the eels’ journey And lift five hundred stones in one go. iii But up the shore in Antrim and Tyrone There is a sense of fair play in the game. The fishermen confront them one by one And sail miles out and never learn to swim. Iv ‘We’ll be the quicker going down,’ they say. And when you argue there are no storms here, That one hour floating’s sure to land them safely – ‘The lough will claim a victim every year.’ Seamus Heaney’s poem, published in 1969, captures much of what makes Lough Neagh unique. It has long been a place of myth an...
Time to say Yes to Palestinian State Last week the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin visited Israel, the West Bank and Jordan. It was an opportunity for the Irish government to take a firm stand against Israeli aggression and its apartheid system of governance. Instead Mr. Martin became little more than a commentator on the ongoing and worsening crisis in that region. While Mr. Martin was occasionally critical in his public remarks of the expansion of Israeli settlements into Palestinian land and concerned at the daily attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinian homes and families there was little of substance to his visit. With Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu making clear there would be no change in Israeli policy and his government’s veto over any possibility of viable negotiations toward a peace agreement, it needs more than meaningless rhetoric from An Tánaiste. It needs action from the Irish government to give peace a chance. Three month...