Felon Setting

Tony Catney is a former republican prisoner. He served a life sentence for an action carried out while a republican activist in 1974. I initially met him at the tail end of my first jail term. He arrived in Cage F of Magilligan Prison in the closing months of 1975, shortly after he was sent down and just a matter of days before I was due for release. Like a minority in the IRA our first acquaintance with prison life took place at the tender age of 16. Over the years I got to know him very well. We became and remain firm friends despite as far back...

Catholic Politicians

In recent days a comment appeared on the Pensive Quill in response to the article ‘Wrong Tune’. The poster, ‘Starry Plough’, manages a promising blog, Sinn Fein Keep Left. While constructed from the perspective of someone who feels Sinn Fein can still deliver the goals that initially defined it, the blog has survived the howls of those who protest the washing of dirty linen in public. Soiled linen is anything that does not depict the leadership in halos. Keep Left is a brave attempt to swim against the tide of party orientation which would readily...

The 20th of July

Glancing at my watch while travelling this morning, today’s date leapt out at me stirring memories from the days when I could still out sprint a British soldier, well apart from the one that caught me in an alleyway between Cooke Street and Lavinia Street in the Lower Ormeau Road. While a teenager in Magilligan Prison in 1975 I picked up a book by the German writer HH Kirst. Its title was simple: The 20th of July. It was a novelised account of the plot against the life of Adolf Hitler and its eventual unsuccessful execution, carried out by Colonel...

Wrong Tune

There is undoubtedly a serious problem in North Belfast around the Billy Boys longing to be ‘up to our neck in Fenian blood, surrender or you die’, which is not going to be resolved by shooting at cops, stoning obnoxious parades, rioting or the myriad of other forceful measures employed against Orange encroachment. For all the commitment of those determined to use them, armed actions have demonstrably failed to prise one British finger away from the North. Nor, in a more localised context, are armed republicans going to find themselves treated...

Infected

At times there have been journalists brazen enough to claim that they would withhold reporting on anything that might prove damaging to the peace process. This never failed to strike me as having blurred the distinction between journalist and player. Eroding that crucial demarcation through withholding information is probably an infrequent act. A more common method is in the way a story is reported. I have no doubt that this type of activity is done for good reason, but not a good journalistic reason.The sense that Sinn Fein is undergoing some...

Going To Seed

Shots fired on the police in Belfast, themselves armed with the latest weaponry available from the British government; republicans manhandled and dragged from their homes screaming abuse at their captors and about those former prisoners they alleged were responsible for orchestrating the arrests; serious rioting confronted with the politics of condemnation from the mouths of Catholic politicians, many of whom were one time rioters and worse.The British sociologist Frank Burton back in the 1970s conducted extensive serious academic research in Ardoyne....

Tramplers

To speak of the Orange Order in the opening decade of the 21st century conjures up all kinds of images in the popular mind. Usually, images of confrontation and violence, as the institution is perceived to want to walk where they are not wanted – Brian Kennaway.Rioting in Ardoyne. Hardly news, we have heard it too often to be shocked by it. Yet, paradoxically, it is very much newsworthy. That riots should be continuing there long after the supposed emergence of a new dispensation around a very old bone of contention provides substance to those...

Forward to the Rear

The irony not to be missed is that 99.99% of the thousands who feel offended and demonstrate had never even SEEN the Danish caricatures - Slavoj Žižek Yesterday along with my wife, I met up with two long term friends from the British Left. We all went out for a few pints together. The drink flowed. I stuck to the cider, my wife preferred something with a greater blend of flavours – Malibu and Coke – but being visitors to Ireland our two friends made the statutory reach for the dark stuff. Guinness, it hardly needs to be pulled, having a pulling...

Patron Saint of Eegits

In Dublin today Atheist Ireland held its inaugural AGM. I only found out about it this morning, had other things planned so, regrettably, was unable to attend. I am not a member but the public was invited anyway. There are meetings of humanist associations all the time and although a member of the Rationalist Association it would never occur to me to turn up at one of its meetings. However, in Ireland events this week have led me to believe that bodies like Atheist Ireland which are campaigning groups need solidarity from others of like mind or...

Prison Brutality

Last year I and another former prisoner found ourselves speaking to a British official at a conference in England. We had no particular agenda. He was a strong Sinn Fein supporter, something I am not, and we were exchanging views with the official over drinks, which is what happens at such events. We talked about the history of prison from a republican perspective. We ventured the opinion that the British state should apologise for its behaviour which led to the hunger strike.In turn the official expressed the view to us that a written history...

Murmurs of Dissent

For the second June in succession we journeyed deep into the Cooley Mountains to assemble at the final resting place of Brendan Hughes. I brought my daughter with me. Along with Tommy McReynolds and myself, Brendan drank the night away on the day she was born in his favourite haunt, the Oasis, in Distillery Street. Friends picked us up a few miles from the mountains and we made our first stop at a pub where I sampled the cider and met others who were there for the same reason – Brendan’s memory,...

On a Train with Yeats

It was not the discussion surrounding William Butler Yeats on the anniversary of his birth a few weeks ago that prompted me to pick up this book about him. Over a year ago I hurriedly pushed it into my bag before setting out for a train journey with my daughter. It was small and light but not too short that I would be left with nothing to read before the train shuffled into its destination. But even the best laid plans are said not to survive first contact with the enemy. The enemy on this occasion was a malfunctioning rail system causing a delay...

Costly Speech

In matters of branches of the state launching an assault on the protection of sources providing information which helps enhance public understanding in Northern Ireland much recent media attention has focussed on the case of journalist Suzanne Breen. The Northern editor of the Sunday Tribune two weeks ago won a landmark decision in the courts against a police force determined to gain access to information it had no right to obtain.Of equal importance to the protection of sources and free inquiry is the case of another figure in public life. This...

The Story Of Ireland

Fergal Keane is one of the great journalists to have worked in the Foreign Affairs section of the British media. His reportage of Africa in particular leaves a searing mark on the memory. His very human story in his powerful memoir All of these People on Valentina, a young girl who survived the Rwandan genocide despite being hacked with a machete by a Hutu Power thug, is a moving testimony to the power of his observation and depth of his empathy. In his book Seasons of Blood a palpable sense of fear is emitted from its pages, confirming that Keane...