Amis Experience

Experience supposedly comes at a cost. The Martin Amis book of the same title was anything but costly. I paid for it the grand sum of £1 on a visit to Belfast. I was about to catch the bus back and did not want to make the journey without something to read. Little choice but to call into one of the city’s well stocked second hand bookshops. It proved a good buy. It kept me going for the southbound journey and Amis is such a good writer. I was a bit surprised that I hadn’t read him prior to that journey. Davy Adams, the Irish Times columnist, had...

Derelict and Delinquent

The men of god have been making the news headlines again. Not for helping the poor, visiting the imprisoned, tending to the sick or anything decent like that. No, for the men of god it is the same old, same old: guided by the holy sperm they are back in the public spotlight for raping the nation’s children.Reports into clerical molestation of children are all too frequent these days. Ferns, Ryan, now Murphy, the latest to remind us that in our midst lurks a malevolent army of rapists blessed before battle by their leading chaplains and absolved...

Long Way Down From London

There are few things that sum up the failure of the Provisional IRA campaign more definitively than the recent call by one of its former leaders for people to inform on those republicans still wedded to the notion of armed struggle. It is not an isolated action but one that slots in neatly to the current mode in Sinn Fein where its key leaders have been taking up positions unimaginable not so many years ago. In some cases people who ordered others executed for informing have been to the fore in urging informers to come forward. If such people do...

Not So Slippery Anymore

When I first heard of David Cook he was grabbing the headlines because he was the first non-unionist Lord Mayor of Belfast since partition. A pretty mundane event these days, but back in 1978 it seemed a radical departure from ‘the way things are done here so know your place.’ It broke the mould even if the mould quickly reset itself for another lot of years. Decades later I met David Cook at a book launch in Belfast and we discussed, in no serious depth, a range of issues. On the few occasions I have met with him since, they have all been at...

Manhandled

It is probably something of a truism to say that the French soccer team handled the World Cup play off against Ireland in Paris on Wednesday better than the Swedish referee. Something of a turnip, the key match official remained rooted to his spot and failed to notice the adroitly administered but illegally executed coup de grace that ensured we won’t be bored by Ireland’s contribution to next year’s World Cup finals in South Africa. Trappatoni’s firm played with heart in Paris but the chances of the team managing to dazzle for any period of time...

Section 44

A former republican prisoner rang me this morning. He sounded angry and gave out about ‘those bastards’ having followed him into the school grounds where he was leaving his daughter off for her day's lessons. Which set of bastards I asked him given that quite a few sets had hassled him over the years for his views. ‘The cops’, he said in exasperation. He has been the subject of cop attention for decades. When he is not in prison the cops seem to spend their time trying to give him extended B & B courtesy of Her Majesty.On this particular occasion...

Irish Unity Comes to Toronto, or Does It?

Today The Pensive Quill carries an article by guest writer Mike Burke on the topic of the Gerry Adams' recent visit to TorontoIrish Unity Comes to Toronto, or Does It? by Mike BurkeOn 7 November, I attended the public forum in Toronto entitled “A United Ireland – How Do We Get There?” featuring Gerry Adams as the keynote speaker. He was joined by a distinguished panel of Canadian and Québécois guests. This forum was one installment of Sinn Féin’s larger project of holding a series of national conversations in Ireland and across the Irish diaspora...

The Deputy.

When is a deputy not a deputy? It is like one of the old riddles we often posed while kids, believing the puzzle to contain some great mystery. The answer on this occasion has more of the ridicule than the riddle about it: the deputy is not a deputy when he is a deputy first minister. When Simon Hamilton of the DUP took the floor at Stormont and referred to Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness as ‘the deputy’, the power disparity in the relationship between the two parties was crystallised in graphic fashion. The Derry politician was said to have ‘visibly...

"We got nothing"

Today The Pensive Quill carries an article by guest writer, blanketman Thomas 'Dixie' Elliott on the topic of the 1981 hunger strike"We got nothing" by Thomas 'Dixie' ElliottThis is an unedited version of what was carried in the Irish NewsI often look back to the time I spent on the blanket protest and feel privileged that I had the honour of spending some of those dark and more often than not, cold and brutal days sharing a cell in the company of Tom McElwee and Bobby Sands. These patriots, like the other brave hunger strikers, dreamt that they...

The Lions Historian?

D-Day: the Battle for Normandy by Antony Beevor. Penguin Viking.Book ReviewHaving, in Spain some years ago, read Antony Beevor’s brilliant account of the battle for Stalingrad, I had no misgivings packing his latest proffering, this time on the Normandy landings by Allied forces in June 1944, for a return journey to the Iberian Peninsula. For the British, taking the beaches of Omaha, Sword, Gold, Juno and Utah, it was Dunkirk reversed; for the Americans it was the beginning of a serious penetration of Europe that would help shape the political...