Gerry Bradley

You have to ask yourself - are they (the leadership) the only ones allowed to write books? Is history never to be recorded properly? It's no coincidence that Gerry felt compelled to write his book. And bear in mind, Gerry Bradley put no one in prison - Richard O’Rawe.

As each year closes it opens up a space in which to reflect on those who took their leave of us in the one about to face the final curtain. On the last day of 2010 my thoughts were on the late IRA activist Gerry Bradley who ended his own life in October. Tomorrow morning when Gerry Bradley’s children wake up it will be the first year ever that they have stepped into without him. That is how final it is.

Gerry Bradley is someone I never got to meet in person or speak to. I feel the less fulfilled for that. Like most others who travelled on the circular Provisional journey from old partition to new partition, I knew of him. It was hard not to. His formidable reputation as one of the IRA’s more efficient operators travelled before him. I was in the public gallery in Belfast's Crumlin Road Courthouse the day he was sentenced for his part in an operation against a top RUC commander. I was friendly with two of his co accused and went to the court, where I had so often stood handcuffed in previous years, just to be there for them.

I thought at the time it took a lot of commitment to be doing what he was doing at his age and twenty plus years into his IRA career. So many others had found safe niches in the ‘don’t go to jail departments.’ How many who joined the IRA in 1970 were coming into jail in 1994?

I first found myself writing about Gerry Bradley when he published a book detailing his life in the IRA. In the wake of publication he quickly found himself subject to the hostility of people who thought that books were something to be burned rather than read. Although I had not yet read his book it irked that a writer should be hounded. I could instantly identify with him and, so, wrote in support of him.

When I did get around to reading Insider: Gerry Bradley’s Life in the IRA, which he co wrote with Brian Feeney, I was pleased to discover that it was a great read. It was an IRA book, written by an IRA activist with an IRA frame of mind. There was no guff in it nor was it the self serving fictionalised account of a life long peace activist. It was a no-frills IRA book, raw without being raucous. The effort that went into it fitted with the description later provided to me by someone who knew both he and his family well: ‘a very wise man who was sharp and shrewd and although he had little or no schooling, once the conflict started, he was extremely intelligent.’

Unfortunately, as the former IRA hunger striker Gerard Hodgins pointed out,

Gerry Bradley's mistake was he wrote a book without going to them and asking their permission … If you wanted to write a book, they would expect to be presented with a copy for them to censor before it goes to publication.

The ‘them’ Hodgins referred to was the Provisional leadership, some of who put out a lot of books lacking in the candour featured in the work of Gerry Bradley.

As he was soon to find out the journey from Insider to Outsider can be one that covers a lot of ground in extra quick time. When Gerry Bradley became the outsider what he was forced outside of was a shrinking group of people who shared a weird belief system despite an abundance of evidence that had long punched holes in it. There was no end to partition or British rule. Ireland United was the stuff of poetry not life in Belfast. Gerry Bradley knew it and said as much. His outsider status did not mean however, that he stepped outside either his circle of genuine friends or the love of his family. They all remained intensely proud of him. They have every reason to. His children, whom he was intensely proud of in turn, were harried into education by him. At his insistence each of them stayed on at school. He instilled socialist values in them and urged them to look after each other no matter what. I guess that helped get them through the trauma of his death.

Gerry Bradley was a strong and determined man but succumbed to despair in large part because as an ex-combatant his intense combat activity had ultimately resulted in very little substantive change. A person who knew him well framed his state of mind at the time of his death in that experience.

if this could happen to him it could happen to anyone. I'm looking at the faces of ex-prisoners and volunteers and I see the same despair there. I didn't notice it to the same extent before, although I knew it was there on some level.

Said to be a very private person there was, in spite of some sensationalised headlines, little room for marvel at his decision to have his wake and funeral a strictly family affair. He had a disdain for the wider funeral industry in which he saw people out of pocket trying to cover the costs of death insertions in papers and who struggled to ‘buy over priced flowers that would wilt and die within days.’ Nor had he any wish for IRA trappings. For long he had carried the IRA and did not need it to carry him on his last journey.

At no point did Gerry Bradley regret writing his memoir. He took the precaution of seeking legal advice before it was published. Not for his own sake but to ensure that no-one would ever go to court or even be questioned because of it. As his fellow hounded writer, the irrepressible Richard O’Rawe stated, ‘Gerry Bradley's book resulted in no one doing a minute in jail.’

Yet, as someone he confided in explained, he regretted the pain unintentionally caused to his friends ‘who got hurt after reading the press around it before they actually read the book. That was never his intention. He wanted to pay homage of sorts to them.’

And pay homage he did. Not that the idiots, the intimidators, the whisper weasels, the Johnny Come Lately types could discern anything like that. They who fired many liquid shots down their throats for the IRA but no lead ones elsewhere, all queued up to smear Gerry Bradley as a tout. As persuasive as labelling the Pope a protestant. So impotent was their rage that they were denied the braggadocio that would have gone with claiming they drove him to end it all. Their smearing, vicious and squalid as it was, had no input into his death. Gerry Bradley was determined that this life was no longer for him. He did not end his life because of the fall out over his book. As was concisely explained to me, ‘he simply wanted to write his book before he died.’ His mind was made up.

For his decision to write we remain grateful.

Rita At Rory's

Cartoon by Brian Mór
Click to enlarge

Papal Bull

Cartoon by John Kennedy

And now, on top of these many crises comes a scandal crying out to heaven – the revelation of the clerical abuse of thousands of children and adolescents, first in the United States, then in Ireland and now in Germany and other countries … There is no denying the fact that the worldwide system of covering up cases of sexual crimes committed by clerics was engineered by the Roman Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Cardinal Ratzinger (1981-2005). During the reign of Pope John Paul II, that congregation had already taken charge of all such cases under oath of strictest silence. Ratzinger himself, on May 18th, 2001, sent a solemn document to all the bishops dealing with severe crimes ( “epistula de delictis gravioribus” ), in which cases of abuse were sealed under the “secretum pontificium”, the violation of which could entail grave ecclesiastical penalties - Hans Kung

It might be difficult to believe but there have to be some good apples in the barrel that has Catholic Church stencilled on its side. Not everyone affiliated to this International Centre for Child Rape is an abuser or an accomplice before or after the fact in terms of cover up. It might well take Indiana Jones to find them but they are there. Why is another matter. Maybe they believe that such is their penance; born into original sin they must walk the earth scorned as the associates of paedophiles because as tiny children they were not worthy in the eyes of the god they proclaim to love so much. Worth it in the end because silent deference to an obedience-demanding god shall see them rewarded with eternal salvation.

It never seems to occur to them that a god who hates children so much that he has them branded as sinners the moment they emerge from the womb, is unlikely to reward them with anything but more of the same. The writer Martin Amis thought that paedophilia was anything but a love for children. He saw it as a hatred of children. So maybe the rapist priests are at one with their god after all. For what is original sin but a hatred of children?

The whole sordid business goes right to the very top. In Ireland, for example, Cardinal Brady has been found to have a history of cover up. In 1975 he participated in imposing a vow of silence on abused children. That he seems an alright sort of guy today is beside the point. Sometimes cultural embedment when it is reinforced by cultic ritual distorts the thinking processes. Brady most likely bitterly regrets his involvement in silencing the abused now that there has been a substantial descaling of his eyes. But if he couldn’t see to begin with what authority can he preach to the rest of us about a god who failed miserably to guide him or equip him with a moral conscience?

Internationally the head of the Catholic cartel, Joe Ratzinger, aka Pope Benedict, or to cynics like me simply the priestfuehrer, too has hands which are by no means clean. Yes, the man with the hotline to Heaven has been up to his neck in a little bit of covering the tracks and distorting he facts. His latest rubbish beggars belief. Rather than place culpability firmly where it belongs, in the hands of the clerical rapists and the institution that covered up the crime, society is offered this: the root cause can be traced to the 1970s when ‘paedophilia was theorised as something that was in keeping with man and even the child … The effects of such theories are evident today.’

Not surprisingly this provoked howls of anguished outrage from survivors groups that spanned the Atlantic. Margaret Kennedy, from the British Minister and Clergy Sexual Abuse Survivors group, complained:

He is trying to say that the modern world is corrupt and sexually rampant. It is blaming society for what is actually their responsibility. No one in any age has ever thought that adults having sex with children is right.

Even more scathing was Barbara Blaine, head of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests which is based in the US:

It is fundamentally disturbing to watch a brilliant man so conveniently misdiagnose a horrific scandal … Catholics should be embarrassed to hear their Pope talk again and again about abuse while doing little or nothing to stop it and to mischaracterise this heinous crisis … The Pope insists on talking about a vague ‘broader context’ he can’t control, while ignoring the clear ‘broader context’ he can influence - the long-standing and unhealthy culture of a rigid, secretive, all-male Church hierarchy fixated on self-preservation at all costs. This is the ‘context’ that matters.

Next he will be blaming the altar boys. They made the priests rigid.

Does the Gull Know...

Cartoon by Brian Mór
Click to enlarge

Christmas Eve

Every year on Christmas Eve, I make a point of taking the kids out away from the house so that my wife can get doing what Santa is really supposed to do. In Belfast I would take them to my sister’s on the other side of town as well as to the homes of a variety of friends. Since leaving the city, we have returned to it every year on Christmas Eve to visit the same people. It has become a well established tradition.

Today we broke with it but only at the last minute. Everyone we spoke to in Belfast advised us against making the journey. Getting there by bus would not be a problem but getting back could prove to be. A last minute phone call to my sister settled it. Although the kids were dressed and ready for the road she cautioned against travelling. Too icy all round.

If we had any thoughts of feeling sorry for ourselves they were quickly dispelled by the scenes from Dublin Airport where stranded passengers faced the prospect of a Christmas separated from the people they most wanted to be with.

When young, Christmas Eve was my favourite day of the year. After that the season slipped into anti-climax mode. My last enjoyable one in those days, when I had not yet been initiated into the dubious joys of prison life, was in 1973. I got blocked out of my mind and rolled into the house and into my bed sick as a poisoned pig. At that point it was something to be endured rather than enjoyed. My mother thought I was ill and blamed it on the cops who had arrested me on a trumped up charge of disorderly behaviour a few nights earlier. She thought they had ill treated me and I did little to dissuade her of her suspicions. Handy to have the auld cops take the blame for my night on the town.

The following Christmas Eve was spent inside in a cold and windswept Magilligan Prison. At 17 I found it horrible and lonely although the place was packed with fellow republican prisoners. I still recall the strangeness of being isolated from my family. The next one was spent outside but was hardly any better. I ended up brawling in the street with a Stick who had earlier, during one of the crazy feuds that beset 1970s Belfast republicanism, shot in the leg the woman I happened to in the company of when we came across him in the local pub. He was sitting with a colleague from his IRA who our IRA had shot. At first it was a clash of the crutches, as both sides poked the other with hospital equipment. Then it became a full blown fight in the street which only stopped when the British Army came along. Both pugilists thought better of waking up in the cells on Christmas morning. The Brits could truly claim to have brought peace to Essex Street.Surreal now but then it was par for the course. The petty hatreds and tensions that once drove us to murderous rage no longer have the remotest relevance to our lives.

Today, fighting with political opponents has been displaced by playing with children. Christmas Eve is no longer spent brawling, but bawling at kids to behave as we took our seats in the cinema in front of Megamind. When we failed to get to Belfast we all took the bus to Balbriggan where we settled into our seats in front of the big screen. Beats brawling, beats boozing.

Merry Christmas to all at the Quill.

The Ghost of Christmas Pissed

Today The Pensive Quill carries a short story by guest writer Thomas "Dixie" Elliott

It was Christmas Eve morning, about quarter to one or thereabouts, when Jamesy made his usual journey back to his flat. I can’t say that the snow was deep and crisp and even because it was actually raining and all sensible carol singers were tucked up in bed, leaving only the strains of drunken revellers to fill the air with song as they roamed the streets in search of taxis.

Jamesy was one of those drunken revellers only he happened to be in a state of drunken revelry all year round. He had staggered out the door of the bar, where he held the proud title of regular, just a few minutes before and hadn’t far to go because he lived only a few streets away. His coat collar was turned up to keep out the chilling rain and he grasped the lapels tightly to his neck because the top buttons were missing. He clutched the blue bag he carried just as tightly, perhaps for fear of being mugged for a few measly cans of stout or perhaps for fear of dropping them on the ground, because in his drunken state it might be dangerous even bending over to lift them up again.

He eventually got to his front door and fumbled with the key for a minute or two before pushing the door open with his shoulder. Managing to keep upright he staggered inside and shut it behind him with a clatter of canned stout. He found the light switch and lit up what passed for a living room. A sofa that would have graced any skip took up most of the room, a few tatty blankets lay across it, for this was also Jamesy‘s bed. A battered old armchair was close to a fireplace where a fire rarely burned. The other side of the fireplace was taken up by a TV which hadn’t been viewed since it broke down during the summer. Jamesy watched all his favourite programmes like racing in the pub anyway. The rest of the room consisted of rubbish and a coating of dust. Jeeze, I’ll have to clean this place up a bit one of these days, thought Jamesy as he placed his precious bag of stout by the armchair. But right now I need a pee.

And off he staggered to the toilet, to pee away the last few pints of the night, hanging his damp coat on a hook behind the hall door as he went.

As he stood swaying over the toilet he took a quick look at himself in the cracked mirror hanging on the wall. He was in his mid-fifties but the face of a much older man looked back at him. An unshaven wrinkled face with sunken cheekbones and red-rimmed eyes belied the fact that Jamesy was once a good looking young man.

“Ah would you look at the state of you standing there peeing more over the floor than in the toilet bowl,” stated his reflection in the mirror, much to Jamesy’s horror because he hadn’t opened his mouth to say a word. Or at least he thought he hadn’t; maybe it was the drink talking he decided. Pulling his zip up he hurried back into the living room but as he entered the light went out leaving him standing in darkness. Cursing the lack of replacement light bulbs he noticed that the temperature had dropped alarmingly and he began to shiver uncontrollably. As his eyes grew accustomed to the dark much to his horror he noticed that someone was sitting in his armchair. He heard a sound like a beer can being opened and a voice he thought he recognised said, “Sit down and have a can of stout with me.”

“Who in hell are you?” demanded Jamesy. “And how did you get in here anyway?”

“Ach sure, Jamesy, you know me better than you know yourself,” said Whoever It Was.

“I know that voice from somewhere!” said Jamesy. “Damned if I do!”

Just then the light went back on and Jamesy’s legs nearly went from under him. For seated in his armchair was he himself looking back at himself. And if that wasn’t bad enough he was drinking one of his own cans of stout.

“Naw!” uttered Jamesy. “It can’t be me, you must be some twin brother my Ma had adopted years ago and didn’t tell me about.”

“Not a bit of it, my Ma had the eight of us and two died young, the ole drink, if you remember?” said Whoever It Was. “And not one of us was put up for adoption.”

“Sure grab one of those stout and sit yourself down so we can talk about the old times,” he continued, before adding rather cruelly, “Jeeze, Jamesy, you haven’t gone and peed yourself, have you?”

Jamesy looked down at the stain on his trousers, the outcome of a hurried exit from the toilet and visibly reddened.

“Don’t worry about it,” chuckled Whoever It Was, “Sure it happens to the best of us.”

Jamesy slumped down on the sofa and pulled the nearest blanket over him. It was still freezing cold in the room, so much so he could see his breath every time he exhaled. Whoever It Was reached down to the blue bag, took out a can of stout and flung it to Jamesy. It landed on his lap and he managed to catch it before it rolled off onto the floor. He took one long look at the person in the armchair. He had indeed every feature on his own face even the small scar above his right eye. Jamesy without thinking touched his scar and Whoever It Was said, “Aye I got that fighting after school one day. Do you remember?”

“Big Micky, he was a year or two older than me, a right bully,” replied Jamesy.

“The very boy!” Interrupted Whoever It Was.

“Ah no you can’t be me!" uttered Jamesy. “Can you?”

Whoever It Was nodded knowingly and took another drink from his can.

Without taking his eyes from himself across the room Jamesy opened his can and took a long slug of stout.

“I can’t believe I’m sitting here talking to myself,” he muttered. “It has to be the bloody drink.” He took another mouthful of stout as if that would help answer his question.

“As the boyo said to Georgie Best, where did it all go wrong?” said Whoever It Was. “I was a great joiner in me day and everyone was looking for me to do jobs.”

Jamesy seemed to be lost in thoughts of times long gone as he replied. “Aye, I started out working with me Da on the building sites, he got me an apprenticeship after I left school.”

“And I met Maggie at the disco that night in 75, a right looker she was too!” added Whoever It Was.

“I had plenty of money in me pockets in those days, working all hours,” continued Jamesy.

“And we got married and had five wains.” Whoever It Was wiped a tear from his eye as he said it.

Jamesy took another drink of stout, draining the can which he flung into the fireplace. “Give us another one of those cans.” His eyes were filling up as he said it.

Whoever It Was tossed him a can and took another one himself. The two ring pulls hissed as one.

“I started calling into the bar for a few pints after work,” Jamesy said. He sat his can down, got up and staggered over to the door to where his coat was hanging.

“And before I knew it I never left the place, except to sleep,” Added Whoever It Was.

“Have you a fag on you?”

“Roll-ups?” asked Jamesy, retrieving the tobacco pouch and plastic lighter from his coat pocket.

“Aye, the under the counter stuff, it would blow the head of a cabbage, but so what, it’s cheap, isn‘t it?” said Whoever It Was.

Jamesy returned to the sofa and rolled two pencil thin cigarettes. “I must be going fecking mad,” he said as he lit the roll-up belonging to Whoever It Was.

“Well if you are, you won‘t mind if I tag along?”

Jamesy took a drag from his own roll-up. “Now what in hell were we talking about?”

“I started going to the bar more often than I was going home,” said Whoever It Was.

“That’s right, and I eventually left work to take up drinking full time,” added Jamesy.

Whoever It Was coughed and spluttered after a drag of his roll-up and added, “Then Maggie kicked me out.”

Jamesy dragged on his roll-up until it burnt his fingers then tossed it into the fireplace. “Now only our Johnny wants to know me; if it wasn’t for him and his good wife, I’d not be having a Christmas dinner at all this year.”

They both looked at each other through tear-filled eyes, then took a another good drink.

“Mores the pity that I’ll not be here to enjoy the Christmas dinner,” Added Whoever It Was.

Jamesy looked worried. “And why would that be if you don’t mind me asking?”

“A massive heart attack will take me this very night,” said Whoever It Was. “And by the time Christmas morning comes I’ll be dead a full day.”

Jamesy put the can to his mouth and emptied it in one go. “You’re pulling my leg... Aren’t you?” He asked.

“Now why would I be joking over a matter like that, you silly ole eejit?”

The drink must’ve gotten the better of Jamesy because the next thing he knew he was wakened by the sound of someone battering his front door. It was still freezing cold in the living room, Whoever It Was lay slumped in the armchair and he didn’t look at all well. In fact, thought Jamesy, he had the look of death about him.

“Break the door in!”

Hearing this brought Jamesy to his senses and he called out, “Hold on a minute and I’ll open it!”

But it was too late. His front door burst open with a crash and in they came almost tripping over each other. His son Johnny led the way followed closely by Jim the bar manager and the rest of his regulars. Jamesy went to meet them with a curse on his lips.

“Have yous no patience at all? Sure I was on my way out to let yous in.”

It was as if he wasn’t there. They all headed in the direction of Whoever It Was in the armchair.

“I think he’s dead,” uttered Jamesy, but they paid not a blind bit of heed to him as they bent over the body searching for signs of life.

“Ah I’m sorry, Johnny,” said Jim. “He’s dead.”

“Sure isn’t that what I just told yous?” Jamesy couldn’t believe that they were totally ignoring him.

“I think he’s been dead a fair while, Johnny, by the looks of him.” This was Big Dan, a regular from the bar speaking. “He hasn’t been in all day yesterday and that’s not like Jamesy, so he must’ve kicked the bucket on Christmas Eve sometime.”

“Passed away, not kicked the bucket,” said Jim the Manager sternly. “Have a bit of respect.”

Jamesy heard his name and kicked the bucket all in one sentence and it finally dawned on him that it was himself who was dead in the armchair.

The realisation that he was a ghost looking at himself dead suddenly took hold of Jamesy and he slumped back on the sofa horrified and dismayed that his departure from this life was with empty cans laying about him.

He was even more annoyed at what Johnny, his son said next.

“The selfish old git, imagine dying on Christmas morning, sure he could have waited until after the New Year at least.”

He heard them making arrangements to call the undertaker and a sense of guilt swept over him because he had ruined his family’s Christmas by dying.

He saw the light coming towards him and felt peaceful. Then the light went out.

Jamesy woke with a start he was in total darkness.

“I’ve gone to hell on Christmas Day!” he shouted.

Then he realised that he hadn’t gone to hell, he was still in his living room on the sofa and the light had blown. He got up and pulled the curtains, daylight streamed in. No one was laying dead on the armchair and Jamesy was glad to be alive.

He staggered out to the bathroom and threw water over his face to bring himself round.

“That was one hell of a weird nightmare. I could murder a pint,” he said as he dried himself with a grubby towel.

“Have you not learned your lesson,you eejit? The drink will be the death of you!”

Whoever It Was peeing in the toilet gave an exasperated shake of his head as he said it.

No one believed Jamesy when he turned up for his Christmas dinner at Johnny’s house and told them he was off the drink for good. And sure enough he never touched a drop again.



Any resemblance to actual persons living and dead drunk is purely coincidental.

　

Slash and Cut

Draconian cuts dictated by David Cameron’s Tory-led British government … It is quite clear that the Stormont partners are more than happy with thousands of job losses and severe cuts to crucial services and benefits for those already amongst the most disadvantaged members of our community … London’s orders will only serve to protect the profits of many of those individuals and institutions most responsible for the economic losses that have occurred - Mairtin og Meehan

Anyone thinking Sinn Fein should be taken seriously as providing some form of alternative to the economic debacle that prevails in the South should now be seeing what a colossal figment of the imagination that was. Based on absolutely nothing of substance to begin with, the litmus test that would invalidate the belief was always going to be the party’s response to the issue of cuts in the North. This is hardly an original insight on my part. I am merely echoing the Sinn Fein activist ‘Mellows’ who in a post on the radical blog ‘Sinn Fein Keep Left’ titled ‘Brilliant Pearse - Now Marty don't fail us now', boldly stated:

However, in the North Sinn Féin is in a position of power and is being told by London to make budget cuts of 4 Billion pounds. If Sinn Féin agrees to implementing cuts of this nature, then what the hell are we doing down the South. We cannot oppose cuts in the South and implement them in the North. If we do we will loose all credibility with the Irish people, and what is worse is that we will be seen as liars. Sinn Féin must fight for working people North and South and it must refuse to implement the cuts in the Six counties.

It comes no clearer than that. Criticisms of the party can hardly be dismissed in the usual way as the work of malcontents out to rob the party leader of his glory if people within Sinn Fein are making pointed observations of this nature.

Conor Murphy’s pathetic attempt to put a radical sheen on his party’s Tory credentials should wash with few:

We wanted to continue to protect society here, to continue to adhere to the elements of the programme of government which we collectively had put together and that was to grow the economy, to protect the most vulnerable in society. I think we have managed through very difficult work over the past number of weeks - and it has not been easy at all for any of the parties - we have managed to supplement what was a savage programme of cuts to try and protect what was important to us.

Because in the cold light of day Murphy’s party was up to its neck in the Tory slash and cut assault on the people of the North. Yet what is Sinn Fein in the South saying about this? Nothing it seems.

Watching Pearse Doherty last evening on RTE it was hard not to be impressed with him. He asks the right questions and presses the right buttons. But it is a foregone conclusion that if he and his more radical colleagues do not establish an autonomy that allows them to firewall their radicalism from the right wing slash and cut Northern leadership Adams will screw him into the ground. And the signs are not good. If he is serious about his radical discourse it is incomprehensible that he has been silent up to now about his party’s Tory driven economic assault on the Northern populace which it is certain to repeat in the South and justify with a Murphyism.

Doherty is a much better performer than Adams. He relies on argument rather than hectoring and bullying and is literate about economic matters in a way that Adams most definitely is not. Because of that he is viewed by Adams as someone who can entice an electorate suspicious of a party it perceives as economically illiterate, to expose its neck to the Master’s fangs.

Once sucked dry it will be abandoned.

Ho Ho Ho

Cartoon by Brian Mór
Click to enlarge

Snow

A Cold Floor by Raymond Watson, from the series The Shot Lock

A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water - Carl Reiner

It might be nice to look at but that is about the height of it. Where I live there was ice still to melt from the last heavy snow a few weeks back when a fresh batch arrived to reinforce it. Now it is everywhere. Even the kids are fed up with it. A novelty at the start they soon grow to realise just how limiting it is. Getting off school is ok but when they are condemned to the house boredom soon sets in.

I like the sense of cooperation and patience that our seriously inclement weather has brought. People moved to assist and steady each other. Road rage seemed to have been reduced as motorists recognised their mutual difficulties. Most of those who fell seemed to have been women. On a few occasions I had to stop to get women on their feet or pick up their belongings after a fall. Courtesy of my wife I had a pair of snow grippers on my shoes which meant I could move pretty freely. Everybody should stock a pair. Their value is to be marvelled at. And they are not a gimmick but actually do what it says on the tin.

Snow, despite its challenges can bring fun. But tonight we saw how it can be the harbinger of grief and loss. A fifteen year old girl dies after her improvised sleigh hit a tree on a Cork golf course. A mother and her child both lose their lives when their car skidded on ice a few miles up the road from us. What emptiness in those households on Christmas morning. The fatal season rather than the festive for the families and their loved ones lost.

The only creatures that seem to enjoy it no matter how long it lasts are dogs. Each morning at the weekends myself and a friend walk the dogs. They love rummaging through the snow laden fields where they can charge around free from the rigours of the choke chains around their necks. A dog’s life doesn’t seem so bad after all. The ease with which they adapt to the extreme cold amazes me. We are well wrapped up while they go pretty much as the day they were born.

During the blanket protest with no windows in the cells and the snow falling outside, which was sometimes driven into the cells by the howling wind, the thought crossed my mind that freezing to death was no longer a remote possibility. A screw commented that he expected to open a cell door some morning and find a prisoner dead from exposure. Most of his colleagues, being the fine Christian gentlemen that they were, probably prayed for it, their bibles firmly in hand. Yet the bible was a source of joy to me. I could stand on it while speaking out the window and keep my feet off the sub zero concrete floor.

I am old enough to recall the big freeze of 1963. Memories of the snow in the back yard being higher than my small frame are vivid in my mind. The channel my father and other men dug through the street to allow some form of movement probably saved the lives of some of the older residents in the Lower Ormeau Road’s Bagot Street. It was about then I first heard my father’s joke about the difference between a snowman and a snow woman – snowballs.

My mother nursed our then youngest sister through it and when the thaw set in thanked her god for his mercy in protecting a new born, only to lose her to pneumonia at the onset of spring. She lies buried under a simple marker placed on her grave by my mother saying ‘my Pauline.’

God isn’t good, god isn’t bad. God just isn’t. It took her many years to realise that but by the time she did I think she was all the happier for it. No longer tormented as to why a good god might deprive her of her child, she could reconcile herself to nature. Better that she did. Imagine going to face a monster like that the other side of the grave.

It is supposed to be 10 below outside. Time to turn the heating back on before the temperature differential levels out. It is the only way to ward of the invasive chill. Snowed in, snowed under, snowed off.

Painting A Cold Floor by Raymond Watson, from the series The Shot Lock

A Carpetbagger

Cartoon by Brian Mór
Click to enlarge

Fiery Terry

If everyone is left to judge of his own religion there is no such thing as a religion that is wrong. But if they are to judge of each others religion there is no such thing as a religion that is right; and therefore all the world are right or all the world are wrong - Thomas Paine, Rights Of Man

It is not the case that Britain has recently been subject to a spate of incursions by religious maniacs although the protests against the manufacturers of superstition would make you think otherwise. The other evening I noticed an internet campaign being launched. I tend not to pay much attention to such things giving the sheer volume of them cascading down on us like an avalanche.

Those behind this particular internet appeal were inviting people to sign a petition to stop Pastor Terry Jones visiting England in February where he was billed to speak at an event organised by the English Defence League. A case of the dumb talking to the deaf. Why then bother getting into a frenzy over Jones? He hasn’t the drawing power of Joe Ratzinger even if his views are as obnoxious. Despite protests against Ratzinger’s September visit, or incursion depending on how you feel about it, he was still allowed to vent his religious opinions as indeed he should have been. So why not Jones?

I was not for signing up to the petition against Jones. I think he should be allowed to speak. In fact I think he should be given British national TV time just as Nick Griffith was provided with it. There the coherence and integrity of his views would be tested. As we have seen, Griffith, the BNP boss, was exposed as naked when the censor’s veil of mystique was stripped away from him.

The US based Jones, head of a church of fifty members which hardly makes him the most influential guy in the world of clerics, came to pubic prominence as the calamitous clown who threatened to burn the Koran to mark the anniversary of 9/11. That was before god and him got into some celestial correspondence in which god told Jones to abandon his plans. Good old god, he was having no false gods before him, especially one called Jonesy. A whisper in the pastor’s ear was enough to have him, Abraham like, stay his sword.

Personally, I have little interest in what Jones has to say. I don’t need to hear him to learn that he is a superstitious bigot who thinks his brand of superstition is somehow superior to other superstitions and as such he has the right to burn their superstitious books. So the issue of his free speech is not something that is causing me any great turmoil.

What does irk me is that the right to hear is being eroded in all of this. People are being denied the right to make up their own minds in response to what they might hear. The PC Big Brother types shall decide for society what it should hear, read or view. The religious idiot Terry Jones hardly poses a threat to the intellect but intellectual autonomy is being undermined nonetheless by the self appointed thought police. The persistent and pernicious assault on the right to hear is barely mentioned in controversies of this type. The right to hear is pushed into the background as a blinkered focus locks onto the freedom of speech side of the equation.

Much better that we be allowed to listen to a fool than to be fooled into the belief that what he has to say is too dangerous for human consumption. Being fooled by the censors is a much more dangerous business than being fooled by Jones.

BTDT

Cartoon by Brian Mór
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Larsson Tour

Despite widespread acclaim Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy is not everyone’s idea of a great read. I noticed recently that Danny Morrison rubbished the books. Morrison, himself a novelist and one time student of the 19th Century French novel at the Open University, knows a thing or two about the novel genre and brings this knowledge to bear on Larsson’s output. But ultimately novel reading is a matter of personal taste and it is clear that there is a great taste out there for the Millennium Trilogy.

In the company of my wife I made our maiden trip to Stockholm in October. Among the reasons we chose to visit the city was our shared passion for the characters and plots created and devised by the late Larsson who died shortly after delivering his manuscripts. A campaigning journalist he was already well known before the blaze of publicity his trilogy ignited. He did sterling work with his pen and made many enemies on the Swedish extreme right whose penchant for neo Nazism bristled with hostile indignation towards Larsson. Yet it will be for his great fiction rather than his Marxist politics that the name Stieg Larsson will resonate in the international cultural milieu.

On a very cold Saturday morning we disembarked from a taxi driven by a scam merchant who sought to fleece us but whose only return was a slightly larger than normal tip, courtesy of my wife’s eagerness to be rid of the pest. Having seen him off, we made our way to the assembly point for the start of the official Stieg Larsson tour, the apartment where one of Larsson’s principal character’s, Michael Blomqvist, lived out his fictional existence. We met a German mother and daughter but our small team of Millennium aficionados quickly grew into a colourful crew of people from a range of backgrounds, Iceland, England, America among them. We even met a woman from Dublin, just down the road from where we live. The Girl who Kicked the Hornets Nest had certainly created a buzz. Our multi national taskforce set out on its cold journey.

Our guide shared her group’s passion for Larsson’s work which added vibrancy to her walk and talk performance. Each question from our midst was answered with assuredness. She had done it all before but came to the task with freshness and did not take her audience for granted. There was a good rapport between her and us which allowed for a probing of themes, during which she sought to draw out our own knowledge on the topic.

I suppose to many, the idea of trudging the cold streets of Stockholm in pursuit of fictional knowledge appears off the wall. Each to their own. It was surreal for sure, visiting the coffee shops, offices and apartments where Larsson’s central characters lived, loved, worked and played. It was certainly not some form of secular pilgrimage, where the need for make believe helped to compensate for a void in our lives. It was no different from what so many others on holidays do. People do day trips to Barcelona or Berlin and get a feel for the things that have interested them. We knew Lizbeth Salander never actually lived in the massive apartment we stood outside. We knew that Lizbeth Salander in fact never lived at all. But the real engages with the unreal in a variety of ways that stimulate the senses and arouse the intellect. Without the unreal the real would make for an existence of stultifying boredom.

And to cap it all, once our tour ended I bid our guide adieu and lapsed back into addiction. I returned to our hotel room to finish the third in the Millennium trilogy.

Allelujah, Allelujah

Cartoon by Brian Mór
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Biffing Biffo

Because economics tends to be a tedious business I rarely watch programmes about it or read copy on it when it appears in the newspapers. But like most others I suppose, I have been drawn to the topic because of the dark cloud that hangs over our shared societal future. The only certainty is that there no longer is any certainty. Grim times ahead. We can not even console ourselves that the burden we are forced to bear will allow our children to escape it. They too will be forced to suffer; a bit like original sin in that sense, punished for something not of their making.

I watched Prime Time on Wednesday evening because Brian Cowen was due a grilling from Miriam O’Callaghan. Also because what sometimes passes for the Left in Ireland would have a chance to seriously critique the type of thinking that has produced our economic woe and which seems wholly incapable of successfully navigating a way through it.

What struck me about Prime Time was how well the Taoiseach actually performed in his interview with O’Callaghan. After the intense mocking he took on the Jay Leno show and elsewhere as a result of his ‘morning after’ debacle, it was widely thought he was chronically incapable of anything other than slurring his way through a serious interview. And if there was room for improvement it promised to lie in a slight shift from slurring to slugging his way through.

That was one image certainly put to bed. Cowen came over as assertive but not aggressive. His performance was all the more masterful because Miriam O’Callaghan is no slouch as an interviewer. There were times when Cowen had her on the back foot when the expectation was that she would leave him without a leg to stand on.

Cowen was not for taking his misfortune lying down. He came into the gladiatorial arena determined not to be eaten by lions and he wasn’t. His position distilled amounts to a simple proposition: bollix or worse that we have made of things don’t let the opposition sit there and pretend that they are going to do things any different.

The sad thing is that he is right. What Cowen probably understands is the logic of capital. As a former government Finance Minister he should. From the point of view of capital what needs preserved is not a few, or even many, bankers but the system of capitalism upon which the Irish economy is based. He knows that the other parties, even those nominally of the Left, will manage that system rather than subvert it and that they will be faced with the same type of challenges and decisions to be made that confronted him. He has put it up to them.

I had hoped that Joan Burton and Pearse Doherty between them might have proved him wrong but they didn’t. Doherty, who by many accounts made a brilliant maiden speech in the Dail where he hammered Fianna Fail economic strategy, was tested on national television. He is much better on the economic question than his party Master whose concept of economics is one plus one equals three and if you disagree you pose a threat to the peace process. Doherty outlined a number of alternative options his party would pursue but his figures did little to plug the fiscal black hole and tended to sound populist, another extravagant luxury the country can ill afford at this juncture. When he raised the issue of default but restricted it to the bondholders with AIB it seemed clear Sinn Fein were preparing to play it safe.

Burton proved no more persuasive. Her main concern seemed to be ensuring Doherty did not come up on her left cheered on by an emotional electorate. In that context she reminded the freshly minted Sinn Fein TD that his party was busy slashing and cutting the public purse in the North. It did not make Sinn Fein’s Left credentials look too strong. Few will buy into the fiction that the party is privatising its way to socialism under the tutelage of Che Cameron.

But Labour are no better, just more articulate with a greater degree of economic nous and less enamoured to power for its own sake.

That the leader of Fianna Fail should emerge as the most coherent, despite being the most wrong, witness for the economy on Prime Time, permits us a vision of the abyss we have fallen into with no way out.

An Praghas na Saoirse?

Cartoon by Brian Mór
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Thou Shall Not Attack the Leader

One of the things that strikes me this morning is that I personally think that gay pride and the GAA have as much relevance as the Orange Order - they've probably both got more members – John Lund

The sad, sorry lot that shuffle about under the collective title of the Ulster Unionist Party have still not recovered from the loss of David Trimble as leader. Reg Empey, more suited to the world of business than the business of politics was brought in to replace DT and his task was to preside over the drift and the driftwood that went with it. A party determined to go nowhere elected a leader fit for purpose. He was more than up to the job and demonstrated as much by taking it nowhere

Now it is the turn of Tom Elliot, a case of Empty following Empey. So unimpressive is he that it is hard to imagine what he even looks like. The one thing he seems determined about is to suppress any alternative voices. Under the guise of the need for more discipline in the party things are hardly going to improve in terms of its political fortunes. We are just not going to hear about the misfortunes as often if Elliot gets his way. With the adoption of a more authoritarian stance the UUP is still in a state of political recession and the most imaginative idea the party leader can come up with is to force through an intellectual budget that will heavily tax ideas and imagination.

Elliott defends his "unembarrassed and unapologetic" brand of unionism and disputes allegations that he is a "political dinosaur". But with people like Harry Hamilton, Paula Bradshaw and Trevor Ringland all hoofing it away from Fermanagh hillbillies, Elliot and his fellow anti-Gay Pride and anti-GAA Neanderthals are providing startling evidence that Darwin got it wrong about evolution.

Long time Lagan Valley member and ‘venerable elder of the Party’ John Lund has found his membership suspended by a party disciplinary committee for a six month period for speaking his mind. Lund vented his spleen on the Nolan show but what he had to say was mild by comparison with the type of things Jeffrey Donaldson used to give off about. One complaint was that Elliot was bussing in his own supporters from the rural areas to help curb any moderate trends within the UUP. He expressed a fear that 'the progressives will not survive’ and that the ‘the party has been dragged back to 1969 and Harry West.’ For that he was deemed to have been ‘unacceptably critical of the leader’. Here too the disciplinary committee ruled against him, claiming it constituted an unacceptable public and personal attack on the former leader, West.

Dead leaders, not even protected by libel laws, can invoke UUP rules to protect them into eternity. For one time leader Jim Molyneaux, he can have it both ways. Although alive he has always looked dead and would have come through any spot the difference competition unspotted. Jim alive, Jim dead, it matters not. He shall not be criticised.

The blind leading the blind and the dead protecting the dead. A party with no future led by men from the past.

History's All Time Premiere Paddy

Cartoon by Brian Mór
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No Disgrace in Embrace

Still other commentators will ask more fundamental questions about the action of the CDF: how can this body respond so swiftly, and so severely, to a priest who writes a theological commentary piece about human sexuality but take so long, if at all, to respond to priests accused of child sexual abuse? The CDF's treatment of Owen O'Sullivan will inevitably have some asking if free thought is a greater crime in the Vatican than child abuse. - Will Crawley

Owen O’Sullivan is an Irish Capuchin priest who is also a prolific and widely published writer. What he commits to paper seems to be well presented and from the perspective within which he writes, reasoned. Last month he captured headlines, although not for the things that usually cause priests to be thrust into the press spotlight. His ‘media moment’ fell upon him courtesy of the Vatican’s censorial wrath having fallen on him. His ‘sin’ was not child rape or cover up of the same. Those things tend to be dealt with much more slowly by the Vatican.

The rapid response from the Vatican’s enforcement agency, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, (CDF) was actuated by a crime of such cardinal significance that Rome alone could deal with it. O’Sullivan’s priestly pen was put to the sword because he had composed an article which appeared in the March edition of the Furrow, titled ‘On Including Gays’. The Furrow, published from St Patrick’s College Maynooth, is an outlet described by Joseph S O’Leary, member of staff at a Japanese university as ‘a forum in which Irish Catholics can openly discuss the problems facing the church.’

But open discussion is the last thing any censor wants. The calling of the book burner is to suppress such openness; it is their reason for being. O’Sullivan’s article was an act of heresy, as far as the church was concerned, because it stated bluntly what is increasingly axiomatic, that ‘same-sex attraction is simply a facet of the human condition’.

Stung by such a mild assertion the Vatican Thought Traffic Control made its move. According to a report in the Irish Times:

the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the Vatican contacted the Capuchin secretary general in Rome with an instruction Fr O’Sullivan was no longer to write for publication without first having his articles approved by it.

The CDF, previously headed by the current pope, Herr Joseph Ratzinger, is now led by US Cardinal William Levada. Conservative men determined that the public will be kept appropriately misinformed of developments and certainly never informed about dissent within the Church. Which is always the work of the devil and as such needs expunged not explored.

The CDF should have no place in Ireland suppressing Irish writers. It should be as welcome in the country as the IMF. The Association of Catholic Priests described the CDF censorship as counterproductive. Rev Joseph S O’Leary was more forthright.

Instead of repressing open discussion, the Vatican might begin to reflect on the wisdom of its own teaching, invented in 1986, that a vast number of human beings are suffering from an objective disorder – particularly given that the scientific support the Vatican claimed for its view has long since crumbled.

The issue of the relationship between homosexuality and Catholic teaching requires a full airing. The German theologian David Berger told Der Spiegel that much of the malignant homophobia pervading the outlook of the Catholic Church is because:

a large number of Catholic clerics and men studying for priesthood in Europe and the United States are homosexually-inclined … The worst homophobia in the Catholic Church comes from homophile priests, who are desperately fighting their sexuality.

What a waste of energy, used up in reconciling itself with prejudice. They should be desperately fighting their bishops, cardinals, Pope and the CDF, not their sexuality which they should embrace not disgrace.

Aer Exodus

Cartoon by Brian Mór
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Self Fulfilling Prophecy

This is hardly anything new to me. It certainly won’t shut me up. This is about the thought police again trying to stop people thinking. I am not going to be censored by anyone. You can’t have democracy and a free press on the one hand while on the other putting the idea into people’s heads that attacking a writer from behind with a branch or an iron bar is the way forward – Richard O’Rawe.

At one point in his book Afterlives Richard O’Rawe details a phone conversation he had with Brendan Duddy during which the Derry peace emissary conveyed to him the deep animosity that a lobby of powerful people held towards him. As the author of the brace of books Blanketmen and Afterlives his persistence in arguing a position they rather would not see the light of day was a source of deep irritation. Duddy told O’Rawe they wanted his public prosecution of the case discontinued.

The conversation came shortly after a discussion at the Gasyard in Derry which was a decisive tipping point – in O’Rawe’s favour – in the four year long debate around the management of the 1981 hunger strike. On the night O’Rawe had seen his account safely fire-walled against any reasoned assault and now his critics were invoking the unreasonable. Duddy was not making any threat, merely conveying to O’Rawe, as he was obliged to, the dangers he believed to be inherent in a situation that had caused untold discomfort to the powerful hierarchy that had come to dominate the Provisional project. Duddy’s view was arguably shaped by his dealings with people he had engaged over the decades and whom he knew carried few references from human rights agencies in their portfolios.

O’Rawe, who successfully came through a prolonged but hardly civil debate with those critical of his account, has often recounted his experiences of the difficulties encountered by someone at variance with the party line. Snapped at by whisper weasels, threats, ostracism and vilification - all played some part in constructing the regime of silence his critics hoped would smother him. Even were his account a stand-alone one with nothing other than the strength of his word to support it, the version he posited always managed to sound credible. The fact that it resembles so closely the experiences of others in broadly similar circumstances gives O’Rawe even greater authenticity.

Disappointingly, little seems to have changed since the republican author’s conversation with Brendan Duddy. The following account appeared on Indymedia.

At a recent 30th Hunger Strike anniversary meeting in Cork one of the
speakers openly threatened the life of Richard O'Rawe. The well known Shinner in reply to a question about Ricky's claims that the leadership allowed six strikers to die for political advantage completely lost the plot and said.
"Richard O'Rawe is taking his life in his own hands, and I wouldn't be
surprised if he was found dead some night.''
When he realised that the audience were totally stunned at this comment,
he qualified his remark by saying he ‘wouldn't be surprised if someone came up behind Ricky and hit him with a branch or a iron bar on the back of the head.’

The expression of an opinion or a plea for someone to rid the party of a turbulent writer? The poster on Indymedia clearly interpreted it as a threat. The speaker must have known that there was an element of the self-fulfilling prophecy at play. ‘Wouldn’t be surprised’ if O’Rawe was found dead some night sounds very like ‘would be disappointed’ if he wasn’t found dead some night.

On its own an internet post should not sound an alarm for the very reason that they would be blaring every second of the day. But Richard O’Rawe had already been informed of the portentous comment and is of the view that it was an invidious call to violence against him. Right or wrong he would be foolish to take a chance. Complacency is no ally of common sense.

Dinner Card

Cartoon by Brian Mór
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Postcards from Stockholm

It was our first trip to Sweden. As we soared in over Norway, gazing out the window of our Scandinavian Airways carrier we marvelled at the sheer preponderance of fjords and rivers that crisscrossed the terrain. Bleak and desolate it nevertheless beckoned with its offer of unremitting solitude.

From the air Stockholm looked massive, almost like flying into London I remarked to my wife. But the difference in population is immense, London having about four or five times the populace of the Swedish capital.

Like New York, Stockholm is built on a series of islands or archipelagos as the Swedes prefer to call them. 12 in all I think, linked by interconnecting bridges. In prison I frequently received postcards or photos of the country’s beautiful lakes but had little idea just how central water is to the topography. For a short time during the blanket protest, before a vindictive screw stole it, a postcard from Sweden was the one dash of colour in our cell. So it was with some reflection that I found myself sending postcards to people held in Maghaberry and Portlaoise from a city where so many were mailed to me.

We had been forewarned in advance that Stockholm was an expensive city and it turned out to be just that. A pitcher of Margaritas to go along with our evening meal cost about €50. Everywhere, prices made rip off Ireland look cheap and value for money by comparison. A cold city, it had no Iceland mentality; nothing there to equal buy one get one free.

Stockholm is a very clean and tidy city and seemingly well organised. Trams, taxis, planes and buses all seem to be on time. Restaurants are invariably packed. Capital of what is said to be the most secular country in Europe, there were few churches that I saw. A religious bookshop beckoned but I didn’t enter. I already had my fiction for the journey, the third of the Stieg Larsson trilogy.

We called it our honeymoon, the first time we had actually got away together without kids tagging along and fighting every step of the way. Our last trip together sans what our friend Angela calls ‘the midgets’ was to Madrid. Even then one managed to stowaway in her mother’s womb. As much as we love them, we found that a touch of absence makes the heart grow fonder!

We spent a lot of time walking including a two hour Stieg Larsson tour. On foot is the best way to acquaint with a city. The late David Ervine preferred to holiday in cities rather than resorts. He wanted to see how people lived rather than how they holidayed. There is much to be said for that. The ersatz composition of resorts limits knowledge of a country visited. Once in from the cold streets of Stockholm, we would collapse in the warmth of a spacious and well maintained hotel room, grateful for the small mercy of not having to separate the fighting midgets.

We were hardly in the city 24 hours before we ran into a scam merchant. He was a taxi driver and seemed not to have been Swedish. Most Swedes we spoke to had reasonable English but this chancer hadn’t a word of it and relied on excitable gesticulations to make his point which was basically that I had broken something disembarking from his taxi. He most likely kept the broken piece in the cab and cellotaped it back on to catch the next tourist he thought was gullible enough to fall for his ruse. My wife sought to calm him with a larger than normal tip whereas I felt a hefty tip on the end of his nose more in order.

Con men like this weasel are regulars in many foreign cities. I experienced it in Amsterdam one evening when a taxi driver who claimed to hail from Morocco took myself and a former republican prison on an elongated route to our flat. When he asked for his ridiculously inflated fare my friend tossed the standard 15 guilders in his direction, telling him in no uncertain terms that we were onto his scam. He threatened us with the cops to which we invited him to take us to the station. A new departure in our lives but the cops were Dutch, not British. That ended the exchange.

Obviously I do not know the cultural or ethnic backgrounds of the people who traversed Stockholm’s streets but it seemed very much a white European city. It was certainly not Malmo to the South of the country where there is much social tension between many Swedes and the immigrant population and where more than a dozen foreign nationals have been shot there this year alone. Few people of different skin colour were on view in Stockholm, unlike Dublin, London or Amsterdam. The only two beggars I came across were not white and it struck me that immigrants, if that is what they were, might experience a difficult time in the country. If the food and drink prices were an index to go by, then it would take a considerable amount of hours on the streets, cup in hand, to make enough for a bed for the night. Ending up on the street is not a safe option. The Swedish climate is not one that would guarantee a response to a wake up call after a night spent roughing it.

Back home, and the kids are fighting.

Ye Royal Energy Programme

Cartoon by Brian Mór
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