Sinn Fein Keep Right

Provisional Sinn Fein must lurch to the Right wing if it is to hold the balance of power in both Leinster House and Stormont's Parliament Buildings. So maintains guest writer, Radical Unionist and ex-Blanketeer, Dr John Coulter.

Will the real Sinn Fein please stand up? King Gerry’s Louth invasion is sending out mixed signals to potential republican voters. Most Southern voters see the Shinners as a hardline Left wing outfit, to be regarded with even more suspicion than the almost now defunct Stickies, namely the Workers’ Party. To kick the rival moderate SDLP in the nuts, Northern Sinn Fein has got to boast how it is ‘Proud To Be A Provie’.

So are the Shinners saying one thing in the Republic, yet totally singing to a different tune in the North? Is Sinn Fein socialist first, or nationalist first?

King Gerry needs to avoid the fatal pitfall that befell his arch rival – Ian Paisley senior – and become branded as the Grand Old Duke of York who led his men up and hill and down again.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of Big Paisley’s first major outing as
the Grand Duke. He was to the fore in forming the loyalist vigilante group, The
Third Force. It flopped. This year also sees the silver jubilee of the forming of another Protestant paramilitary group, the red-bereted Ulster Resistance – again with Paisley senior as a key supporter. The DUP eventually abandoned the Resistance when the chips got too hot.

The end result was that when Paisley himself did something very positive –
forming the Chuckle Brothers with the Shinners – his once DUP faithful turned
traitor and forced him to quit as First Minister, DUP boss and Free Presbyterian
Moderator. If the Shinners, north and south, are not singing from the same republican hymn sheet, King Gerry could find himself de-throned as party president come May.

Gerry has only one option. He must do what former First Minister David
Trimble of the now almost defunct Ulster Unionists should have done – swing Sinn Fein to the Radical Right. Irish Labour will only become a major player in the Dail because it is not Fianna Fail. The SDLP is bashing the Shinners at every turn just as Jimmy Allister’s TUV are thumping Robbo’s DUP. The SDLP and TUV have no chance of becoming a significant force in Stormont. Their shouts and rants are to cover up their lack of constructive policies.

Gerry needs to resurrect the famous General Eoin O’Duffy’s Blueshirts. Ireland needs a disciplined party capable of bringing economic stability and law and order to society. Ironically, Sinn Fein should take as its example two 1930s movements it was once bitterly opposed to – Cumann na nGaedheal, once protected by Blueshirts, and O’Duffy’s own organisation, the National Corporate Party. Ireland needs all-island discipline and security on the social and economic fronts. A hardline Right-wing Sinn Fein party can deliver this.

Former Orange Order boss and MP Rev Martin Smyth once branded Sinn Fein as a fascist movement. In an interview, he told me: “Basically fascism is a right wing dictatorship with a government controlled economy and no opposition. That mantle of fascism belongs in Ulster more to Sinn Fein than to loyalists.”

In 1918, Sinn Fein was once the dominant party on this island. Eighty years
later, the Good Friday Agreement set the stage for an all-island agenda.

If the Shinners want to realistically dictate policy in both Stormont and the
Dail, they must mothball the ‘RA, dump ex-jailbird candidates and become
Ireland’s new Blueshirts.

Sounds a radical solution – but if Sinn Fein can run the North with the DUP,
it must become a Right-wing version of the late John Turnly’s Irish Independence Party.

Breadwinner

I picked up this book one day while browsing through a Dublin bookshop on the hunt for something that my 9 year old daughter might like. She reads voraciously and it is hard to keep up with her appetite for new material. A novel blurbed as ‘starvation or survival – a girl’s life under Taliban rule’, it was the story of a young girl in Afghanistan who had to become a ‘boy’ in order to ensure the survival of her family after her father had been imprisoned by the theocratic authorities.

While I reckoned it would be ideal for my daughter I thought it best to browse through a few of its pages before letting her have it. Once started I did not leave it down until I had finished such was its beautiful simplicity. When she got to it she read it just as quickly and then asked for the remaining books in the series.

The Taliban are a crowd of religious thugs who have oppressed Afghan society since first seizing control of Kabul in 1996. Even whey they were displaced as a result of the US invasion they continued to target those who would not succumb to their superstitions. A particular target for their religious wrath has been women. They were compelled to stay indoors and if they needed to go out they were either to be accompanied by a male or have a note from a male giving them permission to be outdoors. When on the street they had to wear a burka. Females had been banned from obtaining schooling, education being a men only area. Religions always seem to privilege men. Perhaps it is all to do with blaming Eve.

Parvana, the novel’s central character, is part of a family that in the past had been both educated and lived outside the poverty trap. But due to homes being continuously wrecked by bombing they were now reduced to living in a tiny flat; and education, for the females at least, was now history.

Age allowed the young Parvana to turn the tables on the Taliban. During the arrest of her father the religious thugs had beaten her mother to a pulp. The family had to be sustained but with no male to go onto the streets the task ahead was formidable. The oldest daughter was too physically mature to disguise herself as a male so the task fell to Parvana. She took to the streets as the breadwinner. At such a tender age her skills were limited but she could read and as a result people would ask her to read letters they had received and were unable to read themselves. She also sold cigarettes from a tray she had strapped to her neck and which perched at her waist, much like used to happen at soccer games or cinemas in Ireland. Survival was the name of the game and survive she did along with her family.

I did not pick the book because I wanted my daughter to have some acquaintance with violent religious zeal. I purchased for her John Steinbeck’s The Pearl at the same time. Having read it when I was about her age I wanted her to share something from my history. Breadwinner was more to broaden her reading horizons. Since then she has merely said she enjoyed the book but has mentioned nothing about its religious dimension. She will in time discover for herself how religious zealots will try to constrain her and dictate to her how she shall live her life. She will be well warned to disregard them and permit them no encroachment. But for now the book is one that has a character she might identify with, an eleven year old girl who pushed back against prejudice and shackles for the better of her family.

The Breadwinner by Deborah Ellis. Oxford: OUP. 2004.

The End Draws Near

Cartoon by Brian Mór
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The TUAS Strategy

This afternoon sometime I got a text message through from a friend. It said ‘have been listening to Gerry on LMFM. What a clown. He hasn’t a clue. The listeners’ words not mine.’ My response was terse, ‘good.’ To which he answered, ‘he was downright stupid this morning.’ Wasn’t so sure about that, stupidity not featuring as one of his characteristics.

I try not to listen to him at all these days, having learned long ago that he is a verbal crap machine who incessantly churns out the brown stuff. There are sweeter things with which to massage the ears. Still, I thought it might be worthwhile tuning in to a recording of Morning Ireland later in the day just to see if he was as bad against Leo Varadkar, of Fine Gael, as he was against Michael McDowell four years ago.

Hissing and snarling on the phone, he was quickly reminded by the Fine Gael politician that his 2007 debacle hadn’t gone away, you know. Varadkar told him that nothing had changed since then as he was still committed to flaunting his ignorance of economics. Knowing next to nothing about the economy is no crime, but it is not something you want to put on display during a radio broadcast when the topic is the economy. But as Adams has often said of those he takes umbrage at, he would rather be wrong than silent.

It isn’t that I was hostile to a lot of what the Sinn Fein Master had to say, but as always the difficulty is an inability to believe anything he does say. When he rightly labels the other political parties as the ‘consensus for cuts’ it could be treated with some gravitas had his own party along with the rest of them in the North’s British micro government, not formed a consensus for cuts. When he goads the other parties that they should put it up to the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank, it would sound more plausible if his party had only put it up to the British Tories instead of implementing the cuts dictated by London. This type of rubbish has allowed him to develop the unenviable trait of being instantly unbelievable.

Contrast this with Pearse Doherty who when on TV last night stood head and shoulders above his fellow panellists. He sounded eminently credible, his flow uninterrupted, his manner confident, and he is prepared to allow the opposition to speak. His leader on the other hand slithers about in serpentine manner, hectoring and bullying, seeking to voice-over his adversary while convincing nobody of anything other than his not knowing anything about the subject he comes on air to talk about. The sterling work that Doherty is doing in describing the nature of where the country is at economically is undermined the minute Adams gets air time.

Four years ago it very much looked as if Sinn Fein were finished in the South of Ireland. So much so in fact that Eoghan Harris with undue haste at the West Belfast Festival predicted the party would lose every one of its then four seats at the next general election. Now with the economy in a trough, beyond comprehension a mere four years ago, Sinn Fein has been thrown a life line with which it can haul itself up. If it wants to reap the potential to the full it should consider resurrecting the TUAS acronym. Try Using Adams Sparingly.

Office to Let

Cartoon by Brian Mór
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An Atheist Child?

An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support - John Buchan

Last week we had a priest friend over. He is the first cleric to cross our door since moving here but he was in secular dress and the children were none the wiser. Had they asked what he did I would have told them but they didn’t. Had they wanted to discuss religion with him they would have been free to. But he and I had other fat to chew and they didn’t bother. Had I been called away on some unforeseen business I would have said to him, ‘mind the kids till I get back.’ Were he to have discussed religion with them while I was away it would not have mattered. He and they are free to discuss what they want. We don’t hide behind closed doors and drawn curtains, keeping the religious at bay. Our secular household is not filled with non-spiritual angst but is quite relaxed.

Nevertheless, I have sought to protect my children from religion. I consider it a virus which I do not want polluting their lives. They don’t attend mass, make communion, or engage in any of the rituals that are meant to groom them for Catholicism. The five year old has no clue. Heaven would only interest him if there were cars in it. Conversely, my nine year old is quite adamant about her non-belief. Her friend once told her that people who don’t believe in god die. Her response was simple; she had not believed in god since she was born and she was nine now and was still alive. What, if anything, her young superstitious friend thought about that he did not say.

One day in town we were shopping for a DVD. I picked one up about the pope for a laugh and suggested she take that home for the evening’s viewing. She shouted at me ‘I hate religion.’ A woman looked on as if she had just witnessed a lewd act. I stood ready to bark if she as much as opened her holier than thou gob. She remained silent. A good example for preachers to follow.

I tell my daughter that she is free to do what she wishes in terms of her beliefs. If she opts for religion at a later stage it will her own choice and I will not stand in her way. She knows that if she joined the Church, discrimination on misogynous grounds would bar her from becoming a priest and she would be expected to become an anti-gay bigot and oppose the use of condoms even where they might save lives. She would have to pretend that some man in the Vatican is infallible but no women are. But she is in charge of her own beliefs. She likes science documentaries about the beginning of the universe and forever asks questions about causes behind effects. She has difficulty in comprehending the finality of death but I don’t bluff her with afterlife fairytales. I tell her I am so glad that I am able to die as the only things that don’t die are those that never lived. And had I not lived I would never have experienced my wonderful journey through life with her. She is not convinced but in time she shall understand.

But is she an atheist child? I don’t like children being labelled with the belief of their parents. As Richard Dawkins points out there should be no Catholic children or Marxist children. Irish Children or British children yes, but not the other types. She is just a child with no religious belief. I would not call her an atheist.

It is as good a start as I can give her. It is much better than her falling for the old saw about a man living with his mother until he was 33, all the time believing she was a virgin and she believing he was god. Whatever she believes I trust she never comes to believe anything as screwed up as that.

Imagine This

Tonight The Pensive Quill features an article by guest writer, Helen McClafferty, again highlighting the injustices being endured by Gerry McGeough

A political candidate stands as an Independent on issues of principle during
elections in Zimbabwe. Every political dirty trick and smear in the book is used
against him during the campaign.

At the end of the election count, he is arrested as he leaves the Poll Count
Center and taken for interrogation. The international community, with Britain
taking the lead, would be in uproar squealing over the injustice of it all.
Despite his high-profile during the election and before, the Zimbabwe police
state that they arrested him at the Center only because they had no idea of his
whereabouts prior to that date. The international media are disgusted at the
pathetic excuse.

A few days later, the candidate is charged with attacks against the former
Rhodesian military going back 35 years and thrown in jail. Only after a massive
legal struggle is he granted bail and freed under severe restrictions. Due to
these restrictions he is unable to pursue his teaching career, which has an
effect on his family as he is the main breadwinner.

While his political enemies continue to slander him on the Internet, he is
dragged before courts every month and the case is put back for no good reason
every time. Britain continues to highlight the injustice of his case and demands
that all politically motivated charges be dropped.

Two-and-a-half years after his arrest, the candidate remains in legal limbo. He
suffers a major heart attack. The British press and media are in uproar and
demand that Robert Mugabe put an end to this vindictive political persecution.

The candidate survives the heart-attack but his health is now a source of major
concern to his legal team. Regardless of this, the Zimbabwe authorities go ahead
with a trial against him, which begins exactly three years to the day after his
arrest.

In order to try him, a special non-jury court system is resurrected for the
event, even though this system has been repealed years earlier and is
notoriously corrupt. The British government is hysterical about this human
rights abuse.

The trial is stopped for an Abuse of Process application. This is refused
despite the excellent legal arguments in its favor.

The trial resumes six months after it first began. On the second day, the
candidate is rushed to hospital for emergency heart treatment. The local
national media censor all reporting on this major development. The British are
outraged.

Following a surgical procedure, the trial is resumed for a third time. The
charges against him involve membership of a Nationalist group and the wounding
of a Rhodesian soldier during the conflict 30 years earlier.

The evidence against the candidate includes one of his novels, a stated work of
fiction, which has been published and on sale for years. A chapter from this
novel is read out of context in court and entered as "evidence". The
international community is aghast at the idiocy of such a development, and
writers' guilds around the world protest at the injustice of such Philistine
behavior.

Next, it emerges that the candidate once sought political asylum in Sweden. The
Swedish government readily hand over his application papers to the Zimbabwean
authorities and dispatch one of their Immigration Officials to testify against
the candidate. This constitutes the prosecution's main evidence.

International Human Rights and Refugee Groups are beside themselves with fury
and the UN condemns the move. The British threaten a boycott against Zimbabwe
and lecture the Swedes on their treachery.

The trial ends and the candidate is told to brace himself for a twenty year
sentence.

The above story is hardly imaginable. A government provokes international anger
in order to pursue a vindictive, politically motivated trial against someone
just because he stood in an election and articulated views that were at odds
with the powers that be.

Guess what? All of this has happened, not in Zimbabwe but in the North of
Ireland against Gerry McGeough. The only difference is that the British
government far from speaking out against the injustice is actually responsible
for it. Also, the international community, human rights groups and writers'
guilds have been remarkably silent about it all. It's time we all spoke out.

In The Evening

Last Friday, in the evening, I sat and watched Martin McGuinness being interviewed by Ryan Tubridy on the Late Late show. I had fallen asleep earlier on the settee when the show began and headed off to bed. But I had hardy settled down before my son came up and told me ‘it’ was starting now. He made it sound like something out of a Steven King novel. It was worth the watching as it proved to be entertaining. The Sinn Fein politician is obviously hoping to enhance his party’s appeal in the South at a time when an opportunity exists for any Master and his servant and to get elected. If Sinn Fein does not make the breakthrough in this unique and unprecedented set of circumstances it never will.

McGuinness comes over as affable in a way that his oleaginous party leader does not. I found myself laughing when he described his engagement to his then girlfriend Bernie. She was in jail, he bought an engagement ring in Donegal and had a friend take it to the prison to Bernie and place it on her finger. Now if the other fella had told the same story the instant reaction would be ‘porkie, it never happened, he made it up.’

It was strange to watch the exchange between Turbridy and McGuinness which was much less strained than it was when the Late Late host had the Sinn Fein boss in the chair. Such is Adams’ reputation for incessant lying that even McGuinness – who has stood over some dubious claims in his time - couldn’t stand over his boss’s denials of IRA membership. He felt compelled to duck and dive, bob and weave every which way. Adams’ insistence on denying the obvious has placed his senior colleagues in a no-win situation. If they say they believe him they pull ridicule down around them; if they say they don’t believe him, they pull ridicule down around him. He would rather they were ridiculed than he but McGuinness didn’t take him up on that offer. And while the North’s Deputy First Minister might argue that people don’t care about whether Adams was in the IRA or not, there is a view in the South, at a time when politicians cannot be trusted, why one promising honesty would lie about something so obvious.

The irony was hardy lost on viewers when McGuinness referred to the British ministers, including prime ministers, who had sat in the Late Late hot seat and had not been grilled about their past in the same way as he was being taken to task. For Martin McGuinness is a British minister, much the same as Peter Robinson is one. He might be a decent British minister, good at his job, that is all for opinion. But he is a British minister nonetheless.

When asked about both Fine Gael and Labour stating that neither would share power with Sinn Fein, McGuinness said maybe that was because he would not share power with them, or with Fine Gael at any rate. Some in the audience clapped but not many. I thought there would be more given the climate but there is a sense down here that the party will jump into bed with anybody and sacrifice any policy or principle to do so.

Not long ago Martin McGuinness could be found claiming, to the mirth of unionism, that Ireland could be united by 2014, deducting two years from the usual guff prediction. Now it is more likely to be bankrupt. Yet the Late Late interview was instructive in that it showed how far he had moved from his unity is nigh position. When asked would he see a united Ireland in his lifetime there was no answer in the affirmative. A favourite phrase of Martin McGuinness’s has been ‘the reality is.’ The reality is that not one volunteer who fought in the ranks of the Provisional IRA will see a united Ireland in their lifetime. Martin’s party secured us that much.

Don't Make Waves

Cartoon by Brian Mór
Click to enlarge

The Morning After

It’s great news and I’m flabbergasted it’s only happening now in 2011 when the pill itself has been available since the 1980s. I wasn’t aware that GPs would have the time or inclination for any ‘counselling’ after dispensing the morning after pill!? I recall getting it, in Dublin, way back in the mid 1980s….the only counselling back then involved being ‘scolded’ by a family planning doctor and given a polite warning that women like me “ended up on the boat” sooner or later … I’m sure we’ll hear more blubbering from the pro-life lobby and the last of the religious loons this week, waxing lyrical about how availability of this ‘abortive’ pill will encourage people to run out of their houses immediately and try to have sex. - June Caldwell

When I learned that Boots were to issue prescription-free morning after pills over the counter it struck me as a further strengthening of women’s rights and opportunities against those, some belonging to men only religious groups, who would try to impose their own manufactured morality on them.

The morning-after pill is an emergency measure that can prevent an unwanted pregnancy developing if taken in the first 72 hours after unprotected sex. The Family Planning Centre advise that it is likely to be more effective the earlier it is taken. The initiative by Boots cuts out the need for a doctor’s approval. With time not being lost by visits to doctors the effectiveness of the pill is increased. Boots have made a much needed move, long delayed. Better late than never.

Having, in the words of the Irish Times, spotted ‘an amendment to legislation in 2005 which meant emergency contraception could be offered by pharmacists if they operated under a protocol drawn up by a doctor’ Boots launched its initiative. The protocol for Boots has been drawn up by its own medical director, Dr Graham Marshal, who while based in Britain is registered with the Irish Medical Council.

There seems no good reason whatsoever – if we rule out religious bigotry and greedy doctors as constituting good reasons – for Ireland not to bring itself into line with other European societies including the North, where women have forced back the boundaries that so constrain their lives. Irish Family Planning Association Medical Director Dr Caitriona Henchion in welcoming the move said:

emergency contraception is currently available directly from pharmacies in 17 European Union countries. The emergency contraceptive pill is a very safe and responsible method of preventing pregnancy and offers women and girls a second chance to prevent pregnancy when a regular method has failed, no method was used or sex was forced.

The Irish College of General Practitioners in trying to protect its own business, the fee presumably at the forefront of their considerations, frowned on the development. One of its spokespersons claimed that making the pill available over the counter would only increase its demand. That might be true but so what? If women want to prevent themselves developing pregnancy, then the choice is ultimately theirs. Reasons should be found to facilitate a rapid circumvention rather than force the woman to face a decision to abort much further down the line.

The downside is cost. Although Boots claims its objective is to ‘provide responsible, accessible and affordable healthcare to its customers’, Dr Rebecca Oglesby has argued ‘I wonder why it has to be so expensive though, I’m sure many women will find that cost hard to bear.’ This means women in the poorer sections of society. But at least it will cut out the doctor’s fee which now no longer has to be added to the cost of the prescription.

Earlier in the year a women’s health lobby group, Choice Ireland, called for emergency contraception to be made available over-the-counter after one woman claimed a Kerry doctor had denied her a prescription for the morning after pill. She had to travel to Cork. Choice Ireland spokesperson Sinead Ahern objected that:

medical professionals should act professionally and not allow their religious or ethical beliefs to interfere with the job they are paid to do. It is totally unacceptable that a woman can be denied the pill on the basis of that GP’s personal views. It is incumbent on the HSE to ensure that patients are not placed in a position where the only doctor available to them is allowed an ‘opt-out’ of the treatment they require.

The doctor in question should have been struck off for dereliction of duty. What god he worships or football team he supports is of no consequence to the requirements of his profession. He should be compelled to deliver the service whatever about the patient not supporting his football team or sharing his religious opinion. If he wants to play Vatican roulette in his own bedroom it is a matter for himself. No one else should feel under any obligation to listen to him.

Gala Dinner

Cartoon by Brian Mór
Click to enlarge

Loss

My heart is bleeding for them and to see Michaela in that coffin in there really does make you want to ask, “Is there a God at all? But our hearts and our prayers are with them. That’s all we can offer them now – our support … there will be lonely days ahead when all the crowds leave but the community here in Ballygawley and throughout Tyrone will never abandon them – words of a visitor to the home of Mickey Harte.

There are some losses that don’t bear thinking about. The death of a child must top them all. What trauma and despair Mickey Harte is undergoing due to losing his only daughter – his daddy’s girl - can only be guessed at. Those of us fortunate to have our own ‘daddy’s girl’ can only shudder. While we might on numerous occasions have swapped our shoes to walk a mile in Mickey Harte’s, this is not one of them. We want his hand but not his heart, it being much too heavy to carry. Despite the steely spirit forged throughout his career as Tyrone manager, there is nothing in that experience which could have prepared him for the tragedy that so shockingly befell him and his grief stricken family.

A while back I found myself writing about Mickey Harte’s religious faith. He had just survived a car crash and had put it down to divine intervention. Firmly atheist, I found the idea of a divine hand at work not remotely plausible. As an explanation it invited more questions than it provided answers. When I learned of the death – later found to be the result of murder – of Michaela Harte, the notion of gods or the lack of them didn’t enter my head. In a mind occupied by sorrow there was little room for mulling over philosophical questions of suffering and claims about the power of prayer. If prayers bring comfort and consolation to Mickey Harte and his family then prayer has a power which has to be acknowledged. That I might firmly believe it is a psychological power and not a spiritual one is a discussion for another day.

Mickey Harte is a nationally renowned figure because of his achievements in the world of sport. I am not a GAA fan but even with no great devotion to gaelic football it was impossible not to have been impressed with the Tyrone manager’s outstanding ability and motivational persona. His repeat performances in bringing the Sam Maguire to Tyrone were a novel feature of our modern sporting era. Northern teams just didn’t do that. Tyrone’s dominance in the tournament reconfigured the gaelic football sporting map in the country. The North no longer looked the outpost, but the hub. Kerry had been eclipsed and Tyrone was the new kingdom.

The death of Michaela Harte was the subject of conversation almost everywhere I went. On an early morning train a few days back a man I had never met called over ‘it was murder.’ He had just heard it on his wireless set and announced it to the rest of the carriage. Others joined in the conversation.

As Michaela Harte gets laid to rest tomorrow from the chapel where she was married just three weeks ago the prayers of those who religiously believe, and the thoughts of those who do not, will be with Mickey Harte and his family. From lifting a cup to lifting a coffin, the journey from uplifting joy to unimaginable grief is just a short but horrendous step. None of us ever want to follow in those footsteps.

The Kingdom of Pain

You can not fight, you can not hide
But still you try to free yourself
You can not run, not overcome
Your world is gone and there is nothing you can save
There is no way out, this is the kingdom of pain
This is where you die, here in the kingdom of pain – Blinded Colony

As King Kenny of Liverpool looks over his newly acquired kingdom, having being restored to the throne from where he once reigned supreme, the niggling thought must burrow deep that a long dark shadow may fall across what was previously a neon light association with the club he once again manages. With only two games under his belt, these are early days yet, but it cannot be denied that in terms of results his record is one of total failure. Two played, two lost. Not exactly the change in fortune the fans expected. It can only get better, the more optimistic might feel, but there is no iron law to state that it will. Recent trends suggest it can only get worse.

The FA Cup defeat at Manchester United while sore was not abysmal. United, despite being written off last season as over the hill, out of steam and out of pocket, remain the team to beat. Few manage. Liverpool put up a good fight even after Steven Gerrard was deservedly sent off for a vicious foul, momentarily seeming to think he was in a Southport nightclub rather than a football stadium. A touch and go penalty in the first minute was the difference between the two sides. United were criticised for playing in third gear but that is what teams do against third rate opposition, preferring to conserve their energy for the clashes with first rate opponents.

The defeat at Blackpool was the real howler. That the amusements men should take Liverpool for a ride for the second time this season is ominous for two reasons. Lightening doesn’t strike good teams twice, and the axe on Roy Hodgson’s Anfield career began its descent when Blackpool duffed Liverpool in the first exchange between the two sides.

A bad Liverpool side is not expected to beat Manchester United but a bad Liverpool side is expected to beat Blackpool. That it didn’t is indicative of just how bad this current Liverpool side is.

Liverpool could do worse than eat some humble pie. The players might think it worth their while to bear in mind that many fans died watching this club and their memory deserves more effort than is being rendered in these performances. It is not that the heavy hand of the perished should sit on the shoulder of the team, merely that their loss should be acknowledged with a continuation of the passion and commitment they paid to see and died watching. Why would anybody even pay to watch this lot? Imagine your child did not return from a game where they featured. The already terrible loss would be compounded by the lack of any possible explanation as to why the child even went to see them in the first place.

It is time to dispense with the nonsense of turning things around by stating clearly that the objective of this year’s team is to avoid relegation. It need be no blunter than that. A simple injection of realism rather than waffle. Living on the laurels of yesteryear doesn’t cut the mustard. A once great club is just that, once great. Once upon a time there was a team called Liverpool FC and it could play good soccer. The spectre that shuffles around Anfield more resembles Caspar, the opposition-friendly ghost, than the teams of Tommy Smith, Kevin Keegan, Alan Hansen et al.

An Exorcism is needed otherwise a king will be guillotined.

The Three Wise Men...

Cartoon by Brian Mór
Click to enlarge

Kop Kin

Being asked to manage Liverpool Football Club was a great privilege. I have, however, found the last few months some of the most challenging of my career. I am very sad not to have been able to put my stamp on the squad – Roy Hodgson

It was against Rangers in the 1973 Scottish Cup Final that I saw Kenny Dalglish play live for the one and only time. When he joined Liverpool four years later from Celtic as a replacement for Kevin Keegan his already formidable reputation went into overdrive. Although Dalglish never learned to speak English, preferring Glaswegian mumbly bumbly, his soccer brilliance quickly saw him integrated into the side. He was something else and probably the only player of his day that could adequately step into the shoes of Keegan. He demonstrated that much the following year when his goal against Bruges retained the European Cup for Liverpool which a Keegan driven team had first won the year before in a great game against Borussia Mönchengladbach.

When I finally took my place on the Kop, as I had always longed to do throughout my imprisonment, I was aware that I was not watching the finest Liverpool team on record. Jail denied me that. By the time I had set foot in my secular heaven Dalglish and company had long since gone.

Three and a half decades on from Bruges Kenny Dalglish is still spoken of in reverential terms normally reserved for Bill Shankly. So few shockwaves were generated when it was announced today that the Merseyside minnows had parted company with their manager of a mere six months, Roy Hodgson, and that Dalglish would take charge. But can this dour Scot bring to the club what the other dour Scot did when he took over in the 1960s? I hope so but doubt it.

Roy Hodgson, who Dalglish replaces at the helm of the club until the end of the current season at least, was not the source of Liverpool’s woes. So there is no good reason for believing that getting rid of him equates with getting rid of the problems at Anfield. Hodgson inherited these difficulties in circumstances which were never favourable. For sure, since then, 7 league wins out of 20 compounded by losing at home to losers like Blackpool and Wolves hardly encouraged the fans to sign up to his programme. But the rot was there and victories against such sides would only have masked the stench of decay. Hodgson caught the club on its way down and the force of gravity took him with it. He stood no chance of improving on the performance of Rafa who was ditched by the board as the bottom caved in, leaving the trapdoor open for Hodgson who handcuffed himself to the club in its freefall. It is hard to be unsympathetic to Roy Hodgson. He was asked to carve something out of rotten wood and despite his ability to work well on limited resources the task at Anfield proved beyond him.

Nor was Rafa the cause of the problems either despite his failure to salvage his reputation at Inter Milan with whom he recently parted company. Liverpool is a club that lost its way a long time ago. During its spice boy era it maintained a prominent position in English soccer but the glory days were well behind it. Robbie Fowler, Michael Owen and Steve McManaman would have featured in any of the teams that became Liverpool greats, but their trophy cabinets were empty by comparison with those in the homes of Graeme Souness, Alan Hanson or Ian Rush.

Arguably the rot started around the time Dalglish left the club. I suspect he saw it setting in and made his exit. They have never taken a title since. Moreover, there was just something about the teams managed by Dalglish that suggested a lack of bottle at the crucial moment. Two seasons running they squandered the chance to win the league and cup double in the very last game of the season.

In managerial terms Liverpool are returning to their earlier tradition of going for one of their own. But nostalgia can rupture reason and there is nothing that would allow us to believe Dalglish can bring out in the same players what Rafa or Hodgson could not. The club are going for kin, not king. There is no throne to sit on. The kingdom of Liverpool FC is no more.

Hate TV

Cartoon by John Kennedy

I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours - Stephen Roberts

Sometimes when sitting flicking though the channels at night I end up with those hateful religious evangelicals venting their biblical bile from the screen reminding us of all the horrors that await us if we don’t share their opinion. It reminds me of zombie movies, although nowhere near as viewable, where the lead zombie works the stupefied mob into a torpid trance. There is a collective lip movement accompanied by unintelligible mumbling and then they all go off to hate happily ever after: their pockets lighter and the wallets of their preachers bulging. I find few things in life as genuinely phoney as evangelicals professing to be brimming with something called Christian love. Love and televangelism seem a chalk and cheese combination. Ted Haggard and Christian love? Nah, Ted Haggard and boy love has a more authentic ring to it.

Whatever motivates the shower of hate blusterers it is not love. Although I think they are much more representative of their god than the other sickly sweet lot who run around with false faces and ersatz smiles, blessing people with the sign of the cross and offering forgiveness. The evangelical lot seem more at one with a god that hates with a perfect hate, the only type of god that could exist given the hatred he seems to inspire. As has been said, you always know god is on your side when he hates the same people you do. To people like me, the idea of a god of love is incomprehensible. It would make more sense if believers were to tell me ‘god exists and he hates us all; he is the god of hunger, hate, war, poverty, natural disaster, child rape and genocide.’ I could sort of make sense of that without conceding the existence of a deity. But when they tell me he loves me and he will burn me in hell if I don’t love him, I tend not to get it.

The hate is howled and the venom spat while I sit scorning them. Whatever the bible bashing merchants of Hate TV believe in I have no interest in listening to them spout it so the channels are flicked through rapidly. Money features a lot, with their buckets bigger than bibles. As George Carlin was fond of saying, the one thing god can’t manage is money; always a dollar or two short and forever in need of a little top up. No loaves and fishes equivalent there.

Last night my five year old son asked if I was watching ‘the mad’ again. He likes to watch ‘the mad’ probably because he enjoys my reaction to them, and would on occasion ask me to turn the mad channel on. I asked him if he liked ‘the mad.’ He replied ‘they are always shouting.’ At home here we still laugh from the time when he said to his mother ‘mammy, daddy is watching the bastards.’ Can’t blame a five year old for copying what he hears shouted at the television whenever the holy creeps appear.

At least I can honestly claim to have given him a good start.

Ach An Lae Eile

Cartoon by Brian Mór
Click to enlarge

Ibrox 66

New Year Bells had been ringing,
All of Scotland was singing,
The old year had died,
And the new had been born.
As the news of disaster
From Ibrox came spreading,
The news that would cause
A whole nation to mourn
- Matt McGinn

It was the year of Ulster 71. But few remember that today. 1971 is better remembered for the disastrous, draconian and discriminate internment policy that poured petrol on to the flames of an already violent Northern Irish political conflict. Also that year, on the second day of it, lest we forget, 66 Glasgow Rangers fans, 33 of them teenagers, died in a crush tragedy at Ibrox Park. The Gers were playing their old Firm rivals Celtic in the New Years clash, invariably a big event in the Scottish soccer calendar which was always avidly monitored from this side of the Irish Sea.

Two years after the event I stood in a crowd of 134, 000 at Hampden Park for a Celtic Rangers cup final. Little in terms of ground construction had changed. We had to rely on the strength of the crash barriers to keep us safe. With each sway of the crowd I felt my heart pulsate; Colm White’s son asking me to grip his father as the crowd heaved and hoed. Colm was a heavy man but I held onto him all the same. Celtic scored two that day but I felt it would have been safer had they scored none.

There was a big festival held for part of the year of the disaster in Belfast’s Botanic gardens. It was staged to promote Ulster 71. The latter was less concerned with bringing people together and was more a celebration of unionism’s political project. It didn’t stop nationalist youth attending the event. Among other attractions there were modern discos – which meant the opposite sex – and an opportunity for aggro as it was then termed. It was the scene of many sectarian clashes between nationalist and unionist groupings. Most of them were minor, amounting to little more than shouting matches. Whatever fighting there was has less prominence in my mind today than memories of our crowd shouting ’66 Orange squash’ at the other side.

I can’t recall joining in the chants. If I refrained it was not because I was any different from those who did. I shouted a fair amount of vile things, and worse, at loyalists in my day. It was just that I had a close friend who lived a street away who was a Rangers fan and even at that impressionable age I was caught in the middle of divided loyalties. But for him I would not have given things like that a second thought and would have ploughed straight in with the rest of them. And at the end of it all maybe I did shout but memory has shaded things my way.

We were young and shallow and were the product of our times. Today it seems abominable that our sectarianism blinded us to the literally crushing agony and grief experienced by so many people including children guilty of nothing other than going to watch their team play soccer.

Celtic manager Jock Stein said that the tragedy made Glasgow's religious bigotry seem "sordid and little". But things in Belfast were sordid and big. It was a terrible tragedy that should have been met by nationalist Belfast as Aberfan had been a few years earlier. But it wasn’t, at least not in the circles I was familiar with. If the older generation sympathised I have no memory of it. In my cultural circles Rangers supporters were children of a lesser god. Protestant gods didn’t count.

Since then we have had Bradford, Hysel and Hillsborough, all of which have dampened any enthusiasm to shout about soccer stadium disasters. Yesterday, it was both heartening and poignant to witness both sets of supporters at the Ibrox Old Firm clash observe one minutes silence for the victims of that terrible day in 1971.

The loss of a child can accordion 40 years into one time frame. 13 year old Peter Easton’s mother who gave into her son’s pleading to go to the game blames herself for his death. It is mournful that she should have to end her days with that haunting thought. The last thing she gave her son in his short life was a treat. After that it was completely out of her control and the only thing on her hands today is a mother’s love.

Whatever way a games goes, regardless of the passions it might engender, there is no loss suffered like the loss of a fan who fails to return home.

Happy New Year

Cartoon by Brian Mór
Click to enlarge