Legends of the Fall

...

Poetry in the Aras

It’s official. Michael D Higgins, poet and human rights activist, is the 9th President of Ireland. Being small in stature did not prevent him standing head and shoulders above the rest of the field. In terms of how the public appear to understand the office of President it is a role that would seem to fit Higgins like a glove. He knew the ropes better than the rest of them, what was feasible and what was off limits. There were really only two candidates in it as the final vote tally demonstrated. The remaining five were also rans who trailed...

From The Cradle

Tonight The Pensive Quill carries a piece by Guest Writer Sean Doyle, Wicklow Branch Independent Workers Union.                                       From the day we are born our experiences begin. If you want something you protest. You use everything in your arsenal. You cry out and hope someone will hear you and those who care will attend to your needs....

The Devil You Know

Cartoon by Brian Mór Click to enlarg...

Democracy’s Reward

Just back home having made my contribution to the presidential outcome. I cast the top vote for Michael D Higgins. Ireland is going to have a President come what may so opting for the candidate least likely to cause problems for society seemed the appropriate way to go. Michael D, while setting nothing alight throughout the campaign, deciding to play it safe and presidential, had the advantage of sounding honest in a bear pit of prevarication and dissembling.  What we saw was basically what we will get if he makes the Aras. He is most likely...

Almost Done

After a five week a campaign which was in fact longer given the hype and activity in the run up to the official launch, tomorrow the people that ultimately matter, the voters, shall determine what they made of it all. They were lied to right to the very end. The lies were so outlandish that the voters must have seen through all of it.  They now must decide who they trust most to perform the job as President. Clearly those that lie most are those who least merit the vote. But ought does not is make. Maybe people don’t care, feeling that honesty...

All Go At Gallagher

Initially when Sean Gallagher’s ‘independent’ hat appeared in the ring for the presidential election it hardly looked tailor made to fit the head of the Irish President. But with the electorate poised to go to the polls later this week it is clear that the Aras is in some danger of falling into his hands. Whatever the alarmist connotations ‘danger’ is the appropriate term. Doubtless,  Gallagher is part of the Fianna Fail machine even if the tracks of his party membership have been covered with a floor mat upon the face of which ‘independent’...

Moratorium?

It has been a tough presidential campaign for Martin McGuinness. He entered with a bang and despite giving it his best shot now seems destined to exit with a whimper. The decibels from the early days of his campaign could no longer drown out the questions that were being asked of him about an IRA past he suggested was mischievously manufactured.  The war in the North was probably less damaging to his prospects than its overspill into the South. A public prepared to waive its misgivings about the use of arms against British troops and cops...

Off to Dublin

...

The Provisional Irish Republican Army And The Morality Of Terrorism

This review featured in Democracy And Security. Volume 7 No 3 July-September 2011. The status of most violent Liberal Democracy in the world is not one that any country or region, unless perversely enamoured to dysfuntionalism, would seek to covet. Yet, somewhere has to get it and for its troubles tiny Northern Ireland, with its population of approximately 1.5 million, has scooped the unwanted award. There, on the northwest fringe of Europe, between 1969 and 1990 the number of people killed as a result of political violence was ‘greater than...

Top Ten List

Cartoon by Brian Mór Click to enlar...

Miriam & Martin

The past week has not been a good one for Martin McGuinness in his bid to become President of Ireland. Dropping points in the latest Red C poll while two of his rivals made gains was hardly the news he wanted to wake up to on Sunday morning.  At the beginning of the week he had been challenged in Athlone by the son of an Irish soldier killed during an IRA operation in 1983. His frosty response risked polluting the public mood. Then during a televised presidential candidates debate on Prime Time, which pulled 700, 000 viewers at its peak, he...

Martin McGuinness and the Hunger Strike

Tonight The Pensive Quill reprints this article by guest writer Rusty Nail of Slugger O'Toole, which examines Irish Presidential Candidate Martin McGuinness' role in the controversy over the handling of the 1981 Hunger Strike.  Monday, September 28, 20091981 Hunger Strike: Deconstructing McGuinnessRusty Nail at Slugger O’TooleA couple of analogies to start. And then an extended deconstruction of McGuinness’ article from the Irish News.Picture Gerry Adams as manager of the team, Danny Morrison as Captain. Bik McFarlane...

Dealing With Occupation

Tonight The Pensive Quill features guest writer David McSweeney writing about the the occupation of Ireland. Ernst and Young, the accountancy firm which audited the Anglo Irish bank accounts in the lead up to its implosion, announced 300 new jobs for Ireland last week. Half of them, the announcement statement told us will be for “experienced operatives” moving within the organisation. So some of those responsible for enabling the biggest disaster in world banking history, will be looking at higher salaries and new grandiose titles. Media reports...

Led Zeppelin

It is a long time since I read a book on Led Zeppelin, Hammer of the Gods which I raced through while imprisoned. This output, part of the Virgin Modern Icon series, is a much shorter one and considerably less detailed. It is also controversy deficient. Apart from revealing that the group had a reputation as hell raisers prone to throwing the odd television set out a hotel window, there were no revelations. Richard Cole, the group’s one time road manager, might have cornered the market there. By 1970 the Peter Grant managed band had displaced...

It Ain’t Necessarily So

The things that you're liable To read in the Bible It ain't necessarily so -    Bronski Beat In a piece that has caused a stir in some republican circles as of late, the former republican prisoner and hunger striker Laurence McKeown explained his discomfort at attending an event to protest the killing of the young British police officer, Ronan Kerr: I attended because I felt it was the right thing to do. But it felt uncomfortable. I was standing alongside people who had often been condemnatory of the IRA. I wondered if they...

A Wee Black Booke of Belfast Anarchism (1867-1973)

Tonight The Pensive Quill features guest writer Sean Matthews who reviews a book on the history of Belfast anarchism. Irish anarchism is a movement only coming into existence. We do not yet enjoy the popular understanding of and respect for anarchist ideas that can be found among thousands of militants and the wider working class in countries like Sweden, Spain, Italy, South America or Korea. But that is not to say that we have no history at all. We are beginning to uncover forgotten events and this excellent pamphlet provides a small glimpse...

David And Goliath

An intellectually daunting task it definitely is not to work out why Martin McGuinness wants discussion of his past to be ruled off limits during the current presidential election campaign. Yesterday’s confrontation, caught on camera, between him and David Kelly made for powerful television. It required no extra ingredients to merit the description ‘dramatic.’ The dramatis personae were pitched against each other in a real life drama played out in full public view; one determined to make his own personal case for justice, the other, while professing...

On the Rocky Road

Cartoon by Brian Mór Click to enlar...

Bigoted Brethren

Some elements of unionism seem not to have even the limited brains Dawson Bailey was born with. Had grey matter been present even in small quantities post-Holy Cross, the debacle of seriously silly own goals might have taken a backseat. It was not to be. If there is any group more than capable of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory it is the Orange Order. Attending a funeral would appear to be a civilised course of action. Not long back Martin McGuinness turned up for the funeral of Iris Robinson’s father and was made welcome by Free Presbyterian...

Take Him To Your Bosom

Tonight The Pensive Quill features guest writer Sean Doyle of the Independent Workers Union, Wicklow Branch, commenting on Martin McGuinness’s bid for the Presidency. To the 26 counties Nationalists I say stop procrastinating about the coat your presidential candidate should wear. He and his party are following in the footsteps of Irish Nationalist tradition. ...

Marty Down Under

A feature of the current Irish Presidential campaign has been the emergence of a body of opinion that has homed in on what it regards as a brand of hypocrisy in the South of the country. The latter it is said manifests, even prides itself in a willingness to have Martin McGuinness occupy a position of political authority in the North while simultaneously holding its nose at the prospect of something similar in the South. While certainly not alone in subscribing to this critical perspective the writer Jude Collins tersely caught its main theme: There...

Gerry McGeough: Autumn Briefing

Tonight The Pensive Quill features guest writer Helen McClafferty providing recent updates on the imprisonment of Gerry McGeough. 16 September 2011 Gerry calls on Owen Paterson and David Cameron to "release him immediately". Gerry McGeough has called for his immediate release and said the British Army’s apology for the murder of an innocent man by a British soldier is “political hypocrisy” since the soldier is not being prosecuted for the murder.    “Is there justice or not?” asks Gerry.   Gerry wants to know how the...

Belfast Calling

I believe that society owes it to those it failed to protect in the past, to expose the wrong done to those children and ensure that every step is taken to pursue the perpetrators and those who failed or purposely refused to carry out their duties to protect children and to investigate and prosecute criminals - Aengus Ó Snodaigh, Sinn Fein TD. A Dublin court has ordered the extradition of Liam Adams to Belfast so that he may answer charges of child rape. He is a former chairman of Sinn Fein’s Louth Comhairle Ceantair, a position he held despite...

The Bangers Bulletin: Scoop of the Year!

Cartoon by Brian Mór Click to enlar...

To be a War Criminal Presupposes a War

We've committed many war crimes in Vietnam - but I'll tell you something interesting about that. We were committing war crimes in World War II, before the Nuremberg trials were held and the principle of war crimes was stated - George Wald In the wake of the decision by Martin McGuinness to enter the race for the Irish Presidency it is interesting to note a change of inflexion in some areas of media discourse. The Irish Mail on Sunday perhaps provided the best example last week in its definition of the decades-long armed Irish conflict as ‘our...

On the Stump

Cartoon by Brian Mór Click to enlar...

Scoops Not Filed

A few days ago an article appeared in the Irish Times by Peter Murtagh. It related to the 1986 IRA killing of Frank Hegarty, one of its senior volunteers who had gone ‘over to the other side’ as Martin McGuinness put it. The other side ironically, given where Sinn Fein is today, was then the British state. There is little room for doubting that Hegarty was a British agent or that he was unaware that the sanction for going over to the other side was, as Martin McGuinness said, ‘death certainly.’ But that was less the point of Murtagh’s article than...