Archive for the ‘Bloody Sunday, Derry, January 30 1972’ Category
A tribute to the outstanding journalist Ed Moloney, who passed away in New York Aged 77
Ed was a great friend and will be missed.
Condolences to Joan McKiernan, and all friends, colleagues, and comrades.
A reminder : Ed Moloney’s work on issues concerning child abuse in the six-county bit of Ireland which remain unsolved :
John Meehan October 20 2025
Goodnight Sister – Remembering Nell, October 4 2024, 7pm, The Teachers’ Club, 36 Parnell Square, Dublin 1
Goodnight Sister is a tribute to the late Nell McCafferty, March 28 1944 – August 21 2024.
Details Here :
Photo : Derek Speirs
Nell McCafferty’s Funeral from Derry was broadcast late on RIP.IE – Minus an Eamonn McCann Eulogy, Gay Rainbow Flags, or any personal memories of a woman who “changed Ireland for the better”
Many people who knew Nell McCafferty could not get to her funeral in St. Columb’s Cathedral, Derry. An alternative was offered on RIP.IE – a live broadcast starting at 12.30pm. When interested viewers tuned in, they were mystified, seeing only a blank screen. The livestream did not start until after 1.00pm, as a priest shared the altar with three men conducting a religious ceremony containing no stories about one of Derry’s most talented writers, Nell McCafferty. At one screening venue a small group of Nell’s fans – including Máirín Johnson who travelled on the legendary Dublin-Belfast contraceptive train with Nell in 1971 – were not impressed. We learned later that Eamonn McCann delivered a eulogy in front of the altar – A report is below. Source :
Nell McCafferty “Changed Ireland for the Better”
Eamonn McCann delivers a eulogy for Nell McCafferty, St Columb’s Cathedral Derry, August 23 2024
Nell McCafferty ‘changed Ireland for the better’, mourners at her funeral in Derry’s Bogside told
Campaigning journalist and author, who focused on women’s rights, poverty and social injustice, died on Wednesday aged 80
Nell McCafferty “changed Ireland for the better”, mourners at her funeral have been told.
Delivering an elegy in advance of her funeral Mass in Derry’s Bogside on Friday, the veteran civil rights campaigner and journalist Eamonn McCann said it was “given to very few of us to actually change the world”.
Read the rest of this entry »Irish Times Tribute to Nell McCafferty, March 28 1944 – August 21 2024 – Hold the Front Page – Nell has a story
An excellent tribute : Web Link :
Nell McCafferty Obituary – Journalist and Feminist Campaigner
Update, Dublin Gathering, Friday August 23, The Teachers’ Club, 36 Parnell Square West, at 12.30. Nell McCafferty’s funeral will be livestreamed.
RIP.IE Notice :
https://rip.ie/death-notice/nell-mccafferty-derry-derry-city-566175
- Born: March 28th, 1944
- Died: August 21st, 2024
- Nell got to the front page in the end :
“Nell”, she called her autobiography, and that was how she was known.
Small, fierce and feisty. That mop of curls, the waft of cigarette smoke, the tongue in cheek smile and her distinctive walk, like a sailor ashore. Everyone soon knew her smoky Derry voice, laconic, challenging, always ready to break into laughter. You never knew what Nell was going to say next. It was often outrageous. She was a character, and she loved to play herself to the hilt. She was also one of the most important Irish journalists of the latter half of the twentieth century. She listened. She paid attention. She told the truth.
She was, wrote her friend, the historian Margaret Mac Curtain, “unequalled in the extraordinary breadth and fearless candour she has brought to bear on controversial subjects.” Her journalistic career started in The Irish Times in 1970, when the paper’s late Northern editor and editor, Fergus Pyle, commissioned her to write about the new bathroom in her family home in Beechwood Street in Derry’s Bogside.
Home was her touchstone. She vaunted her street-cred. She was part of a Bogside aristocracy that included Martin McGuinness, Eamonn McCann, Seamus Deane, Paddy Doherty, John Hume, Dana and Phil Coulter. Her mother was her biggest fan and harshest critic.
McCafferty was born in 1944. Her father, Hugh, was a clerk for the British admiralty by day and a bookie’s clerk at the dog track at night. Her mother, Lily, reared six children. Another daughter died at birth.
Her parents had to work hard to keep poverty at bay. She was fascinated and frightened by the poverty of the tenements where her father was raised. One of his brothers had died as a British soldier at the Somme. Her mother’s parents were Sergeant Duffy, a Catholic RUC man, and his wife Sarah, a Protestant who “turned”.
Read the rest of this entry »Robert Ballagh’s “The Thirtieth of January”: A Bloody Sunday Painting and the Troubles in the Two Bits of Ireland
In this interview the artist Robert Ballagh discusses the painting “The Thirtieth of January”, depicting Bloody Sunday in Derry in 1972. The conversation provides valuable insights into Ballagh’s personal experiences and artistic process, shedding light on the political and social context of the time.
The interview provides a unique insight into the historical and cultural significance of the painting.
Critical issues related to the Irish government’s response to the conflict, the impact of the Bloody Sunday event, and the broader social and political implications are highlighted. Ballagh’s commentary on the role of the Irish government, the impact on nationalist communities, and the establishment of the Special Criminal Court adds depth to the discussion.
Bloody Sunday Painting – the Thirtieth of January – Robert Ballagh
Thursday, January 20 2022. John Meehan interviews the artist Robert Ballagh in Number Five Arbour Hill.
We are talking about Robert’s painting : The Thirtieth of January, a representation of Bloody Sunday in Derry, January 30 1972.
John Meehan :
Why did you zone in on Derry’s Bloody Sunday , and put so much effort into making this painting? What makes it different from so many other big events during “The Troubles” in the north of Ireland, which lasted for 30 years, from 1968 to 1998?
Robert Ballagh
Well, it’s a long time ago now 50 years, but I have to say that it had an enormous effect on me, and I don’t think I’m alone with that historical experience. I suppose one thing I should say, I was only thinking about this, and I haven’t said anything about this experience to others. I’m a Dubliner. I’ve lived all my life in Dublin. But unlike most Dubliners – it wasn’t by design – I had an extraordinary rich knowledge of the North of Ireland, before the conflict began. Because I was a professional musician in a showband. We used to play at least once or twice a week in the north. So I was in every town village or city in the north that had a ballroom or ballrooms. And so I experienced the reality of life in that society, and became very aware of the sectarian differences, shall we say – the nature of the society, which people didn’t appreciate at all. I tell one very short story to illustrate that. We played fairly regularly in one of the very popular ballrooms in Belfast : Romano’s in Queen Street. We developed quite a following! In the show business vernacular the word groupie was used. These girls used follow us, they came down to Dublin once or twice to hear us. And we were playing one night in Romano’s.
After the dance, they came up and we’re talking to us. They asked “When are you playing again in Belfast?”.
I remember saying “Oh, I think we’re here next week.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yeah – we’re playing in a ballroom called the Astor” which I knew was in Smithfield.
And they said, “Oh, we can’t go there.” And I said, “Why?” – because it was a public ballroom. It wasn’t attached to any organization or anything. It was a public ballroom.
They said, “Oh, no, that’s a taig hall”
And it was the first time I realized, and we realized, that our fan base in Belfast was Protestant.
“Frogs’ legs and lobster Thermidor – or the ABC of republican strategy” – Fearghal Mac Bhloscaidh
Fearghal Mac Bhloscaidh is one of the most interesting political writers in Ireland. The article below is a detailed analysis of Ireland’s peace process, which begins with a speech delivered by Bernadette McAliskey the year before the Good Friday Agreement was signed in 1998. I remember it well. (*)
John Meehan
About the author : Fearghal Mac Bhloscaidh is a Belfast-based historian and the author of a number of important books, including Tyrone: the Irish Revolution, 1912-1923 (Four Courts Press, 2014).
As a young man, I listened to a speech by Bernadette McAliskey the year before the signing of the Good Friday Agreement – the pinnacle of what became known as the ‘peace process’. McAliskey did not object to peace, she had notoriously been subtitled by the BBC in a 1992 interview, when she said: ‘No sane human being supports violence. We are often inevitably cornered into it by powerlessness, by lack of democracy, by lack of willingness of people to listen to our problems. We don’t choose political violence, the powerful force it on us.’ (quoted in Curtis, 1998:297) By the time I heard her speak in 1997, the powerful had arrested her pregnant daughter, Róisín, with the intent to extradite her to Germany. By 2000, the powerful admitted that Róisín, who had never been charged, had no case to answer as there was ‘not a realistic prospect of convicting Miss McAliskey for any offence.’ (Guardian, 20 July 2000). What struck me at the time, was that the powerful had a vendetta against a woman and her family because she had stood up for socialist republican principles for thirty years at that stage. Last month, fifty-five years after the Burntollet march and her subsequent election as the then youngest female Westminster MP ever, McAliskey gave the main oration at the solidarity march in Dublin, where she told the crowd that ‘Palestine is the litmus test of our humanity’ and then urged those present not to vote for any politician who would legitimise the Biden administration, which was ‘enabling genocide’, by attending the St Patrick’s Day events in the White House (Irish News, 14 January 2024).
McAliskey’s speech from all those years ago stuck in my mind because in the questions afterwards she was asked about the peace process and used a powerful analogy that I hadn’t heard before at that stage, but I have heard and used myself on numerous occasions since. She welcomed an end to violence but warned that the provisional movement appeared to be going down a well-worn reformist path that would eventually denude it of any revolutionary potential. She compared the republican movement to a frog, which if placed in a pot of boiling water, will immediately sense the danger, and jump out to save itself, but, if immersed in tepid water brought slowly to the boil so that the change in temperature remains gradual, the frog does not realise it’s boiling to death. In line with their – soon to be – new mates in New Labour, Sinn Féin had swallowed TINA – there is no alternative. Plan A – armed struggle has failed, now we try Plan B. In Sinn Fein’s case, this meant the long march through the institutions, acceptance of the principle of consent and parliamentary reformism on the classical constitutional nationalist model. McAliskey had the temerity to ask for a Plan C, which might mean retaining socialist republican principles and challenging the powerful rather than getting into bed with them.
Read the rest of this entry »Doctor Matt Barrett saves a little of Ireland’s honour at the absurd coronation of a British King called Charles III
The French socialist Jean-Luc Melenchon spoke for many when he branded the coronation of the new English king Charles III “nauseating”.
A Dublin cardiologist, Matt Barrett, is the partner of an Irish politician Leo Varadkar (currently the Fine Gael Taoiseach, Prime Minister). Matt had to attend the recent coronation of an English king called Charles. While Varadkar and other attending Irish forelock-tuggers (such as President Michael D Higgins and the Sinn Féin leaders Mary Lou McDonald and Michelle O’Neill) dutifully swallowed the nauseating royal guff, Matt broke ranks.
Ten out of Ten to Matt Barrett! :
“Varadkar’s partner, Matt Barrett, however, did not get the memo. In the VIP motorcade and in Westminster Abbey, he posted a series of irreverent comments on Instagram to his private group of more than 350 followers.
“Holy shit I think I’m accidentally crowned king of England,” he posted from the taoiseach’s car as they approached the abbey on 6 May.
The posts, reported in the Irish Times on Saturday, have embarrassed the government and landed Varadkar in a fresh diplomatic blunder.
Once inside the abbey, Barrett, a consultant cardiologist, ignored an injunction in the order-of-service booklet to switch off his phone and posted jokes and observations on the ceremony.
A paragraph from page 38 in the booklet caught his eye. “The queen’s sceptre and rod are brought from the altar by the Right Rev and Right Hon the Lord Chartres GCVO and the Right Rev Rose Hudson Wilkin CD MBE, Bishop of Dover. The queen touches them in turn,” it said.
Barrett posted a photo of it with a green line around the last sentence. “Sounds like the script to a good night out, tbh,” he said.
In the list of participants, he noted the Right Rev James Newcome, who has the title Clerk of the Closet. Barrett highlighted this, saying: “Had this job until my early 20s.”
Later he posted a photograph of Charles wearing his crown and compared it to the sorting hat in the Harry Potter books. “Was genuinely half expecting it to shout ‘GRYFFINDOR,’” he wrote.”
The source is the Guardian, a British newspaper.
In Ireland, beside the famous “You Are Now Entering Free Derry Wall”, the English king is not welcome :
Dozens of British Police Confiscate Anti-Monarchy Banners in London, May 6 2023
The site “Leeds for Europe” reports :
Yesterday Suella Braverman’s new, draconian anti-protest laws were used to their full extent to surpress anti-monarchy protestors.
The rest of the world was watching, this is how the English service on France 24 reported it – “While many criticise the price tag of the Coronation as ordinary Britons struggle to put food on the table.. The police arrests of peaceful protesters are scenes you’d expect to see in Russia, not in the UK.”
Leader of Britain’s anti-monarchy group Republic arrested at coronation protest
Gopal Priyamavda Observes :
From a plundered economy to a police force ready to crush protests, Britain today looks like its colonies once did. It had to happen.
https://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article66450
Priyamavda published her article on the Al Jazeera website on May 5 2023; One day later her prediction concerning “a police force ready to crush protests” came true.
Meanwhile several leading Irish politicians are tugging the forelock to the British Monarch : Shame on the leaders of Sinn Féin Mary Lou McDonald and Michelle O’Neill and President Michael D Higgins – their behaviour is politically unprincipled. Leaders of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil – Messrs Leo Varadkar and Micheál Martin are not betraying their principles – they believe in celebrating the crimes of the British Empire.
Source : https://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article66449
Republic’s Graham Smith held at protest on King Charles III’s procession route in central London
Read the rest of this entry »The British Royal Family is “unequal, outdated, and should be consigned to the dustbin of history” – Agree or Disagree?
Read the news items below and decide for yourself if the statement above – written by West Belfast Stormont Assembly member Gerry Carroll (People Before Profit) – should be supported by everyone on the anti-imperialist left in Ireland.
I think the answer is Yes – and this should not be a controversial opinion, especially in Ireland. Unfortunately, some prominent public figures disagree. Lies about the British Royal Family resemble a mountain of dead dogs, and fresh stinking corpses are added daily.
Reliable news reports tell us that the English Prince Andrew, brother of British King Charles, is getting support from a convicted child abuse criminal.
A courageous woman, Virginia Giuffre, successfully won substantial damages in a USA court from the British Prince, who was a close associate of the convicted child abuse criminals Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
“Maxwell, who paid out millions to Giuffre herself in a separate lawsuit in 2017, was jailed for child sex trafficking in connection with Epstein.
But she claimed in an interview with CBS that Ms Giuffre’s claims are unfounded, and that she did not introduce her “dear friend” Prince Andrew to the teenager as had been claimed.
Ms Giuffre said: “My goal has been to show the rich and powerful are not above the law and should be held accountable.” Source : https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/prince-andrew-overturn-claim-by-sex-accuser-virginia-giuffre/
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Readers might assume that no self-respecting Irish political leader would risk getting close to the sinister Buckingham House royal parasites.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tomás Ó Flatharta 