A councillor who left Sinn Fein

The following observation was made in the Irish News (19 October) by columnist Newton Emerson:

Moyle councillor Margaret Anne McKillop has resigned from Sinn Fein, citing its recent support for limited forms of abortion.  In the 11 years that McKillop was a party member the Provisional IRA committed five murders.  Where was her uncompromising respect for the sanctity of life then?

Newton Emerson makes a valid point and Councillor McKillop's position is inconsistent.

I believe in the sanctity of human life but that applies to the victims of IRA terrorism as much as an unborn child.

North Belfast News

In this week's North Belfast News (19 October) Liam Murphy takes a look at some Belfast streets and the people after whom they were named.  However there were a number of errors in the article.

1. 'Drew Street was named after the fiery Rev Norman Drew who was a 19th century street preacher.'  No it was named after Rev Thomas Drew, minister of Christ Church in Durham Street.  He was also responsible for the formation of the Drew Memorial Church on the Grosvenor Road.
2. 'Twaddell Avenue [was] named after William Twaddell, a native of Portadown.'  No, William J Twaddell (1884-1922) was not a native of Portadown.  He was born at Ballintoy in North Antrim but came to Belfast.  He married a woman from Portadown and was buried at Drumcree parish church.
3. 'Michael Pratley was later convicted and hanged for the murder.'  No he wasn't.  Michael Pratley was accused of the murder of Twaddell but was hanged for another murder.  The murder of Twaddell was carried out by the IRA but no one was ever convicted for the crime.

Liam Murphy really needs to brush up on his local history or else the North Belfast News needs a new local historian!

Division in the GAA

Last night Peter Robinson MLA observed that there have been changes in the GAA and indeed there have.  Some of the old divisive rules have gone and that must be welcomed.  However more needs to be done and there is still a long way to go.

 

The constitution of the GAA includes a commitment to a United Ireland and requires that a member of the GAA subscribe to that aspiration.  For that reason it is impossible for a unionist to join a GAA club or participate in GAA games.

 

In addition a number of GAA clubs, grounds and competitions are named after Irish republican terrorists - not IRA men from some historic era but from the recent republican campaign carried out by the Provisional IRA and the INLA.

 

That is why Peter Robinson told the GAA that it is wrong to use the names of clubs and grounds to eulogise men of violence.  This is a subject that I have addressed on several occasions and a number of posts on this blog contain examples of this practice.

Some GAA leaders agree privately that it is wrong to name GAA clubs and grounds after terrorists but they seem reluctant to remove this blight on their organisation.

Meanwhile other prominent GAA figures want to cling to the past and Joe Brolly was quick to say that the naming of GAA clubs was 'no one else's business'.  'People can either like it or lump it.'  Brolly, who had a successful career in the GAA, is a son of Sinn Fein politicians Francis and Anne Brolly.  Today he said that he was proud that the hurling club in his home town of Dungiven was named after Kevin Lynch, a convicted INLA terrorist.  Brolly used to play for St Canice's GAA Club which shares its ground with the Kevin Lynch hurling club.

There is clearly a division in the GAA over this important matter and Peter Robinson's speech has exposed that division.  The real test for the leadership of the GAA is therefore whether or not they step up to the mark and face down the republican backwoodsmen and the political bigots in their ranks.

No other sporting organisation in Northern Ireland eulogises terrorists and murderers and this aspect of the GAA is a hindrance to building a shared future and a united community.

They have come a considerable distance but there is more to be dome, including the removal of the Irish republican ethos from the GAA constitution and the renaming of clubs and grounds that are currently named after republican terrorists.
 

Another error from the Irish News

I have not been blogging for the past few weeks.  I have been working on a particular project that has taken up a lot of time and there are only 24 hours in the day!  However I am now back again blogging and want to pick up on an article in the Irish News today.  It is another example of the poor standard of journalism in Ulster.

 

 

Irish News journalist Connla Young started his report on the Tour of the North with this paragraph:

Nationalist residents have reacted angrily after claims that bands taking part in the Tour of the North parade broke a Parades Commission ruling not to play music while passing St Patrick's Church last night.

In fact the determination by the Parades Commission was that the bands should play hymns while passing St Patrick's Roman Catholic Church, not that they should play no music.  The determination was that they should play hymns and indeed that is exactly what all the bands did.

 

A single paragraph, the first paragraph in the report and yet Connla Young got it totally wrong!

Responsible journalism should be accurate journalism.

Thanks to the Irish News!

I haven't posted anything on this blog for some days - pressure of work and other commitments have taken up so much time that it wasn't possible but I am glad to see that the daily pageviews remain at a very healthy level.

 

Nevertheless I am grateful to the Irish News (25 April) for devoting a whole page, apart from advertisements, to this blog!

 

Their story is based on information obtained under Freedom of Information through the website What Do They Know.  Since 2008 there have been 51 FoI requests to DSD from this website.

This particular FoI request was made by someone named Ben who appears to be a Ben Brown but of whom at present I know nothing other than that he is a prolific user of FoIs.

 

He requested information about how many DSD staff accessed my blog from DSD computers while they were at work.  The answer was 11 and I am glad to see that the figure was low.  I would be very disappointed if civil servants were spending too much time accessing blogs, even mine, during working time.  Indeed I understand that many staff are unable to access any blogs on work computers but I will have to check that out.

 

Now for the benefit of 'Ben Brown', the Irish News and anyone else who read the article, the number of pageviews every day currently stands at anywhere between arround 300 and 3,000 and depends on what has been posted.  As regards that audience I get pageviews from across the British Isles and also from many parts of Europe, the USA and Canada.

The Irish News also referred back to a post from last year and stated:

Last year he removed the business address of human rights activist Fra Hughes from his blog following a complaint to police.

For those who have forgotten Fra Hughes, he set himself up last summer as a 'human rights observer' at Loyal Order parades on the Crumlin Road.  I don't know what qualifies Fra Hughes or indeed anyone else to be a 'human rights observer' but there he was taking close up photographs of Protestant spectators in a way that was intrusive and invasive.

 

At the time I didn't know who Fra Hughes was but later it was pointed out to me that his name, his picture and his business address were on a North Belfast Sinn Fein blog and a Sinn Fein website.  I copied that information across to this blog and Fra Hughes then complained to the PSNI. 

 

When a policeman phoned me to say that there had been a complaint from Fra Hughes he said very clearly that I had done nothing wrong and broken no law and he simply passed on a request for the information to be removed.  Being of a generous nature I removed the reference to Fra Hughes' place of business on the Cavehill Road and the Irish News and the North Belfast News seemed to get rather excited about this.  Thereby drawing further attention to Fra Hughes but both papers missed one key point.  The details of Fra Hughes business were still there on the Sinn Fein website and the blog and they have been there since 27 August 2010, a period of two years. 

 

Fra Hughes objected to the information being on a unionist blog but not to it being on a Sinn Fein blog and website.  Surely if someone is concerned about his safety, as Fra said that he was, he would ensure that the information was also deleted from the Sinn Fein blog and the Sinn Fein website?  Does he think that only republicans read the information on Sinn Fein websites?

 

Moreover, I have just checked the North Belfast Sinn Fein website and their blog and the details of Fra Hughes business are still there today!  It really is farcical.

 

Finally, as a sort of recommendation, the Irish News journalist said that it was 'unfortunate' that 'few MLAs run a personal blog like social development minister Nelson McCausland.'  Yes I think I can definitiely take that as a sort of recommendation!

 

Oh yes, and back to 'Ben Brown'.  He also asked under the same FoI request if I had ever asked for DSD not to buy the Irish News and the answer was 'no'.  Isn't it important to know what is going on in the world of 'Pro Fide et Patria'?  But it makes me wonder if there is some connection between Ben Brown and the Irish News or did the newspaper simply pick up the FoI information from the What do Thery Know website?

 

 

 

The McMahon Murders (2)

In a previous post I referred to an incident on 24 March 1922 when five people were shot dead in a house in Kinnaird Terrace in Belfast.  They were Owen McMahnon, a publican, three of his sons, and a barman who lived with them.  McMahon was also a director of Glentoran Football Club.

In 1961 Rex Taylor, an English author who was sympathetic to Irish nationalism, wrote a book on the assassination of Sir Henry Wilson, the Ulster Unionist MP for North Down, and in it he referred to the McMahon murders: But soon a few astonishing facts came to light, though none of them tended to lessen the degree of Nixon's guilt. It was found that the late McMahons were the paymasters for the IRA trouble-makers in the North, a fact proved by a leakage from the banks of the necessary funds. With the deaths of the paymasters there came also, for a time at any rate, a sudden lull in Belfast.

 

I had never come across that suggestion previously and so asked if anyone had any more information.  I didn't receive any answers but yesterday I came across the background to this in a book entitled Northern Divisions: The Old IRA and the Belfast Pogroms 1920-22 by Jim McDermott.

 

McDermott's grandfather, also Jimmy McDermott, was an IRA officer in Belfast in the 1920s along with his brother Johnny.  The author himself is a teacher and historian.  The book was published in 2001 by Beyond the Pale Publications, which is based in Conway Mill in West Belfast.

 

At 12.15 on 23 March 1922 two A Specials were murdered by the IRA and this was followed by the attack on the McMahon home.  Jim McDermott quotes from a memoir written by Sean Montgomery, a member of the IRA at that time:

There was an attempt to disarm two Specials in May Street.  This was in the charge  of the Brigade OC and after of the Market company.  The two Specials died and one of the worst reprisals ever was the shooting of the well known McMahon family and McKinney their barman.  The McMahons were missed because they gave a sum of money which was in a book captured by the police.

Jim McDermott comments: 'While it is doubtful if the IRA group only wanted to disarm the Specials, it is conceivable that Owen McMahon did give a sum of money to the IRA.  There is often an ambivalence in Belfast nationalists about republicans and guns.'

 

 

 

 

The cost of alcoholism

The Irish News (28 March 2013) has reported that:

• 300 lives are lost every year in Northern Ireland to alcoholism, six times the number killed on the roads last year.
• There were 8,000 alcohol-related hospital admissions last year.
• The cost to the economy was estimated at £900 million.

Those figures are a stark reminder of the cost of alcohol abuse in Northern Ireland, the human cost as well as the financial cost to society and especially to the health service.