Lord Coe's visit to Belfast

Here I am standing on the steps at Stormont today with Lord Coe, chair of the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games, and the Speaker, William Hay MLA, before a briefing on the 2012 London Olympics and Paralympics.

Nelson McCausland MLA, Lord Coe & Mervyn Storey MLA

Earlier Seb Coe had visited a school at Dundonald and after the Stormont presentation he came to the Grove Health and Wellbeing Centre in North Belfast for the launch of a project called All Our Saturdays.  This has been prepared by Libraries NI and others, and is based around the resources of the old Ireland's Saturday Night newspaper.  The veteran sports writer Malcolm Brodie, who was for many years the editor of the newspaper, also spoke and recalled the affection so many Ulster people had for the paper.

A Book Around the Irish Sea

David Brett,  a historian of architecture and heritage, has written A Book About the Irish Sea, which is a history of the people who live around the coastline of the Irish Sea.  He argues that 19th century concepts of nations and nationalism can get in the wya of the real story of what has happened around the sea in the last 7,500 years.  He concludes that rather than dividing people, the sea has acted as a focus of exchange and interaction, a bridge rather than a barrier.

King of the Wild Frontier

King of the Wild Frontier is the title of a television programme on BBC1 on Wednesday night at 10.45 and it is about an Ulsterman named James Kirker (1793-1852), who was born in a thatched cottage at Carnaghlis in the parish of Killead, county Antrim, on 2 December 1793.  He was the son of Gilbert Kirker and his wife Rose Anderson, who were both Ulster-Scots.

James emigrated from Ulster to America and arrived in New York at the age of seventeen.  He served as a privateer in the War of 1812 and was captured by the British.

By 1817 he had moved west to St Louis, Missouri, where he entered the retail grocery business.  Five years later he went west as a trapper and in 1824 he entered the Southwest as an illegal trapper in Arizona and New Mexico.

He prospected for gold and silver and by 1828 was operating a mine in southern New Mexico.  There was no firm government in the region and so he was able to engage in illegal trade in guns, ammunition and cloth with the Apaches in exchange for mules and other goods stolen from the Mexicans.

During the 1830s and 1840s he traded illegally with the Indians and at the same time served as a leader of mercenary fighters employed by the authorities in Chihuahua and New Mexico to destroy the hostile Apaches.  At one time he was even known as the King of New Mexico.  Eventually in 1850 James Kirker ended up in California and settled in Contra Costa County, where he died at the end of 1852.

Presenter Gerry Anderson said, 'King of the Wild Frontier was the result of assembling a veritable historical jigsaw of the life of one of the most interesting and controversial Ulster-Scots who ever scalped an Indian for money.'

In his day he was regarded as a man of enterprise and vision but afterwards in 1851 he was portrayed unfavourably by the Ulster writer Thomas Mayne Reid in The Scalp Hunters: or Romantic Adventures in Northern Mexico.  More recently there have been two studies of Kirker, Savage Scene: The Life and Times of James Kirker by William C McGaw (1972) and Borderlander by Ralph Adam Smith (1999).

Alochol abuse

While reading the newspapers last Friday in Hillsborough Castle, I came across a series of reports about alcohol abuse.

The headline in the Daily Telegraph was ‘Middle aged, middle class and most likely to drink every day’. The Daily Express reported on a similar line that ‘Professionals are drinking the working classes under the table’. It had another report on ‘Children who hit the bottle’, which stated that every day 35 children are admitted to hospital after drinking enough alcohol to make them seriously ill. Meanwhile the Belfast Telegraph reported that ‘Alcohol-related deaths double due to binge drinking’. The number of alcohol-related deaths in Britain has more than doubled since the early 1990s, from 4.023 in 1992 to 9,031 in 2008. 

It is clear that the problem of alcohol abuse is increasing in our society and that the effects of alcohol abuse are increasing, with more deaths and more illness. Such is the power and influence of the drinks industry that governments have been reluctant to address the issue in a comprehensive and coherent way but as the evidence builds up so will the pressure for action.

Launch of Burns' Week

The following photographs were taken at the launch of the Ulster-Scots Agency's celebration of Burns Week.

Hazel Campell (acting ceo, Ulster-Scots Agency), Nelson McCausland, John Hunter (chair, Ulster-Scots Agency)

Orange Community Awards 2009

The Orange Community Awards evening for 2009 was held in Cookstown on Saturday night in the hall of 1st Presbyterian Church. The categories included (1) best charity fundraising lodge (2) individual community involvement (3) special merit award (4) chaplain’s award for Christian witness in the community (5) youth development award (6) Orange Standard award (7) best new banner (8) best banner painter and (9) Grand Master’s achievement award. 

The four banners that were nominated were all painted by William Magowan of Garvagh and the winner was the new banner for Ormeau True Blues LOL990 in South Belfast. The front depicts Ballynafeigh Orange Hall and the back has a picture of Martin Luther. Another of the nominated banners was that of Thiepval Memorial LOL 1005 in Convoy and it has a traditional picture of the Battle of the Somme on one side. The other side shows the lodge returning from its first Twelfth in 1919 led by four pipers. William was one of the Northern Ireland delegation to the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington in 2007. 

The winner of the chaplain’s award was Rev Nigel Gould, minister of Mountnorris and Tullyvallen Presbyterian Churches, who introduced the ‘Christianity Explored’ course in local Orange halls, and the Grand Master’s achievement award went to Rev Gerald Sproule, who joined the Orange Institution in Dublin in 1945. 

Speaking at the end of the evening, I congratulated the winners and commended their effort, commitment and dedication. I also pointed that Orangeism is most successful when its members are embedded in their communities and those who were nominated for awards were all good examples to us. Not only were they deeply involved in their lodges but also in the wider community through their work in areas such as churches, youth organisations, charitable and sports organisations and public life.

Update on GAA

On this blog on 8 December 2009 I referred to a republican commemoration in Londonderry on 6 December to remember the deaths of four IRA terrorists. 

The republican commemoration also included a wreath laying ceremony at an IRA memorial and a Gaelic football match between Na Piarsaigh CLG and Sean Dolan’s GAC at Celtic Park in Londonderry. Celtic Park is the main ground of Derry County Board of the GAA.’ 

This post was based on an article in the Sinn Fein newspaper An Phoblacht, dated 10 December 2009, which said that the republican commemoration programme included a challenge match ‘between two of Derry’s foremost football clubs’. 

Later that afternoon two of Derry’s foremost football clubs played a challenge match for the Cú Chulainn Cup. In a hard fought match held in wind swept conditions the Waterside based Pearse’s edged out the Creggan men by a point. 

It was also based on an article in the Derry Journal on 4 December: 

The day of events will include a wreath-laying ceremony at the republican monument in Rose Court in the Waterside at 1pm , which will be followed by a Gaelic match between Na Piarsaigh and Sean Dolan’s at Celtic Park at 2pm.

Since then I have received a communication from the public affairs manager of the Ulster section of the GAA. He says that he has discussed this matter with both the Celtic Park and Derry GAA Committees and officials from these bodies have stated that the match in question was a scheduled fixture which was played as part of the Derry GAA programme and that this match had no link to any other event taking place in Londonderry that day. 

He added that ‘if there was a link made to this fixture by another outside group then it was done without the knowledge or permission of the GAA and we will be further investigating this matter. No commemorative or political event of any kind was held on GAA property namely Celtic Park and no GAA official unit was involved in organisation of the event that was outlined in the Minister’s blog.’ 

He also stated that no request was made to Derry GAA or Ulster Council GAA at any stage for any event of any kind to take place at Celtic Park.

I welcome this statement from the GAA. The focus is now back on Sinn Fein and they have to explain the reports in An Phoblacht and the Derry Journal. What did happen on Sunday 6 December? Who issued the press statement to the Derry Journal? Following on the GAA denial, how do Sinn Fein explain it all away?