Whitelaw Reid memorial lecture

One hundred years ago, in March 1912, the United States ambassador in London, Whitelaw Reid, gave a lecture in the Assembly Buildings in Belfast, the headquarters of the Presbyterian Church.

Whitelaw Reid was invited to Belfast by the Presbyterian Historical Society and his subject was the Ulster-Scots in Ulster and America.

The invitation to Reid came at a time when Ulster and Ireland were in turmoil as a result of the third home rule crisis.  It was also a time of heightened interest in the Ulster-Scots, their role in the shaping of modern Ulster and their role in the making of the United States of America.

Whitelaw Reid (1837-1912) was the longtime editor of the New York Tribune.  In 1892 he was the Republican candidate for vice-president alongside Benjamin Harrison, who was the candidate for the presidency.  It is noteworthy that Harrison's mother had Ulster-Scots ancestry and that their Democratic Party opponents, Grover Cleveland and Adlai Stevenson, also shared Ulster-Scots ancestry.  This was a time when the Scotch-Irish were very much to the fore in almost every area of life in the United States.  Harrison and Reid were unsuccessful but Reid went on to serve as the United States ambassador to the Court of St James from 1905 to 1912 and he died on 15 December 1912.

On Wednesday night at 7.00 pm I am due to deliver the first Whitelaw Reid memorial lecture in the Assembly Buildings.  Entrance is free and everyone is welcome.

I will be speaking about the signficance of Whitelaw Reid, a Scotch-Irish American of Ulster-Scots descent with family roots in county Tyrone..  I will also be considering the context of the times, socially, culturally and politically.

'The leaven of the Ulster-Scots'

Each year the Belfast Burns Association holds a Burns Night supper to mark the anniversary of the birth of the Scottish poet.  Some years ago local newspapers carried extensive reports of these annual suppers and they provide some interesting insights into what people thought about the Ulster-Scots.

On Monday 25 January 1960 the Belfast News-Letter reported on the supper, which had taken place on the previous Saturday (23 January) in the Grand Central Hotel.

The toast to 'The land we bide in' was proposed by Mr A Kirk, principal of Srtanmillis Training College, who said that the Scots were treated kindly in northern Ireland, where the people went to the trouble even to 'dig up' a grandmother or other relation of Scottish ancestry.

The response was made by Alderman Robin G C Kinahan, Lord Mayor of Belfast, who said that:

The Scots had helped to found the Ulster Province.  He had always looked upon the Ulster Scots as something of a leaven in Northern Ireland.

The use of the term Ulster-Scot back in 1960 is another example of the way in which it was part of the common vocabulary of the time.  It is not some recent invention as some cultural fascists periodically claim.

Belfast City Marathon

The Deep River Rock Belfast City Marathon will take place this year on Monday 7 May.  This is the 31st year of the marathon and last year it attracted over 20,000 competitors, a record for the city.

There have been efforts by some people to get the marathon changed from a Monday to a Sunday and so I am glad that the event will once again take place on the holiday Monday.

The record figures last year, which make it the largest mass participation sporting event in either Northern Ireland or the Irish Republic. prove that the Monday is not a deterrent to participants.  Moreover it is interesting to note that the Dublin marathon is also held on a Monday.

It is also good to see that the race has been sponsored by a non-alcohol sponsor, especially at this time when we are so conscious of the harm caused by alcohol abuse.  At one time the race was sponsored by a brewery but eventually that sponsorship ended and ever since there have been non-alcohol sponsors, which is appropriate for a family-friendly event that seeks to encourage health and fitness.

Well done to the organisers for holding to the Monday and a thank-you to the sponsors as well.

UKIP leader says our forefathers were wrong

On 3 February 2012 Nigel Farage MEP, leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party, was the guest speaker at a Making Politics Matter event in Christ Chruch University in Canterbury.

In the course of the meeting he expressed some surprising views on Scottish independence and the Irish nationalist demand for home rule.

Asked if UK independence should include Scottish independence, the once staunchly unionist politician said that though he used to be of the opinion that all of the United Kingdom should be ruled from London, now he realised just how ridiculous he was in believing this.

'I've now come to the view that if we listened to old man Gladstone in 1886, and we had given the Irish Home Rule, we wouldn't have had the IRA, we wouldn't have had thousands of deaths and all of the misery.'

This is a bizarre statement from the leader of UKIP, especially in the year that marks the centenary of the Ulster Covenant.  Our forefathers fought against home rule for Ireland because they would not accept domination by a Dublin parliament.  Now Nigel Farage says that Ulster should have been put under the control of a Dublin parliament! 

That was what Gladstone proposed in 1886 and that is what Ulster opposed.  Now Farage says that Gladstone was right and Ulster was wrong!  According to Farage, Thomas Sinclair, Sir Edward Carson, James Craig, Fred Crawford and every other unionist was wrong!

This is of course just the latest in a long series of bizarre statements by Nigel Farage and I am sure it will not be the last.

Crossmaglen's Nazi sculptor

Recently there has been some controversy about an application for public funding for the refurbishment of an IRA memorial in the centre of Crossmaglen.  The application by the Crossmaglen Memorial and Heritage Committee has certainly drawn attention to the memorial and the memorial sculpture provides an interesting insight into the IRA.

The sculpture was erected in the town square in Crossmaglen in 1979 and was the work of a sculptor named Yann Renard-Goulet (1914-1999), who was born in Brittany in France. 

Goulet was a passionate Breton nationalist and a sculptor.  Before the 2nd World War he was a member of the Breton National Party (Parti National Breton PNB), which modelled itself on Sinn Fein, and during the war he joined the assault section of Bagadou Stourm, Breton nationalist stormtroopers who were allied to the Nazis.  He also collaborated with the pro-Nazi nationalist newspaper L'Heure Bretonne and in 1941 in Paris, he became head of Bagadou Stourm.

After the liberation of France by the Allies, Goulet left with his wife and two children in 1947 and they travelled to Eire on false passports.  However he was tried in France in his absence on charges of collaboration with the Nazis and was found guilty.  Goulet was one of a number of Nazi collaborators who were welcomed by the authorities in Eire and so he was able to escape the death sentence.  He acquired Irish citizenship in 1952 and eventually he was appointed professor of sculpture at the Royal Hibernian Academy.  Goulet was also made a member of the prestigious arts organisation Aosdana in 1983.  The Nazi collaborator was now a member of the cultural establishment in the Irish Republic.

Goulet was a political activist, both as a Breton separatist and an Irish nationalist, and he was commissioned to create public works commemorating the IRA and other republicans.  These included the Custom House memorial in Dublin (1956), the Ballyseedy memorial in Tralee (1959) and the East Mayo IRA Brigade memorial (1972).

Towards the end of the 1960s Goulet claimed to have taken over the reins of the Liberation Front of Brittany (Front de Liberation de la Bretagne FLB), which was founded in 1965,  and to have been behind all their terrorist attacks.  In 1969 he became secretary general and chair of the Comite National de la Bretagne Libre and published the communiques of the FLB.

Yann Goulet became an ardent republicans and at the start of the Troubles in 1969 he sent a message of support for a United Ireland to the IRA.  He also befriended Ruairi O Bradaigh, president of Sinn Fein and spoke at several Sinn Fein conferences.

In 1972 Goulet took on an even more important and deadly role for the IRA.  At that time the Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi made contact with the Provisonal IRA through Yann Goulet and the purpose of the approach was to offer the IRA arms and explosives.  Nothing came of that initial contact but contact was re-established, again through Goulet, and an arrangment was made for Joe Cahill to travel to Tripoli.  Goulet was therefore a key figure in the establishment of the biggest source of weaponry for IRA terrorists.

Goulet was the central figure in a rather bizarre includent in 1981 when he travelled to Belfast at the request of O Bradaigh, to make a death mask of the IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands but the project was turned down by the local Belfast IRA leadership.  His last major commission also had an IRA connection and it was for an IRA memorial for Milltown cemetery in West Belfast.  However it was never completed because of illness and Yann Goulet died on 22 August 1999, two days after his 85th birthday.

On 9 September An Phoblacht, the newspaper of Sinn Fein and the IRA, published an obituary.  The memorial in Crossmaglen is entitled Glory and according to the An Phoblacht obituary it was erected 'in dead of night as a defiant surprise for the occupying forces!'

Sinn Fein try to portray themselves as radical and progressive but they seem to have had no difficulty with inviting a Nazi collaborator on to their platforms or in employing the same Nazi collaborator to produce their Crossmaglen sculpture.  Of course, why would they have a problem with Goulet?  During the 2nd World War the IRA themselves collaborated with the Nazis.

Goulet was just one of a number of Nazi collaborators who found a home in Eire and became prominent figures there. This is something the Irish Republic probably prefers to forget and indeed Goulet's biography on the Aosdana website and his entry in the Dictionary of Irish Biography are sanitised.  The DIB entry by Bridget Hourican largely ignores his role as a Nazi collaborator and totally ignores his role in the arming of the Provisional IRA by Colonel Gaddafi.

Instead of being a symbol of Glory, the Crossmaglen statue is really a symbol of shame.

Anither Ulster-Scotch wurd an yin mair forbye

Today Diarmaid O Muirithe discussed the word next in his Irish Times column Words We Use and to the use of the word in the sense 'in the direction of'.  A scholar from county Down had discovered its use in the Belfast Newsletter of 11 December 1818.  The report stated that a group of magistrates, tired of the shnanigans going on in their district, offered a reward of £50 to anybody who would apprehend a named criminal 'last seen between Saintfield and Everogue's Bridge ... heading next Loughinisland'.  O Muirithe points out that this old usage is of Scots origin.

He also considers the word stravaig, a noun and a verb, which means, 'to wander about aimlessly'.  It is a Scots word, found in the Scottish National Dictionary, and came into Old Scots from the Old French, estravaguer.

Sean Phelan commemoration in Liverpool

On Saturday (18 February) the Liverpool Irish Patriots Republican Flute Band organised a parade of republican bands in memory of IRA man Sean Phelan, who was born in Liverpool in 1900.  He was born John Whelan but gaelicised his name to Sean Phelan and became a lieutenant in the IRA.

Phelan fought in the War of Independence and was involved in an IRA attack on a train at Upton in county Cork on 15 February 1921.  Cork was the most violent county in the War of Independence, with  several active IRA brigades, and the Third (West Cork) Brigade was the most deadly.  It was a unit from this brigade that carried out the Upton train ambush.

Plans were made for an attack on a train travelling from Cork to Bandon and the attack was to be carried out by a party of thirteen IRA men led by Charlie Hurley.  Minutes before the train arrived at Upton they took over the station and imprisoned the station master.

The train was carrying fifty soldiers from the Essex Rgiments, and the IRA knew there were soldiers on board, but they also knew that it was carrying members of the public as well.

The IRA opened fire on the train and the gunfight lasted for just ten minutes but six civilian passengers, including a woman, were killed and ten wounded.  Six soldiers were also wounded, three of them seriously, and three IRA gunmen were killed outright, while another was fatally wounded and two more were badly wounded but survived.  Charlie Hurley, who had led the attack, was one of the wounded and John Whelan was one of the three IRA men who were killed.

The IRA attack was made famous in the 1960s with a ballad entitled The Lonely Woods of Upton, which was recorded byEileen Donaghy.  She included the song on an album of rebel songs which she recorded under the name of her grandmother Brigid Corey.

Irish republicans in Liverpool want to commemorate an IRA gunman who was born in Liverpool and died in the Upton train attack.  However they probably prefer to forget the fact that the IRA squad of which he was a member murdered six civilians and wounded ten more in that attack at Upton back in February 1921.