Caleb Foundation

Mary and I spent the day in Enniskillen and we enjoyed an excellent tour of Castlecoole House, a National Trust property which is well worth a visit.  The Earls of Belmore are descended from a family called Corry which came from Scotland to Ulster in the 17th century.

On the way down we stopped off at the Killymaddy tourist centre for a piece of their finest apple tart and as a break in the journey.  Getting out of the car the first people we met were a man and his wife who came over to speak.  It turned out that they are members of Ballyclare Evangelical Presbyterian Church and he also preaches in various homes and mission halls.  I couldn't recall meeting him before but I recognised his wife who used to run a women's meeting in a Presbyterian church in North Belfast.  I had preached a number of times at the meeting and we exchanged reminiscences about people we knew.  They also told me their daughter is the principal of a primary school in North Belfast, which I hadn't known. 

The conversation ended and after our break we completed the drive up to Enniskillen.  Again we got out of the car and the first people we met this time were the principal and vice-principal of an educational college..  The woman came over first and reminded me that we had met at a church in Belfast and that quite a number of years ago her father had been the Scottish organiser for an evangelical Christian organisation at the same time when I was the Northern Ireland organiser.  The principal then explained that he had met me some years ago when I preached at a Sunday night gospel meeting in Omagh.  I also know his brother through politics.  Again we exchanged reminiscences about people we knew through those gospel meetings and church services.

Those two converstaions reminded me of what a small place Northern Ireland is and also that we still have a very strong evangelical Christian community in Ulster.  Our society has become more secular but there is still a strong Christian presence, with many vibrant evangelical churches, mission halls, gospel halls and gospel meetings.

Ironically, not long after that I got a telephone call from a journalist at the Belfast Telegraph, who asked if I was a 'supporter' of Caleb.  She actually mispronounced the name but I knew she was referring to the Caleb Foundation.  She said that the paper was running an article about Caleb tomorrow and said that they had identified me as a 'supporter'.

At this point I should explain that the name Caleb is taken from a character in the Old Testament and that the Caleb Foundation is an evangelical Christian committee with members drawn from a range of evangelical denominations, including pastors and leaders from the Elim Pentecostal Church, Congregational Union, Baptist Union, Free Presbyterian Church, Fellowship of Independent Methodist Churches, Church of the Nazarene, Reformed Presbyterian Church and Evangelical Presbyterian Church.  These churches have their differences in that some are Calvinistic in doctrine and some are Wesleyan, some hold to infant baptism while other hold to believers' baptism, and the Reformed Presbyterians sing only psalms.   However they all hold to the fundamentals of the Christian faith, including the authority and inerrancy of Scripture, the sacrificial death of Christ as the basis for our salvation, salvation by the grace of God through faith in Christ etc.  This is their common bond.  I attend a Congregational church on Sunday morning and play the organ in an Independent Methodist Church in the evening but down through the years I have spoken in churches across all of these denominations.

Evangelical Protestantism takes many forms and the above are certainly not the only denominations or churches that fall into this category - we also have pentecostal churches such as the Apostolic Church and Assemblies of God, and others, including totally independent congregations.  Some are larger than others and some have more congregations than others but together they constitute a significant community.  You cannot even estimate the size of that community by adding up their official memberships because membership in these denominations is only open to born-again believers.  There are other folk who attend their services and yet are not members - they are sometimes described as adherents.  For that reason their attendances are other larger than their official membership.  This is very different from some other denominations where a congregation might claim 200 or 300 families and yet have only 50 people at a morning service.  Moreover there are many people in other denominations who would share most if not all of the core doctrines and principles upheld by Caleb.

It is impossible to provide an accurate figure and I will look with interest at any figure given in the Belfast Telegraph tomorrow, but across Northern Ireland the evangelical community must include several hundred thousand people.

I halted the conversation and telephoned the Caleb organiser.  It turned out that indeed the Belfast Telegraph journalist Liam Clarke had interviewed him yesterday for an article that is due to appear tomorrow.  Along with a number of other people I am a Facebook 'friend' on the Caleb Facebook page and so Liam had asked another journalist to ring up and ask me and some others if we were 'supporters' of Caleb.

She seemed fixated on the word 'supporter' but I don't like people putting words into my mouth and so I set out my position as: 'The Caleb Foundation is representative of many evangelical Christian churches in Northern Ireland and as an evangelical Christian I appreciate the work they do in representing that broad interdenominational community.'

The journalist then asked if I thought it right that a minister should be Facebook friend of Caleb.  I found the question both bizarre and offensive.  Do we not live in a free society?    Am I not entitled to have and hold my faith?  I have never made a secret of it and when people vote for me they know who I am.  In fact I asked her if the Belfast Telegraph was now advocating some form of religious discrimination.  Our forefathers fought for civil and religious liberty and it is my right to attend the church or churches I choose, to join the religious socieities I choose to join, and to support those Christian charities and missionary societies I choose to support.

It is worth recalling that some of the most progressive politicians and social reformers in British history were men such as Lord Shaftesbury and William Wilberforce, both of whom were evangelical Protestants, indeed Shaftesbury was a leading figure in both the Evangelical Alliance and the Protestant Alliance.

However back to the present and one thing that strikes me from this exchange is that certain sections of the media in Ulster seem to take a particularly aggressive and intrusive interest in the religious views of politicians who are Protestants ... but no-one else.  I actually asked the jouranlist if they were exploring the religious views of nationalist politicians to see if they subscribed to all the doctrines and views of the Roman Catholic Church. 

The answer was clearly no.  Yet the religious views of evangelical Protestants are scrutinised ad nauseam, often in an ill-informed and inaccurate way.  Should not our media seek to be impartial?

We might ask why this agressive and intrusive interest is focused on evangelical Protestants alone ... but that is a matter for another post.

Republican Network for Unity and William Drennan

On Sunday afternoon the Henry Joy McCracken Republican flute Band is holding a parade around the New Lodge and then up Clifton Street to Henry Place and the Clifton Street cemetery, where it is believed by soome people that Henry Joy McCracken was reburied.

The event is advertised on http://ardoynerepublican.blogspot.co.uk and the post features a photograph of the band holding a banner with the name of the band and the name of the Republican Network for Unity.

 

It also includes a photograph of the blogger, Martin Og Meehan, speaking 'at last year's commemoration', which was organised by the Republican Network for Unity.

However there is a very significant difference between the event they organised last year and the one they have organised this year.  The event last year was to commmemorate both Henry Joy McCracken and William Drennan, who were both members of the Society of United Irishmen.  The event this year has omitted Drennan and is limited to a commemoration of McCracken.

That may or may not be connected to something which I have posted about on several occasions in the past and which I have repeated in my last post.  This is the fact that Dr William Drennan, who wrote a prospectus for the Society of United Irishmen and sought the abolition of a corrupt Anglo-Irish parliament in Dublin, later changed his politicial stance on the Union.

In a speech delivered at a town meeting in Belfast in 1817 Drennan said, 'that, in the event of a full, free and frequent representation of the people in Parliament for the whole empire he would be re4conciled to the Union.  he would not unwillingly merge his country in a fair and faithful representation of these realms.' [Northern Whig 3 November 1893]

Even more interesting is the following statement by William Drennan in the Belfast Penny Magazine (31 December 1811), when he wrote, 'Be Britons with all your souls - and forget that your father called himself an Irishman.'

In 1891, the centenary of the founding of the Society of United Irishmen, Irish nationalists and republicans tried to lay claim to Drennan.  however they were answered by his son John Swanwick Drennan (1809-1893), who was a poet like his father but a poet of Ulster Unionism.  The same thing happened in 1897 and this time they were answered by Drennan's grand-daughter, Mrs Maria Duffin, who said of him, 'Dr Drennan was at first opposed to the Union but afterwards modified his view of it.'

The fact that Drennan changed his position is often ignored by nationalists and republicans, or else they are simply ignorant of the fact.  On a previous occasion I pointed this out when Fianna Fail formed a branch at Queen's University and named it after William Drennan.

Moreover Drennan was not a single exception.  Many of the United Irishmen in Ulster, both the leaders and the rank and file, became supporters of the Union.  They became Liberals and in due course, when Gladstone espoused home rule, they became Liberal Unionists, ultimately merging with the Conservative Unionists and the Orange Order to form the Ulster Unionist Council.

I can understand, therefore, why Martin Og Meehan has dropped Dr William Drennan from this year's commemoration.

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Something the North Belfast News doesn't tell you

Clifton Street graveyard in North Belfast has many an interesting story to tell and I was therefore drawn to an article about it in the North Belfast News (25 August).

 

The article described a tour of  the graveyard, concentrating on 'famous republican rebels'.  It was given by 'local historian' Jack Duffin on behalf of Croi Eanna, an Irish language and cultural society from Glengormley.

 

Some of the graves in Clifton Street do indeed help to tell the story of the Society of United Irishmen but that is only one of the many stories that can be told for Clifton Street was the graveyard of unionists and liberals as well as republicans, the graveyard of wealthy businessmen and paupers, as well as Presbyterian ministers, newspaper publishers, indutrialists and the founding fathers of the shipbuilding industry in Belfast.  One thing many of them share in common is that they were Ulster-Scots.  The graveyard was established at the end of the 18th century, at a time when Belfast was an overwhelmingly Ulster-Scots town.

 

According to the report the tour started with the grave of William Dixon (sic) but it is clear that this was in fact Rev William Steel Dickson, who was born at Kiln Road, Ballycraigy, near Belfast, and who became a Presbyterian minister.  It is surprising that the journalist, Gemma Burns, has got his name wrong throughout the article.

 

The next grave was that of Dr William Drennan, who was born in Belfast and was the son of a Presbyterian minister.  He was the real founder of the United Irishmen and one of the most interesting.  It is also noteworthy that in later years he became a unionist, something that Jack Duffin appears to have ignored.

In a speech delivered at a town meeting in Belfast in 1817 Drennan said, 'that, in the event of a full, free and frequent representation of the people in Parliament for the whole empire he would be reconciled to the Union.  He would not unwillingly merge his country in a fair and faithful representation of these realms.'  [Northern Whig 3 November 1893]

Even more interesting is the following statement by William Drennan in the Belfast Penny Magazine (31 December 1811) when he wrote, 'Be Britons with all your souls - and forget that your father called himself an Irishman.'

In 1891, the centenary of the founding of the Society of United Irishmen, for which Drennan wrote a prospectus, Irish nationalists and republicans tried to lay claim to Drennan.  However they were answered by his son John Swanwick Drennan (1809-1893).  The same thing happened in 1897 and this time they were answered by Drennan's grand-daughter, Mrs Maria Duffin, who said of him, 'Dr Drennan was at first opposed to the Union but afterwards modified his view of it.'

I wonder if Jack Duffin included that side of Drennan in his talk, or the fact that most of the United Irishmen in Ulster, both leaders and rank and file, soon became unionists?

 

Irish News journalist criticises Parades Commission

Today I am indebted to the Irish News for two things:

(1) The Irish News has always been a stalwart defender of the Parades Commission but yesterday on the Evening Extra programme on Radio Ulster, the Irish News journalist Allison Morris took a different line. During the discussion Allison Morris stated that 'at times' the determinations of the Parades Commission 'seem to defy logic.'

 

This is something that I and other unionists have been saying for a long time.  Too many of their determinations are incoherent and inconsistent.  Very often when we say such things we are criticised by the Irish News but at last an Irish News journalist has come to the same conclusion.

 

It would be nice to see the Irish News carry a front page headline criticising the Parades Commission in this way but that may be a step too far for them.  Nevertheless one of their senior journalists has set out her position very clearly.

 

A good example of this is the determinations on the Crumlin Road, when parades come down to the Woodvale Road.  For one parade they will allow a band to come down playing music, another time they will say that it has to be a single drum beat and then another time they will prohibit the band from walking down that section of the road.  Even for the same band there are inconsistent determinations.  Such decisions are beyond comprehension and, to use the words of Allision Morris, they 'seem to defy logic'.

 

Inconsistent, incoherent and incomprehensible decisions are a major contributor to the anger and resentment against the Parades Commission and have brought the Commission into disrepute.

 

(2) Connla Young has devoted an entire article in today's Irish News to the issues that I blogged about yesterday.  Such coverage is excellent and helps to increase the number of people who view the blog.  I couldn't ask for better publicity and I'm just glad I don't have to pay for it!

 

 

The GAA and another IRA comemoration

The memorial match in 2008

 

The GAA has abandoned some of its exclusive rules and has come quite a way but it still has some way to go to reach the vision of a 'shared future'.

 

Last week my DUP colleague from Mid-Ulster, Ian McCrea MLA, highlighted the 'Giants will Clash' Harvey and McGlynn memorial cup which was a GAA match at the MacCumhaill Park in Ballybofey.  The match was between a team from GAA clubs in county Tyrone and a county Donegal GAA select side.

 

The GAA match commemorates two IRA men, Seamus Harvey and Gerard McGlynn, who died when a bomb they were carrying exploded prematurely on 10 August 1973.  They were about 200 yards from the customs post at Kilclean when the bomb exploded killing the two IRA men.  Gerard McGlynn (18) was from Castlederg and Seamus Harvey (22) was also from Castlederg but had been on the run and living in Donegal.  A few weks before his death Harvey had been in court in Dublin charged with IRA membership and possession of weapons.

 

The GAA ground in Ballybofey is used by the Sean MacCumhaills GAA club but it is also the Donegal county ground and it is named after Sean McCool, a prominent republican who was chief of staff of the IRA for a short period in 1942.  This was during the 2nd World War, at a time when the IRA were collaborating with the Nazis, and McCool developed plans to get Nazi agent Sergeant Gunther Schuetz out of Ireland and back to Germany with a shopping list of weapons for the IRA.

 

The Ulster Council of the GAA has denied all knowledge of the event and Donegal county board vice-chairman Charlie Cannon said, 'I checked it out with the county's vice-secretary, we have no game and no application to play a game with Donegall GAA.'  Ulster Council public relations officer Oliver Galligan also said he knew nothing about the match.

 

All of this is very surprising as this is an annual event and has taken place in the county ground over a number of years.  I am not sure when the event started but the Donegal Sinn Fein website has photographs from the 2008 game.  It is therefore hard to believe that the Donegal GAA board do not know anything about this annual competition in their county ground!

 

The GAA says that it is reaching out to other communities but events such as this create a chill factor for those communities.  The rule book of the GAA is explicitly nationalist and it exludes unionists from joining the organisation.  But even if that were changed how could the GAA hope to attract unionist support while it hosts events commemorating republican terrorists.

 

Next year is the 40th anniversary of the deaths of the two IRA men andas such it will undoubtedly receive more attention.  With twelve months to go perhaps the Donegal GAA will get their act together and put an end to this abuse of what portrays itself as an inclusive sport.

It has now been reported that the Ulster Council of the GAA is investigating the event so we will await with interest the outcome of the investigation and what action they propose to take.

 

 

The narrow sea

 

Wayne Soutter, who was born in South Africa but now lives in London, has completed the ten mile swin from the Mull of Kintyre in Scotland to Torr Head at Ballycastle.  It took him twelve hours to complete the task and he is believed to be the first person to ever swim between the two points. 

 

This is a dangerous stretch of water and Wayne also faced the problems of cold water and large jellyfish.  He says that he encountered about one jellyfish a minutes.

 

It is therefore a remarkable achievement and also a reminder of just how close Ulster is to Scotland.  Moreover, with the surname Soutter, Wayne is a man with Scottish ancestry.  The surname comes from the Scots word for a cobbler or shoemaker and is recorded in Dumfries in the early 13th century.

 

Frank Dempsey and the IRA

Frank 'Dipper' Dempsey

I don't normally pick up a copy of the Andersonstown News but I did buy one this afternoon and it certainly contained a wealth of useful information.

 

Page 20  was headed 'D Company remembers its dead' and carried a report on a recent 'IRA reunion' in the Emerald Roadhouse at Finaghy Road North.

 

Over 600 members of one of the most renowned units of the IRA have gathered in the Emerald Roadhouse for a one-off commemoration.

Organised by the Falls Cultural Society and the D Company Ex-volunteers and Prisoners Association, the event honoured the 14 fallen on the Roll of honour of D Company, which operated in the lower Falls area.  A unique portrait of each Roll of Honour member was presented to their families by veteran Belfast republican Billy McKee, one of the founders of the Provisional IRA.

Billy himself was presented with a gold medal by D Company members in recognition of his central part in the republican struggle.

 

The fourteen IRA members were:

Vol Charlie Hughes, who died on 8 March 1971

Vol Jimmy Quigley, who died on 29 September 1972

Vol Daniel McAreavey, who died on 6 October 1972

Vol Paddy Maguire, who died on 10 October 1972

Vol John Donaghy, who died on 10 October 1972

Vol Joe McKinney, who died on 10 October 1972

Vol Eddie 'Mundo' O'Rawe, who died on 12 April 1973

Fian Michael Marley, who died on 24 November 1973

Vol Teddy Campbell, who died on 3 May 1974

Vol Martin Skillen, who died on 3 August 1974

Vol John 'Bap' Kelly, who died on 21 January 1975

Vol Billy Carson, who died on 25 April 1979

Sinn Fein's Paddy Loughran, who died on 4 February 1992

and Sinn Fein's Pat McBride, who died on 4 February 1992.

 

The central figure in the commemoration was Billy McKee, one of the founders of the Provisional IRA and first OC of the Provos in Belfast.  According to Ed Moloney he authorised a numbr of sectarian attacks on Protestants and  renewed attacks on rivals in the Official IRA.

 

A faction led by Gerry Adams managed to get McKee voted off the IRA Army Council in 1977, effectively forcing him out of the leadership of the organisation.  He later joined Republican Sinn Fein and has been critical of Adams and the leadership of Sinn Fein. 

 

Although the IRA later issued a half-hearted apology for Bloody Friday, in a newspaper interview in May 2011 McKee said, 'I'm not going to condemn it or the men that carried it out.  No Way.'  Last year, at the time of that statement, McKee was 89 years old but age had not in any way tempered his views and he refused to condemn one of the bloodiest atrocities carried out by the IRA. 

 

Frank 'Dipper' Dempsey

 

One of the pictures in the Andersonstown News shows the handing over of the gold medal to McKee and the person making the special presentation is named as Frank Dempsey.  A careful look at the photograph seems to confirm that in fact this is none other than Frank 'Dipper' Dempsey, of the Carrick Hill Residents Association.  According to the Andersonstown News, this event was an 'IRA D Company reunion', and the fact that Dempsey was given the 'honour' of presenting the medal to McKee suggests that he was held in high esteem by the 'ex-volunteers'.

 

This is the same Frank Dempsey who has been to the fore in recent protests against Loyal Order parades in Clifton Street and Donegall Street.  But the report in the Andersonstown News shows us another side of Frank Demspey.