Patrick Bronte - 'in the Scotch manner'.

There is an article about the Ulster roots of the Bronte family in the February issue of Verbal magazine, which is published by the Verbal Arts Centre in Londonderry.  This has been prompted by the fact that a new edition of Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte, is in the book shops and a new film adaption is in the making.

The Bronte sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne, who gave us a number of fine novels, were the daughters of Rev Patrick Bronte (1777-1861).  He was minister in the village of Haworth in Yorkshire for more than forty years and exercised a thoroughly evangelical ministry.

However Patrick Bronte was not born in England.  In fact he was the eldest of ten children of Hugh Brunty, a farm labourer from Drumballyroney in county Down.

Patrick Bronte wrote several volumes of poetry and some time ago I came across this comment on his poetry by David J O'Donoghue, author of The Poets of Ireland.  In another of his works, The Geographical Distribution of Irish Ability, which was published in Dublin and London in 1908, he said:

Patrick Bronte was something of a poet, but wrote in the Scotch rather than the Irish manner.

Patrick Bronte died on 7 June 1861 and so this year is the 150th anniversary of his death.

Well done Wrightbus!

Wrightbus in Ballymena is one of Europe's leading providers of buses, with a reputation for high quality design and world class engineering.  The company employs 1,000 people in Ballymena making it one of the largest private sector employers in Northern Ireland.

The company has just announced an order worth £55million from British bus operator Arriva.  This is a massive order for 334 buses, 204 double-decker and 130 single-deck, and it is the biggest order from a UK operator since the start of the economic downturn.  Arriva is one of the largest transport organisations in europe and in the UK alone it has 6,800 buses, of which 1,800 were built by Wrightbus.

Last year the firm unveiled the design for a modern-day version of London's famous Routemaster bus and these buses wil be in service for the London 2012 Olympics.

But Wrightbus produces vehicles for places that are much further afield.  In September they won a £21million contract to produce and export 300 double-decker bus kits for Singapore.

Congratulations to William Wright, managing director Mark Nodder, and all those who have made this such a successful company.  Ulster needs more businesses like this. 

Libya and the IRA

Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams has called on Libyan dictator Colonel Gaddafi to step down and allow his people to have full democratic rights.

Adams said, 'My sympathies are with those demanding democracy and freedom.  The Libyan government, like Egypt and many other Arab governments, have been partners in business and oil with Britain, the US and the EU for many years.'

Gerry Adams made specific reference to business partners but omitted to mention another partnership with Libya and that is the IRA partnership with Libya.  Gadaffi began to arm the IRA in 1971 and continued to arm it throughout the 1970s and the 1980s.  It is estimated that Libyan weapons may have contributed to 1,000 deaths during the Troubles.  Attacks carried out with Libyan Semtex included the Enniskillen bomb in 1987, which killed eleven people, and the Ballygawley bus bombing in August 1988, which killed eight soldiers.

Of course it is just possible that Gerry Adams forgot about the IRA partnership with Gaddafi.  It may have just slipped his memory.  He can't remember being in the IRA, he forgets that Libya armed the IRA ... now there's a man with a serious case of memory loss.

Sculpture for Shankill Road Library?

Today I visited the Falls Road Library and then travelled across to the Shankill Road Library to see the refurbishment work which is becing carried out by Libraries NI and funded by my department.  In both cases the work will really improve the appearance of the buildings and enhance the facilities for users.

The Falls Road Library is a Carnegie library and opened in 1908., while the Shankill Road library was built in 1928 but in both cases Belfast Corporation demonstrated a regard for quality and art.

Above the door of the Falls Road Library there is a set of beautiful sculptures by the Ulster sculptor Rosamund Praeger (1867-1954), who lived in Holywood and whose work can be found in varous parts of Belfast, including Belfast City Cemetery and First Presbyterian Church in Rosemary Street.

In the case of the Shankill Road Library, the main room upstairs was designed as a museum with appropriate lighting to protect artefacts.  The contents of that museum were later handed over to the Ulster Museum and are probably in storage.  Even more surprising was the discovery that a sculpture entitled Early Sorrow, by the Belfast sculptor Patrick MacDowell (1799-1870), used to stand on the top landing. 

The name of Patrick MacDowell may not be familiar to many people in Belfast today but his work probably is.  It includes the statue of the original Black Man, the Earl of Belfast, which stands on the rotunda in Belfast City Hall, and the white marble scene of the dying earl and his mother, which is inside the entrance of the City Hall.  There is a third sculpture by MacDowell in the City Hall and that is the bust of Sir James Emerson Tennent, which is also on the rotunda. 

Tennent, who was MP for Belfast from 1832 to 1845, became a patron to MacDowell and played an important role in the development of his career.  Ironically there are two streets across the road from Shankill Road Library, Tennent Street and Emerson Street, and these were named after Sir James Emerson Tennent.

I was told by the librarian Mark Knowles that this beautiful sculpture is now in storage in the Ulster Museum but that it may be placed on loan to the library when the refurbishment is completed and I hope this can be a long term loan.  It is good to get art out of the stores and visible to the public and what better place than the library which was the former home of this wonderful sculpture.

I understand that the Ulster Museum also holds the artefacts which were in the old upstairs library and again it would also be good to consider whether some of these artefacts can be brought back and exhibited in the library.  If they are not being exhibited in the Ulster Museum or any of the other national museums then surely it is better to look at alternative places where they can be seen and enjoyed, rather than staying in storage.

The refurbishment of the library is a contribution to the development of a Shankill Cultural Quarter and wll complement the improvments at the Spectrum Centre across the road.  The return of the MacDowell sculpture and other artefacts would also contribute to the development of a cultural quarter.

The Belfast councillors who built these libraries, are often portrayed as hard headed Ulster businessmen who had little regard for art and culture.  The fact that they wanted people to enjoy the works of such great Ulster sculptors as Praeger and MacDowell says otherwise.

A debate on education

The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin gave a long and interesting address to the Cambridge Group for Irish Studies at Magdalene College  on Tuesday 22 February.

In it he said that the dominance of the Roman Catholic Church in the patronage of primary schools in the Republic is 'a remnant of the past and no longer tenable today'.  He went on to say that the government in the Republic had been 'very  slow in providing a plurality of patronage models' and called for a national forum to debate such plurality.

The 'massive dominance of the Catholic Church in the management of schools is patently a remnant of the past and no longer tenable today.'  A very high proportion of Roman Catholics would prefer their children to attend a school with a pluralist mix, albeit with some basic religious culture.  'I believe that there is need for a national forum to debate the issue.  Plurality in management is needed to address the changed Irish society.  Plurality in school management can only benefit the true Catholic identity of Catholic schools.'

He spoke of the decline in church attendance among Roman Catholics and said that 'Ireland was 'undergoing a further phase in a veritable revolution of its religious culture.'  The Roman Catholic Church in Ireland would 'inevitably become more a minority culture.  The challenge is to ensure that it is not an irrelevant minority culture.'

This address was highly significant.  It is not clear what sort of future educational arrangements Archbishop Martin has in mind but he sees that there will be change and he wants a national debate in a national forum.  This represents a departure from the traditional stance of the Roman Catholic Church, which has been rigid and dogmatic.

I hope that here in Northern Ireland there can also be a debate about the future of education.  Here we have a range of sectors and a very complex architecture of educational administration.  What is being proposed by the Sinn Fein education minister is even more complex and at the same time unacceptable to many because it is inequitable. 

We need a thorough rethink and a proper debate about the future structure and administration of education in Ulster.  Four years has been wasted because Sinn Fein has been incapable of facilitating such a debate.  It is trapped in its own rigid and dogmatic framework and neither the Sinn Fein minister nor her party have been able to understand the issues and the concerns of those outside the Irish medium and Roman Catholic sectors.  The Sinn Fein minister has shown a lack of vision, a lack of understanding and a lack of ability.  When questions are asked she simply trots out some of her stock of catch phrases and frustrates every effort to have a constructive engagement.

I hope that after the Assembly election we can have a real educational debate in Northern Ireland.  It must be an inclusive debate, an open and constructive debate and one that has a focus on what is right for the children and the rights of the children.  I know the DUP is ready to engage in such a debate and I hope that all the other stakeholders will be ready to play their part too.

Gerry McGeough and the AOH

The Ancient Order of Hibernians is a fraternal orgnaisations that is open to people who are Roman Catholics and Irtish nationalists.  It is generally an organisation that draws little attention but recently it has been mentioned in a number of newspapers.

In the photograph above, Gerry McGeough, President of the Tyrone County Board of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, makes a presentation to Seán Pender, Chairman of the American AOH Freedom For All Ireland committee  The event took place in Omagh on 1 February 2011 and the person in the centre of the photograph was Jere E. Cole, National Director of the American A.O.H.  McGeough had been elected president of the AOH in Tyrone the previous month.

The photograph was taken just a few weeks before McGeough was convicted of IRA membership in 1975 and the attempted murder of DUP councillor Sammy Brush in 1981.  In fact McGeough had been elected president during the time of his trial.  Members of the AOH in Tyrone chose as their president a man who was on trial for IRA membership and murder!

As well as being a convicted IRA terrorist, McGeough is a 'traditionalist Roman Catholic' who attempted to use the AOH to promote his ideology.

In 2006 advertisements appeared in newspapers in rural areas of the Irish Republic and the border counties for those interested in joining a revitalised AOH which would focus on the promotion of so-called 'Hibernian' values.  McGeough said that a significant number of people associated with his brand of extreme Roman Catholicism had been recruited into existing AOH dicisions and that new divisions had been formed in Dublin and other areas.

In May 2006, McGeough, as editor, and Charles Byrne, a 28-year-old from Drogheda, launched a monthly magazine called The Hibernian, dedicated to “Faith, Family and Country”. The magazine, which was professionally produced, had prayers and pictures of the Virgin Mary, as well as articles espousing the views of Fr Denis Fahey and others promoting the Society of St Pius X.  Twenty-nine issues of The Hibernian were published between May 2006 and September 2008, when it ceased publication due to the bail conditions imposed on McGeough.

There are certain similarities between Gerry McGeough and Sean South in that both were IRA terrorists and both were religious extermists, sympathetic to the far-right ideology of Fr Denis Fahey.

The fact that the AOH in Tyrone elected McGeough as their president has attracted very little attention in the media.  I wonder what the reaction of the media would have been if the Orange Order had elected someone as a County Grand Master, a post that is similar to that held by McGeough, when the person was standing trial for murder! 

Another GAA trophy named after IRA terrorists

The Derry Intermediate Football Club Championship (currently known for sponsorship reasons as the M&L Contracts Derry Intermediate Football Club Championship) is an annual Gaelic football club competition between the intermediate (second tier) clubs in County Londonderry. The winners of the Derry Championship qualify to represent their county in the Ulster Intermediate Club Football Championship and if they win Ulster, advance to the All-Ireland Intermediate Club Football Championship. The current Derry Intermediate County Champions are Castledawson who became champions with a 0-11 to 0-10 win over Steelstown on 3 October 2010.

The trophy for which they compete is named after John Bateson (aged 19), James Sheridan (20) and Martin Lee (18), all members of the South Derry Brigade of the Provisional IRA who died when a bomb they were priming exploded prematurely in Magherafelt on 18 December 1971.  All three men came from Ballymaguigan and played for the St. Trea's GFC at Ballymaguigan.  The three IRA men are commemorated and celebrated in a republican song entitled The Ballymaguigan Martyrs.

This is not the only GAA trophy in County Londonderry to be named after members of the Provisional IRA. 

The Hughes/McElwee Cup is a 13 a side (as opposed to the usual 15) knock-out competition for the top Minor clubs in South Londonderry. It is named after Francis Hughes and Thomas McElwee, two cousins from Bellaghy, who were members of the Provisional IRA and died on hunger strike in 1981.  This is a new tournament which was inaugurated in 2008.

 

The GAA has made some progress in 'normalising' itself and removing the association with militant republicanism but it is clear that there is still some way to go.