Fianna Fáil – the new, and the the not so new

Guest Blogger Cllr. Ian Parsley

Cllr Ian James Parsley, born in 1977, joined the Alliance Party in 2002, was elected to North Down Borough Council in 2005, and served as Deputy Mayor from 2008-9. He was the Alliance Party's candidate at the European Election for the Northern Ireland region, attaining the party's best result for 30 years.

In September this year Cllr Parsley resigned from the Alliance party to join the Conservative Party.

He will spend the next year working with the Centre for Social Justice delivering a "Breakthrough Belfast" report as part of the think tank's "Breakthrough Britain" series.

"Electorally, Fianna Fáil will also provide a welcome democratic alternative to Sinn Féin in those (primarily rural, border) areas where the SDLP is now all but absent."

Fianna Fáil – the new, and the the not so new

Much has been made of the potential for Fianna Fáil to enter representative politics in Northern Ireland after it was revealed independent MLA Gerry McHugh had joined the party.

My own instinct is to welcome the move. Regional politics in Northern Ireland has already grown stale, with parties used to managing peace processes but unused to managing government departments. The introduction of a party with the resources to expand and experience of government can only be a good thing in that context. Electorally, Fianna Fáil will also provide a welcome democratic alternative to Sinn Féin in those (primarily rural, border) areas where the SDLP is now all but absent.

However, all is not so new. Fianna Fáil does not offer a route away from identity-based politics to ideology-based politics, as it itself is based within an identity-based system south of the border; nor does it offer a route towards influence on the key issues of taxation, security or welfare reform because it has no say in politics at the relevant level. In short, even if it does cause an earthquake within one of the designations in Northern Ireland, Fianna Fáil’s involvement will not move us away from politics along sectarian lines.

As for Gerry McHugh himself, it is widely known in Fermanagh that he left Sinn Féin for reasons apart from Republican ideology. The stated reason, that he had in fact rejected his then party’s stance on policing, needs to be reversed immediately whatever he claims about his exact party status, or Fianna Fáil may face a false start.

For all that initial confusion, this does ultimately make the question to the SDLP leadership candidates all the more pressing: namely, what is the SDLP for? I have yet to hear either answer that other than by reference to the past. If this continues, they may have no future.

SDLP Leadership - What is That?

Guest Blogger Martin Morgan




Editor's Note.

This article was submitted before the the announcement that the current independent, and former Sinn Féin MLA for Fermanagh and South Tyrone, Gerry McHugh, announced that he had joined Fianna Fáil. The announcement came after a Fianna Fáil support group in Fermanagh was formally established this past weekend. Fianna Fáil support groups now exist in counties Armagh, Down, and Fermanagh. Membership in the party in the previously unorganised six northern counties is believed to be around 500 with counties Antrim, Derry, and Tyrone, expected to launch by early next year.

"Fianna Fáil offers what both the SDLP and Sinn Féin cannot; it could produce Stormont Ministers and has had Dail Ministers for more than fifty five years of the eighty eight years since partition occurred. Add this together and you could see the creation of the most potent All-Ireland political movement in the island’s history."

Martin Morgan is a former SDLP Lord Mayor of Belfast (2003-2004) and former SDLP Councilor for the Oldpark constituency in north Belfast ( Ardoyne, Waterworks, New Lodge, Cliftonville, Ligoniel wards) which he served for 12 years and was a European Parliamentary candidate in 2004.

A double graduate of the Queen's University of Belfast, he is a Social Worker by profession, Martin left the SDLP in 2005 to progress his professional career. Since then Martin has maintained a strong interest in the organisation of Fianna Fáil as a 32-county political entity. He believes that Fianna Fáil is the only political party on the island of Ireland that has the ability to fully promote the well being of all of the people who live on the island.

Maintaining a strong interest in politics across Ireland especially in his home town of Belfast, Martin is of the view that the current political representation afforded to the people of north Belfast is inadequate, outdated and out of touch and requires replacing.

SDLP Leadership – What is that?

Mark Durkan’s stepping down as the leader of the soft Nationalist SDLP has come as no surprise to me. Durkan was Hume’s left hand man in Derry before becoming the SDLP leader and throughout his stewardship of the Party he was dogged by those who believed that being an able Lieutenant to a former leader was his strongest and most able position in the Party. He is a decent person and was an alright steward, but he was not a leader in its truest sense at a time when the SDLP was losing its direction, requiring a strong and confident hand at the wheel, rather than bowing to the inevitable “I am clever than you” abstract sound bite, which left most of us bewildered.

Since Durkan’s announcement Alasdair Mc Donnell and Margaret Ritchie have declared their intentions to replace him. Others in the Party would have aspired to declare openly their ambition to enter the race. Some of these individuals were clearly delusional having overseen their own electoral demise in their respective home constituencies and their failure to strengthen an eroding electoral base. Their vanity by far outweighed their grasp of reality. At least some members of the SDLP had the sense to counsel them against contesting a race that at best had only three serious contenders and at worst two, the third potential candidate being John Dallat from the East Derry area, who would not enter the race even though he narrowly lost out to Mc Donnell for the Deputy Leadership.

Both Mc Donnell and Ritchie are reasonably well-profiled politicians and in the eyes of the electorate Ritchie in particular has handled her Ministerial portfolio well. However, in my opinion, neither Ritchie nor Mc Donnell can turn the tide of fortune back in the direction of the SDLP.

The reasons;

Firstly neither are charismatic characters, commanding the attention of the Party or the electorate.

Secondly we should not be fooled by the “just good enough” election results of the past five years. The results were just good enough for the Party to avoid collapsing, but not anyway nearly good enough to begin to think that the SDLP was returning to former strengths and glories.

Thirdly even though they topped the European poll in the north Sinn Fein has probably peeked at a time when the SDLP’s life support system coughs and splutters along the same as before. The soothsayers of the SDLP always held out hope against hope that the demise of the Sinn Féin experiment would see again the rise of the SDLP. That has not happened. The SDLP’s old boast of being a “broad church” has ultimately obstructed the Republicanism that lies deep within elements of the Party in favour of a significant number of “latte sipping” come lately representatives ( where were they before the ceasefires?) who want status, status and status. This in turn fed into the Sinn Féin machine that eventually decimated the SDLP.

Fourthly a new powerful, mature and experienced political force in northern politics is rising rapidly in the form of Fianna Fáil. Fianna Fáil is now organising across the six counties and has recently opened a political surgery in Crossmaglen. Early indicators show a groundswell of goodwill, support and new members for the 32 - county Party, including strong overtures being made by some elected representatives and members of the SDLP to join Fianna Fáil. Fianna Fáil offers what both the SDLP and Sinn Féin cannot; it could produce Stormont Ministers and has had Dail Ministers for more than fifty five years of the eighty eight years since partition occurred. Add this together and you could see the creation of the most potent All-Ireland political movement in the island’s history.

All of this added together is just too much of a challenge for whoever the new leader of the SDLP will be thus sealing the SDLP’s fate.

INTRODUCING Dan ÓNéill AKA ODD BODKINS #7

Dan has granted Soñar permission to publish his ODD BODKINS cartoon strip.

ODD BODKINS ON Soñar. Vol. I No. 7

Select Image for Larger Viewing

Hugh Daniel ÓNéill.

© Dan ONeill

Thirty years ago Hugh Daniel ÓNéill was described as, “an innovator, a creator and a professional troublemaker” in a foreword to a collection of Odd Bodkins. For seven years his Odd Bodkins cartoons ran daily in The San Francisco Chronicle and in 350 other newspapers throughout the world. At its peak, the strip had a readership of fifty million. When he was hired at age 21 —the youngest cartoonist ever hired by a national syndicate— he was given three simple rules: no religion, no politics and no sex in the strip. He did his best to comply — he kept sex out of Odd Bodkins.

For further information on ÓNéill.

http://www.danoneillcomics.com/

http://origsix.com/index.asp

Tales of Ballydrum Etc.

Guest Blogger Mattie Lennon

Mattie Lennon has written articles (mostly humourous) for The Sunday Independent, The Irish Times, The Irish Post, Ireland's Own, Ireland's Eye, Kerry's Eye, The Wicklow People, The Leinster Leader as well as numerous on-line publications. He claims that he was once told; 'You have the perfect face for radio' and he compiled and presented his own programmes in the 'Voiceover' series on RTE Radio One. He has presented ballad programmes on KIC FM and is currently doing a Sunday morning ballad show on Radio Dublin 100 FM.

John Edward Henry (1904-1986) was a native of Ballydrum, Swinford, County Mayo. He emigrated to the USA in his mid- twenties and spent a number of years in Chicago before returning to Mayo in 1931. When he came back, he married his childhood sweetheart, Margaret Salmon and took over the running of his family farm in Ballydrum.

He also worked with Mayo County Council as a supervisor on road and bridge construction for a number of years. The nature of his work meant that he was often absent from home from Monday morning to Friday night for weeks on end. It was during those periods of enforced absence from home and family, that he gathered much of the stories and anecdotes that would later form the basis of his folktale collection.

He used to invite older members of the community to chat with him about the customs and habits of their own times and those of previous generations, which he felt were in danger of being discarded in the name of progress. Very few others of his time felt the same desire to record and preserve for posterity the folk heritage of previous generation that was in danger of being lost forever but this did not deter him in the slightest.

John Henry or 'Sean' as he was also known left a collection of stories about everything from 'Barnala Wood' to 'Bellmen.' Whether it’s an account of the 'Big Wind' or a Connaught person’s take on 'Ninety-Eight' the true storyteller is evident.

When Sean was a young lad a certain 'Knight-of-the-road', who was better dressed and seemed to be on a slightly higher mental plain than the average tramp, used visit the area. He was known as “the Toff” and when he told a story young Henry hung on every word and would, decades later, commit it to paper.

' . . . In my great grandfather’s time,' said The Toff, 'there were little few glass windows to be found except in the Big Houses, and churches and with some well off people here and there. Among the poorer people, there were various excuses for windows. In some houses, long, narrow openings in the walls served for windows. It was narrower on the inside than the outside and a board was fitted on the outside at night or in bad weather. In some cases, a mare’s placenta or a sheepskin with all the wool and fat removed was stretched across the ‘window.’
These allowed a dull light to get through but were far from being as satisfactory as glass. A good many dwellings then were only ‘bohauns’ or mud huts; they had no light except what came in over the half door.'

'My great grandfather was known locally as Mairtín Bradach. (Mischievous Martin) He went to Sligo on one occasion and brought back a pane of glass. He was so careful of the glass that he carried it all the way home on his back in a sack that was well-padded with rags and paper. He never once sat down on his journey of 22 miles. With the help of a local handyman, he fitted the glass to a wooden frame and installed it with the proud boast that it was the first glass window ever to come to the village of Cruck.'

The Toff went on to add that his great grandfather had a well-known habit of turning things around when he spoke. So, when a neighbour who came across him while fitting the window, asked him what he was dong, he received an unexpected answer. 'I’m tying to let out the dark,' my great grandfather is said to have replied.

'Letting out the dark, as Mairtín Bradach said,' became a popular saying in the locality afterwards.

When the window had been fitted, some of the neighbours felt it that a celebration known as a ball was called for. Accordingly, a small money collection was held and Mairtín donated the food and the music, he being a player on the fife or wooden flute. During the ball, Mairtín saw a neighbour to whom he had not spoken to for some years, peeping in through the new window. There were two lighted candles, one on each side of the window, and he had no trouble recognising the ‘gobadán’ (curlew) as this man was known locally. He had a very long nose, which earned him his title. After making up his mind, Mairtín moved quietly to the back door and picked up the hardest sod of turf he could find. Moving stealthily, he waited until he got beside the window. He waited until the gobadán had his long nose right up to the window. Then he let fly catching his opponent full on the nose and of course breaking the window in the process.

Sean amassed a considerable pile of wire bound notebooks and jotters as he went about his labour of love and in later years he used those notes to write his folktales.

A number of those stories were published in book form by the Mercier Press (Cork) in the late seventies under the title of “Tales from the West of Ireland.” This book was re-issued in 2000 and both editions were quickly sold out.

He contributed to a number of periodicals and magazines and for a long number of years he wrote articles on contemporary Irish social and economic affairs for an American travel company’s newsletter. “Mayo Folktales” is a collection of his stories that have been published in digital from by his son, Eamonn.

There is a total of 54 articles in this collection and it had been arranged in two volumes for distribution purposes. Both volumes are available on CD-ROM as well as in PDF format for direct downloading from the site; http://mayotales.com/

The CD versions are designed to run on all Windows operating systems from Win 98 SE onwards and as PDF is a cross-platform format, those files are compatible with all common computer platforms and are not limited to Windows’ users only.

Full details may be had from http://mayotales.com/ The CD's cost €10 each or €15 for both excluding postage costs. The PDF documents are priced at €7 each or €12 for both.

Northern Ireland Executive condemned by Irish Congress of Trade Unions

We have in this region an Executive which is

no longer fit for purpose.'

© Joe ÓNéill 2009

Despite heavy rainfall, hundreds of trade union members marched from job sites to protest rallies in cities and towns in Northern Ireland yesterday, to protest looming cuts in public sector jobs.

Rallies organised by the Northern Ireland Committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions were held in Belfast, Derry, Omagh, Enniskillen, Coleraine, Craigavon, Armagh, Ballymena, Magherafelt, and Newry as thousands also protested in the south of Ireland.

The NICICTU called on the Northern Ireland Executive and Assembly to make the defense of public services and protection and creation of jobs in the private and public sectors an urgent priority.

Peter Bunting, ICTU Assistant General Secretary told the Belfast rally: 'We need to cherish our public servants because they are the backbone of the real economy, not small businesses, not multinationals and certainly not the top bankers. In a recession like this, the only source of demand in the economy is coming from the public sector.'

Despite the criticism, several elected representatives attended the rally including; Minister for Health Social Services and Public Safety, Michael McGimpsey, MLAs Alex Maskey, and Sue Ramsey.

The full speech is reproduced below.

Fellow workers, friends and comrades.

We are here today to expose bloat, waste and time-serving at the heart of the public sector.

I am talking about, of course, the people who rule us, who write the laws, frame the budget, those who serve in the Assembly and in Westminster . The people we elect who have fiddled while the economy burns, - just as some may have been fiddling their expenses.

The public is being short changed and it is time for payback.

We have in this region an Executive which is no longer fit for purpose.

They squabble over the devolution of policing and justice.

They prevaricate over education.

They cannot agree on a Bill of Rights.

They have no clear shared method to tackle sectarianism and racism.

At the same time, they act as if the out dated Programme for Government reflects reality. To which we must ask: What colour is the sky over Stormont?

The Programme for Government talked of creating six-and-a-half thousand new jobs, - with some even above the minimum wage. Meanwhile in the place where the skies are Grey and the outlook always overcast, almost 50,000 jobs have gone in the past year.

53,000 people are unemployed and another 300,000 are cast aside in the ranks of the economically inactive.

The construction industry has been demolished, the retail sector is in a permanent closing down sale and manufacturing is covered in rust.

Where are the drastic actions being taken?

Where is the sense of crisis?

What is to be done?

Why is this economic crisis not the number one priority?

Why does it matter so damn much about the names of sports grounds?

Politics is about power. Power is about exercising choices. The choices made by the Executive and the Assembly have been misplaced.

Get with a new programme. One which places at the centre of our politics the daily lives of its citizens. We need more jobs. We need a vibrant private sector. We need more start-ups and we need to create more research and development.

We need to keep our graduates at home. We need to capitalise upon the creativity and humour and intelligence of our young and the experience and training of our older workers.

We need to understand that the best solution to poverty and social exclusion is work. Work in well-paid, humanely rewarding and unionised careers.

We have problems that need to be fixed. Our physical and social infrastructure is not remotely up to scratch.

We need to embrace the creative thinking behind a Green New Deal which sustains and nourishes more than our fragile environment. We need to re-think who our economy is supposed to serve.

We need to re-order our priorities. We need to think bigger than call-centres paying the minimum wage to graduates who can only meet the pressures of a consumer society through credit which is no longer cheap or available.

We need to challenge the consensus that cuts are inevitable in our public services because we just have to keep the bankers in the luxury and bonuses to which they have become accustomed.

We need to cherish our public servants because they are the backbone of the real economy, not small businesses, not multinationals and certainly not the top bankers.

In a recession like this, the only source of demand in the economy is coming from the public sector. We hear much about how well-paid the public sector is, compared to the private sector.

First, tell that to a cleaner, or a classroom assistant or a nurse, or a dole clerk.

Second, the real pay gap is not between the private sector and the public sector in Northern Ireland . The real pay gap is the 20% difference between private sector workers here and private sector workers across the water. That is the real pay gap to contend with.

And yet Northern Ireland is sold to foreign investors by Invest Northern Ireland for its cheap labour. And we are supposed to be grateful for that.

If low wages created jobs we would not have 350,000 of our citizens unemployed or economically inactive. Low wages create poverty.

There is a third important point about the public sector you won’t hear about too often from our political classes or read about from the experts in the business press. The public sector spends more money on supporting the private sector than it does on paying public servants.

All the suppliers, who depend on contracts to the schools and public offices,

the service providers to the police and the health service,

the builders of roads and museums,

the profiteers of the Private Finance Initiative,

even the consultants so beloved by Northern Ireland Water,

they take a bigger slice of the public budget than the health workers and the firefighters and the police officers and the social workers and the teachers and the university scientists and all the other public servants put together.

So when you hear the common and cheap mantra from the CBI and the IOD and the usual suspects in the Belfast Telegraph and UTV and the Assembly about making the public sector more lean and mean, what you are hearing is the self-appointed cheerleaders for the private sector cutting off their nose to spite their own face. People operating out of self interest, not in the public interest.

That is what I mean about the public sector as the backbone of our economy. Other speakers here today can make clearer than I, the huge social impact which public service workers make to the daily lives of all of us.

We should be grateful for that, of course, and show that gratitude and respect to every public servant we meet on a daily basis, from the bus driver, to the care assistant, to the traffic attendant to the postal worker.

Especially today, the postal workers of the Communications Workers Union who are making huge sacrifices to keep a universal postal service publicly owned and answerable to the people, not to some Chief Executive Officer who demands a salary of £1 million and yet refuses to meet his workers.

The message I am trying to get across to those who disparage the public sector is its vital role in keeping Northern Ireland afloat now, in this recession, just as they did in the darkest years of our recent past.

Any so-called economist or business expert, or any of their cheerleaders in the press or the Assembly who cannot see that bigger picture is not up to their job. If we must make cuts in employment, maybe we could start with them.

This meeting is as important as when we were here last March, after the murders in Masserene and Craigavon. Then, we were here to defend our democracy.

Now, we are demanding that the democracy we defended does its bit for our economy and our shared society.

Last April, we were here again to defend the workers at Visteon and Nortel and Shorts who were facing job losses in the private sector. We are here today and still sending the same message.

What unites workers is their common humanity, - we do not recognise false distinctions between workers in the public or the private sector.

Support the public sector.

Support decent jobs and pensions for all workers.

Challenge those who make ignorant assumptions about what makes an economy efficient.

Oppose those who try to plant a wedge between private sector workers and public sector workers.

Build an alternative vision for a Northern Ireland which is fit for purpose, for all of its inhabitants.

Thanks for listening.

INTRODUCING Dan ÓNéill AKA ODD BODKINS #6

Dan has granted Soñar permission to publish his ODD BODKINS cartoon strip.

ODD BODKINS ON Soñar. Vol. I No. 6










Select Image for Larger Viewing

Hugh Daniel ÓNéill.

Thirty years ago Hugh Daniel ÓNéill was described as, “an innovator, a creator and a professional troublemaker” in a foreword to a collection of Odd Bodkins. For seven years his Odd Bodkins cartoons ran daily in The San Francisco Chronicle and in 350 other newspapers throughout the world. At its peak, the strip had a readership of fifty million. When he was hired at age 21 —the youngest cartoonist ever hired by a national syndicate— he was given three simple rules: no religion, no politics and no sex in the strip. He did his best to comply — he kept sex out of Odd Bodkins.

For further information on ÓNéill.
http://www.danoneillcomics.com/
http://origsix.com/index.asp

Chomsky - Scargill speak at Belfast Venues

Trick or Treat?


© Joe ÓNéill 2009
(L-R) Moderator Professor Bill Rolston and Professor Noam Chomsky

© Joe ÓNéill 2009
Michael Doherty (National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers) welcomes Arthur Scargill to Belfast

If you consider yourself a supporter of the political 'Establishment' you might say it was 'Trick.' If you are of a more non-conformist, or a rebellious nature, you would definitely say 'Treat', to two events hosted in Belfast this Halloween weekend.

On Friday night, Professor Noam Chomsky, and former President of the National Union of Mineworkers, Arthur Scargill, addressed audiences at separate locations in Belfast.

Chomsky, a longtime critic of American foreign policy, was the speaker at the sold-out Amnesty International Annual Lecture at Queens University, as part of the Belfast Festival at Queens. The following day, he spoke gratis, at St. Mary's College West Belfast, hosted by Féile an Phobail's Festival of the People. Overflow seating for over 200 people had to be arranged in an upstairs room with video and audio facilities, as the main auditorium which holds over 300 people quickly filled to capacity.

Scargill, who led the NUM in the 1984-85 strike which ended in defeat for the union, spoke at the Belfast office of the UNITE union. He retired from the NUM Presidency in 2001, and was elected Honorary President in 2002. He is currently Leader of the Socialist Labour Party which he founded in 1996.

Noam Chomsky
'Alongside his career as a linguist, Chomsky has been active in left-wing politics. In 1965 he organized a citizen's committee to publicize tax refusal in protest to the war in Vietnam; four years later he published his first book on politics American Power and the New Mandarins. By the 1980's he had become both the most distinguished figure of American linguistics and one of the most influential left-wing critics of American foreign policy. He has been extremely prolific as a writer: his web-site in 2003 listed 33 book publications in linguistics (broadly construed), and although the individuation of his political books is complicated, their number definitely exceeds 40. According to a 1992 tabulation of sources from the previous 12 years in the Arts and Humanities Citation Index, Chomsky was the most frequently-cited person alive, and one of the eight most frequently-cited authors of all time.'
Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers, 1860-1960, Bristol, 2004

'I don't say you're self-censoring - I'm sure you believe everything you're saying; but what I'm saying is, if you believed something different, you wouldn't be sitting where you're sitting.'
Chomsky interviewed by Andrew Marr on BBC2, February 14, 1996.


Arthur Scargill
'We need action not words. For the first time we are facing the prospect of seeing legislation introduced which denies the right of trade unionists to come to the assistance of other unionists and denies the right of trade unionists to seek the support of others in their disputes. There is only one response. Faced with this legislation we should say we will defy the law. It is the only action we can take and it is the only response this movement can give. If there is an attempt to use this legislation then you defy it not as an individual union but as a movement.'
Speech to the Trades Union Congress at Brighton on the Employment Act 1982. (7 September, 1982).