The Irish Post - March 11, 2023

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President Biden may miss coronation of King Charles

Diary clash caused by visit to Ireland could prove problematic

BY GRAINNE CONROY

PRESIDENT Joe Biden may not attend the coronation of King Charles because of a visit to Ireland the previous month.

The New York Post is reporting White House officials saying they were unclear if he would attend.

The non-attendance of President Biden is not a snub – but merely a diary clash, and the US would be represented at the event.

However, the president, a proud Irish American, has also openly

spoken about his mother’s disdain for England and the British monarchy.

In his memoir Promises to Keep, Biden said that the Finnegans from Co. Louth, his Irish American family on his mother’s side, held deeply on to “Irish grudges”.

But other media outlets have said that President Biden’s non-attendance is predicated on his being in Ireland in April to mark the 25th anniversary of the signing of the Good Friday Agreement. President Biden is adamant that he will be in

Former pub landlord jailed over sex abuse case

BY GERARD DONAGHY

A MAN from Co. Roscommon has been jailed in England after grooming and sexually abusing a teenage girl.

Graeme Maltby-Baker, 77, admitted four counts of sexual activity with a child aged 16 or under when he appeared at Derby Crown Court on February 3.

Maltby-Baker, formerly of the Bull i’ th’ Thorn pub near Buxton, Derbyshire but now living in Scramoge, Co. Roscommon, was jailed for six years and

nine months last week

The former pub landlord must also sign the sex offenders’ register for life.

“The victim in this case has been incredibly brave in coming forward and her courage and dignity throughout the whole process must be commended,” said the detective from Derbyshire Constabulary that led the investigation.

The abuse, which came to light in 2018 when the victim contacted police, began when she was 15.

Maltby-Baker sent the teenager text

messages as well as making sexual comments to her.

He then began taking her out in his vehicle on a regular basis where he would kiss her, touch her through her clothes and demand oral sex.

The abuse continued for months with Maltby-Baker repeatedly forcing the girl to have sex with him, often in the back of his car.

In a personal statement read out in court, the victim spoke of how she can still ‘feel his rough smelly moustache’ on her face.

Ireland during April to mark that event, and a further trip across the Atlantic a few weeks later seems unlikley.

According to Time, a White House official said: “That does not feel like an event Joe Biden will attend,” although stressed that Biden’s schedule for May had not yet been finalised. It has been suggested his Irish trip would take in Dublin and Belfast, as well as Co. Mayo and Co. Louth, where his family roots lie.

If President Biden ends up not attending Charles’ coronation in May, he won’t be the first president to miss such an event. President Dwight Eisenhower didn’t attend Queen Elizabeth’s coronation in 1953.

She added: “I was a quarter of this man’s age, I thought I could trust him. Why did he do this to me?

“This man took over some of the most important years of my life.

“I sometimes have vivid violent nightmares. It’s the norm for me to wake up in terror screaming.”

The investigating detective added: “As well as the physical abuse she endured, the victim has also had to deal with years of emotional and mental trauma as a result of Maltby-Baker’s predatory behaviour.

“I hope this sentence can now go some way towards helping her to get some closure on this horrific chapter of her life, and allow her to begin looking to the future.”

POSSIBLE NO-SHOW: Joe Biden may be absent on the big day Picture: Getty Images

Cruise line defends action in disembarking passenger

BY MAL ROGERS

A HIGH Court jury in Dublin has dismissed an Irish solicitor’s case in a false imprisonment action.

Caroline Fanning (49) of Foxrock in Co. Dublin had brought an action against Trailfinders Ireland with regard an incident almost eight years ago on a cruise ship.

Ms Fanning claimed that she had been imprisoned on the ship after reportedly threatening to commit suicide. Her litigation was against both Trailfinders Ireland and third party RCL Cruises Limited. RCL are a British company registered in Weybridge, Surrey.

Ms Fanning said her threat to commit suicide was “a sarcastic comment” which arose out of exasperation. She denied that she intended the suicide comment to be taken seriously, and neither was it predicated on the hope that it might bring a swift resolution to her request.

The solicitor, who was accompanied by her 13-year-old daughter who was sharing her room on the cruise, had phoned reception in the early hours of August 9, 2015 requesting to be able to move to another cabin. She was feeling seasick and wanted to relocate to a room less affected by the rolling motion of the ship.

When asked by the receptionist if it was a medical emergency, Ms Fanning said: “There may be one tomorrow,” and “there may be a suicide”. Members of the crew testified in court that Ms Fanning made the suicide comment on more than one occasion.

Ms Fanning told the court that it was “pure sarcasm” born out of frustration.

The ship’s security personnel was alerted and the suicide prevention protocol was triggered.

Ms Fanning was moved to a secure cabin without a balcony, and which was stripped of any objects with sharp knives.

The solicitor and her daughter were subsequently disembarked in the Bahamas.

But David Conlan-Smyth SC, representing Trailfinders and third party RCL Cruises Limited, asked Ms Fanning about an email she had sent to Trailfinders. This said that another person had previously told her about someone complaining to a phone company (on an entirely different matter), mentioned suicide. The problem was resolved very shortly thereafter.

The judge, Mr Justice Alexander Owens, heard from Trym Selvag captain of Oasis of the Sea, who made a decision to disembark Ms Fanning in the Bahamas on the advice of Royal Caribbean’s global security team.

He explained to the judge that the company takes “no risks” in situations of self-harm or violence. But he added that Ms Fanning was given online access to book alternative accommodation and travel arangements. She was not refunded for the trip.

The court heard she later complained to Trailfinders saying she felt she had been in “Guantánamo Bay not on a luxurious cruise”. The jury found in favour of Trailfinders and RCL Cruises.

175th anniversary of the Tricolour marked

The event was held in Waterford, home of Thomas Francis Meagher

BY GERARD DONAGHY

TAOISEACH Leo Varadkar has said the Irish Tricolour is a symbol of ‘a shared future and a shared island’ at an event to mark the 175th anniversary of the flying of the Irish National Flag.

The Taoiseach was speaking at a flag-raising ceremony in Waterford at the weekend as part of a programme of events to mark the anniversary.

The flag was first flown at 33 The Mall in the city on March 7, 1848 by Waterford native Thomas Francis Meagher, who had been gifted it by a group of French women sympathetic to the struggle for Irish nationalism.

Quoting Meagher, the Taoiseach said the original ideal of unity behind the flag was as pertinent today as it was almost two centuries ago.

“In his own inspirational words, and I quote, ‘the white in the centre

THIS WEEK they said...

“That does not feel like an event Joe Biden will attend.”

A White House spokesperson, saying that President Biden is unlikely to attend the coronation of King Charles III.

“What we need today is not legislation, we need the minister to authorise Dublin Airport to spend the €100,000, buy the electronic equipment which will disable these drones when they are identified and bring them down.”

Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary, after Dublin Airport was closed again due to drone activity.

“It was an incredibly difficult couple of weeks to get where we wanted to be, but we are just delighted to be here now and to see that Dáithí’s Law will be in effect by spring 2023, as planned, is just the cherry on top.”

Máirtín Mac Gabhann, father of Dáithí (6), speaking after organ donation legislation was passed at Westminster.

signifies a lasting truce between the Orange and Green and I trust that beneath its folds, the hands of Irish Protestants and Irish Catholics may be clasped together in generous and heroic brotherhood’,” said the Taoiseach.

“And today, our flag remains a symbol of hope, of a shared future and a shared island for everyone who calls Ireland home.”

He added: “As a State, we revere the Tricolour but let us not lose sight of Thomas Francis Meagher, the vision of a Waterford man all that time ago who had a vision and a symbol for a shared future for our island and these are the ideals that must be cherished and championed and upheld here at home and also abroad.”

Also attending the ceremony were the ambassadors of Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Britain, the USA and Ukraine.

The 69th New York Infantry

Regiment of the United States Army – The Fighting 69th – were also represented at the event.

Meagher – who was exiled to Australia following the failed Young Irelander Rebellion of 1849 –later travelled to America, where he would eventually become a citizen and led the regiment in the American Civil War. Following the war, he served as Secretary and Acting Governor of Montana.

“He certainly left an indelible mark on Waterford, on Ireland and the world,” said the Taoiseach. “But what is arguably his most enduring achievement was the introduction of our flag, the Tricolour, in 1848 that was inspired by the French Revolution and other revolutions taking place across Europe at the time.”

The ceremony was the culmination of a three-day programme of events to mark the historic occasion.

“How did you feel about the Covid 19 lockdowns and restrictions and enforcement of the same? Did you just comply and go along with the government narrative? Did you question any of it?”

Van Morrison to Billy Bragg – the Belfast singer, a lockdown sceptic, posed several questions to Bragg on Twitter.

“Football has enormous power to be a force for good across the world. At Bohemians we have undertaken many initiatives to harness this power in Ireland, in particular to support and champion the situations of people who are homeless or refugees in Direct Provision.”

Daniel Lambert, COO of Dublin soccer side Bohemians.

Oasis of the Seas Picture: Courtesy of RCL

‘SYMBOL’: Leo Varadkar Picture: RollingNews.ie

Billy Bragg

DÁTHÍ’S LAW FOCUSING ON ORGAN DONATION PASSED

Important legislation delayed by the Stormont stalemate is enacted by Westminster

where we wanted to be, but we are just delighted to be here now and to see that Dáithí’s Law will be in effect by spring 2023, as planned, is just the cherry on top.

“Dáithí continues to fight every day while he waits for the gift of a new heart, and we hope that this change in law helps make organ donation the norm in society, along with education and further awareness.

“We will never stop spreading the positive message of organ donation, as we hope that one day it will save our Dáithí’s life.”

The Northern Ireland (Executive Formation and Organ and Tissue Donation) Bill included a provision that allowed the Department of Health to lay the final regulations on organ donation changes today without the

BY FIONA AUDLEY

IT was revealed last week by the Department of Health that Dáithí’s Law will come into effect on June 1. After being delayed due to the political stalemate at Stormont, the legislation passed at Westminster and received royal assent last week.

Named in honour of six-year-old Dáithí Mac

Gabhann, it means adults will be considered potential organ donors unless they choose to opt out or are in an excluded group.

The youngster from West Belfast has been awaiting a heart transplant for five years after being born with a condition that means only one side of his heart works.

Welcoming the announcement, Dáithí’s father Máirtín Mac Gabhann said they were

‘delighted’ with the success of their campaign.

“It was a very proud day for our family and campaign to have Dáithí’s Law included as an amendment on the Executive Formation Bill,” he said.

“To hear Dáithí’s name mentioned again, and again, in the House of Commons was something we will treasure forever.

“It was an incredibly difficult couple of weeks to get

Dublin airport delays due to drone activity is unacceptable – O’Leary

BY MAL ROGERS

THE solution to illegal drone activity at Dublin Airport is “relatively easy”, Ryanair Chief Executive Michael O’Leary has told RTÉ.

The airport was once again closed last week (Thursday) meaning that three flights – including two from Britain – were prevented from departing or landing at the airport. The knock-on effect of the delays or cancellations would affect the travel plans of thousands of passengers, according to Mr O’Leary.

This follows several other instances of disruption due to drone activity – in all there have been six occurrences since the beginning of January.

Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, Mr O’Leary said it requires Dublin Airport to have the technological capability to disable the drones.

RTÉ reports that airlines affected by the diversions have called for more action from aviation authorities and said the latest disruption was unacceptable.

On Morning Ireland Mr O’Leary called on Minister Eamon Ryan to act decisively or resign.

“What we need today is not legislation, we need the minister to authorise Dublin Airport to spend the €100,000, buy the electronic equipment which will disable these drones when they are identified and bring them down,” Mr O’Leary told RTÉ

“We need that done today. We don’t need a memo to Cabinet next Tuesday. What happens if the airport is shut again Saturday or Sunday?”

Mr O’Leary said that Dublin Airport has sought permission from the Department of Transport to acquire anti-drone technology. So far this permission has not been forthcoming.

need for an Assembly vote.

It will change the way consent is granted by introducing an opt-out system.

Those excluded from the deemed consent legislation include children under 18, people who lack the mental capacity to understand the change in law, visitors to Northern Ireland and temporary residents

Between now and June 1, the Public Health Agency will increase its awareness campaign to make sure people understand the new system and the choices they have.

Specialist nursing staff will continue to speak to families about donation, as well as considerations around faith and beliefs, before any organ or tissue donation goes ahead.

Peter May, Permanent Secretary at the Department

of Health, hailed the ‘lifesaving’ change to the law.”The 1st of June will mark another important milestone for organ donation in Northern Ireland,” he said.

“The new law will strengthen the current legislative framework around organ donation and will increase the current rate of consent in the small number of cases in which it is clinically possible for organ donation to proceed after a person’s death.

“Doing so will increase the overall number of donors, and ultimately the number of lifesaving organs available for transplantation. I know that many people in Northern Ireland have campaigned tirelessly to raise awareness of organ donation and I want to commend them for all their work in this area.”

A Night For Michael Collins

A night to remember Michael Collins, and to fundraise for a statue to be unveiled in Cork City, will take place on Friday, March 24th, 7pm, at the Irish Cultural Centre, Hammersmith.

Organised by the Collins 22 Society, the evening will feature a number of guest speakers.

For an invitation to the  event, please email:  Aengusomalley@gmail.com

www.michaelcollinsstatue.com

NEW HOPE: Dáithí Mac Gabhann with his father at a Celtic match last year Picture: Getty Images

The contradictions and complications of friends’ past lives

journalists for overlooking Henry’s republican past.

He dug out an old article by Kevin Myers describing Henry as a former member of the Official IRA.

Why then was this being overlooked in the obituaries? That was Shane’s question.

Henry himself said that he had been saved from a possible paramilitary career by, of all things, punk.

Some past interviewees are real friends, people that I meet socially, discuss ideas with, share problems with, seek advice from.

One of the surprises of the peace process period was the discovery that some of those who had bombed and killed or ordered others to bomb and kill turned out to be civil and decent people. Some of course did not and were objectionable louts. Others were such fixated ideologues that they could not dissent from party lines and propaganda. You could have an argument with them but you couldn’t have a conversation.

Davy Adams is one who made a radical journey away from his past. He had been a senior member of the Ulster Defence Association.

Friends and neighbours of mine have been murdered by the UDA. They would have murdered me if they’d got a chance and very nearly did, at least once.

Davy was one of the representatives of the UDA at the talks leading up to the Good Friday Agreement. He is a strong believer in that agreement.

He was later a columnist for The Irish Times for ten years. He then joined the Dublin-based international humanitarian organisation, GOAL and worked in many stricken countries, including Syria and South Sudan.

Should I tell him that I don’t want his friendship unless he tells me what he did in the UDA? I don’t think so.

He doesn’t interrogate me about how I lived my early years.

Richard O’Rawe was the PRO for the IRA prisoners on hunger strike in the Maze prison. He was arrested and imprisoned for taking part in an armed bank robbery.

He has written about this but I assume that as an armed republican he did things that he has not written about.

Still, I know the ground he stands on now. He is a novelist and playwright, a man with a great mind who speaks frankly, and he is a friend, as Henry was, as Davy is.

I met Anthony McIntyre when he was doing his PhD at Queen’s University Belfast in the mid 1990s. There had only been one place for a PhD student at the politics department that year. Mackers, as his friends call him, was competing for it against a young woman who was a member of the SDLP and got through on the basis of a degree he had studied for in jail.

AFTER my friend Henry McDonald died in January, numerous friends and former colleagues put messages up on social media expressing their grief and admiration for a tenacious journalist.

Henry had been Ireland correspondent for The Guardian. Before that he had been a security correspondent for the BBC and at the time he died he was the political editor of the Belfast News Letter He had published several books including two novels and was hoping to move from journalism to fiction writing.

One of the first to express

condolences was the DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson.

Like an eager news digger, Henry had got around, accumulated contacts and made many friends.

He had attracted critics too but most had the decency not to mar the moment for his grieving friends and family.

Then Ed Moloney, himself a journalist with a great reputation, former Northern Editor of the Sunday Tribune and author of great books wrote his tribute and referred to Henry’s time as a militant young republican in the Official Republican movement.

The ‘Stickies’ had sent young Henry to East Germany on some kind of training camp.

I had never spoken to him about this. Maybe I should have done.

Shane Paul O’Doherty, who had been a member of the Provisional IRA and regretted his crimes came out with several tweets criticising

Through that music culture he had made Protestant friends and also acquired a sense that cultural evolution effected more meaningful change than armed militancy could.

I have other friends today who were members of the IRA or loyalist groups. I don’t probe them about the past. I take them as the people they are now. I don’t get on well with ideologues or people who spout party lines so these are friends who have left all that behind.

I also have journalistic contacts, people I go to for information and who, like other journalists, I keep sweet with civility. Journalists cultivate contacts and they are happy to fudge the distinction between their professional dealings with them and more amicable association.

But though he passed his PhD he never got an academic job.

Henry McDonald thrived in journalism despite his early militancy and enjoyed a career that was denied to others because they had served time in prison which Henry hadn’t.

Henry’s last job was as political editor of a unionist newspaper, having travelled as far as anyone might have conceived he could when he was a young militant. People who think for themselves and change should not be disparaged for what they did or thought in their youth.

n Malachi O’Doherty is one of Ireland’s leading political commentators and author of 11 books on the North of Ireland.

One of the surprises of the peace process period was the discovery that some of those who had bombed and killed or ordered others to bomb and kill turned out to be civil and decent people

People who change their minds, and so their lives, should be lauded

MALACHIO’DOHERTY

THE PAST: Some things are best left unspoken

LONDON ST PATRICK’S FESTIVAL 2023

Sunday 12 March | 12–6pm | Trafalgar Square | Free

Come and celebrate with music, dance, food and more. From the festival in Trafalgar Square to the famous parade from Hyde Park. It’ll be grand!

Join the celebration london.gov.uk/St-Patricks

with...

MICHAEL Flavin, novelist and academic, talks about his newly-published novel One Small Step, set against the background of the Irish community living in Britain.

MICHAEL FLAVIN

Opera or pantomime?

Opera (oh yes it is).

Which (real) historical figure do you most admire?

James Connolly was the most extraordinary autodidact. Insightful analysis, too.

What would be your motto? Avoid mottos.

Have you a favourite quote from any poem you’ve read?

“The Bees are flying, They taste the Spring” (Sylvia Plath).

What’s a favourite line from your own writing?

The men who built Britain

THE founding of the London Irish Centre in 1955 was the first realistic response to the realisation that the almost half a million Irish emigrants then in Britain were in need of adequate and culturally sensitive welfare provision. Post-war Reconstruction was in full swing and many Irish men were then working in construction.

What are you working on at the moment?

I’m in the final stages of writing a psychological thriller The Voice Hearer. I’m also writing a further Troubles novel, set in the late-1980s, with 40,000 words thus far. In addition, and following the warm response to my recent article on leadership in the IRA and Sinn Féin in Terrorism and Political Violence, I’m aiming to write a more fine-grained, leadership-based study of the shift from armed campaign to political engagement. Meanwhile, I’m under contract with Palgrave Macmillan to write a further, academic book on leadership.

Which writer has most influenced you?

I love the pared back, economical prose style of John McGahern.

What are your Irish roots?

My parents were both from Newcastlewest, Co. Limerick. They moved to Birmingham for the job opportunities in the 1950s.

Which piece of music always sends a shiver down your spine?

There’s a Pogues version of Danny Boy from a 1984 John Peel session, guaranteed to move the listener to tears.

Heaney or Yeats?

Heaney.

What is your favourite place in Ireland?

The memory of happy teenage summers in Newcastlewest lives with me still.

Which book has really moved you?

John McGahern’s A Memoir

Which living writer do you most admire?

Jhumpa Lahiri (ethnically Bangladeshi but born in the UK). She has McGahern’s gift of economy and she engages with inter-generational tensions within immigrant families.

Readers should start on page one of One Small Step and savour each word to the end.

Mozart or Martin Hayes?

Mozart (sorry Martin).

What books are on your bedside table at the minute?

Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These and Jhumpa Lahiri’s Whereabouts

In terms of inanimate objects, what is your most precious possession? I don’t get hung-up on possessions.

What’s the best thing about where you live?

Home is Canterbury. It has a fine cathedral…

...and the worst?

… and tone deaf buskers.

What do you consider the greatest work of art?

Mark Rothko’s Seagram Murals (1958-59).

I saw them at the Tate. And a tip of the hat should also go to Bernard Canavan’s paintings of post-war Irish emigrants.

What do you believe in?

I’m an atheist, so not much really.

Since its foundation therefore a special relationship has existed between the LIC and the Irish in British construction, with more than one Irish contractor contributing men, money, and materials at cost to its construction and expansion.

The importance of the Irish in British construction has been out of all proportion to their numbers. They came to dominate ground works during the decades following World War Two and, by the end of the century, many Irish-owned companies had become household names in Britain.

Notwithstanding the £2.3 billion remitted by Irish emigrants between 1939 and 1969, and thereafter, by century’s end the term ‘Irish Navvy’ had acquired negative connotations not least in Ireland, sometimes contributing to feelings of low self-esteem amongst Irish construction workers and their families.

Over the past two decades however Cowley’s work has altered these perceptions to such an extent that today the term is more widely regarded as a badge of honour. Many have attested to this – not least President Michael D. Higgins who, in Coventry in 2014, said: “In the 1960s, across Britain, monuments to the labour of Irish workers could be seen throughout the cities and countryside - most particularly with the construction of the motorways, but also on the building sites where Irish tradesmen and labourers were often the backbone of the workforce.

Ultan Cowley gave the title to his book, The Men Who Built Britain, and it was more than an idle boast. It was a statement of pride in the reputation for industry, and the capacity for hard work, rightly earned by our people.”

The prolonged concentration of Irish male migrant labour in British construction, and its results, has conferred on this sector a particular importance for the Irish in Britain. Historically the largest single employer of Irish male migrant labour, the industry still continues to attract Irish immigrants, many skilled professionals, in addition to those of Irish-descent who have built on their forebears’ achievements.

Cowley’s book is unique in that, for the first time, it embedded the story of Irish male migrant labour in the histories of both Irish emigration and of British civil engineering across the 19thand 20th centuries. In Irish Migration studies, The Men Who Built Britain is therefore regarded as the standard work on the subject.

Unusually, his work document’s not only the statistical record but also the personal accounts of the men themselves, of their industry colleagues, and of those closest to them. The timeframe of his research – the 1990s, enabled him to engage with Irish emigrants who, in some instances, had actually ‘taken the boat’ well before World War Two and often worked as agricultural labourers before gravitating

towards construction. Such men represented a living link with the legendary Spailpins and Railway Navvies of the 19th century –vanished world, famously evoked in the writings of the Donegal navvy-poet Patrick MacGill, author of Moleskin Joe and Children of the Dead End

The Cowley Collection holds extensive correspondence, photographs, and documents relating to Irish involvement in construction but by far the most invaluable element is the 50-plus hours of taped conversations which tell, in their own words, the stories of many of the men and women whose lives revolved around the industry from the start to the close of the last century.

Ultan’s repeated efforts to persuade organisations in Ireland to highlight these stories were met mainly with indifference so the willingness of the London Irish Centre, supported by O’Donovan Waste and others, to acquire and promote this unique archive has been warmly welcomed. “My work is, in large part, the story of the Irish community in Britain. Clearly the Cowley Collection has, at long last, found its proper place.”

 For further information, to book Ultan to talk about his extensive research, or to buy a copy of From Clare to Here – Memories of the Men Who Built Britian, email: ultan.cowley@gmail.com; +353 51 563377

The Cowley Collection, an archive of invaluable research into the Irish influence in British construction work, has found a permanent home at the London Irish Centre

Michael Flavin

The Seagram Murals by Mark Rothko Picture: Getty Images

BUILDING BRITAIN: A navvy contemplates his handiwork Picture: Courtesy of Ultan Cowley

Irish man jailed for people smuggling

BY GERARD DONAGHY

AN Irishman is one of four people charged in Britain with people-smuggling offences after an investigation by the National Crime Agency (NCA).

Desmond Rice, 46, of Meadowcroft, Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire appeared before magistrates in Nottingham last week

Also in court were Albanian nationals Arsen Feci, 44, and Klodian Shenaj, 48, of Broxtowe Street, Nottingham and Banet Tershana, 51, of Harmsworth Crescent, Hove.

The men were arrested by NCA officers as part of an investigation into a group alleged to have smuggled migrants to Britain in boats from Belgium.

Investigators allege that Rice, Feci and Shenaj were involved in acquiring a rigid hulled inflatable

Sue Gray lands a new job with Starmer

boat (RHIB) and using it to travel to Belgium to collect migrants, before landing at Margate in Kent.

The four men are alleged to be part of a gang organising a series of people-smuggling runs to Britain from Europe, including a number of crossing events last year.

“These arrests follow an extensive investigation into individuals who we believe were involved in a number of migrant crossings from Belgium to the Kent coast in 2022,” NCA Branch Commander Colin Williams said on Tuesday.

“Tackling people smuggling continues to be a priority for the NCA as we target and disrupt organised crime groups at every step of the route.”

All four men were remanded in custody until their next appearance at Nottingham Crown Court on March 29, 2023.

BRITAIN’S Senior civil servant Sue Gray, who investigated lockdown gatherings in Downing Street, has been offered a job as Sir Keir Starmer’s chief of staff.

Allies of Boris Johnson reacted with anger to the news.

The BBC reports that former minister Jacob Rees-Mogg said Ms Gray’s Partygate conclusions now looked “like a left-wing stitch up”.

“So much for an impartial Civil Service, the Gray report now looks like a left-wing stitch up against a Tory prime minister,” the former business secretary and Brexit opportunities minister tweeted.

Sue Gray was Second Permanent Secretary with responsibility for the Union and Constitution Directorate in the cabinet. This was even more senior than her previous role as the Director-General, Propriety and Ethics Team.

The former civil servant tended to be very secretive, operating in carefully preserved obscurity – the BBC called her “the most powerful woman in Britain you’ve

never heard of”. But the high-ranking official used to be a pub landlady in Newry, which specialised in country and western music. Her official biography merely says: “She also took a career break

to run a pub in Newry, Northern Ireland.”

During the 1980s the pub, called The Cove, on the Hilltown Road, was run by Sue and her husband Bill Conlon, the C&W singer from Portaferry, Co. Down.

Morrison and Bragg take to Twitter in spat over Covid

Popular entertainers discuss their differences regarding lockdown over social media

VAN Morrison and Billy Bragg have been involved in a Twitter storm. The Belfast singer, a noted sceptic about various aspects of the official response to Covid-19 during the pandemic, has demanded Billy Bragg answer several questions.

The roots of the interchange lie in a recent issue Mojo magazine, in which Bragg interviews Morrison about his new album, Moving On Skiffle, a collection of songs inspired by the groundbreaking musical movement. Following their interview, Morrison posed questions to the singer, well known for his left-wing activism.

which

In his list of questions to Bragg, which he posted on Twitter, Morrison referenced some current conspiracy theories in his questions.

His questions included: “How did you feel about the Covid-19 lockdowns and restrictions and enforcement of the same?” and “Did you just comply and go along with the government narrative? Did you question any of it?” he asked. Referring to his own anti-lockdown stance – Morrison was vociferously against lockdowns – he asked: “Did you not approve of me protesting?”

of his questions. did the any vociferously was told not to ask you about your views on the our discussing subject. not

Referring to his own anti-lockdown stance – Morrison given he government’s

In reply, Billy Bragg tweeted: “Hi Van, I’m a bit surprised at your questions, given I was told not to ask you about your views on the pandemic during our interview. I got the impression you wanted to avoid discussing the subject. I’m not so squeamish, so here are my responses.”

response was reasonable, that he did follow the

Bragg tweeted that he thought that the government’s response was reasonable, that he did follow the ‘government narrative’ but that he did question it. He also added that he respected Morrison’s right to protest.

NEW JOB: Sue Gray Picture: Getty Images

DUP only has itself to blame

KEVIN MEAGHER looks at the implications of the Windsor Framework

WHAT’S that sound coming from Northern Ireland right now?

Why it’s the frenzied flapping of chickens coming home to roost.

DUP poultry to be precise.

Having lustily campaigned for a hard Brexit in the hope that anything that made Northern Ireland less European automatically made it less Irish, there is a good bit of head-scratching at this week’s turn of events.

On the one hand, they are left with a deal on the revised Northern Ireland Protocol that Rishi Sukak claims will transform Northern Ireland into the ‘world’s most exciting economic zone.’

On the other, many loyalists claim the new deal with the European Union further detaches Northern Ireland from the UK and hastens Irish unity.

At the time of writing, the DUP leadership is in a quandary: Support the Windsor Framework – as the reformed protocol shall hereafter be known – thus helping restore the Stormont institutions that are currently mothballed, or reject it and, well, take a leap into the unknown.

The new deal shaves some of the rough edges off the original version, agreed by Boris Johnson as Britain left the EU in 2020.

To make trading with the rest of the UK easier, there will be a new ‘green’ lane, with minimal checks and paperwork for goods coming from Britain to Northern Ireland that are destined to be sold there.

A ‘red’ lane for goods heading into the rest of Ireland (and therefore the EU) will see more stringent checks.

All of which makes sense and was in fact a proposal put forward by Dublin and Brussels in October 2021.

There is also something called the ‘Stormont Brake’ – allowing the assembly to veto any new EU laws that might apply in Northern Ireland.

By giving the new accord the King’s secular name, and by setting King Charles up to have tea with the EU Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, Sunak has set a Britishness test for unionists.

‘Back the deal or offend the King’ is the unsubtle message.

The DUP’s Sammy Wilson said King Charles might live to ‘regret’ his decision to give a coded thumbs up to the deal.

Actually, it is Sammy and the DUP that might come to rue the day they fell out with a Tory prime minister, the British government, the UK parliament, the supreme court and the monarch.

Perhaps we should be calling them disloyalists?

What is clear, is that the vibe in Westminster and in the British media and opinion-forming circles, is that this is a good deal and should be supported.

The reaction of the European Research Group of Euro-hating Tory backbenchers has also been broadly positive.

Figures like former Brexit secretary, David Davis and Jacob Rees-Mogg are on-board.

As is Northern Ireland Minister Steve Baker, a former chairman of the ERG – who some though might quit over the deal. He was effervescent in supporting it.

Even David Frost – Lord Frost – the architect of the original protocol deal, if that’s not overstating it – has come out saying he can live with it.

Boris Johnson, however, has come up largely against the deal. This is evidently not good news, but may well not be enough to cause any lasting damage.

Hardline unionists are frustrated because they can see that the Windsor Framework is just a rebranded version of the Protocol.

Northern Ireland will still be treated

differently. There will still be border checks at the ports.

The Stormont Brake requires all sorts of thresholds before it could be applied.

So, the pressure on DUP leader, Jeffrey Donaldson, is now intense. Throughout its 52-year history, the party has always opposed first and recanted (quietly) later.

Having vociferously opposed the Good Friday Agreement back in 1998, they turned tail and accepted it by 2007 – after punishing the Ulster Unionists for supporting it.

The DUP has never taken responsibility for its actions but not this time. Now they are expected to support the deal and help get the devolved institutions restored.

Ultimately, they have no Plan B.

If they reject the deal and refuse to restart Stormont, the other parties will not just sit back and take it.

It is likely that the two governments will come up with proposals to run the place in the short term, while the rules are reformed to allow other parties to form an executive.

This might allow the more moderate Ulster Unionists to mount a comeback.

All in all, not a good week for the DUP, but having done so much to help eject Northern Ireland from the European Union, they have brought this mess to their own front door.

I think we can all be forgiven for chortling at the irony.

n Kevin Meagher is author of A United Ireland: Why Unification is Inevitable and How it will Come About and What A Bloody Awful Country: Northern Ireland’s Century of Division

The Irish trade union leaders heading strikes for better pay

TRADE union leaders of Irish descent are leading the fight for decent wages in Britain.

There is Irish lineage for a number of the general secretaries – from Mick Lynch at RMT to Pat Cullen at the Royal College of Nursing and Christina McAnae at Unison.

One of the most prominent trade unionists of modern times has been Frances O’Grady, who until the turn of the year, was general secretary of the TUC. She now sits in the House of Lords as a Labour peer.

All of these leaders have performed well in articulating the demands of their members to government.

The cost of living crisis has thrust millions into poverty across the UK. Inflation has been galloping ahead at over 10 per cent, with workers being offered derisory rises of below 5 per cent – and even the these offers have been tied to job losses and changes in working practices.

Workers have been incredibly exploited over the past 10 years, punished by austerity measures, many have seen their wages flat-line

PAULDONOVAN

or decline in real value.

At the same time, the government has removed limits on city bonuses.

It has overseen some appalling squandering of billions on PPE and track and trace contracts during Covid-19.

Then, came Liz Truss’s crazy period in office, which cost the country further billions This cost has now been laid on ordinary workers.

Can anyone be surprised that people are angry and want a decent wage rise?

The workforce is also in a strong position, with near full employment and skill shortages. The government’s response has been lamentable, in fact for the most part it has failed to govern.

Until recently, ministers seemed

happy to see strikes across transport, health, education and many other areas just drag on.

There is a strange culture in Conservative g overnments that sees them measuring themselves against Margaret Thatcher. This virility test equates to the more industrial unrest that can be created the better. But as with much else in the mythologised past of Conservatives today, they have failed to learn the lessons of history.

The 1980s were a different time. Thatcher fought the unions but she also carefully prepared the ground and didn’t take on everyone at the same time.

The unions today have been expertly led. RMT’s Mick Lynch has run rings around ministers and

media commentators, just clearly stating the case for a pay rise. His suggestion that there is plenty of money, it is just in the wrong people’s hands, has resonated with many.

The RCN’s Pat Cullen comes over as reason personified. She has a good track record, having led a successful strike in the north of Ireland in 2019.

The NHS staff have reached breaking point, many are walking away because they cannot take it anymore. Whilst the public was happy to clap the NHS staff during Covid-19, today the same staff go to foodbanks. The NHS is probably in a worse state today, than during Covid-19, with excess death levels going up.

The public, though, remain steadfastly behind the strikers.

Journalists seem to scurry around trying to find voices who will condemn strikers but mostly to no avail.

Leaders like Lynch poke holes in the arguments of news anchors, who earn hundreds of thousands, yet question why people are striking.

The trade unions have served their members well over this strike period. Solidarity has been maintained, particularly as government and its media supporters have sought to build division between the public and striking workers – the two groups often amount to the same.

It must be hoped that the present wave of collective strike action does result in decent pay rises for people across the board.

The rises can be afforded.

Taxes on big corporation and high wage earners may need to rise. Maybe there should be some claw back on the funds lost to fraudulent activities during the Covid-19 period. Frances O’Grady has suggested that equalising capital gains tax with incomes tax rates could help fund the required rises.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Moving forward, it must be hoped that the present actions are the beginning of a new era of collective solidarity – a time when we are not only all in it together but also equally share the spoils.

DUP LEADER Jeffrey Donaldson Picture: RollingNews.ie

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Smile motorists – you’re on traffic camera

CALLS have been made for traffic wardens in Limerick to be equipped with body cameras.

The Limerick Leader reports that at the monthly meeting of the Metropolitan District of Limerick City and County Council, Councillor Sarah Kiely submitted a motion that the provision of cameras be re-examined as a “matter of urgency”.

Cllr Kiely claimed traffic wardens were being “assaulted” and that the cameras would act as a

deterrent to those inclined to “abuse” the wardens.

Council officials state that traffic wardens would use

LIMERICK

“their own judgement” of a situation and activate the camera only when necessary.

The cameras, the council believes, would act as a deterrent to protect the safety of the wardens.

In counties where cameras are already in use, procedures state that the recordings

allows wardens to report any abusive or threatening behaviour to the gardaí.

The images may only be used in prosecutions for assault or threats to traffic wardens and footage is deleted once it is not required for any legal proceedings.

Limerick City and County Council replied to Cllr Kiely’s motion saying: “The use of personal protective equipment for local authority staff, including body-cams, etc is an operational matter that is kept under constant review. ”

Bond actor Pierce Brosnan thrills Ballycastle locals

LOCALS in Ballycastle are said to have been surprised and delighted when the actor Pierce Brosnan appeared in Ballycastle. The former James Bond actor posed for photographs with locals throughout the town. Brosnan was in Co. Antrim to film part of a new movie

Four Letters of Love, a

romantic drama based on the book of the same name from Dublin author Niall Williams. The film is expected to give a further tourist boost to the Causeway Coastal area.

The Belfast Telegraph

reports that the actor, from Navan, Co Meath, posed for photographs with locals.

The film also stars Helena Bonham Carter, Gabriel Byrne and Ann Skelly.

Northern Ireland has become a favoured spot in recent years for filming locations. Game of Thrones was filmed in Co. Antrim.

Team forced to row back on donations

SAMUEL Obadia (52), of Graiguecullen, was found guilty of transporting drugs for a criminal gang at Carlow Circuit Court and was given a three-and-a-half-year sentence. The last 12 months were suspended, after Mr Obadia pleaded guilty to having drugs worth €56,000 for sale or supply.

Judge Eugene O’Kelly outlined the facts of the case. The court heard that a search in Carlow in June 2021 of a vehicle belonging to the defendant, a

Portuguese drugs ‘mule’ living in Ireland jailed CARLOW

Portuguese national living in Ireland for twenty years, revealed 3kg of cannabis worth €56,000.

The defendant was arrested and made full admissions. Judge O’Kelly said the defendant was “making runs for a criminal gang, either money or drugs”.

Judge O’Kelly believed the defendant may have been targeted as he had previously not come to the attention of gardaí. Mr Obadia had admitted to gardaí that he had done a total of six runs. He had never been threatened, nor was there any drug use involved, noted the judge, but had “got involved for payment”.

Mr Obadia had two previous convictions for road traffic matters.

WICKLOW’S intrepid ‘Rowhardorgohome’ team were dealt a hammer blow when a technical glitch on crowd-funding GoFundMe platform caused €58,513 worth of donations they had raised for charity to be refunded.

The Wicklow People reports that having defied treacherous conditions to set a new world record for a five-person Atlantic crossing, the crew of the ‘Brugha’ – Tom Nolan, Derek McMullen, Shane Culleton and brothers Gearóid and Diarmuid Ó Briain – were left “shocked” as their fundraising efforts on behalf of Laura Lynn, Ireland’s children’s hospice organisation, and the RNLI were reduced to naught.

The tightly-knit group of childhood friends were later informed by GoFundMe that the error could not be reversed.

The response to the fault from Wicklow and beyond has been emphatic so far, with €35,172 of the €58,513 already raised.

A statement released by the Wicklow Rowhardorgohome team reads: “The team would like to thank all who have donated to our charity campaign for your patience during the technical glitch which caused all donations to be refunded.

“Everyone who donated should have received an email from Gofundme today outlining the issue and providing a link to a page to re-donate. Thank you!”

WICKLOW

MALROGERS Hard news the easy way

Holy show in Armagh

They were. But matters in Italy were equally fraught. After the turbulent war years, it looked as if the Italian Communist Party might gain power.

Joseph Walshe, Irish ambassador to the Vatican, called it ‘a fight for western civilisation’. He told Pius XII that all the members of the Irish Government were praying for him.

The pope replied, “Ireland is always faithful and I want her fidelity now.”

Walshe reassured the pope that the government and the people of Ireland were behind him. He later described the events: “I added specifically that the government, as well as the people, would regard it as the greatest moment in our history if He deigned to make Ireland the home of the Holy See for the period of the persecution, if and when it came.”

Economic woes

THE first airline-operated Boeing 787 Dreamliners are set to be scrapped – and they’re Irishowned. The 787–8 models entered service in 2013 and so after ten years are approaching the point which essentially means they have more value as spare parts.

They’ve been sitting idle since September 2019 when Norwegian Longhaul ceased flying them. The cost for a new airline to take these into fleet is prohibitive

SERGEI Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, has said that Vladimir Putin has three advisers. “Ivan the Terrible. Peter the Great. And Catherine the Great.”

Sadly there’s no room for the man who was called Ivan the Reasonable, otherwise known as Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev. Putin didn’t bother going to his funeral last year.

But talk of Putin brings us round to a discussion of Ireland and communism. Particularly in the formative years of the new state, and then again in the aftermath of World War II, there was genuine fear that Ireland might become communist- a sort of Cuba of Europe, a Soviet outlier on the Atlantic edges of the continent

Priceless books

A BILLIONAIRE investor who has extensive interests in Ireland is auctioning what is the earliest and most complete Hebrew Bible in existence.

Jacob Eli Safra, usually known as Jacqui Safra (83) has owned Parknasilla Hotel in Co. Kerry since 2013. Safra, from a Lebanese-Swiss Jewish banking dynasty, also owns Rossdohan Island and Garnish Island in Co. Kerry. He bought Garnish in the late 1990s.

Safra is bringing the bible, known as the Codex Sassoon – arguably “the most influential book in human history” – to auction in May, at an estimate

Catholicism was seen as a natural bulwark against communism, and so successive taoisigh, but most notably Éamon de Valera, were vehement in opposition to anything that remotely smacked of socialism. Which is where a very peculiar story comes in.

It is a sort of urban legend – actually, it’s more of a suburban legend, because it’s nearly true – that Pope Pius XII seriously considered moving the Holy See, the Vatican, to Ireland. It’s a popular fable locally, with more than a grain of truth in it.

In Dermot Keogh’s masterful book Twentieth Century Ireland – Nation and State he describes how that after the Second World War the advance of communism was feared in many parts of

of between $30 million and $50 million, or about €28.5 million and €46.5 million.

A spokesperson for Sotheby’s said: “The Bible is certainly one of the world’s greatest treasures and holds powerful resonance for the three monotheistic religions and their billions of adherents.”

The Hebrew Bible is the foundation for Judaism and other Abrahamic faiths, including Christianity, which refers to these texts as the Old Testament.

Large parts of it have been incorporated into the Bible, leading the book to be labelled “the bedrock of Western civilisation”.

The Codex Sassoon is named after former owner David

Europe; Ireland was at the forefront of that fear factor.

Thus in 1948, after de Valera lost power in Ireland, the new government wanted to make it clear that, despite the change in administration, they were devout Catholics. They immediately sent a telegram to the Vatican saying that Ireland desired “to repose at the feet of your Holiness the assurance of our filial loyalty and of our devotion to your August Person, as well as our firm resolve to be guided in all our work by one teaching of Christ, and to strive for the attainment of a social order based on Christian principles.”

The government in Ireland continued to be scared stiff of communism, and wanted to make sure the Catholic Church was on board.

Solomon Sassoon.

If you fancy bagging the book yourself, and you’ve deep pockets, it will be on view in Los Angeles gallery from Sunday, April 30 to Wednesday, May 3.

The exact sale time will be announced in the coming weeks.

I don’t know if the Codex Sassoon ever made it to Ireland, but I like to think that it did.

As it happens I’ve stayed in the Parknasilla Hotel more than once, and I like to think I might have been sleeping in my well-appointed room while the bedrock of civilisation was similarly taking its rest nearby, perhaps in a safe in the reception area.

Walshe continued, “For this offer, He expressed His deepest gratitude and went on to say , ‘Ireland is the only place I could go to – only there would I have the atmosphere and sense of security to rule the Church as Christ wants me to rule.’”

The Pope then asked the Ambassador, “Yes, but what do you, as a follower of Christ think I ought to do?

The Irish ambassador advised the pope to stay put. The pope replied that that was what he intended to do.

In the event, the communists failed to gain power, and the Holy See remained in Italy.

So we came close to having the Vatican in Armagh. He’d have been doing his shopping in Sainsbury’s in Newry, or taking his holidays in Castlewellan instead of Castelgondolfo. And St Patrick’s Day in Armagh would have taken on a whole new significance.

But it wasn’t to be.

Norwegian Long Haul was a division of Norwegian Air Shuttle that operated long-haul flights between Europe, Asia, and North America with an all-Boeing 787 Dreamliner fleet. It was was registered in Dublin. As the aircraft are not airworthy, it is anticipated the disassembly process will take place at Glasgow Prestwick Airport (PIK), under the guidance of the Irish owner. I don’t know if they’re selling off their seats. In the 20th century, probably up until about the 1980s aircraft seats were so comfortable that you could buy them secondhand and fit them into your van. Music groups and bands, or indeed anyone spending a long time in a Transit van, would cherish an aircraft seat, particularly a Boeing 707 yoke. Small ads in Melody Maker – among other publications – used to offer them for sale. Today on a budget flight you’d gladly settle for the space offered by the back of a Transit van, never mind one of its seats.

Starry eyed

WITH the recent amazing Northern Lights show many of us across these island enjoyed in February, I spotted the star Alpha Centauri. Further research revealed that it won’t be St Patrick’s Day on Alpha Centauri for another 4.367 years so there’s no point sending them your wishes just yet.

VATICAN DISAPPOINTMENT: Armagh’s two St Patrick’s Cathedrals

Picture: Courtesy of Northern Ireland Tourism

The voice of the Irish in Britain since 1970

A flag fulfilling its promise

THE 175th anniversary of the inaugural flying of the Tricolour was marked at the weekend in Waterford.

The national flag was unveiled by Thomas Francis Meagher, who had been gifted it by a group of French women sympathetic to the struggle for Irish nationalism.

The green in the flag represents Irish Catholics, the orange Irish Protestants, and the white symbolises peace between the two communities.

With the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement coming up, the celebrating of the flag could scarcely have come at a better time. Ireland today is largely at peace, its two communities living alongside each other in relative harmony.

There are occasional, terrible events that evoke the horrors of the past —such as the shooting of Detective Chief Inspector John Caldwell in Omagh in February. But very pointedly, the shooting of the PSNI officer in Co. Tyrone was condemned from across the political spectrum, from Sinn Féin to the unionist parties, and from Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael in the Republic to British political leaders.

Green and orange did unite in denunciation of this unacceptable act of gratuitous violence.

Problems, too, still exist in the North with the Northern executive still not functioning and the Stormont Framework currently being debated. But these are political problems, and a wholesale return to violence now is unthinkable, notwithstanding the attack on Det Ch Insp Caldwell.

With St Patrick’s Day approaching we can tentatively say that the promise of the Tricolour 175 years ago, of peace between the nationalist and unionist communities, is close to being a reality.

Drone activity must be curtailed

MICHAEL O’Leary is right. Ryanair may have its detractors, but his business model has allowed a generation of Irish people to travel home affordably. Many readers can cast their minds back to the 20th century – and indeed the latter years of the 20th century — when to travel home to Ireland would cost a week’s wages. It was largely Mr O’Leary’s efforts that changed that.

Because Ireland is an island, the air link is vital. So when that link is severed – albeit temporarily – by something such as drone activity, everything from commercial interests to family visits is disrupted.

Several technologies exist that can interrupt the action of drones in the vicinity of airports. These technologies fall under the category of counter-drone systems or anti-drone technologies.

Michael O’Leary is totally correct – they should be deployed without delay at Dublin Airport.

The complexities of citizenship

IN Gerry Molumby’s letter about extending votes to the diaspora, he repeats an oft-quoted misapprehension. He writes: “Since the Good Friday Agreement, people in Northern Ireland can hold Irish citizenship, British or both.”

This needs to be qualified. The people of Northern Ireland have been able to hold Irish citizenship since long before the Good Friday Agreement.

This was embodied in Irish constitutional statute in 1956. The Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act of 1956 had a number of important provisions, including one that stated that anyone born on the island of Ireland is Irish. That is, anyone born in Ireland was automatically an Irish citizen. Someone born in Northern Ireland was entitled to be an Irish citizen if they chose that option.

You may be sure that the likes of Gerry Adams or Martin McGuinness never travelled on British passports. Neither did Seamus Heaney – he even wrote a poem about it, long before the Good Friday Agreement (in 1983, to be exact):

“...be advised My passport’s green.

No glass of ours was ever raised

To toast The Queen.”

And when he said his passport was green, he wasn’t talking allegorically. He would have had a green passport with a gold harp on the front. Like most other people of a nationalist leaning persuasion born in Northern Ireland.

The right to a ‘green passport’ has been enshrined in the Irish constitution indisputably by Irish statute since 1956.

Similarly anyone born on the island of Ireland up until 1949 (when Ireland became a republic) is still entitled to British citizenship.

After that date only those born in Northern Ireland have automatic British citizenship through place of birth.

(People can qualify for Irish or British citizenship through parentage or grand-parentage, or through residency, of course, but we are talking here solely about birthplace qualification for citizenship.)

As neither Britain nor Ireland have ever had a bar against anyone holding more than one citizenship (unlike many other countries), it would be fair to say that dual citizenship has been available to everyone born on the island of Ireland for several decades

The Good Friday Agreement certainly reiterated this (Schedule 1, Article 2), “(vi) [The Good Friday Agreement] recognises the birthright of all the people of Northern Ireland to identify themselves and be accepted as Irish or British, or both, as they

may so choose, and accordingly confirm that their right to hold both British and Irish citizenship is accepted by both Governments and would not be affected by any future change in the status of Northern Ireland. “

This is not as simple as it sounds

The right to Irish citizenship has been open to anyone in the Six Counties since long before then.

There is a caveat to all of this – a sting in the tail, if you like. Not only is dual citizenship permissible under British and Irish law, it is in fact mandatory.

An Irish citizen Emma DeSouza, born in Northern Ireland, wanted to assert her Irish citizenship to the exclusion of her British citizenship. This was taken to court (several courts in fact) with the British Home Office arguing that you are “automatically British” if you are born under British jurisdiction, ie, Northern Ireland. You can renounce your British citizenship, but it will cost you.

According to rulings from the courts, The Home Office’s position, according to court documents, is that the people of Northern Ireland are “as a matter of law, British” and that British citizenship is conferred automatically on you if born anywhere in the Six Counties.

The DeSouza case shows that you can’t choose between being Irish or being British or having dual citizenship; there aren’t three options. There are only two: the choice is (1) British citizenship or (2) Irish-and-British dual citizenship; there are no other options.

But you can certainly have Irish citizenship, and travel on an Irish passport, and you have been able to do so since 1956. And you can pay to take lengthy legal steps to renounce your British citizenship.

But if you are involved, say, in litigation in Northern Ireland, the highest court you will be able to appeal to is Britain’s Supreme Court, which takes precedence over any European court, in the context of Northern Ireland.

Although Gerry Molumby has very clear – and persuasive – arguments about votes for the diaspora, I fail to see how the Good Friday Agreement enters the picture, or the matter of citizenship of those born in Northern Ireland. And he most certainly should get his facts absolutely correct on such basic constitutional points if entering into an even more finely tuned constitutional question such as votes for the diaspora.

Bernie McDermott Manchester

Name calling

I’M curious that in a recent article about unusual Irish surnames Conjoyce or Conjoice didn’t come up. Maybe it isn’t an Irish name, but it sounds as if it is. Is it connected to the Irish Joyce, with perhaps ‘Con’ added. I can find no information about the name on the internet.

Christine Hillstead By email

McIlwham and his piccolo

MY daughter recently returned from a concert by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London. Leafing through the programme later I noticed that the Principal Piccolo player was one Stewart McIlwham. I’ve never seen this name before and wondered if it is Irish or Scottish, or related to a name such as McIlhatton.

I noted that Mr McIlwham studied first in Glasgow, but of course that being one of the most Irish cities in Britain means it could still be Scottish.

I can find no information on the name anywhere, and I’d just be interested to know its origins.

Mary Considine Bristol

GREEN PASSPORT: Seamus Heaney shakes hands with Queen Elizabeth II in the presence of former President Mary McAleese, before a state dinner at Dublin Castle on May 18, 2011 Picture: Getty Images

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Tactics of utter futility

THINK about the north of Ireland for a moment. Think about Northern Ireland. Just think about that place right now in 2023. Analyse it.

Think about the tortured history and think about the more settled present. Think about the economic and social issues of the place. Think about it in that way.

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Then think about the national issue. Think about the constant backdrop that is part of that place. Think about it then as a hived-off part of this state, the Republic.

Think about it from a deeply republican point of view. Think about it as if you were the most deeply committed republican. Think about it, indeed, as if you were a committed physical force republican.

That is, that not only do you believe in the fundamental rightness and justice of a united Ireland but you believe in using physical force to bring it about. You believe in the use of political violence in order to achieve that Holy Grail. A united Ireland.

Analyse it from that point of view. Let’s go even further. Let’s make it as

plain as we can.

Analyse it from the standpoint of you being someone that believes bullets and bombs is the only way to bring about a 32 county republic.

Analyse it from there. And then tell me, honestly, from any of those standpoints did you arrive at the logical or emotional conclusion that the next step towards ensuring that republic would be the shooting of a policeman?

Of course, I’m being

deliberately cold about this. I’m not talking about a father shot in front of his son and his son’s friends. I’m not talking about a man shot in front of fleeing children. I’m not talking about standing over him and putting more bullets in to his body as those football-loving children run and scream. I’m talking, in fact, about seeing this man solely as a high-ranking policeman of the Northern state and your aim being a united Ireland. Do you at any time conclude that attempting to kill him is the best way to achieve this? Even if, remember, you are a committed physical force Republican. Even if you believe previous manifestations of physical force, be they 1916 or 1969, were thoroughly justified. Do you at any time now, in 2023, conclude shooting that policeman is the best way to achieve this? Would that

make sense to you?

It is hard, isn’t it, to imagine that it would. It is almost beyond belief that it would. From any standpoint it is almost impossible to see how you would look at things as they are now and conclude a shot policeman is the next step towards getting that 32 county state. Which begs the question, so if not about bringing a 32 county country in to existence, what was the meaning of that shooting?

It can only be, can’t it, that physical force republicanism demands physical force. Not because that force will lead to a united Ireland but because it must assert its own existence. In this way of thinking all of those who took up arms in the past demand that future generations take up arms too.

On and on into eternity. Irrespective of context and circumstance.

So if taking up arms in 1916 made strategic sense but does not in 2023, that is not the point. The point is not the aim. The point is not a united Ireland. The point is bloodshed.

On and on forever, political violence must be committed

as a tribute to physical violence. We must honour the dead by sending more people to their deaths. This is physical force republicanism not as a means of bringing about an Ireland united and free but as a death cult.

The living must honour the republican dead and they must never stop doing so. It has to be that doesn’t it? Because otherwise the shooting of that policeman makes no sense. It does not bring a united Ireland one step nearer. It does not make a 32 county Republic in any way more likely. Only the politically illiterate could believe that to be so.

Maybe I’m utterly wrong. Maybe there is another explanation. Maybe someone can explain why pumping bullets into that policeman in front of fleeing children is good for a united Ireland. Maybe there is an an analysis whereby that blood spilled alongside a football pitch will be something a future Ireland can be proud of. But if there is it is beyond me. Way, way beyond.

n Joe Horgan tweets at @JoeHorganwriter.

This

is physical force republicanism not as a means of bringing about an Ireland united and free but as a death cult

JOEHORGAN

NOT THE WAY FORWARD: A Belfast mural glorifying violence Picture: Getty Images

Holiness, hoax or hallucination?

MAL ROGERS surveys the phenomenon of the moving statues which swept across Ireland in 1985

NEXT week, March 14 is the anniversary of the beginning of a strange phenomenon in 1985 that led to further unexplained happenings. The date marked the start of Ireland’s religious statues going on the move. Or at least some of them. First out of the starting blocks was one of the Virgin Mary in Asdee, Co. Kerry. This heralded in a spate of moving statues across the country –although none were recorded in Northern Ireland.

The focus soon moved to Ballinspittle, Co. Cork, where an observer claimed to have seen a roadside statue of the Virgin Mary move; similar occurrences were reported at around 30 other locations around the country.

The Virgin Mary appeared to do the most moving, but other A-list saints such as Patrick and Aidan were also reported to move spontaneously, hover in the air, turn around, or generally appear animated.

Thousands gathered at many of the sites out of curiosity or to gaze in wonder and to pray. Up to 100,000 were said to have visited the Ballinspittle site alone.

Author John D. Vose recorded in his book The Statues That Moved a Nation interviews he had with witnesses — who told him the most amazing stories of miraculous happenings.

Brazilian international bestselling author Paulo Coelho also conducted an investigation into the

phenomenon. The revered writer came up with quite a few New Age theories – but failed to arrive at a definitive conclusion.

Various scientific theories were advanced: a team of psychologists based in UCC explained the visions as being optical illusions caused by staring at objects in the evening twilight.

The BBC’s documentary Miracle Statues interviewed John Murray, chairman of the Grotto Committee – set up locally to look after the Ballinspittle statue and its environs.

A serving sergeant in Cork city at the time, Murray told interviewers that he saw the statue move two days after the first report in July 1985. He was among a crowd of several hundred people praying and singing hymns in front of the grotto when “suddenly, without warning, there was a gasp from the crowd”. The statue, embedded in concrete, appeared to be airborne for half a minute. “I was so convinced it was a fraud that I climbed up into the grotto the next morning and tried to shake the statue, but it wouldn’t budge. I checked the back, the sides of it for any trip wires, but I couldn’t find anything,” he told the BBC

The official view

The Catholic Church hierarchy does not officially endorse or acknowledge any reported cases of moving statues as miraculous. With the Irish moving statues, the Vatican

A date with history

What happened on this day...

Saturday, March 11:

1596 – 136 barrels of gunpowder explode in Parliament Street, Dublin, demolishing 20 houses and killing over 120 people. The explosives had been ignited, presumably by accident, by an English soldier John Allen, probably drunk at the time.

Sunday, March 12:

1944 – Britain bans all travel to and from Ireland in an effort to prevent news of Allied

preparations for the invasion of France reaching the Germans.

Monday, March 13:

1865 – Birth of Patrick Nally in Balla, Co. Mayo. The athlete was a major inspiration in the founding the GAA in 1884 by Michael Cusack. The Nally stand in Croke Park is named after him.

Tuesday, March 14:

1991 – The Birmingham Six – Paddy Joe Hill, Hugh Callaghan,

The Church approaches all such phenomena – along with the veneration of relics reported to perform miracles – with caution, and investigates them thoroughly before making any pronouncements. This is to avoid giving false hope or misleading people. Ultimately, the official stance is that apparent occurrences such as moving statues are not to be taken as unquestionable evidence of divine intervention or supernatural phenomena. In effect, they remain highly sceptical.

In the case of the Ballinspittle incident in 1985, the local bishop

Richard McIlkenny, Gerry Hunter, Billy Power and Johnny Walker – are released from jail after their convictions for the murder of 21 people in two pubs are quashed by the Court of Appeal.

Wednesday, March 15:

1672 – The first declaration of indulgence, suspending penal laws against Catholics and dissenters, is issued by Charles II.

1852 – Birth of Lady Isabella Augusta Gregory, writer and co-founder of the Abbey Theatre.

Thursday, March 16:

1904 – James Joyce is awarded a bronze medal in a Dublin singing contest and promptly throws it in the Liffey.

1955 – Ruby Murray scores five

initiated an investigation into the claims, and the Vatican department known as the Congregation for the Cause of Saints made the journey from Rome to observe, but in the final analysis remained reticent about the affair.

analysis remained reticent the

Relics, statues, and those who see visions have long been venerated by the faithful; but Christianity, as well as encompassing spirituality and faith, regularly ventures into showbusiness and commerce. So a bit of publicity can help.

But devotion and piety also play a part, as does what is known as ‘vernacular religion’. That is, the version of Catholicism practised locally. In Ireland, this harked back to the Celtic Church, and even further back to pagan times when goddesses were worshipped.

William Allen in his PhD thesis at UCD in 2015 said: “Initially the Catholic Church tried simply to ignore the attraction of shrines such

as Ballinspittle in West Cork and consistently dodged the media’s request for comments until the Church was forced to acknowledge what was happening. They disappointed many believers by calling, as the Bishop of Cork and Ross did, for ‘extreme caution’ As more apparitions and moving statues appeared the Church’s attitude hardened. The greater majority of Catholic priests regarded the phenomenon as a distracting and potentially dangerous ‘superstition’, penning letters to the media in a vain attempt to curb the flow of pilgrims.”

The veneration of holy relics, of moving statues, of miracles performed – has long been an easy target for atheists, and indeed some Christians. The Church has downplayed the role of such phenomena since the Vatican II reforms in the early 1960s. But the fascination for this complex subject for both believers and unbelievers alike seems set to last.

simultaneous hits in the British charts.

Friday, March 17

Feast day of St Patrick, Apostle of Ireland.

1903 – St Patrick’s Day becomes a public holiday, under the Bank Holiday (Ireland) Act 1903, an Act of the British Parliament

1917 – Birth in Derry of tenor Josef Locke (born Joseph McLaughlin).

1931 – The first St Patrick’s Day parade is held in the then Irish Free State.

1959 – Bridie Gallagher sets the attendance record for the Albert Hall in London – 7,500 people.

1967 – Death of Francis McPeake, Belfast uilleann piper who wrote Wild Mountain Thyme

MARION CONUNDRUM: The Grotto at Ballinspittle Picture: Sheila 1988 via Wikimedia

authorities said little.

Josef Locke Picture: Public domain

THE Irish Film London (IFL) organisation is back with its annual St Patrick’s Film Festival – and its 2023 offering is full of great Irish drama, documentary and short films. Hosted in association with the Mayor of London and Greater London Authority, the Festival takes place at cinemas across London from Friday, March 17 to Sunday, March 19, and online via their Irish Film From Home site. Screenings will take place at Hammersmith’s Riverside Studios, as well as the Kiln Cinema in Kilburn, The Garden Cinema in Holborn, the PictureHouse Central on Shaftsbury Avenue and at the London Irish Centre in Camden.

The IFL team will also be present at the Mayor of London’s St Patrick’s Festival in Trafalgar Square on Sunday, March 12, they have confirmed.

IFL’s Festival Director Gerry Maguire said of their plans: “St Patrick’s Day is a time of year when everyone can celebrate the best of being Irish.

“With this year’s film programme, Irish Film London is playing a part in Ireland’s continued success on the big screen, by introducing London audiences to some of the best new Irish films.

“We look forward to seeing everyone in cinemas, as well as on Trafalgar Square for the Mayor’s wonderful annual get together.”

Here’s just a few of the highlights...

St Patrick’s Day, Friday, March 17 – The feature length drama Lakelands, screening at Riverside Studios in Hammersmith.

Lakelands follows Cian, a young Gaelic footballer struggling to come to terms with a career-ending injury after an attack on a night out. The film features a cast of emerging Irish stars including Éanna Hardwicke (Vivarium, Normal People) and Danielle Galligan (Netflix’s Shadow and Bone) and is the directorial debut from Robert Higgins and Patrick McGivney.

Saturday, March 18 – A short film programme hosted at the Garden

Cinema in Covent Garden. This handpicked selection of thought provoking and original films is selected from open submissions and represents some of the best new Irish filmmaking talent.

Sunday, March 19 – Another chance to see the BAFTA and Oscar nominated An Cailín Ciúin (The Quiet Girl) at the London Irish Centre. Having won 24 awards, and been nominated for a further 29, this film has made waves since its first appearance at Berlin Film Festival in Feb 2022. Set in 1981, the story follows Caít, a young girl sent to live with relatives for the summer, and who undergoes an emotional transformation during that time. Audiences can catch the film at London Irish Centre at 3pm.

Irish Film London’s celebrations will also take place online via the

popular Irish Film From Home platform.

The online programme means those not able to attend in person call still join in the fun from the comfort of their own home.

Featuring a selection of short films taken from open submissions, this year’s online content is as strong as ever.

Also featured is the RTÉ documentary Clodagh, telling the story of the eponymous designer.

SHORT FILMS AT TRAFALGAR SQUARE:

Before the cinema programme begins, IFL will take part in the Mayor of London’s St Patrick’s Day festivities at Trafalgar Square on Sunday, March 12.

Irish Film London are providing a programme of six family-friendly shorts which will play on the big screen at Trafalgar Square throughout the day, giving audiences a chance to see Irish films for free, and offering Irish filmmakers a screening opportunity in front of the circa 50,000 people who will attend the events across the day. www.irishfilmlondon.com

Irish radio in your area...

BEDFORDSHIRE

 Jim Carway presents Luton Irish Live on Diverse 102.8FM and online every Tuesday evening 6-8pm. Contact Jim on 07977 063233.

BRADFORD

 Joe Sheeran presents Echoes of Ireland on Bradford Community Broadcasting 106.6FM every Sunday at noon. The programme is repeated on Mondays at 9am and Wednesdays at noon and is online at www.bcbradio.co.uk.

BRIGHTON

 Brighton and Hove weekly Irish radio airs live on Mondays from 8pm on Radio Reverb, 97.2 FM, DAB and online.

COVENTRY

 Hands Across the Waters on Hillz FM. Broadcasting live every Monday and Thursday 1pm-2pm and the best of Irish & Country every Sunday 1pm-2pm. You can tune in locally on 98.6fm or catch us online at www.hillzfm.co.uk

 Join The Four Country Road Show with Colm Nugent and Michael Gallagher every Tuesday 9-10pm and Sunday 2-4pm. Broadcasting live in Coventry from the studios of Radio Plus 101.5fm and online around the world on www.radioplus.org.uk playing the very best in Irish and Country music, news, guests and more.

GLASGOW

 Celtic Music Radio on 1530AM and www.celticmusicradio.net featuring Paddy Callaghan’s Trad with Pad every Tuesday from 6-7pm.

HERTFORDSHIRE

 Radio Verulam 92.6FM and online at www.radioverulam.com

featuring The Emerald Hour with Kathy Weston, Lydia El-Khouri and Shane every Thursday from 7-8pm, and John Devine’s Traditional Irish Music Show, featuring Joe Giltrap, every Monday from 7-9pm (available on the website for seven days after broadcast)

 John Devine, Monday evenings from 7-9pm on Radio Verulam in West Hertfordshire 92.6FM or through the internet at www. radioverulam.com. Facebook www.facebook.com/rvirishmusic.

LONDON/SOUTH-EAST

 Johnny Jameson hosts Ireland’s Eye on Resonance 104.4FM every third Wednesday of every month, 8-9pm and repeated the following morning at 10pm.

 Emily Horgan, Pippa T and Róisín O Rourke broadcasting What’s the Craic? every Tuesday from 7-8pm on West London’s ONFM 101.4.

 Johno’s Irish Hour, ONFM 101.4, every Saturday morning from 10-11am with presenter John O’Sullivan. Anything and everything Irish including traditional Irish music, news and sport.

MANCHESTER

 Out and About in Manchester with Martin Logan, Wednesdays 7-9pm on 96.9FM.

 The Irish Connection Show with John Lowry on Wythenshawe 97.2FM, Saturday from 10am to noon. www.wfmradio.org.

MIDLANDS

 Bob Brolly’s Irish Show, Sundays 4-7pm on BBC Radio WM 95.6FM and DAB Radio.

NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE

 Jim Bennett, Fiona Clelland and Tommy McClements present NE1 Irish from 5-7pm every Wednesday on 102.5FM or www.ne1fm.net. Text NE1 + message to 60300. Contact 0191 261 0384.

OXFORD/BERKSHIRE

 BBC Radio Oxford/BBC Radio Berkshire hosts Henry Wymbs’ Irish Eye, Sundays from 2pm on 95.4FM | 104.1FM.

ONLINE

 Gerry Byrne’s Irish Radio: www.irishradio.org 24/7 non-stop Irish Music. Live weekdays 1-3pm; Saturdays & Sundays 11am-1pm. Podcasts uploaded to website immediately after shows are transmitted. Requests welcome to: gerry@irishradio.org. For music, arts, charity sector, commerce and current affairs interviews search YouTube Irish Radio with Gerry Byrne.

 Mid West Radio, the home of Irish music, chat, news, culture and gossip 24 hours a day! www.midwestradio.ie

 RTÉ Radio operates four primary national stations — RTÉ Radio 1, RTÉ 2fm, RTÉ lyric fm and RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta — and seven exclusively digital stations — RTÉ Radio 1 Xtra, RTÉ Choice, RTÉ Pulse, RTÉ Chill, RTÉ Gold, RTÉ 2XM and RTÉ Junior, available online.

 Alan O’Leary of Copperplate presents two hours of Irish traditional and folk music every Sunday at 8-9.30pm (repeated Wednesday 8-90pm) on www.liveireland.com — 24/7 live Irish trad and folk. It can also be heard 24/7 on Mixcloud, Soundcloud and Podomatic.

 All Folked Up – a folk show with an Irish influence – is broadcast on the third Thursday of the month on sarumradio.com at 7pm.

 Irish Country Music Radio (Limerick) – Broadcasting live and recorded programmes 24 hours a day covering a broad spectrum of Irish music: www.irishcountrymusicradio.com.

THE IRISH IN THE UK TV SHOW

www.theirishintheuktv.com

Join Martin each week as he meets the community around the UK with an Irish connection

Every Thursday evening at 7.30pm

Repeated Sat at 8.30pm and Tues at 1pm

Sky 186 Freesat 161

Martin Logan 07808 573142 martinloganmanchester@gmail.com

Sponsored by

Documenting violence from Nazi Germany to Northern Ireland

MICHAEL J MCDONAGH talks to author Audrey Magee about her books The Colony, set in Ireland, and The Undertaking, set in Hitler’s Germany

OUT AND

T:

AUTHOR: Audrey Magee

AUDREY Magee’s second novel The Colony is set in a remote, fictional Irishspeaking island; a hugely disparate setting from her first novel The Undertaking, set in Nazi Germany at the time of the downfall of the Third Reich. It vividly depicts the tribulations of a German family trying to survive in those terrible times.

Audrey Magee shares a lot with Martin McDonagh – the writer and director of The Banshees of Inisherin. They both have an astonishing ability, through the authentic dialogue of their characters, to transport their reader into the heart of complex, conflicted and sometimes cruel environments, revealing the emotions, fears and traumatic experiences of the lives they portray at times of political unrest.

I’ll never know how either second generation McDonagh can sit by his keyboard in the suburbs of south London to create the Irish vernacular dialogue and outlandish scenarios of his Irish plays and films or how Audrey Magee, a journalist and mother living in Wicklow can convincingly engage her readers with the vivid suffering of a German soldier fighting in the frozen fields at Stalingrad and share with the reader the emotions of his non Jewish wife struggling to survive starvation in Berlin.

convincingly

Through her characters the reader is taken back in time to Nazi Germany as the Russian army arrives in the city to end Hitler’s regime. For both writers it is their creativity, imagination and skill at writing convincing dialogue and

their sense of place that makes their work so powerful.

The Colony, Audrey’s second novel, transports the reader to a remote island off the west coast of Ireland to share the experiences of an English painter. The artist has gone there to paint the rugged dramatic landscape. But conflict arrives in the shape of a French academic visitor. He resents the English intrusion.

The Frenchman has been staying there to record, study and preserve the old forms of the Irish language surviving on the island in danger of being lost, but he comes with his own baggage and conflicts from being raised with Algerian Muslim roots in France.

The Colony is very much a southern perspective on the violence in Northern Ireland. We were, in the main, safe in the south, but that drumbeat of bombings, shootings and killings had a huge impact on the children and teenagers of my generation

It is a delightful book so well written in capturing the life of the last characters on their island with their ambitions and disappointments and their complicated relationships with each other. Intercut with the narrative are moving poignant factual bulletins of atrocities happening in the North of Ireland to set the context of both the time and place.

Audrey Magee’s first book The Undertaking has a much darker subject. The book is set in the era not long before the Nazi regime was

happened but reading the novel now, especially the Stalingrad elements describing the bombing and destruction in the winter snow, are resonant with what is happening today.

These two novels set in different political regimes were the first of what Audrey has described as a ‘triptych’. I asked her when we might see the third novel.

“When I left journalism and set out to be a writer I knew that I would write three books. But I didn’t know setting out that the three were connected, that each book was about the impact of a political and social system on the ordinary person. The first novel, The Undertaking, is about fascism and the ordinary person, while the second novel is about the impact of colonisation on the ordinary person. The third novel will come, in time, but I am a slow writer as I distil everything I write, again and again, as though making whiskey.”

The underlying theme running through both books is Audrey’s interest in the impact of politics on the lives of ordinary people.

“Political systems like fascism and colonisation don’t just appear overnight. They don’t suddenly appear so that you wake up one day and say, oh my God, now we are fascists. It’s a gradual, incremental space that creeps up slowly on people until one day a whole society is changed, is utterly different from what it was ten years previously. But how does that happen? What do people do to allow that to happen? What do people not do? And what are the latent behaviour patterns that we pass on then from one generation to the next? What authority and expectations do I assume as the children and grandchildren of people who colonised? What behaviours do I display as the child or grandchild of a person who was colonised? That’s what really interests me, and that’s what this triptych is about. The third book will deal with another kind of

The Undertaking

there is only one tiny moment of interior monologue because the German soldier and his wife had to block the truth of their involvement in the Holocaust. They could not allow that truth to enter their daily lives so that they live at a distance from their inner selves. But in The Colony, four of the characters have interior lives, the Englishman, Mr Lloyd, the Frenchman, Jean Pierre Masson, and the two islanders, Mairéad and her son, James, because I wanted to explore whether interior monologue has a national identity, whether those ways of being that we inherit from our parents, grandparents, schools and societies feed into the way we think, the way we talk to ourselves in

our heads. Does monologue have a national identity, a political identity? If you come from a country, that is a colonising country, what is the impact on your interior self? If you come from a country that was colonised, what does that do to your inner thoughts?

“The Colony is very much a southern perspective on the violence in Northern Ireland. We were, in the main, safe in the south, but that drumbeat of bombings, shootings and killings had a huge impact on the children and teenagers of my generation. I wanted to explore the impact of that pulse of violence, so that the violence is at the core of the novel. The novel is about growing up, as

James does in the book, with that pulse of violence in your life, that pulse that will determine what it is to be Irish when you travel abroad, what it is to speak the Irish language, and what it is to wave the Irish flag. It is now 25 years since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement; it seems to me a good time to draw breath, to pause and reflect on the impact of colonisation on the ordinary people of Ireland.”

The Undertaking, was nominated for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2014 whilst The Colony was long-listed for the 2022 Booker Prize and many critics feel that they should have been shortlisted for the Booker.

BOOK TALK: Audrey Magee and Michael McDonagh

Close and ancient neighbours

History, geography, culture and language strongly connect Scotland and the North of Ireland. GRAHAM WALKER and JAMES GREER

IT is remarkable how little Scotland features in contemporary Northern Ireland politics and indeed vice-versa. In our book, Ties that Bind?: Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Union (Irish Academic Press), we show that both places have been, and remain, politically as well as culturally entwined, even if this has sometimes been obscured and seldom acknowledged. We demonstrate how central both places and their politics currently are to the question of the future of the UK Union.

The relationship between Ulster or the North of Ireland and Scotland is one of singular historical intimacy. Over the centuries numerous common bonds have been forged around themes as varied as religion (especially Presbyterianism), trade and industry, language, literature, music and sport. There have been substantial population movements between the two places, most notably from Scotland to Ulster in the 17th century, and the reverse flow during the 19th century.

Given such close ties of ‘kith and kin’, there was thus much anxiety in Scotland when the ‘troubles’ broke out in Northern Ireland at the end of the 1960s. Religious divisions in west-central Scotland and the ‘Orange and Green’ character of much popular culture seemed to hold the potential for discord to spill over. However, there was little inclination in Scotland to politicise the Northern Ireland problem; moreover, Scotland’s political development during the 20th century around the left-right politics of Britain as a whole was at variance with those in Northern Ireland where the community division over the constitutional question left little room for political appeals that were not of an ‘Orange or Green’ kind.

Scotland in effect kept the troubles at bay, but the price of this was the relative absence of Scottish contributions to efforts to find a solution. There was no Scottish ministerial presence in the Northern Ireland Office after the imposition of Direct Rule in 1972 until the much more promising political context of the 1990s. In 1985, following the signing of the significantly named ‘Anglo-Irish Agreement’, a Glasgow Labour MP admitted in the House of Commons that Scotland’s voice in the debate had not been heard, and that this was all the more regrettable given that Scotland was the part of Britain with most in common with Northern Ireland and best able to comprehend the complexities of the problem.

The changed political circumstances of this century require more awareness and frank acknowledgement of the political issues which bring Scotland and Northern Ireland together, and suggest the need for more positive interaction. For those in Scotland who recoil from such a prospect we would remind them that there are many Scotlands and there is certainly one that cares about Irish matters and relations between Scotland and Northern Ireland especially. Few would doubt that Scotland becoming independent would have far-reaching effects across the political landscape in Northern Ireland, while there is

also the likelihood that moves towards, or the securing of, a united Ireland could have a de-stabilizing impact on certain communities in parts of Scotland. For decades Scotland and Northern Ireland were the drivers, in their respective ways, of

debates over devolution and constitutional change in the UK more broadly. In that transformative moment when the UK was radically re-shaped at the end of the 20th century both places received devolution with primary legislative powers. Moreover, the critical interrogation of the meaning, or meanings, of British identity was brought about by the Northern Ireland situation or the Scottish Question as the latter took on greater political force with the success of the SNP.

In our book we take issue with those commentators and scholars who simply discount the Irish dimension, whether in historical or contemporary perspective, in deliberations over Britishness. We argue that it is essential, and we take the view that including Northern Ireland helps us

appreciate the varieties, ambiguities, untidiness, and slipperiness of the whole concept of British identity.

We also argue that Scottish politics, over the past fifteen years or so, have been ‘Ulsterised’. What we mean by this is that there has been a narrowing of political life in Scotland to the point where every other issue is subordinate to the ‘national question’, and where the language of ‘Unionists’ and ‘Nationalists’ is now as common as in Northern Ireland. Outgoing First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s wish to make the next UK general election in Scotland a ‘de facto’ referendum on the independence question is perhaps the ultimate expression of this ‘Ulsterising’ effect. Moreover, it needs to be noted how much the recent political and media attention to religious sectarianism in Scotland merely underscores the extent to which this phenomenon echoes divisions in Northern Ireland and highlights the Irish roots of these tensions in Scotland.

Divergent support for Brexit in the 2016 referendum has severely tested the Union. Brexit has strengthened some political arguments for Scottish independence while further complicating the practicalities of partitioning Great Britain, while the separate Brexit settlement applied to Northern Ireland, the Protocol, continues to paralyse politics at Stormont. Historically the corridor linking Britain and Ireland, Northern Ireland is now also the place where, messily, the EU and the UK meet. With Brexit lacking the support of a majority in Northern Ireland and the Protocol lacking the support of any elected unionist representative, the architecture of devolution and powersharing has been unable to withhold this strain.

The DUP’s refusal to enter a Northern Ireland Executive under the current Protocol has encouraged a vocal minority within unionism to imagine a rose-tinted future without devolution. We argue that any nostalgia for a variation of Direct Rule is a dead-end for unionists. It ignores the shape and priorities of the new Northern Ireland electorate, and embraces rallying a smaller unionist base over the challenge of reversing recent electoral losses. The continuing absence of Stormont also sets Northern Ireland apart from the rest of the devolved UK. Legitimate criticisms of the devolved settlement made across the UK – most notably with regard to poor public policy outcomes, the incoherent role of central government, and the lack of common endeavours across the Union –lose credibility when they imagine a unitary UK state as a politically viable alternative. Despite the favourable conditions provided for Scottish and Irish nationalism by the turmoil of British politics in recent years, the constitutional future of the UK is still very much up for grabs. Polls suggest that the surge in support for nationalism widely seen as inevitable in both places has, as yet, not occurred. Whether the Union breaks or is remade the ties between Scotland and Northern Ireland will remain a vital component of our shared history and an uncertain future across the narrow sea.

in their newly published book The Ties That Bind examine why this association is largely unheralded

We argue that any nostalgia for a variation of Direct Rule is a dead-end for unionists. It ignores the shape and priorities of the new Northern Ireland electorate

WHEN VAN MET CLIFF

In a rare interview with The Times, Van Morrison pinpointed our regular journalist and columnist MICHAEL MCDONAGH as the person responsible for bringing together himself and Cliff Richard to record a track. We asked Mick to give us the full story

Iwas working with Van Morrison and we would have regular meetings with him in a patisserie in Notting Hill near his home in Holland Park.

One morning over coffee he said he wanted to collaborate with musicians that he rated. He reeled off a litany of music legends that he respected and would like to work with – Miles Davis, John Lee Hooker, Steve Wickham, to name a few.

It began to get a bit intense over coffee and cake, as was often the case with Van. I asked him which song he thought would be a good starting point and he suggested Whenever God Shines His Light

To lighten the mood I flippantly said: “Oh you need Cliff Richard for that. He’s into God.”

To my astonishment, bordering on horror, he grabbed my mobile phone stuck it in my hand and said, “get him.”

Like I was supposed to have Cliff on speed dial.

Now, those who know Van are aware that he can be impatient. I was kicking myself for making the suggestion; but as it happened my own guardian angel must have been looking after me. By a strange coincidence I actually knew exactly where Sir Cliff was at that precise moment. Long story short – through record industry contacts I knew Cliff would be at the Mayfair Hotel later that day.

Nonchalantly I said to Van: “Yes. But I can’t get him right now. He’s at lunch at the Mayfair hotel.”

Not a man who would usually take excuses Van looked up and said, “Fair enough – then get him later.” He walked out of the cafe.

Once he’d gone, I was galvanised into action. I didn’t know Cliff although I’d met him once briefly at Top of The Pops. But I got the request from Van through to him at the hotel.

It then all happened very quickly and although Cliff was cautious of Van I got a positive response. He didn’t have much time but we arranged to go into the Town House studio a few days later. I was going to meet Van to tell him the news and was parking my car when, as he was walking up, I shouted out of the car window, “It’s on.”

This was the element recalled by Van in the Times article.

At the recording session there was were just Van, Cliff, a guy called David Bryce, who looked after Cliff, Mick Glossop, Van’s recording engineer and myself.

Cliff

Van was late. So after a cup of tea Cliff suggested that he just do it – get on with the song – and went into the studio. He was almost finished when Van arrived, about an hour late.

Cliff and Van did not know each other and Van isn’t great at small talk but after a few preliminary introductions Van listened to what Cliff had done and was really impressed. Cliff was really cooperative and ended up doing a bit more than had been envisaged. Van then asked him to sing a bit of the song in unison together.

When it was done Mick Glossop did some technical stuff which left a pregnant pause. So Van and Cliff began to have a conversation about their respective views on God, discussing the meaning of life, religion and faith. But soon after it went onto slightly territory, particularly from Van, as he opened the red wine.

A few years later there was a sequel as I found myself standing in the pitch dark behind the stage at the Royal Albert Hall next to Sir Cliff, who was holding a microphone about to go on stage. In the gloom I whispered in his ear: “You’re a martyr for singing duets with Irishmen, aren’t you?” He grinned at me and started singing as he ran up the steps to surprise an unsuspecting Daniel O’Donnell – who was in the middle of his Cliff Richard medley, before a packed hall.

To lighten the mood I flippantly said: “Oh you need Cliff Richard for that. He’s into God”

COLLABORATORS: Van Morrison and Cliff Richard Pictures: Getty Images

Sharon Shannon live in Birmingham

AS part of her mini three date UK Tour the multiinstrumentalist Sharon Shannon stopped off at Norton’s in Birmingham last month

To have the Sharon Shannon Trio play at the relatively new venue in Birmingham has been an aspiration for venue owner Peter Connolly since it formally opened its doors in 2019.

In advance of the concert, the venue sold out once the news of the famed button accordionist from Co. Clare went online.

The Trio were followed with a performance from the lads of local band Lampa who were joined on stage by Manchester’s Donal Scally.

Sharon Shannon is scheduled to make a quest appearance at London’s St Patrick’s Day celebrations in London this week, and is due to perform next at the Cambridge Folk Festival on July 28.

http://sharonshannon.com/tour/ for updates.

Words and pictures by Chris Egan

Audience guests and fellow musicians, Pete Bishop and

ST PATRICK’S FESTIVAL

Sunday 12th – Saturday 18th, March

LIVE IRISH MUSIC WITH THE REELS

Sunday 12th, and Thursday 16th – Saturday 18th

LATE BAR ON ST PATRICK’S DAY

Special Irish dishes on our menu

Jim Murray from the Sharon Shannon Trio

Tim Edey

Sharon Shannon with Peter Connolly and guests from Nortons

ON STAGE: Sharon Shannon

A musical tour round Northern Ireland City soundtrack Thereby hangs a tale

MUSIC aficionado and voice over artist Tim Burdon will be taking listeners on a journey into the world of film soundtracks with his new series on BBC Sounds and BBC Radio Ulster called What’s The Score?

For six weeks from Sunday, March 12, Tim will bring some of his favourite film music tracks and talking with people involved in the world of local cinema.

The son of respected horn player John Burden, who played on everything from Bond soundtracks to Beatles records, Tim is a passionate lover of film music.

This series this series allows him to share that passion with listeners.

Starting on Oscar night he takes off on a trip across Northern Ireland to meet movie historians and talk with fellow fans about film soundtracks.

In programme one he discusses the rich cinematic history of Belfast with historian Mike Catto, tracing the story of cinemas in the city and representations of Belfast on the silver screen.

In the first of a weekly series of features he goes behind the

scenes of the Ulster Orchestra to focus in on a specific section of the orchestra to find out what makes a good soundtrack work.

He’s also joined by local actor Michael Smiley who looks back on his own

favourite film moments and scores for My Cinema Paradise

Tim’s journey takes him to film hubs in Derry, Newcastle, Omagh and more. Guests include Bronagh Gallagher, Ciaran McMenamin and Jayne Wisener.

CROSSWORD

No. 908

What’s The Score? is a McLean Media production for BBC Sounds and BBC Radio UIster n What’s The Score? Begins Sunday, March 12, 6.30pm. BBC Sounds and BBC Radio Ulster

Clues Across

1. Ireland’s largest lake. (5,5)

6. Mimics. (4)

10. Call socially. (5)

11. Sleepy state populated by yes-men? (4,2,3)

12. Try to equal the bird that is tardy. (7)

15. In an inferior position. (5)

17. The highest male voice. (4)

18. Jewellery from a Munster Gaeltacht? (4)

19. You chaps name a Middleeastern country. (5)

21. The smith might use these roars. (7)

23. The court of the Papal See. (5)

24. Doing nothing. (4)

25. Toy that has its ups and downs! (2-2)

26. This somehow tore a Muse. (5)

28. Another name for Edgeworthstown. (7)

33. Aborigine’s weapon. (9)

34. Members of a gaggle. (5)

35. Golfers’ pegs found in an English river. (4)

36. Given a copper, a Windsor is worth a mint! (10)

Sudoku requires no calculation or arithmetic skills. It is a game of placing numbers in squares using very simple rules of logic and deduction. It can be played by children and adults. Simply fill in the grid so that every row, every column and every 3x3 box contains the digits 1 through 9. However each number can appear only once on each row, column and 3x3 box. Answer next week.

Clues Down

1. Emotion that means nothing to tennis players. (4)

2. Constellation - the Little Bear. (4,5)

3. When warm, the Spanish may have accommodation. (5)

4. A Celt can provide Gallic distinction. (5)

5. Departed, left. (4)

7. Punitive. (5)

8. Desert snake with distinctive movement. (10)

9. Ranch-hands. (7)

13. This shrub would love to be in beer! (4)

14. Lo, dream of such a title! (7)

16. Insect and mammal provide sports equipment. (7,3)

20. If my weird mixture is taken, it should prepare one for ensuring safe delivery. (9)

21. Knifelike weapon affixed to a rifle. (7)

22. Achieves victory. (4)

27. Make amends, an hour after noon. (5)

29. Musical instrument most associated with church music. (5)

30. Big cat. (5)

31. Manufactured. (4)

32. Tumbled. (4)

REHEARSALS are underway in Dublin for the premiere of playwright Martin McDonagh’s Hangmen

The play, which received its world premiere in London in 2015, has yet to be shown in Ireland, where a major new production comes on the back of the release of McDonagh’s multiple award-winning and Oscar nominated feature film The Banshees of Inisherin Based in Oldham, Greater Manchester, Hangmen tells the story of Harry, the second-best hangman in England, who has just learned that hanging is to be abolished.

Funded by the Arts Council and produced by Gaiety Productions in association with Decadent Theatre Company, the play will open at Dublin’s Gaiety Theatre on March 11.

The creative team is led by director Andrew Flynn, who has a long association with McDonagh’s work, and the ensemble cast includes Aisling O’Sullivan, Denis Conway, Gary Lydon and Killian Scott.

The darkly comic tale follows the success of recent Gaiety Productions of McDonagh’s work, including The Cripple of Inishmaan, The Lieutenant of Inishmore and The Lonesome West n Hangmen runs at the Gaiety Theatre from March 11 to April 8.

Fiona Audley

No. 1031

Last week’s answers:

Clues Across

1. Shepherd’s pie  7. Dim  9. Hens   10. Sorrow  11. Tern  14. Slane  15. Polka   16. Opts  18. All up  21. Elude  22. Addle   23. Rigid  24. Teem  25. Melee  26. Motte   29. Vice  33. Pigeon  34. Aran  36. Law

37. Lough Sheelin Clues Down

1. See  2. Easy  3. Hose  4. Rural  5. Scorn   6. Edge  8. Monasterevin  9. Harp festival   12. Blouse  13. Baker  14. Slang  17. Puddle   19. Lodge  20. Palma  27. Owing  28. Tress   30. Cowl  31. Knee  32. Ball  35. Awn

PHOTOGENIC PLACE: Titanic Belfast Picture: Courtesy of Tourism Ireland

Playwright Martin McDonagh

Edited by Mal Rogers

In the footsteps of St Patrick

CO. DOWN Downpatrick and Saul

In the grounds of the Church of Ireland’s Down Cathedral in the ancient town of Downpatrick lies the grave of St Patrick,

The Apostle of Ireland is reputedly buried in the leafy graveyard alongside Ireland’s other two patron saints, Brigid and Colmcille.

Down Cathedral, or the Cathedral Church of the Holy and Undivided Trinity as it like to be known on formal occasions, is a place which has, over the centuries, been destroyed by earthquake, pillaged by the Danes, burnt by the Scots, destroyed again by the English, and then lay in ruins for the best part of 200 years. Today it is hard to imagine a more peaceful place, surrounded by tall beech trees, with views across the Quoile to the ancient Cistercian Abbey of Inch. With the Mournes as a backdrop and the tightly hedged fields stretching endlessly across the drumlins it is a byword for tranquility.

The theory goes that St Patrick and the generations of saints and scholars who followed him, developed a monastic Church more in keeping with Gaelic society and what was known as the Brehon law, and turned their back on European ideas. Brehon Brexit if you like.

By confining Christianity to the simple purpose of conversion and by not attempting to interfere with Gaelic life, Patrick converted the Irish to Christianity – without violence, one of the few places to achieve this. The

consequent powerful fusion of Gaelic society and Christianity resulted in the glories of the early Irish church – and led to the description of Ireland as the land of saints and scholars.

CO. ANTRIM

Slemish/Sliabh Mis

Slemish rises out of the centre of the Antrim Plateau. According to legend captive Patrick, in his first Irish home, herded sheep and pigs for Milchu, a local chieftain on its slopes. Spoiler alert: Patrick’s pig-tending has also been located in Co. Mayo (see below).

Slemish, standing some 437 metres high, is the remains of a plug of an extinct volcano. A well-marked path leads to the top.

The Belfast writer Sam Hanna Bell once wrote of Ulster: “Where every hill has is hero and every bog has its bones.” And Mount Slemish has the biggest hero of all.

CO. MEATH

Slane/Baile Shláine

The valley of the River Boyne is the site of one of the most abiding legends associated with Patrick. In pagan Irish times, and indeed even after the advent of Christianity, fires were an integral part of the Irish Mayday festival, or

Although facts about St Patrick are notoriously hard to pin down, he is associated with many areas in Ireland and Britain. MAL ROGERS offers a guided tour

JUST VISITING: Glastonbury Abbey Picture: Wikimedia

Bealtaine. Every high hilltop in Ireland lit with much ceremony by pagan priests. This holy duty was the sole preserve of the Druids – until St Patrick came along. On the hill of Tara, the ancient royal and spiritual capital of Ireland, he lit his own fire, calling it the fire of Christianity. And the rest, as they say, is theology.

CO. DONEGAL

St

Patrick’s Purgatory/Purgadóir

Phádraig

St Patrick’s Purgatory, on the flat and rocky Station Island in Lough Derg, vies in popularity with Croagh Patrick as a place of pilgrimage.

The Purgatory of St Patrick, a narrow deep cave, has been a place of pilgrimage since at least the ninth century. Local legend states that the saint freed the area from evil spirits by fasting in the cave for forty nights. He also banished a giant water monster, presumably the Lough Derg Monster (Dergie?), into exile. Paraphrasing Blackadder, he managed to do it with a plan so cunning that it could have been hatched by a fox who was Professor of Cunning at Trinity College Dublin. According to folklore St Patrick persuaded the reptile to stay at the bottom of the lake until La Luain –which the snake understood as Monday. But La Luain in the Irish language also represents the Apocalyptic Last Day. So the monster is confined to the depths for ever and a day.

CO. MAYO

Croagh Patrick

Like so many important holy places in Ireland, Croagh Patrick has been a significant religious site since ancient Celtic times. Today it is the annual destination for thousands of pilgrims who climb the 2510 foot-high stony peak to pay honour to Saint Patrick’s missionary work, and to do penance for their sins. For maximum pilgrimage points, do it barefoot.

On the south side of the summit is a steep precipice on which Patrick is said to have rung his bell, at the sound of which adders, toads “and many other venomous creatures arrived in countless numbers” and flung themselves, lemming fashion, over the edge.

GALLOWAY AND THE SOLWAY FIRTH

Ireland is one of only a few European countries which, when asked “What have the Romans ever done for us?” can truthfully say, “Er, actually nothing.” Because the legionnaires never settled in Ireland.

But Patrick was in all likelihood a Roman, so maybe the Romans did do something for us after all.

It seems our patron saint may have been born in Scotland or the north of England to a high-ranking Roman official. Even more disturbingly he may have been a tax collector for the Romans in Britain

One noted scholar of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic history, claims there are reasonable grounds to believe that he didn’t enjoy the tax collecting and skipped across to Ireland. And a possibility exists that Patrick may well have come to Ireland for the express purpose of exploring the feasibility of collecting of taxes in Ireland on behalf of the Romans. Either way, a false red beard and a leprechaun hat would have been just the thing to use as a disguise. Maybe.

At the village of Portpatrick in Wigtonshire,

facing across the Irish Sea towards Co. Antrim twenty miles away, the ruined St Patrick’s Chapel dates back to 1629. It probably stands on the foundations of a much older church built in honour of St Patrick. The unusual shape, historians say, is probably due to the influences of Irish architecture.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, when Portpatrick was an important ferry port for passengers, the village was described as the Gretna Green for Ireland. A daily packet boat from Donaghadee in Co. Down would deliver couples availing of the younger age of marriage in Scotland. Happy couples could disembark, complete the ceremony, and be back on board within an hour. With, of course, the blessings of St Patrick ringing in their ears.

CUMBRIA AND NORTHUMBERLAND

Moving further east and south from the Solway area, Birdoswald Fort on Hadrian’s Wall is one of the best preserved of the 16 forts along the fortifications. Charles Thomas, a respected Cornish historian of early Christianity, believes that this was Bannavem, the birthplace of Patrick. There is a reasonable amount of circumstantial evidence that the Apostle of Ireland was indeed from this neck of the woods, so keep your eyes peeled for any further clues.

Aside from this dramatic backstory, Birdoswald is one of the best sites to see all the components of the Roman frontier system that stretches across Cumbria and Northumberland, including the early turf wall and the stark remains of bulwarks in these craggy uplands. You can almost hear the Picts shouting abuse at the centurions, and perhaps Patrick saying, “Language, gentlemen, please.”

PEMBROKE

The Pembroke Coastal Path, part of the National Welsh threads round the very edge of Britain.

St David and very possibly St Patrick both called this area home, as indeed did St Elvis. No, not the King across the water in Tennessee. This Elvis (again, probably) came from Munster and fetched up here on the coastal route. In fact, there are more saints hereabouts than you could reasonably shake a pilgrim’s stave at.

Whitesands Bay at the very tip of St David’s

Peninsula, looking as if it had been ordered from central casting with its gull-draped rocks, curls of silvery sand and secluded rocky coves, is an extremely sainted place.

According to legend St Patrick had his vision to convert Ireland to Christianity here.

SOMERSET

Banwell

St Patrick’s birthplace is a poser. Various sites have been put forward, the favourites being somewhere in the west of Scotland or the west of Wales.

However, an English historian called Harry Jelley has put forward a plausible case for St Patrick being a Somerset lad. He reckons that the village of Banwell, five miles east of Weston-super-Mare, could be the saint’s birthplace.

A late Roman settlement is known in the area and it contains an undated, unexplained earthwork in the form of a cross. This, Mr Jelley believes, has a religious connotation. Irish monks – of whom there were many in the area from about the 7th century onwards – perhaps constructed the cross as a monument to Patrick. This would have been a few centuries after the saint’s birth, but the memory of his birthplace of such an important personage would have survived. It’s located south of Gout House Farm.

In one of the few pieces of writing credited to St Patrick, his Confessio, he writes: “I had as my father the deacon Calpornius, son of the late Potitus, a priest, who belonged to the small town of Bannavem Taberniae; he had a small estate nearby, and it was there I was taken captive.”

Glastonbury

The Irish monks who helped found Glastonbury and establish it firmly in the public mind (as a spiritual centre, not a rock venue) were an extraordinarily imaginative bunch, responsible for many tales.

King Arthur was probably their brainchild, as was the expansion of the story of the Holy Grail. As for the legend that Christ once visited England with his uncle Joseph of Arimathea (the theme of “And did those feet in ancient time...”) look no further than this part of Somerset and the Irish monks who plied their trade there.

St Patrick, according to legend, visited Glastonbury in the 5th century and met with St David at the site of today’s Glastonbury Abbey. The two saints then worked together to establish the first Christian church at Glastonbury.

Another legend suggests that Patrick travelled to Glastonbury to meet with Joseph of Arimathea, who also happened to have the Holy Grail about his person. In a connected move, Patrick blessed the spring at Chalice Well.

Competition for the honour of being Patrick’s birthplace has, of course, been fierce among locations as widely dispersed as Somerset, Wales, Cumbria and southwest Scotland. The medieval monks of Glastonbury, always alert for ways to attract new business in the way of wayward souls, naturally enough put in a claim to be the one True Birthplace of Patrick. The Tudor chapel of St Patrick in the precinct of Glastonbury Abbey honours this tradition, although it was built near enough a thousand years after Patrick walked this earth.

Bannavem Taberniae, Harry Jelley argues with some linguistic authority, is Banwell.

Advertise in the Travel section and get customers flying through your door – Contact Dara Ashby on 0208 900 4223

SAINTLY PRESENCE: The statue of St Patrick at Croagh Patrick

Hadrian’s Wall Picture: Courtesy of Visit Britain

A HOTEL FIT FOR A KING

“LONDON is set to come alive during the King’s coronation and our perfect location within London’s royal borough sets us in the prime position to welcome domestic and international guests to celebrate this exciting and momentous occasion.”

and knows the area intimately.

Those are the words of Dublin man Gary Redmond, manager of the Adria hotel in South Kensington, London. He’s been at the Adria for five years now, so knows the area intimately. Gary is friendly, helpful, efficient; like everyone on his staff, and knows the area intimately. Together with his team he’s come up with a very inviting package at the hotel which should appeal to monarchists and non-monarchists alike.

I cheered with the rest. And now that he’s visited Erin’s We’ll be much better friends than we’ve been heretofore When we’ve got all we want, we’re as quiet as can be Where the Mountains of Mourne sweep down to the sea.”

nights’ accommodation with breakfast and afternoon tea, a guided walk of the royal borough, and a Harrods picnic hamper, made up by gourmet chefs.

that location and luxury, so prices are robust at the Adria. But hotels in this area of London are always going to be expensive, so you might as well stay at the best. And the Adria is just that.

Charles’ coronation. You may

But the hotel is perfectly situated within the royal borough, so it is an ideal location to celebrate King Charles’ coronation. You may even find yourself humming a few lines of the Percy French song The Mountains of Mourne, particularly the quietly seditious, yet surprisingly apt verse that goes:

“I’ve seen England’s king from the top of a bus

And I’ve never known him, but he means to know us.

And tho’ by the Saxon we once were oppressed, Still I cheered, God forgive me,

The Mountains , particularly the quietly seditious, yet surprisStill I cheered, God forgive me,

Bray no longer a last resort

BY JAMES RUDDY

IRELAND’S ‘Brighton-on-Sea’ resort of Bray has made it into the prestigious list of the world’s most underrated travel destinations for 2023.

With its mile-long buzzing seafront of bars, cafes and lovely sand and shingle beach, the town

comes 13th in the 14-strong Time Out list.

Made popular by the arrival of the railways in 1854, the resort faced years of decline before becoming re-established as a favourite of Dubliners in recent decades.

Birthplace of celebrities such as singer Hozier and TV star

Where the Mountains of Mourne to it’s

King Charles has shown himself to be a staunch friend of Ireland, and evidently enjoys spending time there –he has spoken about his admiration for Ireland and Irish culture many times. He’s even had a bodhrán lesson at the Irish Cultural Centre in Hammersmith, for goodness sake. But it’s not expected this will play any part in coronation proceedings.

So, many Irish people will want to celebrate his coronation – and if you want to splash out and soak in the atmosphere of where it’ll all happen, no better place than the Adria

The hotel is offering two

Dara O’Brian, it lies just 12 miles south of the capital and is famed for hour-long climbs up 800-foot rocky Bray Head, which provides spectacular views from the summit.

Bray takes its place in the firstever such list by Time Out, the global media and hospitality company, which chose the line-up from recommendations by expert editors and writers worldwide.

The aim is to “inspire a people to discover places which pack a

The guided walking tour of South Kensington delves into the history and significance of the royal borough – and they’ve had plenty of history in these parts. The tour showcases the architecture and regal landmarks of the area. The Adria is a short walk from several key London locations: the Royal Albert Hall is literally just round the corner, Hyde Park a ten minute stroll away, and two of the world’s finest museums the Victoria & Albert and the Natural History Museum are basically just at the bottom of the street.

The Adria achieves a remarkable trick: it is exquisitely comfortable, yet painstakingly perfect. The fivestar hotel has a members’ club charm, but with added boutique pizazz. Potted plants in exactly the right place, wonderful coffee table books, a large vase of peonies, some light classical music playing.

Of course, you have to pay for all

punch in terms of food, culture and experiences but are often overlooked by travellers”.

In number one position on Time Out’s Most Underrated Travel Destinations list is Mongolia, selected as it is much easier to reach and cheaper than people realise and offers a unique nomadic experience with a true feeling of stepping back in time.

A surprise entry is the Devon city of Plymouth in England. Writer Huw Oliver says “Perhaps

It has what the novelist Arnold Bennett described in his 1902 novel The Grand Babylon Hotel as ‘that mysterious quality known as style’. In spades.

Factfile

Prices from £1,500 inclusive of 2 nights with breakfast and afternoon tea, a Harrods picnic hamper including sweet and savoury treats with a bottle of champagne and a two-hour guided walking tour. Package available from April 1 to May 31, 2023

*Harrods picnic hamper and walking tour are subject to availability; packages must be booked a minimum of one week in advance of stay date.

because of its middling size, it’s slipped under the radar, and that’s pretty unfair... Book a room at the Bistrot Pierre B&B, in the revamped Royal William Yard, and you’ve lined up pretty much the perfect weekend away.”

Other offbeat places on the list are Mexico’s Lake Bacalar, Burlington (Vermont) in the USA, Gippsland in Australia and Srebrenik in Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as the Ecuadorian city of Cuenca in the Andes.

If you’re looking forward to celebrating the coronation of King Charles, or perhaps just wanting to soak in the history and culture of one of the great cities of the world, the Adria in South Kensington is just the place says MAL ROGERS

RELAX IN STYLE: The Adria Pictures: Romeo Balancourt

The Adria’s Gary Redmond

CHARLIE WILKINS’ GARDENING

In the garden this week...

 WEATHER WORN: Every garden boasts daffodils and tulips during spring, and many who live in exposed areas correctly insist on choosing low growers.

This is understandable, for many of the exquisitely beautiful forms flower early and, as a result, many get battered by our weather. The likes of Tete-a-Tete are sturdy

COLUMN HOME&GARDEN

enough in leaf and stem, but many others growing in windy counties do not. Mind you, no county in Ireland is less windy than its neighbour. We live, all of us, in one of the windiest countries in the world. In really poor weather conditions, I find that many of the miniatures lose their moment in the footlights and their dance is far too short.

Got a gardening query? Email Charlie at ctfwilkins@gmail.com

When this happens, their effect on the emotions are chiefly tinged with regret – that you have to wait another whole year before seeing their wondrous blooms again.

For all the reasons outlined, I now grow my favourites in pots and containers on sheltered paved areas where they may be seen for longer, and savoured more easily. Would you take on board this kind of horticultural tip for next spring? You’ll delight in the results.

BERRY PERFECTION

THE thorny pyracanthas flower in late spring whitewashing their branches with a virtual foam of blossom, but this display pales in comparison with their autumn performance.

From September the large crowded bunches of highly polished, rounded berries slowly ripen through shades of lemon-orange to deepest marmalade. Some varieties arrive with flaming red but the general consensus favours the striking orange.

Ideal as wall or fence plants, they need to be kept under close control, training the stems and main branches to wires or similar supports. Wayward shoots that attempt to grow straggly outwards will need diligent removal to achieve the kind of perfection as seen in the accompanying illustration.

Needless to say that all varieties come suitably armed with spiny and vicious thorns so glove wearing becomes essential even for the bravest horny-handed.

To get the very best from pyracantha, prune in early summer when the plants are in full bloom. On wall-trained plants, tie in new lateral shoots which are needed to extend the framework, but cut back unwanted material to the main stem. Shorten

QUESTIONS &ANSWERS

My camellias are getting too much early morning sun and night frost. They are quite large and I’m wondering if they can be re-sited? If yes, when?

Camellias and rhododendrons are probably the only two garden shrubs that can reliably be  moved during any month. Provided you take a decent root-ball and have the new position opened then all should be well. Water during dry spells up to September.

all remaining laterals back to a spray of bloom. This exposes the flowers and developing berries to sunlight and keeps the entire plant within specified boundaries. The intention always is to cut back all unwanted growths, bearing in mind that to cut off shoots containing flowers is to rob you of winter berries.

Pyracanthas are totally hardy, but it is not generally appreciated that they can come under extreme stress when subjected to long periods of freezing cold.

It is not the cold itself, however, that causes the plant to drop all its berries (and leaves), but frozen soil conditions that prevent the uptake of vital moisture by

the roots. The plants resist the curtailment of moisture by shedding leaves and fruits and they may require as much as an entire year to recover.

During very cold weather (as experienced this winter and of late) it may be necessary to give some protection to the root area. Use fleece or other fabric

TOPICAL TIP ANTICIPATION

ANTICIPATION if very much the mood of March. The wind this month may dull my enthusiasm for long hours gardening but not for my constitutional walks in nearby woodland.

How nice my daily rambles here. Soon the verges will be softly covered with bluebells and wild garlic. If you can possibly get out into such a planting over the next few weeks do so, for it’s an experience not to be missed.

Don’t forget to look up as you walk for the greening of spring birches, old and young, is light and dancing whatever the weather! Young birch foliage is extraordinary in its colouring, emerald green mainly, and full of bird song.

Young people today are unfamiliar with such beauty and more is the pity. Sights like these are regretfully fast disappearing.

material for this job. A good alternative would be mulching the root area with a two inch application of any brand of commercial compost.

For those with children and a fear of berry poisoning, be assured that the berries are not toxic but they may cause mild stomach upset if swallowed.

AS soon as the fragile-stemmed Alstroemeria starts showing above ground, push some bamboo canes around them and place sheep wire on them. Secure with soft ties, then as the stems grow, the wire can be slid up the canes giving support at all stages of growth. Of course much neater and certainly much more pleasing from an aesthetic viewpoint is black netting, the kind used by fishermen.

I have seen this done at the RHS garden at Wisley and it looks not only terrific but it’s totally invisible.

Our citrus plant did very well in the conservatory but now we see roots emerging from the base of the container. Do we re-pot?

Yes. Use a good citrus compost (these are specific and essential) and make sure that gravel or grit covers the bottom of the container for increased drainage.

Can my ornamental grasses be cut back now? I only have them less than a year, I’m not sure as to how and when.

Deciduous grasses such as Molinia and golden Hakone are cut back in late winter and the evergreen forms early March. Be aware of new growth low down and avoid damaging this.

BERRY IMPRESSIVE: This house front looks spectacular from late summer to winter, when the orange Pyracantha berries are at their showiest

Alstroemeria Picture: Getty Images

Camellia Picture: Getty Images

Tete-a-Tete dwarf daffodils

Picture: Getty Images

Irish Heritage annual bursary auditions

THE Irish Heritage annual bursary auditions took place recently at Wigmore Hall in London, one of the world’s great concert halls. The bursary programme was established to encourage young Irish performers and composers, not only with performance opportunities, but also with financial support as they transition from college to professional life.

Thanks to the success of the charity’s fund-raising and to the support of generous donors and organisations such as the Ireland Funds, Irish Heritage is currently able to offer four valuable bursaries and a special award to Irish born and first-generation Irish students studying at recognised conservatoires and colleges.

Adjudicators Fiachra Garvey, Anna Cashnell and Robin Tritschler

Soprano Caoimh-Ella Lundy.

Double bassist Maitiu Gaffney

Deirdre and Tom Scanlon and Mary Connolly from Irish Heritage

Jim Kirby from Irish Heritage is pictured left with Jennifer Skilbeck and Alex Heuson, sponsor of the Homan Potterton Bursary for String Instruments

PICTURES BY MALCOLM MCNALLY PHOTOGRAPHY

Tara Viscardi and Margaret Parkinson from Irish Heritage

Soprano, Hope Marna

Celebrating St Patrick in Britain

ST PATRICK’S celebrations

round Britain begin this week. The highest profile event is in London on March 12, with a parade in central London followed by a concert in Trafalgar Square. But towns throughout the length and breadth of Britain will be holding festivals, concerts, parades and céilís. Here we pick out just a few of the highlights:

BRISTOL

Bristol will be turning green for St Patrick’s week this year with the launch of the West of England Irish CultureFest, March 10-19

Over forty events are lined up, including music, dance, historical walks and talks exploring Irish life in the West Country, an open session with Bristol Harps – the newly combined GAA team of St Nicks and Western Gaels,. Also featured are Irish comedy nights, trad sessions, bodhrán classes, live music, club nights and a screening of the Irish language film Song of Granite telling the dramatic story of legendary singer Joe Heaney.

The culmination of activities and celebrations is the annual St Patrick’s Parade and Party taking place on Sunday, March 19.

The parade will be departing from Trinity Centre (BS2 0NW) at 12.30 before heading towards Bristol’s Old City for a party at St Nicks Market (BS1 1JQ) and several of the bars on St Nicholas Street. The parade will be led by Bristol’s Pipe and Drum Band.

Paula O’Rourke, Lord Mayor of Bristol, said: “It’s great to see the annual St Patrick’s Parade and Party back again...alongside the Irish CultureFest taking place across the West of England between March 10-18. Make sure and come along for the celebrations.” weirish.org.uk/festival

MANCHESTER

The 2023 Manchester Irish Festival has once again teamed up with Tourism Ireland to celebrate this year’s ten day festival.

Over 100 events (mostly free of charge) will take place between this Friday March 10

right through to Sunday, March 19.

The award winning Fianna Phadraig Irish Pipe Band will be launching the St Patrick’s week on Saturday 12 and celebrating their 75th anniversary at the annual St Patrick’s Day Parade from the Irish World Heritage Centre at 12 noon.

On St Patrick’s Day itself, Friday, March 17, they will be visiting the Irish communities in Levenshulme and Burnage, and performing from 6pm at Hennigans Sports Bar, Fred’s Ale House and the Union before finishing off at the Farmers Arms in Burnage.

The festival will also stage a week of events promoting and celebrating female Irish musicians and singers with a week of free concerts at Fred’s Ale House.

The popular Farmers Arms Irish Pub in Burnage will stage the festival closing party on Sunday, March 19 which will be broadcast live by OnEire broadcasting with Joe Casserley and Clare Flynn and will feature Irish dancing displays from the Keegan Academy School of Irish Dancing, Traditional comes music from fiddle player Colleen Langan, Trad musicians from St Marys and The McGuire Family from 2-5pm.”

Other festival highlights include the ‘Return to County Levenshulme’, which is a free week long Irish festival sponsored by the Levenshulme Pub Company.

The Union Irish Music bar in Levenshulme celebrates its 100th anniversary with a week of free Irish events on every day of the festival.

Popular Irish bar The Fiddlers in Levenshulme will celebrate its last month with a host of events to say farewell to the much loved pub. The award winning St Kentigern’s Irish Club in Fallowfield are bringing over from Ireland the very popular All Folk’d Up for a sell out special concert at the venue.

www.manchesterirish festival.co.uk

LUTON

Luton St Patrick’s Festival, organised by Luton Irish Forum, was first held in the town in 2000, and is now a leading attraction in the Luton cultural calendar –Irish music, dance, sport and drama are presented across Luton.

The Parade this year is on Saturday, March 18.

This weekend on Saturday , March 11 the Forum has organised its St Patrick’s GAA Blitz at St Joseph’s Club, Gardenia Avenue, Luton. An afternoon of Gaelic sport will feature youth teams from St Dympna’s GFC, Luton GAA and Luton GAA St Vincent’s GFC plus St Colmans (Hurling) and women’s team Claddagh Gaels LGFC.

St Joseph’s team from London will also be competing. https://lutonirishforum. org/St-Patricks

NOTTINGHAM

The Nottingham festival begins on March 13 at Nottingham Irish Centre when chairman Pat Murphy give a talk on fifty years of the centre, as well as discussing the history of the Irish in the East Midlands.

Other events include a full programme of music, dance, talks and film leading up to the main event of St Patrick’s Day itself, which begins at 9.30am.

The concert programme on March 17 – in Market Square, Nottingham –includes the Louie Walsh Band, Claire Regan Academy of Irish Dance, Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Nottingham, the Glendarragh Academy of Irish Dance, the Nottingham Irish Set Dancers, the Mc Manus Academy of Irish Dance and Kelly’s Heroes. The

MC is Gerry Molumby.

On Wednesday, March 15 there is a screening at Broadway Cinema of the award-winning Irish language film An Cailín Cuín (The Quiet Girl). There will be a musical introduction to proceedings from harpist Roisin Hickey. www.nottingham stpatricksfestival.org.uk

NEWCASTLE

The Shamrock Charity Ball is being held in the Biscuit Factory on March 18.

The ball, in aid of the Little’uns Charity, will be hosted by Alfie Joey. Geordie and Irish folk trio The Belta

Reivers and The Folk Soul Bros and acclaimed dance company Murphy’s Celtic Legacy are among the performers providing the entertainment for the night. www.eventcreate.com/e/ theshamrockball

YORKSHIRE

The main event at the York Irish St Patrick’s Festival takes place on March 18 in the big tent in St. Sampson’s Square 11am-8pm Performances include sets from Dougie Smith, the Flying Donkeys, Paula Ryan and the O’Connor Academy of Irish dance plus many more.

To All Our Customers

FLYING THE FLAGS: St Patrick’s Parade in Bristol

“A Very Happy St Patrick’s Day”

PIPING UP: The Fianna Phadraig Pipe Band outside Manchester Cathedral

Notification of Death WINSTON HARPER

The death has occurred of Winston Harper of Harlesden, formerly of Dublin, on 16th February, 2023 – peacefully at home Winston will be sadly missed by his loving wife Jean; daughter Vivien; son-in-law Michael; grandchildren Shannon, Sinead and Caitlin; and great-grandchild Mila. Along with all relatives, neighbours and extended circle of friends. Reposing on 13th March, 2023 – 2pm to 4pm EC Mills,142 Church Road, NW10 9NH. Funeral will take place on 14th March, 2023 at 1pm in East Chapel, West London Crematorium, Harrow Road, NW10 4RA. The family have requested NO FLOWERS but donations to British Lung Foundation COPD in honour of Winston. A special thank you to all who cared for Winston in his twilight years

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Coventry’s GAA success story

WORDS AND PICTURES BY CHRIS EGAN

ST FINBARR’S GAA club in Coventry was established in 1953. The club made an immediate impression on the Warwickshire GAA scene winning a Senior Hurling County Title in their first season. They went on to then win the Senior Hurling Championship in 1955 and 1957 along with the Senior Hurling League in 1955 and 1956.

Adopting both codes by the end of the 1950ss their first football honours came in 1959 winning the Intermediate Championship. Then in 1960 the club achieved “the double” winning the senior football and junior hurling leagues.

Today, the club has ambitions to expand and bring back those glory days. 2021 saw the club win the Senior Hurling League and Senior Championship for the first time in 33 years, an achievement then replicated on 2022. The footballers, meanwhile, won the Sugrue Cup, Intermediate League and Championship.

St Finbarr’s Senior Ladies

St Finbarr’s Senior Men’s Hurling Team

Senior Men’s Hurley Team, Players’ Player of the Year, Noel Lenihan

Rob Lanphier named Clubman of the Year and presented with the John Coen Memorial Trophy

St Finbarr’s hurler and football player Ritchie Murray takes to the dance floor with the Turley Duggan Academy St Finbarr’s hurlers provide an honour guard as quests arrive Music from The Gradys

No rebound for Rory in Bay Hill

wouldn’t have played the shot I played, which was unfortunate.”

He roared back into the contention with four birdies but missed out narrowly by one shot. A win would have seen him reclaim his World No. 1 ranking.

“I still wish I could have had a couple of shots back today but, I guess, everyone would say the same thing. It’s one of those days and one of those courses where you are going to rue missed opportunities and a couple of missed putts here and there but it was a good week. I saw some positive signs. Game’s rounding into form for the bulk of the season.”

It was a particularly encouraging week after a T-29 at the Genesis Invitational and T-32 at the WM Phoenix Open last month where he also lost his World No. 1 ranking. McIlroy hopes to carry the momentum into this week’s Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass.

“It’s getting better,” McIlroy said when asked about the improvements in his game. “I feel like I figured out the driver a little bit more this week. Yeah, it’s getting there. I think there are still a couple little things to tidy up and try to get more comfortable with. But, yeah, I mean with Players, Match Play, and then the Masters, so two tournaments between now and then and plenty of time to feel a bit more comfortable with where everything is.”

Heartbreak for McIlroy as Kitayama holds his nerve to secure a first PGA tour win at Arnold Palmer Invitational

BY MALHAR HATHI

GOOD things come to those who wait.

As Kurt Kitayama broke through with his first PGA Tour win at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, World No. 3 Rory McIlroy wore a smile looking on from the sidelines.

The Holywood man had waited for nearly half an hour to learn his fate after his 12 foot birdie putt on the 18th hole grazed the hole to miss on the low side. Despite a finishing 70 for eight-under-par, it wasn’t enough as he was left to rue on what might have been after a dramatic final round saw the Northern Irishman finish tied second at the Bay Hill Club & Lodge in Orlando last week.

To miss out on the title by one shot was a feeling Kitayama knew only too well.

After being beaten by Jon Rahm in Mexico, Xander Schauffele in the Scottish Open and by McIlroy in the CJ Cup in South Carolina last year

– all by one shot, the 30-year-old American finally had his moment in the sun with a red cardigan sweater to show for it.

It wasn’t without adversity though. A triple bogey on the ninth hole after finding a bunker squandered his two-shot lead but pulled ahead with a birdie putt on the par-3 17th hole for the lead. He eventually made a par on the last hole to finish with an even-par 72 for nine-under.

“I’ve been dreaming of this for a while,” he said after bagging $3.6 million. “I’ve been close and to finally get it done feels amazing.”

For McIlroy, who shared the same aggregate as Harris English, the turning point came at the 14th hole after an error in judgement and a glance at the leaderboard caused him to make back-to-back bogeys.

“Bad start, really good middle and not a bad finish,” he assessed the final round when he mixed five bogeys and seven birdies.

“If I look back, the one thing I will rue is the tee shot on 14th. I birdied

13th and when I got on the 14th tee, I honestly thought I was one or two behind the lead. I was walking to the

14th green and I looked behind at the scoreboard to see I was leading by one. If I hadn’t known that I

Deep into the final round, as many as five players were tied for the lead, including McIlroy, to set up a thrilling finish. American Jordan Spieth briefly held the lead but produced four bogeys when it mattered the most to card a 70 and finish on seven under. Viktor Hovland putted into the water on the 16th and defending champion Scottie Scheffler and Tyrrell Hatton scuppered their advantage too to finish tied-4th.

“I certainly felt it on the golf course, so I’m sure it was pretty good to watch,” McIlroy said. “It’s hard because the lead was changing hands with guys making bogeys, not really making birdies.

“But it was a great back nine. It was great to be involved with,” he said. “I’m really happy for Kurt. He’s been playing well for a while now and I’m happy to see him get his first win.”

As for the other three Irishmen, Pádraig Harrington finished with a two-over-par for tied-53rd while Shane Lowry bowed out with a fiveover-par. Séamus Power had the most disappointing finish with a twelve-over-par languishing at the bottom after being seven shots off the lead heading into the second round.

“I’m still trying to figure out Bay Hill,” Lowry, who carded an 80 in the third round, tweeted.

All four Irish players will be in action at the PGA Tour’s $25 million Players Championship which runs March 9-12.

RUEFUL RORY: McIlroy was edged into second place at the Arnold Palmer Invitational by tournament winner Kurt Kitayama, below Pictures: Getty Images

Corbyn lends support to Bohemians’ fundraising

Islington North MP and former Labour leader gives his seal of approval to the Dublin football club’s humanitarian efforts on behalf of Palestinian children

BY GERARD DONAGHY

JEREMY Corbyn has given the thumbs up to an Irish soccer club’s new jersey which aims to raise money to support children in Palestine.

Dublin club Bohemian FC has unveiled their 2023 away shirt featuring red, green and black detailing and a dove icon, after teaming up with the organisation Palestine Sport for Life.

The club says it hopes to raise awareness of human rights violations in Palestine and raise much-needed funds to support access to sports for children in the Tulkarem Camp in the West Bank.

Bohemians shared a picture on their Twitter and Instagram accounts of Islington North MP Mr Corbyn giving the thumbs up while wearing the new jersey.

The club added that Arsenal fan Mr Corbyn had recently visited Bohemians’ Dalymount Park ground in Dublin.

Ten per cent of the profits from the jersey will go to the Palestine Sport for Life project in Tulkarem to provide sports equipment.

The project supports children from the Tulkarem Camp in the West Bank and the nearby Nur Shams Camp.

Both camps are densely populated with no open spaces, meaning children have no place to play except for school playgrounds.

Speaking at the kit’s recent launch, Bohs COO Daniel Lambert said he hoped the move would help Palestinian children, who face ‘unimaginable

challenges’.

“Football has enormous power to be a force for good across the world,” he said.

“At Bohemians we have undertaken many initiatives to harness this power in Ireland, in particular to support and champion the situations of people who are homeless or refugees in Direct Provision.

“Their right to play and to have an actual childhood should never be taken away and we hope that this partnership with Palestine Sport for Life will assist many young Palestinians, as well as highlighting their plight to our fanbase and others in the world of football.”

Meanwhile, Dr Philip Jaffe, Vice-Chair of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, praised the move.

“I commend the Bohemian Football Club for using their jersey to highlight the human rights violations faced by children in Palestine, including the right to life, to education, to adequate housing, and especially the right to play,” said Dr Jaffe.

“By building a relationship with Palestine Sport for Life and

providing resources to support children’s right to play in the Tulkarem, Bohs are playing the role of a good global citizen.”

The jersey builds on similar initiatives undertaken by Bohemians in recent years.

In 2020, in collaboration with Amnesty International, the club’s away jersey focused on promoting the integration of refugees.

The following season, Bohs worked with the charity Focus Ireland and Irish band Fontaines D.C. to highlight the unacceptable levels of homelessness in Dublin.

Most recently, the club partnered with the family of Bob Marley to release a jersey commemorating the music legend’s last-ever outdoor gig, which took place at Dalymount Park.

Funds raised went towards providing music and sports equipment to refugees and asylum seekers in Ireland.

The Bohemian FC Palestine jersey, in association with Palestine Sport for Life, is available from the Bohs club shop at www. shop-bohemianfc.com.

THUMBS UP: Jeremy Corbyn pictured on the Bohemians Twitter site