May, 2014

  This piece was my contribution to Danny Morrison’s collection Hunger strike: Reflections on the 1981 Republican Hunger Strike (2006)  THE HUNGER STRIKE When I think of the hunger strikers it’s 1981 again and I’m driving towards a fly-over. The fly-over is across the M2 leading out of Belfast, and on the part of it that […]

Out of evil sometimes comes good and out of disaster, victory. No prizes this morning for guessing what I’m referring to. It’s the Stop-the-Shinners car-crash. So what good can we retrieve from this wreckage? Well, one good is that the Boston Tapes Oral History project has become, in the words of academic and peer Paul […]

[Enter two men.] Man 1:  I’ve been thinking. Man 2:  You surprise me. Man 1:  This whole Gerry Adams thing – it’s very costly. Man 2:  In what way? Man 1: Well, we’re told that he has been questioned for up to seventeen hours at a time. I’m against that. Man 2: So am I. […]

[Foreword: I hate having to do this but if you were off sick the day they did Irony in school, please stop reading now…] Dear Mary Lou,  You don’t know me but I know you. That is, I’ve seen you on the television and I’ve liked what I’ve seen – and heard. For a start, […]

Breath-taking, isn’t it? Where to start? Where to start even thinking? For example, you might think it’s as plain as a pint of Guinness that the arrest of Gerry Adams relating to the killing of Jean McConville is calculated to do the maximum possible damage to Sinn Féin’s chances in the elections north and south […]

 1. As they munch their breakfast toast this morning, Ed Moloney and Anthony McIntyre must be feeling good. Having selected people who they knew detested Gerry Adams for what was considered selling out, they put on tape their accusations that Gerry Adams was responsible for the death of Jean McConville. Now, thanks to those tapes, Gerry […]