Joe McVeigh’s comment on this editorial from The Irish Times just twenty-nine years ago:
‘Our statement was published in the IT on the same day. I cannot find it -but I think it is not the issue. We were both priests ministering in the north and dealing with violence every day. We felt it was our responsibility to provide an analysis of the root causes which might encourage people to work towards ending it. Our statement pointed out that the British involvement in Ireland was the
root cause of the violence here. Is this true or not? The Irish Times does not think so!’
29 Years on and The Unionist Times is still Speaking Out !
‘Brexit resurrects the English cult of heroic failure
Move to leave the EU feeds into the British taste for celebrating disasters as triumphs’
You have to hand it to Fine-minded Fintan O’Toole’s maniacal mining of his newly discovered vein of irony: last week it was the DUB’s turn to have a right good left wind ‘go’ at the Mainlanders. Genuinely peeved was the Man who makes up the Minds of the Mindless.
English nationalism is what gets his cabra as they say in North Madrid rather than in North Dublin. English Imperialism is what floats his boat and it is this English Nationalism aberration (a daaarlin word, Joxer) which is threathing to waive the rules as far as The Toole is concerned.
Imperialism? Ah, the forgotten word. When is the last time you came across the I-word in The Unionist Times ? Part of the natural order, it has no need of name-checking.
Not a word to kick in the shins, Imperialism: it has long since been accorded the status of Protected Building Block of the German Queen’s English. Imperialism, especially English Imperialism, good, Gnashionalism, especially English Gnashionalism, bad.
Today the DUB is having a ‘go’ at his mirror-image the DUP.
‘Fintan O’Toole: DUP has done the most for a united Ireland
Unionist party’s idiocy and sleazy behaviour threatens Northern Ireland’s foundations’
Note the two small o’s in his surname: one of them has just winked. Mind you, you have to be quick on the blink or you’ll miss it. Continue to think ‘wink’ and then you’ll spot it.
Now, where has one spotted that particular wink before? Ah, yes: in the twinkling eyes of another royal, King Brian of the Little People who was the scourge of the old codger known as Darby O Gill.
There are many legendary lines, too many to mention, in this Myles stone of a movie that warrant repeating but there is one line which just must be made walk the line because of its relevance. The other lines can be allowed a, erm, lie-in, as it were, on this occasion at least.
This is the line where King Brian (as played by Jimmy O’Dea, a Liffeysider) gets to address Darby O’Gill (played by Albert Sharpe, a Lagansider) and whom he calls a (gulp) ‘tooleramawn’ on account of the latter accusing him of ‘having a heart as cold as a white Christmas’ after someone else, be gob, had levelled the charge of being ‘as proud as a whitewashed pig’ at a third party:
-Three wishes I’ll give ye, great wishes and small
But you wish a fourth, and you’ll lose them all’.
And there you have it, what the Fine-minded Fintan’s inner eye is actually denoting here by a wink and a nod of his manhole cover-sized head is, of course:
-A United Ireland of the 4 Ps is being guaranteed by the addition of the fourth P of the DUP.
Prior, of course, to its being subsumed as ‘The only English-speaking entity in the EU’ back into the UK. Less, of course, the lass-led Scoland. The lass who is less than enamoured of Good Queen Bess and who thinks she’s a dolly mixture of Lady MacBeth and the Lough Ness Monster of a Sturgeon.
Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr: tis cold out here, being the only English-speaking country left out here on the periphery in the middle of the storm-tormented Atlantic, be gob..
Again, without seeing the letter to which the editorial was responding I’m not sure there’s a great deal of point to this blog.
Nonetheless prima facie the editorial seems mostly reasonable if, indeed, McVeigh and Wilson sought to diminish the Provos’ culpability for their atrocities.
Exceptionally,I find myself agreeing with M T.If Fr Joe cannot produce a copy of the original letter,there seems little point to this mini blog.On the face of it,the Irish Times editorial seems reasonable.Maybe Fr Joe could ask his clerical friend Fr Wilson if he has kept a copy of this “important ” letter.