February, 2022

I’ve never thought highly of the late Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell. But I pray the Good Lord would preserve us from the tsunami of sycophantic shite regarding the House of Windsor.which threatens to engulf us all. During his lifetime the Duke of Edinburgh was recognised as an ignorant, overbearing bully, a selfish and racist  boor. He was a reputed […]

Gavin Robinson, apparently, had a rather rough ride in an interview with RTÉ’s David McCullough. Yes, you heard me – the DUP being subjected to close scrutiny by RTÉ. The world has gone mad. Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin has had a commemorative wall vandalized – sledge-hammered, actually – because it contained the names of those […]

When Woodrow Wilson, one of the many humbugs to occupy the White House, presented his Fourteen Points, the French Premier, Georges Clemenceau, retorted that the Good God had only Ten. Woodrow Wilson was a comparative miser with words. Michael Foot’s Election Manifesto as British Labour Leadernwas reckoned the Longest Suicide Note in History. And Sir […]

The monthly IRISH POLITICAL REVIEW incorporates LABOUR COMMENT and its current issue reprints the 1898 piece by James Connolly “The Roots of Modern War”  At the time, he said “The great industrial nations of the world, driven on by their moneyed classes, themselves driven onby their own machinery, now front each other in the Far East, […]

I was wrong to write that Beckett didn’t have an Irish Passport in my recent Blog. He donated one of his poems to the Connolly Association for a collection they published “Beyond The Shore”. And the Association was involved in a commemoration at his Paris grave attended by the Irish Ambassador. I am indebted to […]

So. First it was Edwin P, declaring that there’d be no more agri-food checks at ports on goods coming from Britain. Then it was Paul G saying he was packing in the…what was it…honour of a lifetime to have served for eight months as First Minister of NEI. Might he also be the last First […]

Is there a Summer School, a Street, a Bridge, a Long Eireannach or a Scholarship named after Alfred Wilmore, better known as Micheal Mac Liammoir? Mac Liammoir was a genius, a London-born British Subject with no family connections to Ireland, who first trod the boards as a child with his fellow-Londoner, Noel Coward.  In his […]

Michael McDowell believes what the south needs is more men with bigger and better guns. OK, that’s something of an over-statement. But in today’s Irish Times he does join the likes of Regina Doherty in deploring the possibly closing of the Cathal Brugha barracks and build houses on the site. The core question here is: […]

In 1840 Thomas Davis addressed the Historical Society in Ireland’s only university with the words “Gentlemen, you have a country.” In those days Ladies were not accepted as university students. Davis was certain in his mind that he and his fellow students belonged to a country called Ireland, and he urged his fellows to serve that country. […]

In the hours and days following the murder of fourteen innocent civil rights marchers on the streets of Derry on Bloody Sunday, the papers and television media around the world proclaimed the Parachute Regiment had shot dead “gunmen and bombers.”  I found myself wondering just how many lies could be brought against a peaceful civil […]