The weekly IRISH POST, published in London since 1970 describes itself as The Voice of The Irish in Britain.
It’s a fair claim and one of the voices featured was mine, from 1974 on. My, how the last half-century has flown!
Tempus Fugit, D**n it!
I count the current Editor, Mal Rogers, as a personal friend. He is a man of many talents which
he employs for the public good. A gifted traditional musician, he played concerts to vindicate the innocence of the Birmingham Six and others unjustly imprisoned – and waived the fee. A prizewinning travel writer and former pub landlord, Mal Rogers has a great sense of humour with a Rabelaisian tinge. He’s from Co. Down.
When I first wrote to the Irish Post it was edited by Breandan MacLua (1935-2009). Today I checked on either Wikipedia or Google to check his dates, and was surprised when it produced the appreciative obituary which appeared in the Connolly Association’s Irish Democrat, written by myself, D.O Cinneide.
From 1948 until his death in August 1988 at the age of 75 the Irish Democrat was edited by Desmond Greaves, and in the September edition of that year the paper published my own short appreciation of how he he guided me to use my pen less like a shillelagh and more like a rapier.
Born in Birkenhead Desmond was a research chemist earning well over £1,000 per annum in his early twenties, and during the Second World War was employed as a scientist doing hush-hush research at Woolich Arsenal. His family came from County Down.
Desmond was a polymath, with a deep knowledge of music (his family was Methodist}, a published poet, an historian,and a political activist from his early youth. He forsook the wealth his talents might have given him, and lived a celibate life promoting socialism internationaly and Irish national independence. He inspired the Civil Rights Movement in the North of Ireland and persuaded half the British Labour MPs to campaign for equal civil rights for all the the inhabitants of the Six Counties. A recent edition of History Ireland gives an account of the Connolly Association’s inspiration of the Civil Rights Movement. Like Breandan, the Connolly Association and its monthly organ has gone on Sli na Firinne (the High Road of Truth).
I was a leading part of the CR movement (Derry) in the 60s. Decision making was in house; the single external influence that I recall was from Mississippi.
Much of this about Desmond is absolutely fictional. As Eamonn McCann has remarked, Sinn Fein and its allies are colonising history
John Patton