I don’t want to hear another word of criticism against President Michael D Higgins. Not a peep, not a monosyllable. My reason for taking this stand derives from something I’ve noticed over the years: the Irish people are great talkers. I’m even a fair talker myself. But sometimes the talking has to stop. That time is now, at least in terms of President Higgins.
You’ve almost certainly encountered it yourself. You’ll have politicians appear on TV, calling on people to “support” his/her party. Other than cast a vote for them, what does that mean, support? Is it suggesting we join that party? Is it suggesting we put a poster in the window? There’s no answer to that question. Politicians rarely get round to telling their potential followers just how they can help the cause – beyond putting their X in the right place.
Well I’m not a politician and we’ve been over the subject of Michael D’s non-attendance at that dinner in Belfast until a mountain of words has been created. And now? Well you know the answer to that. Eddie Whyte has provided the example in his open letter to Higgins. And if you think that Higgins was wrong and insulting to northern nationalists/republicans, then you’ll take the two minutes to write a letter to the President, telling him how you feel. If you’re not prepared to do that, you would clearly rather talk than act. Does that sound a bit insulting? It may well be. But it’s the truth.
Right, here’s mine. I’ll post it this morning. When are you writing yours? If even a couple of hundred found their way through the letter slot of Áras An Uachtaráin, you’d be surprised how uneasy it’ll make the occupants feel.
President Michael D Higgins
Áras An Uachtaráin
Phoenix Park
DUBLIN 8
Dear President Higgins,
I am writing to you in connection with your decision to reject the invitation to be guest of honour at a civic dinner in Belfast City Hall on 8 April, commemorating the Easter Rising.
You say that you will not attend because there is not cross-party consensus. There is: all parties have agreed to your attendance. The Democratic Unionist Party has declared it will not attend the dinner. Regrettable though that is, it does not alter the fact of cross-party consensus on your invitation.
Many in the nationalist/republican population of the north of Ireland have felt excluded from the Easter Rising commemorations in the past few weeks. Speech after speech has been delivered as though Ireland stopped at the border, the Irish question had been settled and the north did not exist. ‘Abandonment’ would not be too strong a word to use in describing nationalist/republican feelings at present.
Your action, in allowing your attendance to be determined by a right-wing unionist party, adds to our sense of abandonment. You have deeply disappointed a great number of your fellow Irishmen and women in the northern part of our country.
Yours
Jude Collins
Feel free to copy the above, or Eddie Whyte’s, in part or in whole (Eddie’s is at this link: http://www.judecollins.com/2016/04/an-open-letter-to-president-higgins-by-eddie-whyte/. But WRITE THE LETTER.
If I might be smug for a moment, I wrote a letter to herself (Robinson) back in the day in order to nit-pick about something she said.
So, I agree with Dr C, if you’re so annoyed then get writing.
President Michael D Higgins
Áras An Uachtaráin
Phoenix Park
DUBLIN 8
Dear President Higgins,
I am writing to you in connection with your decision to reject the invitation to be guest of honour at a civic dinner in Belfast City Hall on 8 April, commemorating the Easter Rising.
I feel utterly betrayed by your blatant disregard and lack of respect shown for the Irish citizens in the north.
Is our acceptance now conditional on the approval of our unionist neighbours?
After the most sectarian and disrespectful election campaign I have ever witnessed in the republics elections of 2016 and I have seen many in the troubled north of Ireland, mostly driven by the media but encouraged by the majority of political parties I despair that the Presidency of Ireland has now been tarnished by your following suit.
The damage that has already been done I fear is permanent and will be long lasting. In a society coming out of conflict, taking sides was the worst possible move the republic could have made and I feel was it for selfish political reasons. While I expect no better from politicians, the President of Ireland should not have succumbed to such naïve behaviour.
Britain could never have divided this nation as much as we have done ourselves in this centenary year.
I no longer feel right in holding my Irish passport but would never sink so low as to carry a British one.
I am hearing now slan abhaile in my own land. Unfortunately, I have no other home to go home to. I do not have a country.
I hope you are proud,
“Britain could never have divided this nationas much as we have done ourselves in this centenary year” So very true and so very sad. This is the crux of the matter , the divide and conquer strategy with a new twist. The 2016 version of the Unionist veto
What would Joxer make of the words corporate inversion? Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson is facing some of the largest protests ever seen in Reykjavik as Fine Gael continue to woo the Irish Labour Party back into its ranks. The NAMA debacle continues to cause reverberations from Derry to Kerry. Evictions are facts of life in Ireland today, as arrangements are made to count “rough sleepers” in the Irish Census.
As sterling efforts are made to cobble together one more right wing administration, others are plotting the next election in the 26 counties. How many more Tribunals are needed to further expose the greed and corruption at the core of Irish politics in this partitioned Island?
When politicians were being well paid to work on behalf of their constituents, some of them including wives and partners spent time moving large amounts of cash around the country. The TUT published an article on 5 June 2008, concerning wealth and possessions, given the lack of documentary evidence available to a tribunal. Sceptics will find evidence in the Flood Tribunal findings, bordering on the farcical. In the absence of a grasp of complex financial details, it boiled down to,
“Where did you get your loot?”
“Won it on a horse.”
There is a sectarian head count pending in the north of Ireland. Each individual has a right to support his/her elected representative of choice, however, we all have to live with the consequences. Unfortunately some now live abroad, some in temporary dwellings, others live and die on the streets while others remain in politics. It is possible to remove someone from elected office, not so with a monarch.
Dear Michael
Get up to Belfast and come to our party. People are very upset that you missed it.
So the DUP weren’t coming? Big deal. They don’t like parties anyway. Alliance were disapointed not to see you as well and as they took nearly half the vote in East Belfast last year plenty of prods (perhaps all as the DUP said they didn’t mind either) would clearly have no problem with your visit at all.
You recently called on unionists to be generous with regard to Dublin’s celebrations and having seen the inclusiveness and the plurality of events – including the recent Glasnevin dedication – you were right to do so. Perhaps you need to be as generous in your expectations of Belfast. Who knows – We might be able to manage something just as inclusive and your attendance could only help.
On the other hand your non-attendance has only wound people up.
Love
BYC
You’ve still three days to decide Btw. People take last minute holidays with less notice and it’s only a dinner.
Good to see this endeavour getting some coverage. The more letters sent the better. The President clearly needs to hear the voice of the people.
Telephone Áras an Uachtaráin
Tel: +353 1 617 1000Fax: +353 1 617 1001Lo Call: 1890 430 430
Write to Áras an Uachtaráin
Address:
Áras an Uachtaráin
Phoenix Park
Dublin 8
Email: info@president.ie
Don’t email. Repeat , DON’T email President Higgins. Emails have only one-tenth the impact of a three-dimensional letter. Go on, splurge on a stamp…
Leagan Gaeilge anseo:
An tUachtarán Michéal D. Ó hUiginn,
Áras An Uachtaráin
Páirc an Fhionnuisce
Baile Átha Cliath 8
A Uachtaráin, a chara,
Tá mé ag scríobh chugat maidir le do chinneadh diúltú don chuireadh a bheith mar aoi onórach ag dinnéar cathartha in Halla Cathrach Bhéal Feirste ar 8ú Aibreán.
Deir tú nach mbeidh tú i láthair mar nach bhfuil comhaontú traspháirtí ann. Ach tá: d’aontaigh gach páirtí go ndéanfá freastal air. D’fhógair an DUP nach ndéanfaidh siadsan freastal air. Cé gur trua é sin, ní athraíonn sé an comhaontú traspháirtí maidir le do chuireadh.
Mhothaigh cuid mhór daoine sa phobal náisiúnach/poblachtach i dtuaisceart na hÉireann imeallaithe ó chomóradh Éirí Amach na Cásca le cúpla seachtain anuas. Thug óráid i ndiaidh óráide le tuiscint gur chríochnaigh Éire ag an teorainn, go raibh an cheist Éireannach socraithe agus nárbh ann don tuaisceart. Ní bheadh an focal ‘Tréigean’ ró-láidir le cur síos ar mhothúcháin an phobail náisiúnaigh/phoblachtaigh faoi láthair.
Trí ghéilleadh do pháirtí eite-dheis aontachtach ar an dóigh seo, tá tú ag cur le mothú an tréigin. Chuir tú an-díomá ar lear mór de do chomh-Éireannaigh sa chuid thuaidh dár dtír.
Le meas,
Jude
so pleased to see you are suppporting the letter campaign I proposed when I re-blogged your post about Eddie’s letter to the president.
I shall be posting my letter in Dublin later today and it will cover the main points I wrote about in my post, which I have updated with this latest from you
here’s hoping that all together we will let the voices of Northern nationalists/republicans be heard
https://eurofree3.wordpress.com/2016/04/02/letter-writing-campaign-to-the-president-of-ireland/
Ben
The centenary of 1916 was hyped up for years and billed as a springboard to reunification in some quarters. Ironic, then, that most nationalists/republicans have seen it as further evidence that the 26 counties give not one fig for NI and its inhabitants whether of green or orange hue.
The Rising did lead to a Republic for the 26. It also lead to partition. Perhaps both legacies are finally being recognised in 2016.
you might aswell send a letter to daddy christmas his staff will have been instructed to bin them.the only letter i have is on the window right beside the doorbell.[if you are calling here about elections take yerself ta fxxk]only language these people understand mickalene included.
Just read your blog Ben. While I’d like to see the President in Belfast I can’t help but notice that some people slagging him for not coming here have also been slagging the South for what they see as overly inclusive events in Dublin. If he’s a fan of the reconciling and cross-community aspects of the Dublin commemorations its fair for him to question the bona fides of people who describe things like the Glasnevin Necrology as “deeply insulting” or the inclusion of constitutional nationalists on banners with the Rising’s leaders as a dilution of support for physical force.
im sure you are quite right BYC –
unfortunately you seem to have confused my blog with somone else’s. For 2016 I posted about Morse communications then and now . https://eurofree3.wordpress.com/2016/03/26/irish-easter-message-1916-2016/
and re-blogged a visit to the museum to see the 1916 exhibition
https://eurofree3.wordpress.com/2016/03/31/memory-anger-betrayal-a-museum-visit/
Please do let me know how you connect these posts with your observations
How about this one. Discuss!
Dear President Higgins
Thank you for your honesty for staying away from an Easter Commemoration in Belfast. You have nothing in common with the leaders of 1916, much like the parties hosting the Belfast Commemeration itself, who have all abandoned the tenets of the Proclamation and are content administering British rule in a partitioned Ireland.
Irish Republicans do not need you in attendance in Belfast or anywhere else to convey your sense of Irishness on us.
Yours,
THIS IS NOT ME – PLEASE NOTE -BUT A COMMENT I RECEIVED – JUDE…
Jude,
I will be writing a letter before this week is out.
No other head of state of any country around the world would pull out of a commitment they had given because a much lesser figure/s had withdrawn.
He effectively let unionists dictate the President of Ireland’s agenda. That is really poor form.
It shows a lack of leadership and, worse than that, weakness on the part of Michael D Higgins.
It came just days after he made a passionate, some would say inspirational, speech about Ireland and the rebels who demonstrated the ultimate bravery and courage.
On that occasion he was quite happy to raise his own profile up on the back of their sacrifices.
But when it came to himself playing a small, non-controversial role we found out the true content of his character.
Joe McMahon
You know what Jude? Your absolutely right on this one. Its time for Irish people, North and South, to stop talking and start acting (non violently and responsibly, of course). I’ll be copying your letter Jude but I’d advise other people who write their own letters to keep it respectable and formal, sign your name and give your contact details. Will we get a reply? I don’t know, maybe an acknowledgment of our letters would be nice.
I’d also advise people to share this blog/article on facebook/twitter, so as to get more people sending letters.
Micheal D. Higgins, Uasal,
Aras an UachtaraIn,
Pairc an Fhionn Uisce,
Duibhlinn, 8.
A Uachtarain,
A very wise man once wrote: ‘When a person is in fashion, all he can do is right’.
Whatever about your views on the dismal science of economics, your latest inaction on the even more dismal topic of the Six Counties which lie on the other side of the Black Sow’s Dyke is something which is very fashionable indeed down here. Certainly, if one is to judge by the duvet of hush which has descended upon the Twenty Six Counties.
The David Quinn quartet, for example, hasn’t played a single bum note in protest. You must be doing something rightwing.
No doubt you, as the current occupant of what formerly known as the Vice Regal Lodge and official residence of the Lord Lieutenant, are aware of the man who penned the above quote. For some unfathomable reason the former Big Wig of the Phoenix Park is not nearly as well-known as he deserves to be.
No, not the one who as a boy lived there and subsequently won the Nobel Prize for Literature. That would have been one who’d have given two thumbs up to your decision to stay put, one, Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill.
Nor was it Dev himself, who, incidentally, had no problem about sending a fleet of ambulances to Belfast during WW2 whether the Loyalists wanted him to, or not.
The very wise former Lord Lieutenant was, of course, Lord Chesterfield. Not only is he virtually unknown in the Free Southern Stateen, but when his name did get a little publicity, it was for all the wrong reasons. That was back in the days when Dr. Samuel Johnson’s Letter to Lord Chesterfield was on the Intermediate Certificate course and the good Lord was cast as The Bad Guy.
In fact, Philip Dormer Stanhope, Fourth Earl of Chesterfield was a very Good Guy indeed. And, during his short tenure as Lord Lieutenant, 1745/ 46, proved himself to the world’s worst Imperialist, pure fourth division, Vauxhall Conference League material. One suspects it was his brain which came between him and the imperative to be a Premier League Imperialist.
When, for instance, responding to the false alarm of a Rising in 1745, while still in his bed chamber, and that ‘the papists are all up !’, he first stretched, then yawned, and replied:
-I am not surprised at all, why, it is ten o’clock. I should have been up too, had I not overslept’.
Lord Chesterfield’s most enduring legacy to the people of Ireland, Dublin (apart from his unparalleled and unappreciated wit – incongruously, he has yet (!) to be added to the increasingly lengthy litany of local literary lions by the banal-retentive Literati on Liffeyside) was the central role he played in the laying out of Phoenix Park, and his insistence that its large gates be opened to the Plain and Unplain People of Dublin alike.
The Phoenix Park is also associated with the Invincibles, when, in 1882, they launched a (literal) surgical strike on the Chief Secretary and his Under Secretary. W.Churchill’s grandfather (see above) heard the screams from what is now Aras an Uachtarain.
A century before, Lord Chesterfield once remarked (if memory serves one correctly, in his Celebrated Letters to this Son) along the lines that ‘if I am ever confronted by ignorance so overwhelming I immediately surrender, for indeed ignorance is truly invincible’
A Uachtarain, you would appear to have done ditto in the face of the DUB’s most recent display of invincibililty. But where you differ from Lord Chesterfield, is that while he had his tongue firmly in a cheek (his own), alas, you seem to have had yours between the cheeks of the leaderette of the DUP.(and not, sadly, the front ones either).
‘Aras an Uachtarain’, may be literally translated from the Leprechaun as ‘The Habitation of the Creamery Manager’ just as ‘Pairc an Fhionn Uisce’ can be only translated as ‘Clear Water Park’ rather than the Phoenix of the mispronouncing, monoglot Englishman.
And should you wish to avoid giving credence to the growing conviction among the minority who count, even if they cannot count, that within the frame of a visionary poet lurks the heart of a creamery manager, and to dispel the rumour that there is Bad Moon on the Rise (see above, under Leadettertte, DUP) then the solution is obvious.
As Commander in Chief of the real Oglaigh na hEireann (they display so themselves) just take a leaf out of old Dev’s book, pull rank, commandeer a military ambulance, and you’ll be in Belfast before the dusty bluebells have begun to toll.
And if the uniformed 26 county ambulance driver has a problem about the wee SIX you could keep him amused / awake by quoting from the lips of Lord Chesterfield which launched a thousand quips. Beginning with his deathless take on, if not the SIX then SEX:
-The position is ridiculous, the pleasure but momentary and the expense damnable.
Followed by , perhaps:
-The Emperor Charles V said he would speak to God in Spanish, to his horse in German, to women in Italian and to men in French’.
Mar Ghael, is mian liom scriobh chugat i nGaeilge, a Uachtarain, agus i nGaeilge na Gaillimhe os rud e gur Gaillimheach gairmiuil tusa, a Uactarain:
-Bain anios an mhear agus …..Scaoil amach an Bobailin !’.
During the 1920s when the then incumbent of the Vice Regal Lodge was Governor General Tim Healy, the residence became known as ‘Uncle Tim’s Cabin’.
Will the Back Story repeal itself?
To leave the last word, fittingly, to Lord C.:
-The Nation looked upon him as a deserter; and he shrunk into insignificancy and – an earldom’.
Is me,
P. Warbeck, Iseal,
Aras an Iochtarain,
Duibhlinn 12.
“alas, you seem to have had yours between the cheeks of the leaderette of the DUP.(and not, sadly, the front ones either)” + “-The position is ridiculous, the pleasure but momentary and the expense damnable” – Once heard, never forgotten. Perkin, you are a veritable treasure-house. May your riches continue to adorn this site…
Why do yous care?
Life’s too short. Enjoy it.
As I said earlier in a recent post, you can look forward to his reply via his secretary with a footnote extending his best wishes and a weasly excuse and s.od all else.
That’s my letter sent too:
Dear Mr President,
Please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, pretty please for the love of God and all that is Holy with a big, fat cherry on top, can you fix it so that you attend SF’s Up the Rising shin dig at City Hall? It would keep an awful lot of childer happy if you would reverse your decision not to attend. You’ll never hear the end of the whining and gurning from now until the end of your term in office, so once again please times infinity reconsider your decision and allow the toys to be placed back in the pram.
Greatly Appreciated,
A.Unionist
Sent my letter yesterday, and iam from the south!
Maith thú, NM!