August, 2017

  There is a bust of Melina Mercouri on the side of a street below the Parthenon in Athens. It is positioned in a such a way that is looks eternally upwards in the direction of the fabled temple on the top of a classical hill. It is to sculpture what Opus 113 by Ludwig […]

  The decision of the British government to hold a referendum in 2016 re their membership of the EU was taken without regard for the implications for the peace process in Ireland and the sensitivity about the issue of the border which was imposed on Ireland in 1920. Since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, people […]

PICS 1- 4 are  by Perkin Warbeck   pic 1 Pic 2 Pic 3   Pic 4   “A MALTASTY MOUTHFUL Pic 4:   ‘This traditional Maltese house was built in the turn of the 19th Centre. Constructed in Maltese lime stone, it holds a number of Maltese stone handcraft, such as traditional apertures, iron works […]

Further to my blog earlier today on Trump and Confederate statues in the US, the artist Rita Duffy has suggested ‘artistic intervention’ rather than destruction, and has given the example of Carson’s statue at Stormont having a Degas’s ‘Little Dancer’ style tutu added for a few weeks. If you think this is a good idea, […]

 Following its 1918 mandate Sinn Fein established a national parliament, Dáil Éireann, to govern Ireland as a Republic and set up departments of state and republican courts. Its mandate was renewed in 1921 when John Dillon’s Irish Party declined to contest seats it had lost. in 1918. The Second Dáil sent delegates to negotiate with […]

This line from the ever popular The Fields of Athenry, sums up why Irish republicans are always preoccupied with achieving freedom – not just for Ireland but for Palestine and for other oppressed people around the world. Indeed, the Irish struggle for freedom, in the early 1900s, inspired many other people in Indiaand elsewhere to struggle for […]

I note that Senator Gerard Craughwell is to seek a nomination to contest the next presidential election should current incumbent Michael D Higgins stand unopposed for a second term of office. In a statement issued from the Seanad Senator Craughwell said democracy demands that all presidents should be elected.  Article 12. 5 of Bunreacht na […]

The term “managing the past” has been known to send me up the walls gibbering and swearing. On the face of it, the past is the past – it’s fixed, it’s gone, it can’t be manipulated or changed. What can be done is manage how we view the past, and important work that is too. […]

Thanks to Donal Kennedy for locating this link….   http://www.advertiser.ie/galway/article/36110/friedrich-engels-and-his-forgotten-journey-to-county-galway

 According to THE TIMES OF LONDON the General Election of 1918, in so far as it affected Irish Constituencies, was regarded on all sides as a plebiscite. The paper grudgingly conceded that Sinn Fein, which contested the election,won by a landslide. There are still today newspaper pundits and professors of history who would deny, but […]