‘Up’ is a popular word these days. There can be few people who haven’t heard or heard about the Ireland women’s soccer team celebrating their victory with a few lines from the Celtic Symphony, to wit “Ooh, aah, up the ‘Ra!” This has enraged some and amused others.
Up applies also to Micheál Martin, who was up in the north-eastern corner of our country to meet with representatives of all parties and urge them to form an Executive. It would be fair to say that Micheál’s popularity with unionists is up there in the stratosphere, since he seems more concerned with the feelings of unionists than with looking at the Good Friday Agreement and setting up a citizens’ assembly regarding a possible border poll, as the GFA says should come when enough people want it.
Up appears in an article in the Irish Times by Fintan O’Toole. In fact, Up appears in that article around several dozen times. What Fintan has done is say not ‘Up the Ra!’ but Up with all the bloody deeds he believes the IRA were guilty of during the Troubles. I’m in eager expectation of another article from Fintan, where he will cry “Up!” about all the bloody deeds performed by the British army, the RUC, the UDA and the UVF over the course of the Troubles. He might even yell “Up!” when he has read Danny Morrison’s The Good Old IRA, which catalogues the even more numerous bloody deeds perpetrated by the ‘good old IRA’ of the early years of the twentieth century – the IRA which waged war that established the state in which Fintan, presumably, is happy to live.
Ireland has been partitioned for just 100 years. Britain still claims jurisdiction over the six north-eastern counties, just as it claimed jurisdiction over the 32 counties of Ireland, until the ‘good old’ IRA forced them to concede independence to 26 of these. The fact that southern politicians like Micheål and southern scribes like Fintan seem intent on keeping the six NE counties within British jurisdiction is undemocratic and shameful.
Many of us have high hopes that Micheál and Fintan’s anti-republicanism is something up with which we will soon not have to put.
Never end a sentence with a preposition, Virginia. Especially ‘up’.
Well said and delivered Jude Collins