James Connelly by Mary Black
Posted by Jim on June 14, 2022
The Battle of the Bogside
Posted by Jim on June 13, 2022
The scene for the Battle of the Bogside was set long before August 1969. For years the nationalist majority of Derry had suffered a unionist gerrymander of the city which left many Catholics living in slum conditions.
Matters came to a head in October 1968 when a civil rights march was met with force by the RUC.
Pictures of MPs leading the parade were beamed across the world, bringing the problems in the north of Ireland to a global audience.
In January 1969 the situation deteriorated further when loyalists attacked a People’s Democracy march from Belfast to Derry at Burntollet.
Days later ‘Free Derry’ was born in response to attacks on Bogside pensioners’ homes by the RUC.
The July 12 Orange Order parades in 1969 were accompanied by violence and so it was not a surprise that tensions were high leading into the Relief of Derry march planned for August 12.
The largest loyal order march of the year, the Relief of Derry, was organised annually by the Apprentice Boys to mark the end of the Siege of Derry in 1689.
For years it had been a source of tension in the city as a coat-trailing exercise and it was often accompanied by violence.
Despite the rising tensions, on August 8 1969 the Stormont government decided to allow the parade to go ahead.
As it passed close to the Bogside at Waterloo Place on August 12, rioting erupted between nationalists and Apprentice Boys and their supporters.
RUC immediately used armoured cars and water cannon – followed by loyalist rioters – to chase nationalists back into the Bogside.
What became know as the Battle of the Bogside began.
Rioting ebbed and flowed as day moved into night and Bogsiders, supported by nationalists who rallied from all over the north-west, forced police and loyalists back out of ‘Free Derry’.
Rioters used the vantage point of the high-rise Rossville Street flats to keep police at bay with missiles and petrol bombs.
At one stage — with concern rising that rioters would run out of petrol — the Derry Citizens Defence Association dispatched representatives to obtain petrol from a garage, providing a receipt against the petrol seized.
By the morning of Wednesday August 13, rioting had spread to other nationalist areas of the north in a pogrom of Catholic areas.
Taoiseach Jack Lynch issued his famed and usually inaccurately quoted message that “we will not stand idly by” as he sent Irish troops to the border to establish first-aid posts.
What Lynch actually said was: “The present situation is the inevitable outcome of the policies pursued for decades by successive Stormont governments.
“It is clear also that the Irish government can no longer stand by and see innocent people injured and perhaps worse.”
With refugees fleeing south, Stormont mobilised the B-Specials who were soon repelled by the Bogside nationalists.
As the north faced into an abyss on day three, two people were killed by the RUC.
Nine-year-old Catholic boy Patrick Rooney was shot dead in his Divis Flats’ home in west Belfast when police fired from a Browning machine gun mounted on an armoured car.
In Armagh, John Gallagher was also shot dead at Cathedral Road by B-Specials.
With the RUC now completely exhausted and over-stretched, Six County prime minister James Chichester-Clarke asked the British government to deploy troops.
At 4.30pm, British PM Harold Wilson agreed.
At around 5pm on Thursday August 14 the first soldiers of the Prince of Wales Own – on standby outside Derry – marched into the Waterloo Place front line in their distinctive ‘Tommy’ tin hats and carrying tin shields and SLR rifles.
Their commander, Major David Hanson told journalists:
“Provided one is pleasant and polite, one can achieve an awful lot in this world.”
Their arrival marked the start of what the British army code-named Operation Banner, a campaign of atrocities that was to last 38 years. The next day, August 15, six people Herbert Roy (26), Hugh McCabe (20), Samuel McLarnon (27), Michael Lynch (28), Gerald McAuley (15) and David Linton (15) were dead.
Brexit:
Posted by Jim on
PM to unveil plans to scrap parts of NI Protocol agreed with EU
https://emp.bbc.com/emp/SMPj/2.44.15/iframe.htmlMedia caption,
The PM says the protocol is “upsetting the balance of the Belfast Good Friday Agreement” ahead of changes to be announced
Boris Johnson will later publish plans to scrap parts of the post-Brexit deal he struck with the EU in 2020.
The PM wants to change the Protocol section of the deal to make it easier for some goods to move between Britain and Northern Ireland.
But the EU is against the move, saying it would break international law.
The UK insists its proposals – to be set out in a parliamentary bill – are legal and will secure the future of the United Kingdom.
The two sides agreed the Protocol as they strived to maintain peace in Ireland – including the open Irish border – following Brexit.
The Republic of Ireland is still part of the EU’s single market for goods and services, which the UK has left.
Rather than impose a hard border – involving checks on goods and people moving between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic – the protocol introduces checks on some goods travelling from from Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales) to Northern Ireland.
The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which won the second-most seats in the recent Northern Ireland Assembly elections, argues this creates a divide that could lead to the break-up of the UK.
It is refusing to set up a new ruling Northern Ireland executive with Sinn Féin, which won most seats in the elections and accepts the protocol, until changes are made to the wording.
The UK government, despite signing up to the agreement in January 2020, has also raised concerns, prompting the publication of its bill later on Monday.
Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis said he was confident it would be lawful for the UK to make changes to the protocol without the EU being involved, and that he expected the DUP to form an executive with Sinn Féin after the bill was published.
There’s been a long build up to this legislation which will, this week, generate a lot of noise.
The EU won’t “sit by and watch the UK tear up a treaty”, warned one Brussels diplomat.
The European Commission is expected to relaunch legal action against the UK, which was previously paused, once it’s had a chance to analyse the bill.
That’s seen as a first step or “low-hanging fruit”.
But the commission is also likely, before long, to outline further “flexibilities” around its own proposals for easing checks on goods arriving into Northern Ireland from Great Britain.
It won’t be anything like the more fundamental rewriting of the treaty that the UK’s calling for but officials on both sides have signalled that they don’t see today’s legislation as ending any prospect of further talks.
In fact, some in Brussels view this bill, that’s further exposed splits in a fractious Tory party, as a clumsy UK negotiating tactic.
There’s speculation too that Liz Truss is trying to burnish her leadership credentials with some Conservative Brexit supporters.
But allies of the foreign secretary insist that, behind this potential law, there is a far simpler logic; if the EU won’t renegotiate a treaty that is causing huge problems in Northern Ireland, then the UK government is obliged to act.
Putting questions around blame and motives aside, one clear outcome of today looks set to be a further deterioration in post-Brexit relations between the UK and the EU.
UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and European Commission Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič discussed the UK government’s plan on Monday morning.
Afterwards, Ms Truss said she wanted to “fix the problems with the Northern Ireland Protocol and restore political stability”, adding that Brussels must be “willing to change”.
But Mr Šefčovič tweeted that the UK’s actions were “damaging to mutual trust and a formula for uncertainty”.
DUP MP Sammy Wilson said it was “impossible” to make a judgement call on proposed changes to the protocol until the final draft of the bill, which appeared to be “a changing feast”, was published.
Sinn Féin leader Mary-Lou McDonald told Sky News the UK legislation would break international law and cause “huge, huge damage” to the Northern Irish and Irish economies.
And Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin called for negotiations between the UK and EU to deal with the impasse.
He described the UK government’s decision to change the protocol as a “low point”, which was was “very regrettable”.
“Announcing the unilateral breaching of an international agreement is pretty serious stuff and can’t be just put aside,” Mr Martin said.
“It goes to the heart of trust and the European Union needs a trusted partner to negotiate with.”
What is the Northern Ireland Protocol?
- The Northern Ireland Protocol is part of the Brexit deal: it means lorries don’t face checkpoints when they go from Northern Ireland (in the UK) to the Republic of Ireland (in the EU)
- Instead, when goods arrive in Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK (England, Scotland and Wales), they are checked against EU rules
- The UK and the EU chose this arrangement because the Irish border is a sensitive issue due to Northern Ireland’s troubled political history
Read more: A simple guide to the Brexit border problem
The bill published later is expected to aim to remove checks on goods arriving into Northern Ireland from Great Britain that are destined to remain there rather than enter the Irish Republic.
Under the plans, businesses in Northern Ireland would be able to chose between sticking to either EU or UK standards, as well as UK VAT and state aid rules applying in Northern Ireland.
It is also expected there would be a more limited rule for the European Court of Justice.
Goodbye Columbus Hello St. Brendan
Posted by Jim on June 12, 2022
By Abdon Moriarty Pallasch
In this piece from our archives Abdon Moriarty Pallasch talks to Tim Severin (d. 2020) who retraced the 6th century legendary journey of St. Brendan from Ireland to Newfoundland.
The idea that Irish monks in an ox-hide boat might have beaten the Conquistadors and the Vikings to America was largely relegated to Irish folklore before 1976.
That year, British navigation scholar Tim Severin set off from Ireland in an ox-hide leather “currach” to prove that St. Brendan the Navigator and his followers could indeed have sailed to American and back again in the 6th century.
His landfall on Newfoundland after four months sailing proved Brendan’s voyage could be done with medieval material and medieval technology,” said Severin, who now lives in Courtmacherry, Cork.
Severin first learned of St. Brendan’s voyage while studying navigation at Harvard in the 1970’s when he happened on Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abatis (Voyage of St. Brendan the Abbot), a Latin text dating from the 9th century, copies of which have survived in monasteries around Europe. (“A medieval best-seller,” Smithsonian magazine called it.)
It was the Navigatio’s detailed description of Brendan’s boat which piqued Severin’s interest. Brendan’s monks tanned ox-hides with oak bark, stretched them across the wooden frame of a boat, sewed them with leather thread, and smeared them with fat to seal them against water – a composition that would preserve a boat well in cold water, Severin thought.
Opening a nautical map of the North Atlantic, Severin said he was amazed by the obviousness of the route Brendan would have had to take to reach America.
The only westward-flowing current available to ships sailing from Ireland would be the northernmost part of the Atlantic, hugging the coasts of Iceland and Greenland – the route Leif Ericson, the Viking, would follow in the 10th century.
“It was like all the pieces of the puzzle suddenly fell in together,” he said.
“Monks seeing icebergs for the first time would call them crystals. “Volcanic activity off the coast of Iceland would spew red-hot sulfur-smelling rocks into the ocean,” as mentioned in the Navigatio.
With help from other enthusiasts of the Brendan legend in both Ireland and England, Severin literally sewed together an old-fashioned replica of Brendan’s currach using materials that would have been present in Brendan’s day.
In May, 1976, Severin and his crew set off from Brandon Creek, in that remote area of Kerry’s Dingle Peninsula where fishermen still build currachs for themselves.
The leather sails of the St. Brendan carried them north to Scotland where Brendan had visited other priests; then northwest to the Danish Faroe Islands, where another “Brandon Creek” still marks the spot where natives believe Brendan disembarked. Severin’s crew waited out the winter in Iceland.
Many of the stops on Brendan’s legendary voyage were at islands where Irish monks had set up primitive monasteries. Norsemen who later sailed these waters and landed on these islands would record the presence of Irish priests who they called “Papers” (Fathers).
Severin said he was surprised at the friendliness of whales that swam around the boat and even underneath it. The few ships that travel those icy northern waters are usually freighters with large engines. By contrast, Severin’s boat “looked more like a whale – skin stretched over a bony frame – and far less menacing,” he said.
Fourteen hundred years ago, before whales had any contact with man, Severin feels they may have felt uninhibited enough to surface with a boat on their back, as told in the Navigatio, certainly, some of the whales could have been viewed as “sea monsters,” he said.
Severin’s boat survived a puncture by the columns of floating ice off Canada. While a puncture might have sunk a fiberglass boat, Severin and his men were able to sew a new piece of ox-hide over the hole.
While Severin’s crew had a few modern conveniences such as a radio and dried meats, he had to endure the same cold and wetness Brendan’s monks endured. He also tasted their diet of fish and sea birds.
“For hardy 6th-century monks used to living off fish and birds in stone cliffs on barren rocky islands, a sailboat ride to America wouldn’t have seemed as daunting,” Severin said.
Severin’s crew landed in Newfoundland, Canada, on June 26, 1977, in the area where they believed Brendan and his men would have landed.
While Severin’s journey does not prove that St. Brendan did make the voyage to North America, it does prove that a small leather boat or currach of the type that is described in Navigatio could make the journey by the route laid down by the Latin text. What is also obvious is that the Irish were pioneering seafarers of the North Atlantic currents almost 1,000 years before Columbus set foot in America.
The Brendan legend was better known around Europe during Columbus’ time than Leif Ericson’s because of the Catholic Church’s network of monasteries. “Columbus was aware of the legend of St. Brendan,” said William McKee, a history professor at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida. “It was an important part of the folklore and legend in medieval Europe. It may have influenced Columbus to sail west, looking for Brendan’s ‘Promised Land of the Saints’ while he sought a passage to India,” McKee said.
Maps from Columbus’ day often featured an island or islands in the western Atlantic called, “St. Brendan’s Isle.”
“It may well be that navigators from Ireland came across the Atlantic and touched ground at Newfoundland said Michel Gannon, a history professor at the University of Florida. “I would like to think that because I’m Irish myself.”
More conclusive proof may come from a site in West Virginia where stone carvings dating to some time between the years 500-1000 have been discovered. Analysis by archaeologist Dr. Robert Pule and a leading ancient language expert, Dr. Barry Fell, indicate that they are written in Old Irish employing the Ogham alphabet. According to Dr. Fell, the “West Virginia Ogham texts are the oldest Ogham inscriptions recorded from anywhere in the world. They exhibit the grammar and vocabulary of Old Irish in a manner previously unknown in such early rock-cut inscriptions in any Celtic language.” Dr. Fell goes on to speculate that, “It seems possible that the scribes who cut the West Virginia inscriptions my have been Irish missionaries in the wake of Brendan’s voyage, for these inscriptions are Christian because the early Christian symbols of piety, such as the various Chi-Rho monograms (Name of Christ) and the Dextera Dei (Right Hand of God) appear at the sites together with the Ogham texts.”
The legend of St. Brendan is powerful enough that Irish Americans from New York to San Francisco and from Boston to Daytona Beach, have chosen St. Brendan as the namesake for their parishes.
In 1978, Clearwater Beach Catholics, many of them Irish-Americans, built a church on Island Estates, where just about every family has a boat docked out back. They saw a symmetry between Brendan and his men setting off in an ox-hide currach from Kerry’s Brandon Creek and a church named for him on an inlet of Florida’s Intracoastal Waterway next to a marina that specializes in modern fiber-glass boats.
“It’s a maritime area,” said Cavan-born Father Edward Mulligan.
The church’s 14 stained glass windows depict St. Brendan’s seven-year odyssey as recorded in the Navigatio: sailing past the crystal that stretched up to the clouds; past the “Island of [black]smiths” where inhabitants hurled flaming, foul-smelling rocks at the monks, and finally, landfall in the sweet-smelling “Promised Land of the Saints.”
Brendan and his monks explored until they came to a “great river” that divided the land. Then they sailed back to Ireland.
“The Irish are lousy historians,” said Monsignor James McMahon, pastor of St. Brendan’s parish in Brooklyn. McMahon went to Ireland and looked for documents or authenticated histories of Brendan’s life and was disappointed to find little.
McMahon, a former history teacher and a self-professed skeptic when it comes to historical legends, nonetheless believes the Brendan story must be based on an actual great voyage of some sort.
when he served as pastor of St. Brendan’s Parish in Clearwater, Florida.
Fr. Edward Mulligan is willing to take it on faith.
Historians believe Brendan was born about 484 A.D. near Tralee in Kerry. He was ordained by Bishop Erc and sailed far and wide spreading the faith and founding monasteries, the largest at Clonfert, Galway, where he was buried in 577 at the age of 93. But when Mulligan was studying in the seminary in Dublin, the priests didn’t dwell too long on St. Brendan’s accomplishments.
“He was kind of overshadowed by St. Patrick,” Mulligan said.
But when Mulligan, like Brendan before him, left his home and family to travel to America as a missionary, he took a new interest in the Brendan legend.
“When I came to this country, I began to study everything I could get a hold of regarding St. Brendan,” he said.
Mulligan had become a firm believer in the story, and he carried on the faith like other Irish immigrants and Irish-Americans.
“There’s so much evidence that it really was possible to make the journey,” Mulligan said.♦
