Veterans Day is a holiday celebrated annually in the United States (and a few other countries) that honors all of the men and women who have served in the military, both past and present. Veterans Day was originally known as Armistice Day. The holiday was first established in 1919 to honor the soldiers who fought in World War I. In 1954, it was renamed Veterans Day to include all veterans of all wars.
The meaning of Veterans Day is to remember the sacrifices that veterans have made for the country. It is also a day to show appreciation for their service. There are many ways to celebrate Veterans Day. Some people choose to participate in parades or other public events. Others may spend time volunteering at a local veterans’ hospital or home. Some people simply take a moment to remember and thank a veteran in their life.
Popular: Sinn Fein president Mary Lou McDonald at the party’s ard fheis earlier this month
November 11 2022 06:30 AM
A series of polls suggest Sinn Fein is currently the most popular party in the Republic.
But for the moment, its role is confined to the opposition benches in the Dail.
The question remains, however, what would a Sinn Fein taoiseach mean, and what would the consequences be, if anything, for Northern Ireland?
There is no love lost between Fine Gael and Fianna Fail — who are coalition partners in government in Dublin, along with the Green Party — and Sinn Fein.
Leo Varadkar, soon to be reappointed taoiseach, has said the Republic cannot have someone leading the country who refuses to condemn terrorism, following Mary Lou McDonald’s comments that there is “no comparison” between IRA violence and gangland violence.
He claimed it would take a decade to clean up the “mess” Sinn Fein would make of the economy if the party was in government.
Current taoiseach Micheal Martin has also recently said it is time to “take the gun out of Irish politics”, but Sinn Fein “is not doing that, it tries to have a bet each way”.
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“Sinn Fein policies in the last year or two, in my view, have not made economic or fiscal sense in terms of the amount of public spending that would be involved.
“They are essentially a party that, at their core, have been anti-EU and anti-enterprise,” he added.
But is this fearmongering or political point-scoring, or a realistic assessment of Ms McDonald’s party and what it would do if it took power?
One former senior DUP figure, who did not want to be named, said a potential Sinn Fein taoiseach would “not make much difference” for Northern Ireland.
“It would be a long road before [a Sinn Fein taoiseach] could actually happen, as, while they may become the largest party, they would still need another party to go into government with,” they said.
“The electorate in the Republic seem to prefer a Fianna Fail/Fine Gael coalition, and Leo Varadkar has already made it clear his party would not go into government with Sinn Fein. Even, let’s say, if Sinn Fein did fill the taoiseach position, I don’t think it would make much difference for us in Northern Ireland.
“It would probably heighten calls for a border poll, but it wouldn’t make such a poll any more likely to succeed.
“People down south don’t vote for Sinn Fein on the constitutional question, they vote for them regarding issues like housing and jobs.
“Recent polls have shown the electorate in the Republic are in favour of a united Ireland, but not if it means paying higher tax to pay for it.
“The vote for Sinn Fein to get one over on the ‘Dublin elite’, who they feel have not treated them fairly, those who feel wealth has not been shared evenly throughout society.
“If Sinn Fein were the lead party in the Republic, I think it would be very short-lived as people would see how economically illiterate the party really is. There’s also the issue of having a possible Sinn Fein taoiseach who can’t even publicly denounce terrorism.”
While Sinn Fein has come out as the most popular party in the Republic in polls, its support has recently dropped slightly.
A survey conducted by the Sunday Independent and Ireland Thinks put the party on top at 34%, but this is a drop of three points from the previous poll in March.
Political commentator David McCann said if Sinn Fein led the government in the Republic, there would be an “initial novelty” of having a Sinn Fein taoiseach for the first time, but “that would soon wear off”.
“If they did lead the government, at the end of the day I don’t think it would be a radical government, as they would have to go into coalition with another party and that would lead to more a run-of-the-mill regime, with Sinn Fein’s potentially more drastic plans tempered,” he said.
“People vote for Sinn Fein on the bread-and-butter issues like housing and healthcare, so they would try to make in-roads in those areas.
“In terms of what it would mean for Northern Ireland, I’m not saying Sinn Fein would ignore the border poll issue, but it’s up to the Northern Ireland secretary to call a border poll.
“They could set up a citizen’s assembly on the constitutional question, as they have been calling for, and do exploratory work on what an all-island civil service and those kind of things would look like, but that’s about it.”
Molotov cocktails being thrown in Northern Ireland during The Troubles. GETTY
Robert Collins’ book acts as a starting point for research into Irish Northern Aid and its role in fundraising and publicizing the republican struggle in the United States.
I became interested in researching Irish America and Northern Ireland through a class at the University of Limerick with Dr. Ruan O’Donnell about The Troubles.
Focusing originally on the tragic events of Bloody Sunday in Derry on January 30, 1972, I began researching Irish America and came across the name Irish Northern Aid (INA) as a support group for the families of republican prisoners.
In its aftermath, INA held protest marches and fundraising events that stretched for blocks in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and as far west as San Francisco. As I delved further into the topic, it became clear to me that this was a significant organization that supported the Republican movement in Ireland, both financially and through a sustained publicity campaign.
However, no serious academic examination had ever been done on the organization, outside of some mention in books and often derisory accounts of its activities.
On Tuesday, October 18, my book, Noraid and the Northern Irish Troubles, 1970-1994, was launched in Belfast at the James Connolly Visitor Center on the Falls Road. The Q&A was chaired by political commentator Andrée Murphy and featured long-term INA activist and current Ancient Order of Hibernians Freedom for All Ireland National Chairperson Martin Galvin via Zoom. It also featured important contributions from Fra McCann, Tom Hartley and Ciaran Cunningham about how much the support from America meant to nationalist families in the six counties.
Hearing first-hand accounts of the impact of these encounters was a humbling experience and reminded me that sometimes just researching a topic is not enough to get a full grasp of the gravity or importance of these relationships. You must hear it from the people involved.
All those in attendance including, most of all, myself, were treated to some excellent commentary and anecdotes on the trans-Atlantic nature of the conflict and the awareness of the Irish American community to events in Northern Ireland.
A week later on October 25, the Teacher’s Club in Dublin was the location for a second book launch, with O’Donnell, senior lecturer in history at the Department of Limerick as the special guest.
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In launching the book, he spoke of the special relationship between America and Ireland, dating as far back as the 1798 United Irishmen Rebellion. Situating Irish Northern Aid within this tradition was a central theme of the book, as was outlining the role of Irish America in legitimizing the struggle for full national sovereignty on the island of Ireland.
The launch also contained valuable contributions from the audience, including former Lord Mayor of Dublin Mícheál Mac Donncha and lifelong Irish republican Jim Monaghan. Also in attendance at the launch was Sinn Fein representative for North America Ciaran Quinn, who recently returned from a 10-day trip to Canada alongside John Finucane MP.
My book acts as a starting point for research into INA and its role in fundraising and publicizing the republican struggle in the United States. As such, there are inevitably people both in Ireland and America who played a greater role than portrayed.
Invariably, there are also likely people to whom this research has given too much credit. Nonetheless, the goal was to provide a serious academic examination of the role that sections of the Irish American community played in both sustaining and ultimately ending the armed conflict of the Provisional IRA.
But after hearing the stories from interviewees and those in attendance in Belfast and Dublin, this author was humbled and is even more determined to further research Irish America and the people who shaped its direction for a quarter of a century.
* The book, “Noraid and the Northern Ireland Troubles, 1970-1994” is now available to order online.
Sinn Féin vice president Michelle O’Neill speaking at her party’s ard fheis. Picture by Damien Storan/PA Wire
John Manley
07 November, 2022 02:00
DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson. Picture by Liam McBurney/PA Wire
THE DUP is using the protocol as an excuse for not sharing power with nationalists, Sinn Féin deputy leader Michelle O’Neill has said.
The first minister designate accused her party’s former partner in government of refusing to accept the outcome of May’s Stormont election, which saw Sinn Féin emerge with the largest number of seats.
In an address to her party’s ard fheis, the Mid Ulster MLA said Sinn Féin “stood ready to form a power-sharing government” but that the institutions lay dormant due to the DUP’s boycott.
She said it was wrong that progress on the issues affecting people’s daily lives were “being put on hold”.
“At any time, this would be unacceptable but in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis it is utterly disgraceful,” Ms O’Neill said.
The Sinn Féin vice-president said the DUP was using the protocol as “cover not to enter power-sharing”.
“And the real reason is because as an Irish nationalist, I will be at the helm as first minister – and everybody knows it,” she said.
Ms O’Neill accused Sir Jeffrey Donaldson of “scaremongering” over the impact of the post-Brexit trade arrangements on healthcare provision, a reference to the DUP leader’s recent claims about the protocol leading to delays in life-saving heart surgery, which were subsequently refuted by two separate health trusts.
She said it was an “irrefutable fact” that the protocol was working and that Sir Jeffrey had been “rebuffed on numerous occasions in the past week about his misleading claims”, including “scaremongering about vital medical care”.
“Jeffrey doesn’t just need a fact-check – he needs a reality check,” she said.
The Sinn Féin deputy leader welcomed recent engagement between British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen.
“What we all want to see is a deal done to make the protocol work better but for the avoidance of doubt, neither the Assembly or the Executive has any mandate or role in these negotiations,” she said.
“So holding back powersharing in the meantime is simply to punish the public – this is reckless and it needlessly polarises our society and politics.”
She called for London and Brussels to “propel” the talks to resolve the outstanding issues around the protocol.
Can there be a united Ireland without a united Northern Ireland?
David Bell
Oct 29
Despite the current turmoil at Westminster or even the more mundane matter of the not unrelated cost-of-living crisis, the constitutional question is never far from being the main concern of many in Northern Ireland. But for at least the immediate future, would it not be better to reflect more on social cohesion than on geographic unity?
Geopolitical regions are of course social constructs. They reflect certain perspectives and judgments in making particular groupings and, like every modern region, the social complexion of Ireland, both north and south, is a product of its past. Invading Anglo-Normans would become Hiberno-Normans, eventually assimilating into the larger Gaelic society to become even ‘more Irish than the Irish’. Some would become Protestant, but most remained Catholic and would chafe under Anglo-British rule. Yet in the north, the Anglo-Irish and staunchly Protestant Scotch-Irish would eschew all things Gaelic and become Ulster Unionists.
Perhaps the most obvious historic difference between Ulster Unionists and Irish Republicans, the other main socio-political group in Northern Ireland, is religion. Indeed, this carefully delineated region was established to provide the larger of these two groups with what has been described as “a Protestant parliament for a Protestant people”. While the creation of this six-county state is frequently cited as a textbook example of sectarian gerrymandering, its consequences are seldom considered purely in terms of social health. Indeed, the creation of Northern Ireland might represent the antithesis of ‘social cohesion’, which the Council of Europe defines as “the capacity of a society to ensure the welfare of all its members, minimising disparities and avoiding polarisation”. Or more plainly, the opposite of equality and inclusion.
Social equality was the theme of Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett’s 2009 book ‘The Spirit Level’, which has the self-explanatory subtitle of ‘Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better’. As the authors note, “the relationships between inequality and poor health and social problems are too strong to be attributable to chance”. Although not as extreme as the United States, the world ‘leader’ in inequality among developed nations, the United Kingdom is shown to have the highest indicators of social dysfunctionality of any of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. Sweden almost always does best.
Early Scandinavians were also among the pre-Norman invaders of Ireland. Between the 8th and 10th centuries, Viking raiders began to settle around several Irish ports. Dublin, or Dubh Linn, Old Norse for ‘black pool’, would become one of the most important centres in the Viking world. Recent DNA analysis has shown that Ireland’s Vikings mostly originated in the region we now know as Norway, whereas those of the Anglo-Saxon era Danelaw tended to be of Danish extraction. It is not clear what this meant in practice, however, both came from a radically different, non-Christian tradition to others who would colonise medieval Hibernia. Nevertheless, all of Ireland’s pagan Vikings would eventually become Christian Norse-Gaels.
From their earliest raids in AD 795 until the Battle of Clontarf in AD 1014, Norsemen played a significant part in the formation of Ireland north and south. Beginning in the 830s, a notable transformation in Viking behaviour becomes increasingly evident. Rather than just transitory raids, evidence of organised Scandinavian settlement begins to emerge. In AD 840, a Viking fleet over-wintering at Lough Neagh, establishing a longphort from where they pillaged and slew or enslaved bishops, priests, and scholars. In AD 841, the Annals of Ulster record that “the heathens were still on Loch nEchach”. The precise location of the Viking stronghold is unknown, but ‘Oxford Island’ is a reminder of their presence, a name derived from the Norse ‘Ost-Fjord’ or East inlet. Nordic placenames have an added importance as, apart from their genetic material, little physical evidence remains of the Viking’s two century sojourn in Ireland.
Viking placenames are mainly on Ireland’s east or south coasts:
The Skellig Islands off the coast of Kerry
Wicklow on the east coast of Ireland
Howth on the north side of Dublin Bay
Dalkey on the coast, south of Dublin
Leixlip on the river Liffey, west of Dublin
Lambay, a small island off the coast of Dublin
The Saltee Islands off the south coast of Wexford
Smerwick on the Dingle peninsula in west Kerry
Dursey Island off the coast of Cork
Strangford on the northeast coast near Belfast
Carlingford on the Irish Sea north of Dundalk
Wexford at the southeast corner of Ireland
Waterford on the south coast of Ireland
The Irish language has borrowed heavily for words relating to commerce and seafaring, two of the more peaceable activities associated with Vikings. The Irish words for ‘peddler’, ‘tax’ and ‘market’, for example, all come from Old Norse. It is the same for such nautical items as ‘rudder’, ‘anchor’ and ‘rowlock’ while the Irish words for ‘fishing-line’ and ‘cod’ have a similar provenance.
English Old Norse Irish
anchor akkeri ancaire
boat bátr bád
sheet/sail skaut scod
rudder stýri stiúir
thwart popta tochta
fishing-line dorga dorú (dorgha)
ling (fish) langa langa
cod (fish) porskr trosc
market markadhr margadh
penny penninger pinginn
button knappr cnaipe
shoe brók bróg
beans baunir pónair
enclosed plot/yard gardhr garrdha
Table 1. Irish loan-words words borrowed from Old Norse
Uí Ímair is Old Irish for ‘descendants of Ivar’, the legendary Ivar the Boneless in this case, also known as Ivar Ragnarsson. From the mid-9th century, a Norse-Gael dynasty of this name were centred in the Kingdom of Dublin from where they reigned over much of the Irish Sea region from the Hebrides to Northern England, stretching as far south as York. Ivar the Boneless was reputedly head of the ‘Great Heathen Army’ that invaded England in AD 865. Silkenbeard, also known as Sigtrygg Olafsson, a descendant of Ivar the Boneless, was head of the Uí Ímair between AD 995 and AD 1036 and son-in-law to Brian Boru, King of Munster.
By the end of the 9th century, the descendants of Vikings were established as Kings and Queens in several regions across Ireland and some of these, including Silkenbeard, clashed with Brian as he sought to become the first High King of all Ireland. The battle that took place at Clontarf on Good Friday AD 1014 was described in the Irish annals as the “slaughter of the Foreigners of the Western World” by the Christian Irish and has passed into folk lore as the birth of a nation. As with most origin myths, however, the facts, like the outcome of the battle itself, are a little less clear cut.
Clontarf was, at best, a pyrrhic victory. Nevertheless, unlike Ethelred the Unready the previous year, defeated by Sweyn Forkbeard, the Irish did not collapse in the face of “the Norse tyranny”. However, far from being eradicated, the decedents of the Hiberno-Norse founders of Dublin and other towns across Ireland remained a significant presence long after AD 1014. Indeed, their influence was felt as far afield as Iceland where a new Norse-Irish identity emerged. But it would be the descendants of a different branch of Norsemen who would dictate the next chapter in Ireland’s history.
The arrival of the Anglo-Normans during the late 12th century set the country down a meandering path leading to where it is today. Ireland, both north and south, evolved under the sway of what would eventually become Britain. Now, almost 1000 years later and in light of the latest Northern Ireland census statistics, there can be little doubt that the people of Ireland once again stand at a crossroads. On this occasion, however, they are better placed to be the masters of their own destiny.
In the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, the British and Irish Governments acknowledged that the constitutional status of Northern Ireland turned on the consent of a majority of its people. The 1998 Belfast Agreement enshrined the duty of the Secretary of State in this process, to call a border poll when it was judged likely that a majority would be supportive of Northern Ireland forming part of a united Ireland. However, it is difficult to imagine how a chronically divided Northern Ireland would happily form part of a united Ireland.
We could, perhaps, do worse than get in touch with our inner Viking! Not so much dwelling on the traditional propensity towards rapine, pillage and plunder but more on the Nordic package of social welfare and economic systems. This combines features of capitalism, such as a market economy and fiscal efficiency, with generous social welfare in areas such as state pensions and medical care. This ‘Nordic model’ contrasts with the winner-take-all ‘American model’ of capitalism, which has been so enthusiastically, and disastrously, embraced by the current British government. There would, however, be one major stumbling block to Northern Ireland’s adoption of the Scandinavian paradigm. As discussed above, social cohesion, is pivotal.
An engagement with politics is considered an important factor for social cohesion. Voter turnout in Scandinavian has traditionally been high, figures over 85% are not unusual. In the United States, on the other hand, turnout rarely exceeds 60% of the electorate. And these electorates expect very different thing of their representatives. While Trumpian razzamatazz might be acceptable in the United States, Scandinavian politicians are required to behave like ordinary citizens and have interests beyond politics, what Denis Healey’s wife Edna described as his “hinterland”. In Northern Ireland, overall turnout for the 2022 Assembly election was 64%, a figure more in line with the United States than with Scandinavia. There was, however, a distinct east west divide. Fermanagh South Tyrone, at 69%, had the highest average turnout while North Down had the lowest at 48%. Turnout for Local Government is even worse, sitting in the low 40s in some District Electoral Areas of Belfast.
Another indicator of social cohesion is the amount of social capital a community possesses. This has been defined as “the networks of relationships among people who live and work in a particular society, enabling that society to function effectively”. An example of this might be hearing of a job opportunity through a friend-of-a-friend. In Northern Ireland, however, there are two distant and largely separate communities. A teacher working in Wheatfield Primary School in West Belfast, for example, would be unlikely to hear of a vacancy at Holy Cross Girls’ Primary School by word of mouth, or vice versa, despite being geographically adjacent to each other.
On the world stage, interest in the concept of social cohesion has waxed and waned. However, if Northern Ireland is indeed at a constitutional crossroads, it might now be time to consider what benefits its application might offer this beleaguered state. The present choice is between a dysfunctional Northern Ireland within a United Kingdom and a dysfunctional north within a United Ireland. Clearly, despite some thinking on this matter that ranges from wishful to magical, neither option is good. As any poll on a united Ireland looks to be some years off, perhaps we could best spend this time focused on “minimising disparities and avoiding polarisation”.
