We All Will Need a Holiday, a Chara
Posted by Jim on August 5, 2022
A Letter from IrelandThe Lark and the Freedom Fighter
Posted by Jim on August 4, 2022
An essay written by Bobby Sands in 1979 while protesting against the criminalisation of republican prisoners. Because protesting prisoners were not allowed books or writing materials, this essay was composed on a square of toilet paper and smuggled out of the prison.
My grandfather once said that the imprisonment of the lark is a crime of the greatest cruelty because the lark is one of the greatest symbols of freedom and happiness. He often spoke of the spirit of the lark relating to a story of a man who incarcerated one of his loved friends in a small cage.
The lark, having suffered the loss of her liberty, no longer sung her little heart out, she no longer had anything to be happy about. The man who had committed the atrocity, as my grandfather called it, demanded that the lark should do as he wished: that was to sing her heart out, to comply to his wishes and change herself to suit his pleasure or benefit.
The lark refused, and the man became angry and violent. He began to pressurise the lark to sing, but inevitably he received no result. so, he took more drastic steps. He covered the cage with a black cloth, depriving the bird of sunlight. He starved it and left it to rot in a dirty cage, but the bird still refused to yield. The man murdered it.
As my grandfather rightly stated, the lark had spirit – the spirit of freedom and resistance. It longed to be free, and died before it would conform to the tyrant who tried to change it with torture and imprisonment. I feel I have something in common with that bird and her torture, imprisonment and final murder. She had a spirit which is not commonly found, even among us so-called superior beings, humans.
Take an ordinary prisoner. His main aim is to make his period of imprisonment as easy and as comfortable as possible. The ordinary prisoner will in no way jeopardise a single day of his remission. Some will even grovel, crawl and inform on other prisoners to safeguard themselves or to speed up their release. They will comply to the wishes of their captors, and unlike the lark, they will sing when told to and jump high when told to move.
Although the ordinary prisoner has lost his liberty he is not prepared to go to extremes to regain it, nor to protect his humanity. He settles for a short date of release. Eventually, if incarcerated long enough, he becomes institutionalised, becoming a type of machine, not thinking for himself, his captors dominating and controlling him. That was the intended fate of the lark in my grandfather’s story; but the lark needed no changing, nor did it wish to change, and died making that point.
This brings me directly back to my own situation: I feel something in common with that poor bird. My position is in total contrast to that of an ordinary conforming prisoner: I too am a political prisoner, a freedom fighter. Like the lark, I too have fought for my freedom, not only in captivity, where I now languish, but also while on the outside, where my country is held captive. I have been captured and imprisoned, but, like the lark, I too have seen the outside of the wire cage.
I am now in H-Block, where I refuse to change to suit the people who oppress, torture and imprison me, and who wish to dehumanise me. Like the lark I need no changing. It is my political ideology and principles that my captors wish to change. They have suppressed my body and attacked my dignity. If I were an ordinary prisoner they would pay little, if any, attention to me, knowing that I would conform to their insitutional whims.
I have lost over two years’ remission. I care not. I have been stripped of my clothes and locked in a dirty, empty cell, where I have been starved, beaten, and tortured, and like the lark I fear I may eventually be murdered. But, dare I say it, similar to my little friend, I have the spirit of freedom that cannot be quenched by even the most horrendous treatment. Of course I can be murdered, but while I remain alive, I remain what I am, a political prisoner of war, and no one can change that.
Haven’t we plenty of larks to prove that? Our history is heart-breakingly littered with them: the MacSwineys, the Gaughans, and the Staggs. Will there be more in H-Block?
I dare not conclude without finishing my grandfather’s story. I once asked him whatever happened to the wicked man who imprisoned, tortured and murdered the lark?
‘Son,” he said, ‘one day he caught himself on one of his own traps, and no one would assist him to get free. His own people scorned him, and turned their backs on him. He grew weaker and weaker, and finally topled over to die upon the land which he had marred with such blood. The birds came and extracted their revenge by picking his eyes out, and the larks sang like they never sang before.’
‘Grandfather,’ I said, ‘could that man’s name have been John Bull?’
About the GAA
Posted by Jim on July 23, 2022
The Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) is Ireland’s largest sporting organisation. It is celebrated as one of the great amateur sporting associations in the world.
It is part of the Irish consciousness and plays an influential role in Irish society that extends far beyond the basic aim of promoting Gaelic games.
It was founded on November 1 1884 at a meeting in Thurles, Co. Tipperary, by a group of spirited Irishmen who had the foresight to realise the importance of establishing a national organisation to make athletics more accessible to the masses and to revive and nurture traditional,indigenous sports and pastimes. At that time, it was largely only the gentry and aristocracy who were allowed to meaningfully participate in athletics.
Until then all that was Irish was being steadily eroded by emigration, intense poverty and outside influences.Within six months of that famous first meeting, GAA clubs began to spring up all over Ireland and people began to play the games of Hurling and Gaelic Football and take part in Athletic events with pride.
The Association today promotes Gaelic games such as Hurling, Football, Handball and Rounders and works with sister organisations to promote Ladies Football and Camogie. The Association also promotes Irish music, song and dance and the Irish language as an integral part of its objectives. The GAA has remained an amateur Association since its founding. Players, even at the highest level, do not receive payment for playing and the volunteer ethos remains one of the most important aspects of the GAA.
The organisation is based on the traditional parishes and counties of Ireland.As a community-based organisation, it is often stated that it is difficult to determine where the community end sand the GAA club starts as they generally overlap and are intertwined. The GAA has over 2,200 clubs in all 32 counties of Ireland.
Every summer the inter-county All-Ireland Championships in hurling and football capture the attention of the Irish public, and regional towns heave with the arrival of large numbers of supporters and the colour, noise and excitement that they bring. In the region of 1.5 million people attend the GAA Championships from May to September.
However, by far the two biggest days in the GAA calendar are the All-Ireland finals in hurling and football. A sell out attendance of 82,300 is guaranteed in Croke Park and the quest for tickets is intense as Ireland’s top counties do battle for the right to be All-Ireland champions.The finals are broadcast around the world.The GAA has developed abroad amongst the Irish Diaspora.The Irish who emigrated brought their national games with them and both regional and club units are now well established in the United States of America, Australia,Britain, Canada, China, mainland Europe and many other parts of the world.
400 clubs promote the activities of the GAA around the world.As with all aspects of Irish society, the GAA has undergone many changes in the past 40 years. Among the first major changes to take place was the removal of ‘the Ban’ in 1971,which had prevented members of the Association from playing or attending a number of other sports such as soccer and rugby.
In more recent times changes have been made to the rule which prevented members of the Security Forces in the north of Ireland from becoming members of the Association, and the rule which limited the playing of games at Croke Park and all other Association venues to only those controlled by the Association. At the 2005 Annual Congress a vote was passed to allow international rugby and soccer matches be staged at Croke Park for the first time for the duration of the redevelopment of their traditional venue at Lansdowne Road.
Both amendments were viewed as contributing positively to the emergence of post-’Troubles’ modern Ireland.
Huge changes have also taken place in the structure of the GAA’s inter-county Championships. For 110 years, the All-Ireland Championships had been run on a purely knockout basis. In 1997 a new system meant that for the first time a team who had suffered a defeat could still win the All-Ireland hurling title, as losing provincial finalists were re-entered in the competition.
In 2001, the Football Championships adopted a similar approach. The result was the most exciting Championship in years and a dramatic increase in the number of quality games at national level for GAA fans.
With a marked increase in attendances and the need to market the games more fervently, the GAA invested heavily in the development of its grounds. Indeed it has been estimated that the GAA has invested (in current purchasing power) the equivalent of €2.6 billion in its nationwide infrastructure at national and local level in the past 50 years. The result is that the vast majority of GAA clubs, even in the most rural areas of Ireland, have developed and enjoy ownership of their own grounds and associated facilities.
However, it is the Association’s Headquarters at Croke Park which has been the subject of the most dramatic redevelopment. The stadium has been thoroughly modernised in a rebuilding project that took place between 1993 and 2005 and the stadium’s capacity was increased from 64,000 to 82,300 and is now considered to be among the most modern stadiums in Europe. It stands today as a monument to the selfless work and dedication of the GAA’s enormous legion of volunteers.
Further change for the Association has followed the publication of the Association’s Strategic Vision and Action Plan 2009-2015. It charts a path for the Association across the wide spectrum of its activities and many of the goals set out have already been realised. Many of Ireland’s most prominent personalities over the years have been well known for their exploits on the GAA fields.
Former Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Jack Lynch wona record six All-Ireland medals-in-a-row, five in hurling(1941-44 and 1946) and in 1945 in football with his native Cork. John Wilson, a former Tánaiste (Deputy PrimeMinister) won an All-Ireland football medal with Cavan at the Polo Grounds, New York in the only All-Ireland final played outside Ireland.Several current members of Parliament also played the games at the highest level and Minister of State for the Diaspora, Jimmy Deenihan T.D., won five All-Ireland football medals, and captained the Kerry team in 1981. The father of An Taoiseach Enda Kenny, Henry Kenny, won an All-Ireland football medal with Mayo in 1950.
IN MEMORY
Posted by Jim on July 22, 2022
In Memory
July 22, 2022 by Irish Echo Staff
Pic of Day: Pictured is artist Paula Stokes in St. Patrick’s Hall, Dublin Castle where former president of Ireland Mary Robinson launched a Memento Mori, a memorial installation dedicated to the victims of the Great Hunger. The stark, simple, banquet table holds a representation of an inedible crop of 1,845 hand-blown, ghostly white, glass potatoes created by Stokes. The artistic rendering is laden with symbolism and meaning as Dublin Castle served as the center of opulence and power at a time of starvation, mass emigration and misery in the Ireland outside the Castle’s gates. Photo by Leah Farrell Photocall Ireland.