The BBC have just announced that Eddie McGrady has announced that he is not going to stand in South Down at the Westminster election. The speculation is that the new SDLP leader Margaret Ritchie will stand; Sinn Fein have already selected Catriona Ruane.
It’s not often we get free things to give away to our readers, but courtesy of Palgrave Macmillan we have a nice paperback copy of Brian M Walker’s excellent history of partition of the island and how identities shifted in both the north east and the south and west: as most of the territory that [...] read our review »
Northern Ireland’s peace process has been promoted as an international success story. The Republic’s Department of Foreign Affairs has its Conflict Resolution Unit, which aims to disseminate the ‘lessons’ of the Northern Ireland peace process. And some of the prominent players in our peace process have travelled abroad to other troubled spots to share their [...] read our review »
We’ll have to agree to differ on Faulkner, Rory.
The Arkle Bar in Downpatrick used to be owned by the family of my partner. Her father ( Patrick Crolly) was from Ballykilbeg and not a big fan of a certain orangeman William Johnston.
As a ‘Green’ High boy we obviously move in different circles, but its a small world.
You may even remember a Sergeant Mooney.
Rory Carr @ 08:17 PM:
Since this thread has diverted a considerable distance from Turgon‘s original post, I feel entitled to one further off-topic remark.
Cannonball created a small, but notable record in braining his noble owner-rider. Baron Faulkner of Downpatrick’s life peerage is the shortest of any: less than four weeks. Not many people know that.
Oh, well …
Oh yes, Driftwood, I knew Séan Mooney. There was another Catholic RUC sergeant, Fitzpatrick, very tough but he earned respect for being very fair and he took no nonsense from drunken squaddies. He left the area before the Troubles kicked off. There was also a Catholic Head Constable for a time at the beginning of the sixties, McQuaid was his name. His son went to Red High during my time – funny he looked and dressed exactly like a well-off Protestant farmer’s son, all bluff and hale and hearty with big red cheeks and a sly buck-tooth grin, but not a bad fellow really, not meaning any slight on well-off protestant farmers’s sons (or daughters) I hasten to add.
In 1972 an IRA volunteer who later lost his life while setting a bomb at a target close to Downpatrick lay in wait in the grounds of Faulkner’s house in Seaforde for three days and nights with a sniper’s rifle hoping for a opportunity of target. Faulkner didn’t return home during his wait and the volunteer withdrew. The attempt was not sanctioned by the Army Council who were not apprised of the request for the go-ahead by the two individual AC members to whom the request was initially made but one of them gave the nod to go ahead of his own volition. That AC member is now deceased but the other is yet alive and was until recently prominent in the leadership of the Continuity rump.
Now, not many people (still living) know that.
Rory
You’ll be glad to hear Sean is still living in Downpatrick and his family. The drunken squaddies were presumably from Ballykinlar (I assume you know the place)and now behave similarly, though not in Downpatrick.
As a child I was a regular visitor to the house in Seaforde. there was usually an Army presence so i’m surprised any murder attempt would have been attempted there.
You’ll be happy to hear that the Green High has a 20% plus ‘Catholic’ intake and a few Dawkinsian ‘Prods’ go to the Red High and Assumption.
Any reason no attempt was ever made to assasinate Paisley?
As perhaps my bizarre screen name indicates, I move in “horsey” (but NOT hunting) circles. …and while I never even spoke to Faulkner, I have heard from enough people that Brian Faulkner (horsey person) was a much more affable person than Brian Faulkner (unionist politician and orangeman).
Probably true.
And I can vouch for the fact that Jim Wells (bird watcher) is actually a nice guy.
He had no time for sectarianism and was an outstanding representative for the Downpatrick area.
Ask the people of Longstone Road!
Driftwood,
I believe there was a preservation order out on Paisley since he represented to the world that voice of unreasoned bigotry that made rebellion itself seem reasonable. Actually the attempt on Faulkner should never have been allowed to proceed as there was a policy against political assassination in the Provisional camp – it was the Official IRA that made the attempt on John Taylor about that time which he was very fortunate indeed to survive.
I have always been opposed to pollitical assassination and strongly believe that it is a dangerously counter-productive tactic – one doen’t murder the representative of a government, albeit the government of the enemy, with whom one eventually hopes to treat when hostilities end or are suspended.
Yes, I am aware and pleased at the cross-fertilisation in the previously segregated grammar schools although in my youth there was no animosity between Red and Green and we mixed and socialised and built close friendships freely together and dated girls from across the religious divide – somehow the Green High gels looked hotter to us and the Ballynahinch gels looked hot to the Green High lads.
But stop…it’s a wee bit undignified to start drooling at my age….
Mr Carr,
I think the Official IRA (who of course dont exist according to Trot journos) also murdered two Irish senators (Barnfield????) and Fox (possibly Fox was the Provisionals (far too late to look things up).
And of course Rev Robert Bradford and Edgar Graham were also killed.
I believe that you are correct in that Billy Fox was murdered by Provisionals. I knew Billy Fox and his killing not only sickened but actually astonished me as he had been the only Fine Gael representative that had treated with the Provisional leadership examining their proposals for Dáil Uladh and the other proposed provincial assemblies and indeed Daithí Ó’Conaill, then Adjutant-General and driving force behind the 4-province assemblies, had once cited Fox’s open-minded earnestness as an example of how the provincial assemblies could be of appeal to Ulster Protestants in particular.
But those were early days and a lot of idealism was yet in the ascendancy and I have long believed Fox’s murder to be against the grain of that spirit and rather a consequence of that border sectarianism and deep burning resentments over old land issues that later infected (and to my mind, sullied) that idealism. That consideration however may only be a product of my own naivety.
Near choked on the fish supper yesterday when the “First Minister” Margaret Ritchie told a UTV interviewer that if and when she won the South Down seat that she would give the DSD Portfolio to one of her ministerial colleagues
-Peter Robinson and Martin Mc Guinness will be saying in the words of that old Dermot Morgan record
Thank you thank you very much Miss Ritchie …..
I personally think all this has gone to her head and she has a unsatiable appetite for position power and off course she has happily orphaned her promises on giving up DSD when elected leader and is hell bent on election to do the double – It won’t wash with Joe Public and it clearly didnt work when you were a Councillor /MLA .
The ink was barely dry on Eddie Mc Grady’s political obituary when Maggie announced she was going to run ….. people are thinking that all this was stage managed over the past few months …and as one contributor put cute hoorism doesn’t work and has left a bad taste … PEOPLE AREN’T STUPID ANYMORE and what the SDLP in South Down don’t reailise their day for taking people for granted are over….cometh the man cometh the hour.
Rory Carr @ 09:50 AM:
Rarely does one encounter such a casual, dubious, self-serving, gut-churning and crudely-expressed defence of “collateral damage”.
With that, Goodnight Vienna, My Lai and so many multitudes more. At least the men and women of 1916 accepted the hideous notion of “blood sacrifice” for themselves: their would-be imitators, like Sean Kinsella and his mates, impose it on anyone else.
Earlier in this thread RobertNoonan @ 12.57 PM asked what Eddie McGrady (remember him? He’s the topic here) stood for. Now, by default, Rory Carr @ 09:50 AM reminds us of certain decencies and humanities.
Well, Rory Carr @ 09:50 AM,
I suggest you read the whole of my post again, Malcolm Redfellow as you seem to have completely misjudged (with extreme prejudice) what I actually wrote. I made no defence for Fox’s murder rather declaring that I was sickened by it and attributing its undertaking to “that border sectarianism and deep burning resentments over old land issues” that infected the Provisional movement in the border areas in particular and which I have long and publicly deplored.
A little humility and a lot more attention to detail might serve to disabuse you of any notion that you alone have the monopoly on compassion or have inherited the mantle of John Donne.
Rory Carr @ 11:15 AM:
You were “sickened” in your first paragraph.
Your second paragraph then provided a pretext for the hounding and grisly murder of Billy Fox. You further lower the tone by repeating your specious extenuation in this latest post.
If the expression sectarianism and deep burning resentments over old land issues is meant to justify Protestants being fair game in Monaghan (at least in those dismal days), spit it out. Then we’ll know where you are coming from. I still reckon that Billy Fox’s “capital crime” was to be too good a republican for the Provos to stomach.
For the record, the Billy Fox assassination was fully aired here on Slugger back in mid-2007, largely through the mental aberrations of Trowbridge H. Ford.
“Your second paragraph then provided a pretext for the hounding and grisly murder of Billy Fox.”
How bloody dare you! I did nothing of the sort. My whole post was written in order to deplore the “sectarianism and burning resentments over old land issues” which I have always felt were spiteful, and demeaning of the best of the Republican ideal but which so blighted much if not most of Republican action in the area, including, I believe the murder of Billy Fox, a man from a different political perspective than mine with whom I had spoken on a number of occasions and found to be courteous, reasonable and very personable.
That you can turn my outright condemnation of his murder volte face into some weird sense of justification for it, particularly in light of my earlier forthright statement in opposition to political assassination of any poltical figure (including, on previous posts on this site, those of Mountbatten and Airey Neave) speaks volumes more for your mindset, I fear, than it does for mine.
I have been physically threatened in no mean order by armed pseudo-republican thugs in London for speaking out against the murders of Mountbatten and Neave at the time of their occurrence and I refuse to be traduced by you any more than I would then be intimidated into silence by them.
Dunumian….indeed stage managed resignation……as the very first comment on this thread suggests…..and a tacky piece of “cute hoorism” by Mr McGrady.
The feedback that I get from some SDLP friends (incrdibly I still have some) is that they are a little embarrassed by the cynical nature of his resignations/non resignations.
In South Down the sheer tackiness of McGrady/Ritchie would certainly be a factor I would bear in mind . Too tacky for my taste. But I suspect that any reservation that SDLP voters will have in South Down will be offset by the honeymoon period of the local girl made good.
She will I suspect win South Down.
You may be right of course…and she could lose.
Ultimately we will all know the answer in early May.
fitzjames – here is me thinking you were a jacobite
LOL..Coll Ciotach…I am not THAT old.
But congratulations on being the first person to comment on the name….accurately.
The history of Jacobitism is my alleged field of expertise and there are numerous Jacobite sites on the Internet.
“they havent gone away you know”
But I actually use the name for another…even much more silly….reason
Rory Carr @ 02:23 PM:
You do, indeed, deserve a small apology. My dilatoriness in responding was the consequence of attending to the heroic doings in TW2 7BA of thirty men (with substitutes) and a referee.
That apart, what is your beef?
In this thread I have suggested that:
By the way, your pompous stand on being threatened in London hardly makes an impact. Many, many of us have been there in different ways.
yes – I have been wrestling with your nom de plume – if I recall you negatively referred to Jacobites in an earlier thread which threw me off for a while.
here is to the House of Wittlesbach
Coll Ciotach @ 09:55 PM:
[Totally off-topic, but I'm bored.]
You’re right. It’s a good pseudonym. I was helped by finding his Twitter page. By the same token, you, sir, should be a MacDonald.
The family-tree of the Wittelsbach dynasty on wikipedia is delightful. I wonder which benighted soul gave time and effort to that.
My recent discovery was Count Roehenstart, a.k.a. [Austrian] General Charles Edward Stuart. He was the illegitimate son of the Archbishop of Bordeaux and Charlotte Stuart. She was the Young Pretender’s child by Clementina Walkinshaw.
Anyway, the Count Roehenstart thought he had a claim to the Scottish throne, at least, and twice went to visit his homeland. On his second visit, in 1854, he was run over by a horse and cart, and is buried in Dunkeld churchyard.
Only Anthony Hope would get away with that as the basis for a novel. Yet, I am assured by sources it is true(-ish).
My interest therein? A distant collateral from Dublin took himself to the Boyne to fight for King and Country. Although a Prod, he loyally stood (or more likely rode) for James Stuart. Not a good career move.
Coll Ciotach,
There are some who see Jacobitism as a political movement. …right up to including a Divine Right of Kings….no dont laugh….well I cant help laughing myself to be honest.
My interest is purely historic….and the nom de plume (nom de guerre surely!) has an additional significance to me but we need not go there.
While toasting “Francis II” and his money laundering cousinage in Bavaria, I hope you observed the tradition of toasting “over the watter (sic)”
Mr Redfellow, the wikipedia page (and several others of Jacobite and “legitimist” (sic) interest) is edited by a person of my aquaintance.
My own “edit” that Charles Stuart was a drunken, spousal and woman abuser is not received well.
Actually Id forgotten I was on Twitter…think I only have two entries.
we are not allowed a glass of water at toasts any longer
taking of wiki,it shows the pro british union vote in south down has droped from near 25 thousand to under 14 thousand in 20 years,where did they all go and why?.
Malcolm Redfellow,
The “small apology” which you acknowledged that you owed to me was, apart from being rather niggardly, then followed by further quite untrue accusations and a pathetic justification for your earlier wrongheadedness.
On the points you make:
1 & 2.Your opinion of Eddie McGrady’s record is your own, is unremarkable and requires no comment.
3. “You were neatly diverted from the thread to put up a sequence of defences of extremism…” – Well no I didn’t. I simply replied to some topics relating to the Downpatrick area that Driftwood and I were sharing and I noticed that you were happy to join in with your little anecdote on the shortness of Faulkner’s term as a noble.
4. Specifically, you suggested there was a case for a political assassination of another decent man. – That is the biggest lie of all. I made no such accusation but rather attributed to it a motive which I clearly found to be base. That you have quite deliberately twisted your understanding to impute that my words meant the exact reverse of what I actually said is quite unforgiveable and compounded by your last words on the matter.
5. This point, apart from being practically unintelligible, entirely misunderstands the use of my phrasing which suggested that within the Republican movement in the earlier days of the struggle “a lot of idealism was yet in the ascendancy” which you have for some strange failure of understanding assumed to be a comment on the Protestant Ascendancy which I had not mentioned nor had in mind. The fault clearly lies in that simple failure of yours which along with you being miffed because your little aside on Faulkner was not greeted with the fawning adulation you obviously crave every time you cut and paste from some archive or the other seems to lie at the root cause of your particular offensiveness on this occasion.
6. Well, bully for you.
Rory Carr: I made no such accusation but rather attributed to it a motive which I clearly found to be base.
I’m with you on most of your argument – but for you to fall into this trap was very careless. When talking about the troubles *any* attempt to explain an event is treated as an attempt to excuse it.
Reader @ 10:08 AM:
Fair enough. Specious, but fair enough.
Rory Carr on Feb 27, 2010 @ 09:50 AM gave an “explanation’ of a particular callous and pointless political murder. It was:
I decode that to mean the killing of Billy Fox was some revenge against Protestants.
Rory Carr‘s “explanation” falls down on a number of points:
Rory Carr‘s ad hominem comments pass me by as the idle wind, which I respect not. If he, or anyone else finds sticking to the facts of the matter as trivial as cut and paste from some archive or the other, that merely is the measure of the man.
I see that Malcolm Redfelow has again deliberately misappilied my reference to “early days”, which was a clear reference to a period before Fox’s murder when Provisionals like Daithi Ó’Conaill thought Fox to be a valuable voice of influence upon Protestants in the border area worth cultivating, as referring to a later period when he was in fact murdered.
His speculation as to the reasons for that murder are, I suppose, as worthy of consideration as those that I put forward, but no more than that and as easily dismissed as idle speculation as I had already admitted, when I first aired my views, mine might well be, by finishing my speculation by saying, “That consideration however may only be a product of my own naivety.”
When I give an opinion, however based upon personal experience, I do find it best to be aware of the possibility of my own fallibility.
On statements of record however it is best to be accurate and in that spirit I would offer to Redfellow the correction that it was the death of Samuel Devenney, following a savage beating by the RUC in his own home, that sparked off the Battle of the Bogside and not that of Frank McCloskey as he mistakenly asserted.
Fitz:
As perhaps my bizarre screen name indicates, I move in “horsey” (but NOT hunting) circles. …and while I never even spoke to Faulkner, I have heard from enough people that Brian Faulkner (horsey person) was a much more affable person than Brian Faulkner (unionist politician and orangeman).
[lightbulb appears] I know who you are. I can’t believe it took me so long to work it out.
When I said you were an Antrim Road Stoop, I was half right. You’re an Antrim Road ex-Stoop.
Anybody else want to guess who Fitz is ? I’ll not take the pleasure of outing him myself. Think about it – ex politician, pathological hatred of Alliance Party and unionists, doesn’t say much critical about Sinn Fein (but is clearly not a member), has a weird love/hate thing going with the SDLP. Come on folks, it’s obvious.
Rory Carr @ 01:17 PM:
I note the correction in the same open-hearted way it was offered.
Now, as I recollect that time, Sammy Devenny was done over in the April. He lingered on in hospital until he died on 17th July.
My memory has Frank McCloskey being batoned near Dungiven Orange Hall, in mid-July. Yes, I’ve checked the dates: Frank died the day after the assault, on 14th July.
I leave it to others to put those dates in order.
Whatever. The “coincidence” of those two deaths, the RUC predilection to invade the Bogside (in the previous January and the April episode which involved the assault on Sammy Devenny), and the looming Apprentice Boys March inspired the formation of the Derry Citizens Defence Association that July.
So, despite your correction, I’ll stand by my statement, if you don’t mind.
Comrade Stalin @ 01:54 PM:
You enjoyed that, didn’t you?
As I say, I cheated and went to his Facebook page.
I hope that “being outed” does not inhibit his worthy and pithy contributions here, which I, for one, welcome and appreciate. I don’t have always to concur with them.
I haven’t gone to the Facebook page. And looking through this thread again, it doesn’t look like he was going to special efforts not to get named, so I can’t say it’s a big deal. Nonetheless, it was a momentary frission of excitement in the otherwise boring, sterile, election-losing life of an Alliance stooge.
I was hoping though, Mr Fitz, that you could give us your side of the story about how you came to part ways with the SDLP. It’d make for great copy. The version of the story I’d been told was that they threw you out for being a raging bigoted maniac far to the right of Sinn Fein – and that was before the ceasefires. But surely that can’t be the full truth ?
Comrade Stalin,
“lightbulb”…….I invite you to take the pleasure of outing me.
But consider that perhaps I would take the Gerry Adams option of denying anything anyway. But I admit to be curious. The only reason you are not taking the responsibility of outing me is that you would prefer if someone else took that responsibility….well its an Alliance kinda thing I suppose.
I really disapprove of this “Stoop” business…..or “Blueshirt” kinda insult. Although hypocritically I rather approve of using the word “Stickies” to describe people.
On a general point about internet message boards…..I find that those who use screen names which indicate a particular political preference (say EasterLily or OrangeSash1690 etc) do themselves no favours as we tend to discount even reasonable views put forward.
But I wonder about the wisdom of Comrade Stalins version of Thru the Keyhole…..like Loyd Grossman he sees “clues” and wonders aloud “who lives in a house like this….over to you David”.
But I wonder if ComradeStalin has misinterpreted some “clues”….I have always chosen my words rather deliberately but surprisingly truthfully. It is of course not my responsibility to correct any assumptions made by ComradeStalin.
She has declared for Westminster
Is she pro grammer schools?, If so she’s a shoe in, Even non irish nationlists will vote for her.