Tuesday, July 01, 2008
Lord Mayor avoids official Somme commemoration.. again
As previously noted here. This morning, apparently in keeping with his party’s policy set out in 2004 - which barred Sinn Fein representatives from attending “British military commemorations” - the Lord Mayor of Belfast, Sinn Féin’s Tom Hartley, boycotted the official commemoration of those who died at the Battle of the Somme and instead laid a wreath on his own at 9am - repeating the actions of SF’s Alex Maskey, when Lord Mayor in 2002.
Pete Baker @ 12:04 PM
Paul Kielty wrote: “Are we mature enough to do this?”
Errr....no.
Posted by on Jul 02, 2008 @ 12:33 AMPete
It’s the difference between noting an announcement of intention, and noting the action itself.
No new information at all. Was there ever any doubt at all after the announcement that this is what would happen? No, there was not. Hartley going fuck it and attending the ceremony anyway: that would be news. Hartley saying I really wanted to go but SF prevented me: that would be news. It’s not even like there is a significant gap of time between the announcement and the event. There is no new content here. Zip, zilch, nada. Heard you the first time, and this is effectively spam.
And in between 2002 and 2008 there’s that 2004 Ard Fheis decision.
Yes. You said. On the last thread.
It remains consistent with the Republican principles that led Alex Maskey not to attend in 2002 and Tom Hartley not to attend in 2008. Perhaps I’m wrong: maybe Tom really wanted to attend and was barred by SF policy. He doesn’t strike me as a man who would be held by it if that was what he really wanted to do, but in any case it is simply speculation. Not particularly scientific, Pete.
As for
I should be welcoming this six-year-old “very good gesture”.
They have laid poppies in the official commemoration for many more than 6 years: I’m sure you still find it a welcome gesture. SF’s gesture was a good one at the time, and remains so now. It would be absurd for republicans to attend the “official” ceremony. If there is anything extra you think they can do short of that then by all means suggest something constructive. But sneering at what is an honest gesture should really be beneath you.
Posted by on Jul 02, 2008 @ 07:30 AMIt’s posts like this which makes me think a competitor set up to balance Slugger’s Newsletter-Bele Tele (on a bad day) editorial slant would be a very good thing.
Hmmmm....
Posted by on Jul 02, 2008 @ 07:48 AMI have better things to be doing than listing the times Pete has been wrong, in my opinion, on issues. But he’s badly misjudged this one. Tom Hartley of SF is the wrong target for his ‘Oh My God, SF have boycotted the Official Somme Commemoration AGAIN’ rant.
The boycott, it seems to me, was of the Unionist Commemoration. Their shindig seeks to wrap the dead of the UDR and the B Specials and all other discredited state paramilitary groups up with the slain of the Somme which taints the commemoration - which Pete wants Tom Hartley to attend - with sectarian bigotry. If that’s the test which has to be passed to get into the ‘club’ - then the ‘club’ isn’t worthy of membership.....
Posted by on Jul 02, 2008 @ 08:23 AM“The fact that many more Irishmen than themselves fought, were wounded, died, and won victoria cross medals in WW1, is totally ignored.”
“Today’s ceremony at the Peace Park was not just another journey down a well-travelled path. For much of the past eighty years, the very idea of such a ceremony would probably have been unthinkable.
Those whom we commemorate here were doubly tragic. They fell victim to a war against oppression in Europe. Their memory too fell victim to a war for independence at home in Ireland.”
MARY McALEESE 1998.
There is no depth to THE DISGUSTING HYPOCRISY OF REPUBLICANS ON THIS BOARD. For 80 years the ONLY PEOPLE honouring the whole of the Irish sacrifice in WW1 were UNIONISTS and “WEST BRITS”.
Posted by on Jul 02, 2008 @ 08:33 AMSomeone asked to provide a link to Stormont legislation which discriminated against nationalists.
Flags and Emblems (Display) Act (Northern Ireland) 1954. (now repealed)
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/hmso/fea1954.htm
you can find it at the above link. (its not on the usual legal links as it has been long repealed)
Its an offence to interfere with the display of the Union Jack. A police officer may require the removal of a provocative emblem / flag but the Union Jack is expressly excluded from being a provocative emblem.
This legislation directly discriminates against nationalists - Unionists can fly their flag freely, Nationalists cannot do so.
The legislation also indirectly discriminates against catholics as its effects will be more felt by catholics than by protestants.One of the earlier posters (T.ruth i think) has inadvertently set out precisely all those reasons why nationalists find themselves unable to take part in war commemorations - i think it is worthwhile to remember all those who died in WWI. however, for T.ruth’s commemorations, he wants to remember them in glory, and to add on all the other conflicts the UK army have been involved in and to wrap it all up with a red white and blue bow.
Even some within deepest england are unhappy with the “glorious dead” approach to war commemorations, preferring instead to remember the futility that war is.Posted by on Jul 02, 2008 @ 08:59 AMThere is no depth to THE DISGUSTING HYPOCRISY OF REPUBLICANS ON THIS BOARD. For 80 years the ONLY PEOPLE honouring the whole of the Irish sacrifice in WW1 were UNIONISTS and “WEST BRITS”.
Point made and taken, Lurid. However Tom Hartley was even ahead of Mary McAleese in his recognition of the sacrifice of the Irish who fell in WWI -he attended, if memory serves, the Islandbridge event in 1995 or 1996.
It would also be worth remembering that when, for instance, James Magennis won a VC in WW2, his achievement was ignored until recently by unionists in Belfast City Hall because he was a Catholic.....
Posted by on Jul 02, 2008 @ 09:11 AMGOOD POINT!
There is no depth to THE DISGUSTING HYPOCRISY OF UNIONISTS ON THIS BOARD!
When John Redmond raised the Irish Volunteers he proposed to Kitchener that the colours for the 10th and 16th should be an uncrowned Gold Harp on a green field. Ireland would have her own colours and divisions as had the Australians, Canadians and New Zealanders.
Kitchener refused! To his credit Lloyd George pointed to Kitchener’s disgraceful behaviour at the time.
The 36th were permitted by Kitchener to fly the. Ulster banner.
DISGRACEFUL DISCRIMINATION!
Tom Hartley has provided a laurel wreath in the manner of Irish remembrance in a manner commensurate with that of the dignified (and rather touching) ceremony at Dublin’s memorial gradens or of the presentation of a fir wreath at the Ulster Tower by senior officer of Ireland’s defence forces.
Tom Hartley is an Irish politician serving in Ireland. He is not an ambassador to Britain. He is not required to slavishly follow the British format for remembrance. He is right to follow an Irish one.
It might help if the Royal British Legion rebranded as the Irish Legion aussie style, (at least for WW1 & WW2 events.)
GOD BLESS TOM HARTLEY AND ALL WHO SAIL IN HIM!
Posted by on Jul 02, 2008 @ 09:35 AMShould it not be “ Conas atá sibh, a chairde” ie Vocative case. The posessive adjective is not used.
Posted by on Jul 02, 2008 @ 09:39 AMAs many learned commenters have said, this is a public show of loyalty by the unionist colony - nothing to do with remembering ‘our glorious dead’(including the ‘glorious’ sectarian murderers in the UDR/RUC)Who wants Taigs to attend such an Orangefest?
Posted by on Jul 02, 2008 @ 09:45 AM“As many learned commenters have said, this is a public show of loyalty by the unionist colony - nothing to do with remembering ‘our glorious dead’(including the ‘glorious’ sectarian murderers in the UDR/RUC)Who wants Taigs to attend such an Orangefest?”
Surely, when the UDR or RUC are remembered it is those who did not fall to the temptation to respond in kind to republicanism’s worst excesses who are honoured, not those (few) who disgraced their uniform and their mission.
Maybe not. Maybe all those evil prods are so depraved that they’re standing by the cenotaph secretly glorying in the murder of innocents at the hands of their jackbooted stormtroopers!
“the unionist colony”
A sweet discription. Send ‘em back where they came from!Posted by on Jul 02, 2008 @ 10:11 AMI didn’t mention prods - many pro Brit Catholics lend an air of respectability to these functions but NO Nationalists or Republicans attend. I was under the impression that ALL UDR/RUC who fell in the struggle were remembered and consequently all native Irish who died at the hands of the British and their running dogs ‘got what they deserved’.This is a British colonial outpost hankering back to the ‘mainland’ so they are a unionist colony.
Posted by on Jul 02, 2008 @ 12:12 PMKeep ‘em comin’, Pancho. Keep ‘em comin’.
Posted by on Jul 02, 2008 @ 12:36 PM‘got what they deserved’
Care to source that quote Pancho?
Posted by on Jul 02, 2008 @ 01:22 PMPancho’s Horse: I was under the impression that ALL UDR/RUC who fell in the struggle were remembered...
As are all of the Tommies etc. who fell in WW1 and WW2. Presumably no-one assumes that all of those million or so dead were saints. We remember the sacrifice, and leave individual judgement to someone a bit more omniscient.
You would assume that the brutes and vicious zealots among your political idols aren’t representative of the rest, and you wouldn’t demean your goodies by concentrating on the unnamed minority at Easter, would you?
Of course, there is still room for us to argue about what I think of the majority of rebels or provos, and what you think of the majority of the RUC, UDR etc.
Posted by on Jul 02, 2008 @ 03:08 PMAah, willowfield, I feared that you had retired. Running Dog, that wasn’t a quote, hence no quotation marks. But how about"We don’t call it Bloody Sunday, we call it Good Sunday” Mayor of Coleraine?
Posted by on Jul 02, 2008 @ 03:11 PMReader, the majority of the ‘tommies’ may indeed have been good decent men but their job was to annihilate the Nazi/German menace by fair means or foul. Likewise, the ABC Specials and their offshoots the sectarian RUC/UDR whose job it was to cleanse the 6 counties of the republican menace. This does not entitle them to be included in ‘our glorious dead’. This commemoration is more of a ‘rub the Fenians nose in it’ than remembrance of our brave boys. Anyway, it’s a british thing so who cares?
Posted by on Jul 02, 2008 @ 03:29 PMPancho’s Horse: Likewise, the ABC Specials and their offshoots the sectarian RUC/UDR whose job it was to cleanse the 6 counties of the republican menace.
That wasn’t in the job description. The RUC had the same role as the Garda - a role that brought them both into conflict with the IRA, and brought the RUC into conflict the Loyalist alphabet soup too. Loyalist murders were more likely to result in convictions than republican ones. And the UDR was set up in response to the 1969 Hunt report which saw the need for an armed force under Army, not local, command. Under the circumstances, I will certainly give any member of either, past or future, living or dead, the benefit of the doubt until I know more about them as an individual.
But for republicans, doctrine suffices as a motive for collective hate - the organisation that justified blowing up a van load of plasterers before and after the fact, at Teebane - has come a long way to get Maskey and Hartley anywhere near the Cenotaph. A step too far for some republicans, of course.
Posted by on Jul 02, 2008 @ 09:00 PM
