What’s the matter with Hillary?

At last two pieces which go to the heart of why Donald Trump is rampant and Hillary Clinton is faltering. The plain fact is that people like their politicians to inspire or at least identify with their problem and fears.  Mrs Clinton is a poor speaker and comes across as an over-calculating policy wonk who does neither. Remember  those visits to Belfast showing support for the peace process  which continued even after we were thrown off the international news agenda? …

Read more…

If Gerry Adams was ever immune, that immunity has now been lifted. What next?

The Adams arrest raises acute questions about a comprehensive approach to dealing with the past I discussed just before the news broke. Depending on the outcome, the prospects could go either way. The cry of selective or one sided justice from one side produces an inevitable echo. Justice all round is unlikely to become better served, neither are truth or political relations. If the PSNI draw a blank, we’re where we were. If they don’t, we enter the unknown. A heavy burden is placed  on the  operational  independence of the police, …

Read more…

Why Irish America needs to get on board with modern Ireland, or get out of the way.

Reading the memoirs of Ken Bloomfield and Tony Blair for me give two very telling insights into the politics of Irish America and their priorities in viewing the homeland. I begin with Tony Blair who noted the contradiction of certain American politicians idolising Margaret Thatcher while having an ambivalent attitude towards groups like the IRA who made it their business to kill her. This contradictory attitude is in my experience typical of some Irish Americans who while in the states …

Read more…

In losing touch with Ireland’s struggles is Irish America losing its social conscience?

I’m not saying I agree with Andrew O’Hehir in every aspect of his column on Salon, particularly the sense that there is a singular and deterministic direction of travel in Irish American identity.  But there may be something in the idea that 1998 and the Good Friday Agreement has heralded a slow disengagement with the cause of Ireland per se: As the title of Noel Ignatiev’s important if overly harsh academic study “How the Irish Became White” makes clear, Irish immigrants first …

Read more…

PSNI out, then in but LGBT still in the cold.

This years St Patricks Day parade in New York City has been making headline for all of the wrong reasons this year. There was the controversy earlier about the refusal to include LGBT groups which led to a boycott of the parade by the Mayor of New York and condemnation from parties back here about the absurdity of in 2014 groups being discriminated against solely on the basis of their sexual preferences. But, yesterday the guys over at LAD, found …

Read more…