Move over, Alfie!

Alfie Byrne and Big Jim Larkin stood against one another for a Dáil seat over 7 general elections between 1927 and 1944.

In 3 of those (1927, 1937 & 1943) they were both elected. In the other 4 (1932, 1933, 1938 & 1944) Alfie won and Jim lost.

Rivalry between them was intense and at one stage Alfie sold a pub to finance his campaign.

As you'll see from the above, Alfie had the last laugh.

But now Alfie is finally losing his seat to Jim. While Jim is being celebrated all over during this year commemorating the 1913 Lockout, Alfie's seat, at the corner of the Clontarf Road and Alfie Byrne Road, where it has been for the last 20 years, is to be removed by the City Council because of repeated vandalism.

You can hear Larry Medlar talking about Alfie and Big Jim here. The recording is from 1978 when Larry was 90 years of age and it was made by his son in law Dave.

Uisce faoi thalamh?

I came across this interesting doorway the other day when out prowling around the capital, as is my wont.

I thought it a disgrace and hoped it might just be in an embarrassing phase in its restoration, but you never know these days.

I added it to my Flickr collection when I got home and I commented to some friends that you'd think Trinity College would take better care of their façades. This was under the mistaken impression that I had taken the photo in Westland Row, where TCD own one side of the street.

Yesterday, when I was passing where I thought I had taken it, I was amazed that it appeared to have either vanished or been completely tidied up. Then I got a niggling doubt about where I had actually taken it.

So, when I got home I checked out Google Street View by retracing my steps on the day the photo had been taken and found that I had actually taken it in Kildare Street. It is one of the few frontages of this type on Kildare Street, which is mainly the home of various institutions. Westland Row, on the other hand, has many such frontages. Thank you Google.

On closer inspection of the Google Street View frontage, I saw that the door had been blurred out. Very odd. You have to request this, it doesn't just happen. So what was the secret of the red doorway that the occupants, or former occupants, did not want revealed.

It clearly was not a personal privacy issue as you can see that there was nobody, whose anonymity might need protecting, at the door. And it dated from anything up to two or three years ago, when, as you can see, the door was red instead of its current blue.

The premises is directly across from Dublin's Shelbourne Hotel, where a lot of celebrities and other dubious types stay or meet. And it is within a short distance of the former Anglo Irish Bank HQ, the Irish Parliament, Buswells Hotel - frequented by parliamentarians, the Government Departments of the Taoiseach (Prime Minister), Minister for Finance, Minister for Agriculture, and the Attorney General, not to mention the Freemasons' Hall.

So what the hell was going on here then?

I offer the above reflections to the NSA, Mossad and G2, who are by now, no doubt, reading this very post.

Hi Guys.

Where is it ? No. 14

To see all the quiz items click on the "Where?" tag below.

I had a premonition Felix would be in like a shot with that one. Well done. I think he may have spent a bit more time in there than myself given his close connection with the library.

Our Oil under Your Land?

Uncle Sam's Mexican Policy
by Gordon Brewster, 29 January 1927
By kind permission of the National Library of Ireland

This is one of my favourite Brewster cartoons because it is timeless. It specifically refers to the USA response to Mexico effectively nationalising its own oil resources, many of which were being exploited by US oil companies at the time.

It reminded me, in my own time, of the UK/France/Israel response to Nasser's nationalisation of the Suez Canal, and, more recently of the invasion of Iraq, where the US administraion resented its oil happening to be located beneath someone else's land.

Much of the Brewster collection of cartoons in the National Library of Ireland is timeless and that which is not is usually a very perceptive take on a contemporary event. And they are all beautifully drawn.

My own interest in Brewster dates from 1946 when Gordon died in my mother's shop in Howth.

Máire

The previous post deals with a talk by Mary Clarke, Dublin City Archivist, whose office adjoins the reading room in the Dublin City Library and Archive (DCLA) in Pearse St.

The office next to hers is occupied by Máire Kennedy, Divisional Librarian, and they are both series editors of one of the Council's series of publications. The most recent publication in this series is "A City in Conflict: Dublin City and the 1913 Lockout" (ed Francis Devine). The detail above shows Máire with President Higgins on the occasion of a presentation to him of a copy of the book.

I have been dealing with Máire now, quite intensively, since 2008 when I persuaded her to let me give my first talk at that year's local history day in the marvellous lecture room in Pearse St. In the intervening years I managed to get her to let me do four more talks covering both local history (Killiney) and my family history.

Her help, enthusiasm and blind faith have been a wonder to behold. She didn't bat an eylid when I told her I would be using the projector, sound and real time online customised interactive Google maps in my first talk. I have a sneaking suspicion that she welcomed the opportunity to show off the, then relatively new, lecture room facilities.

Fortunately all went well, and, as I said, both she and I have been back for more.

Both Máire and Mary make for a formidable team in DCLA, ever patient, generous with their attention and time, enormously helpful, and wearing their learning and qualifications with an excess of modesty.

The Secrets of the Archive

This is Heritage Week when people discover all sorts of things all over the place.

And increasingly they are discovering them at home as more and more records are digitised.

However, during this week the Heritage crowd are trying to tempt you out of your comfort zone and into the field, so to speak.

One such occasion was last evening's talk by Mary Clarke, the Dublin City Archivist, in my local library in Raheny.

Now, the title of this post is intended to be provocative. Mary actually went out of her way to stress that she had no secrets. The archive belongs to the people of Dublin and they are welcome to come in and share all of it.

Mary's task was to tell us just what she had in her archive in Pearse St. And that is just what she did in a most entertaining half-hour tour de force.

I am a frequenter of the Dublin City Library and Archive on the first floor of the Pearse St. public library. But after Mary's talk, I realised I hadn't even scratched the surface of the place.

Admittedly, I hadn't gone back as far as the medieval period in my local (Killiney) or family history research, so all that stuff was new to me. But it sounded like a fascinating treasure trove not to be ignored, even if the most exciting period in Killiney's history was not the medieval period itself, but what came before and after it.

And, as far as my family history is concerned, unless I meet some famous ancestral branch along the way, I'm not going to get within an ass's roar of that period.

However I can empathise with the terrified Dubliner, with his helmet and his bow and arrow, in the picture above. No, it has nothing to do with an impending appearance in Croke Park. It concerns the defence of Dublin City against the marauding O'Byrnes and O'Tooles from the Wicklow hills. This guy was supposed to keep the dispossessed Dubliners at bay as they tried to retake their native city from the foreign invader.

This was still the position when I started on my local history at around 1500 AD. The area around Killiney had earlier been given to the "old English" Goodman family on condition they kept the natives at bay. But during the seventeenth century they found they shared a common religion with the dispossessed and against that of the new post Reformation planters. So things got a bit muddled and the defenders in turn became the dispossessed and many of them lost their heads, so to speak.

Mary went on to cover a lot more, including modern photo, oral and written archives.

An education and a night's entertainment in what must have been the shortest and most thrill packed talk in my local library for yonks.

A fitting contribution to this year's Heritage Week.

All you can eat?

Click for larger image

Is this an honest ad?

In big print: all the data you can eat.

In tiny print (bottom left corner under the url): implied limit of 15GB per month & no tethering & €20 obligatory renewal every month. (Click on the image to enlarge)

You tell me.

Click for larger image

VBVM

Knock Shrine c.1885
from Schofield/Sexton

This is a useful time to look at Knock, Co. Mayo, where the Blessed Virgin Mary is reputed to have appeared on 21 August 1879, so we are fast approaching the 134th anniversary of the apparition.

I have a particular interest in Knock, having been on many pilgrimages there in my youth. My father was born in Ballyhaunis, just down the road (7 miles) and visits to the old homestead, then still inhabited by my Granny and Aunt Mollie, always included a trip to the church at Knock.

This was not the Knock of today. There was no basilica only a church with a gable end. Mind you it was a very important and controversial gable end, but a gable end no less.

There was no church of reconciliation with as many confessionals as there are weeks in the year.

And the holy water was freely available in unlimited quantities from a common tap in the corner.

Then there were the huxters stalls along the street, selling all sorts of religious artefacts and holy sounvenirs.

A decade of the rosary, a trimming or two, some momentos, and that was it. Private and no fuss.

So the picture above, is nearer to what I experienced than is the one below. It is a very interesting picture, taken within a few years of the apparition, and it testifies to a huge well of faith among those who visited in those early years. The crutches on the wall represent cures of one sort or another. Whether through divine intervention, the power of faith, or sheer mind over matter, an amazing number of cripples appear to have walked away.

For that reason, it is a very powerful picture. All the more powerful when you know the background of the times.

Irish faith was local and built around the monasteries, parishes and old practices.

There were patterns (mini-pilgrimages/visits), holy wells and other pisreogaí (superstitions). Rome, with the active connivance of Cardinal Cullen, was attempting to stamp out all this stuff and impose Rome rule (homogeneous and done by the book). Bishop McHale was the people's champion but he lost out in the long run.

In parallel with this conflict the land war was hotting up in this very area. Evictions were rife as was land agitation, and the church was divided, some priests opting for the old and others going with the new. This was the part of the country that gave us the boycott the following year. And, of course, 1879 was the year of the Gorta Beag (mini famine).

So it is not stretching it too much to say that Knock had a collective nervous breakdown around the time of the apparition. Eugene Hynes is great reading on all of this.

The narrative of the apparition, as it hit the wider public consciousness, was filtered by the church to ensure theological orthodoxy and the result has a bit of the camel about it.

The picture below of the gable as it is today, shows the Blessed Virgin, St. Joseph, St. John the Evangelist and the Lamb of God. As motley crew as ever there was. That's what I mean about the camel - a compromise creature designed by a Committee (for which read church).

The modern decor, and holy complex, was instituted by that great dancehall promoter from Toureen, Monsignor Horan. A holy entrepreneur extraordinary. He ran rings around Charlie Haughey (Taoiseach/Prime Minister) by challenging him to validate his Mayo credentials and support the construction of a nearby airport. He even got Pope John Paul II to visit the shrine on the 100th anniversary of the apparition. Some operator.

Anyway, I just thought I'd give the BVM a mention seeing as how she is tending to slip from view in this modern materialistic world.

The Gable End today

Blythe Spirit

Click on any image for larger version

In 1924 Ernest Blythe took a shilling off the old age pension, reducing it from 10/- to 9/-.

He never heard the end of it till the day he died. And no Minister for Finance since has been unaware of Blythe's action and the odium it attracted.

The cartoon, above, which dates from 1924, is by Gordon Brewster from his series in the Sunday Independent. It refers to Blythe's cut, aptly contrasting it with other cuts which were not made at that time.

The cartoon is as relevant today as it was then and it is reproduced here with the kind permission of the National Library of Ireland who currently hold a collection of almost 500 of Brewster's cartoons.

Minister Joan Burton is reputed to be considering a reduction of €10 in the State old age pension for the next budget. While this reduction is proportionately less than Blythe's, its effect, given all the recent stealth taxes and rises in charges, would likely be similar, and attract equal odium in saecula saeculorum.

I'll leave you to contemplate all this against a background from the poet, Shelley, who always had a word for everything.

HAIL to thee, blithe spirit!
Bird thou never wert—
That from heaven or near it
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

...

Chorus hymeneal,
Or triumphal chant,
Match'd with thine would be all
But an empty vaunt—
A thin wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

...

Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know;
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow,
The world should listen then, as I am listening now.

from Ode to a Skylark

I Love Lucy

A beautifully written piece in yesterday morning's Irish Times reminded me how much I loved Lucy over the last two decades.

In the course of my work, I kept an eye on the Financial Times. Heavy stuff. But a paper which, over the years, has had a higher standard of writing than many of its ostensibly literary counterparts. You could lift stuff out of it for a ministerial brief and find yourself an honorary member of Aos Dána before you knew it.

Then there was Lucy. In the middle of all the economic and financial chaos, pseudo-intellectualism and buzzword management, there was a sane world out there somewhere, even if it was only in Lucy's head.

She calmed you down, made you smile, and reminded you what was really important. She was ostensibly writing about management, but it was really a philosophy column to which anyone could relate. She had a lightness of touch and a lurking smile, and, God forbid, she wrote actual English. Real words strung together to actually mean something. And always a new angle to wake you up.

So I plunged into her piece in the paper and I wasn't disappointed. I'd say she was in her alley. The UK Civil Service was banning 30 ugly words, including the horrendous linguistic abuse "going forward". And not before its time.

The accretion of jargon, or lazy shortcut use of language, since I joined the Civil Service, 46 years ago, has been spectacular.

At that time, we were advised to procure a copy of Sir Ernest Gowers' The Complete Plain Words so that we could avoid such pitfalls and do language the honour of retaining its meaning. The book was produced by Her Majesty's Stationery Office and was available, to keep, from our own Registry. It became a constant companion and, along with a good dictionary, has stood me in good stead to this very day.

So, thank you Lucy for keeping me sane, at least in my own estimation.

And I can't blame the Irish Times for what I think is a wee typo in the piece. When I went to the Financial Times original, there is was again. The proof was in the pudding, as they are now wont to say.

Ah well, we can't all be perfect.

No Snopes Here

Does Pope Francis think
women are unfit for politics?
Under the above heading the Association of Catholic Priests posted the following on their website:

In today’s (August 3rd) Independent Eilis O’Hanlon quotes Pope Francis as saying the following in 2007, apparently in the context of a presidential election in Argentina:

“Women are naturally unfit for political office. Both the natural order and facts show us that the political being par excellence is male. Scripture shows us that woman has always been the helper of man who thinks and does, but nothing more”.

Can anyone authenticate, or give a context, to this statement. If he really did say it, and if it means what is appears to mean, we could be in deeper trouble than we think

Having ascertained at Snopes that the quote was a malicious fraud, I set out on Twitter in pursuit of Eilis O'Hanlon.

I came across her talking to Donal O'Keeffe where she was admitting that the Pope had not said what she said he had.

I asked her about a correction and, to my surprise, she pleaded ignorance of how this might be dealt with online and suggested I write in a letter. In other words, she wanted me to correct her mistake. This left me very taken aback, I need hardly say.

You can see the "progress" of my conversation with her below.

Arising out of this conversation, the ACP was able to reassure its readers in the following terms:

Sunday night: Eilis O’Hanlon has admitted on Twitter that there was no proper authentification for her quote. Sunday Independent!!!

As I pointed out on the ACP site:

I can only assume that she saw my intervention as a male attack and in some way a defence of the Pope’s view on women priests. Neither of which is the case. Sloppy journalism and a Pope in error are two separate and distinct issues.

Today, I have calmed down, at least sufficiently to do this post :)

---

Update 11/8/2013
Anyway, it went on. You can follow some of it here if you have the energy. Highlights mentioned below.

The next day I got a cryptic tweet telling me it was Monday. What, in Jaysus name, I wondered was that all about? Did she take Monday off? Had she discovered something nobody else knew? Would she not be coming back till Tuesday?

Then all was explained. The Sunday Independent was only published on Sunday. So she could not [apologise][correct the error] till the following Sunday, and I was suffering from premature indignation. Must be the hormones then.

Anyway, today is Sunday, and ne'er a bit of a correction in the air. So it looks like it was a case of buy a bit of time and that obnoxious person will go away, or perhaps be distracted by the testicle eating fish which seem to have taken her fancy in the meantime.

From Premature Indignation on Monday to Testicle Eating Fish on Sunday, that must surely be my longest organism to date.

And, I don't go away. So stay tuned.

Hover the cursor, if you dare. Males only.

Whistleblower

Craig Murray

This is an opportune time to return to Craig Murray.

He rose to eminence as a UK ambassador. He became a whistleblower over UK collusion with torture in Uzbekistan. He was smeared and "sacked" by the UK Foreign Office, then under the sleazeball Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw. And he has had to make his own way in the world ever since.

He is, in effect, a precursor of Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden, except his authorities did not succeed in criminalising him, despite their best efforts to do so.

He is now a writer and campaigner for human rights, and his latest foray into the field was a talk at Belfast's Féile an Phobail yesterday evening (1/8/2013).

His theme was The Respectability of Torture a subject on which he was well qualified to speak.

Bill Rolston introduces Craig

The venue was St. Mary's University College, a former teacher training college and now a constituent college of Queen's University. The significance of its location on the Falls Road in Belfast was not lost on the audience and it was remarked that there were probably people present who came from a community that had experienced torture first hand, not from Uzbekistan's Islam Karimov, but from "their own" UK authorities, who still claim jurisdiction over the six counties of Northern Ireland.

Craig was introduced by Bill Rolston, and if you think there are a few empty seats there, be assured they were filled by the time Bill finished his introduction. Attendance was round the 60 mark, which wasn't far off the capacity of the lecture theatre itself. The audience was attentive and involved and Craig's talk was followed by a lively discussion.

Craig in action

Craig started, in his usual quiet informal and intimate manner, by recapping on his own experience, from the time he was posted as UK ambassador to Uzbekistan in 2002. Online, you can read the whole story in Wikipedia or listen to Craig tell it himself in RTÉ's radio series on whistleblowers (2006).

He has written a book about his experiences relating to Uzbekistan which is available via Amazon.

The thrust of his talk was how human rights are ignored and collusion with torture becomes a routine part of an administration's plunder of other people's resources, particularly when they find themselves relying on the cooperation of totalitarian leaders.

When Craig raised their collusion in torture with his authorites he was more or less told to shut up and just play second fiddle to the US ambassador in Tashkent. He was told he was "overfocussed on human rights". When he didn't shut up, he was accused of some 18 "offences", some of them criminal, such as selling passports for sex, and being constantly drunk on the job. In the middle of all this, he suffered a relatively rare and mysterious illness, which in the light of what happened to Dr. David Kelly and others, might just have been an attempt to send him back to his maker.

So where does the respectability come in? Well, as Craig explained, this torture is being carried out, colluded in, or justified, by administrations which otherwise hold themselves out as models of democracy, human rights and the rule of law (which, of course, they are not). Craig also mentioned the rampant self-censorship in the mainstream media (MSM), who contrive to ignore all of this even when it is put under their nose. He was a bit at a loss to give a definitive explanation for this perverse behaviour. However, as we all know, the MSM have, by and large, become the creatures of political and commercial vested interests, and, in any event, lack the courage of the Pilgers and Fisks of this world to resist the huge pressure put on them.

Craig told us that he himself has been banned from the BBC. The exception is when he is in the area of one of their outposts who are not up to speed on the ban, as with BBC Radio Ulster yesterday morning when they interviewed him as a speaker at the local (mispronounced) Féile an Phobail.

As it turned out, Craig was eventually cleared of all the charges laid against him by the Foreign Office, except one: that he had revealed the other charges!

The Belfast session was a wonderful experience, and a great tribute to Craig for delivering it, to the Féile's organisers for organising it, and to the audience for turning up to be sensitised to one of the greatest scandals of our time.

Máirtín Ó Muilleoir

The newly elected Lord Mayor of Belfast, Máirtín Ó Muilleoir, turned up, chain and all. No need to tell you which community he came out of. The first thing he did when he came in the door was to take a photo of Craig.

Danny Morrison

Also in attendance was Danny Morrisson, Cathaoirleach na Féile.

Craig blogs at craigmurray.org.uk