We like to believe in destiny and the power of the human spirit. But in the end everything just comes down to pluses and minuses, ones and zeroes – as a fascinating study by an Irish writer demonstrates...
The new Pope has not fully answered questions about what he did or didn’t do during the Argentine dictatorship – but that isn’t to say it’s not too late for him to find redemption. For that, actions rather than words are required...
One of Britain’s most senior clerics has had to resign after accusations of inappropriate behaviour towards other priests. Given the litany of child abuse in the Church, isn’t that a bit rich?
Spare a thought for all those downtrodden true believers, whose medieval view of the universe is, so we are told, under attack from all corners in modern Ireland.
Triple All-Ireland winning hurler, the openly gay Donal Og Cusack, gave a mighty address at the recent Derry Pride, drawing parallels between the gay-rights struggle and the fight against institutionalised sectarian discrimination in Norn Iron..
The PSNI have begun to compete with Republican Action Against Drugs in the stupidity and ignorance of their ani-drugs raids. Plus: simpering about the Queen...
In September 1988, John Gallagher drove to Lifford, collected a rifle from behind the wardrobe in his father’s bedroom and headed for Sligo, where he murdered his ex-girlfriend Anne Gillespie, and her mother Annie. When the case came to court John Gallagher pleaded – and was found – guilty but insane and he was remanded to the Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum. In July 2000, Gallagher successfully escaped from Dundrum and absconded to England, before returning to Northern Ireland, where he was able to live freely, because of the unique absence of an extradition treaty for people in his position. Earlier this month, in a bizarre twist, apparently in the hope of taking advantage of a bequest from his father, Gallagher turned up at the Central Mental Hospital and handed himself in. It’s open to him to apply to the Health Review Board for release on the grounds that he does not now suffer from a mental illness. The Minister for Justice, Alan Shatter, has already acknowledged the possibility that he might be released within a matter of weeks. But as far back as 1991, in a special investigation carried out for Hot Press, Eamonn McCann questioned the original verdict of the court – and whether Gallagher was ever ‘insane’ within the meaning intended by the act. In the light of the growing controversy about the case, we reprint here in full the extraordinary story as it was originally published in Hot Press.
In 1982, she was sacked from the school in County Wexford where she taught. Irish politicians have colluded since then in protecting religious-based discrimination on the statute books.
The venal, rotten truth about Irish politics has been exposed for the world to see – but what about the far more serious crimes perpetuated against children by the Catholic church? How can those who were party to such outrages continue to go unpunished?
We all know that marijuana is less harmful than booze or cigarettes. In the face of incontrovertible evidence, why do Irish politicians continue to insist otherwise?
An area of outstanding natural beauty is under grave threat, having been earmarked by rapacious planners as ripe for ‘development’. Who will shout stop?
An area of outstanding natural beauty is under grave threat, having been earmarked by rapacious planners as ripe for ‘development’. Who will shout stop?
According to constitutional experts, if Bertie makes the Aras he can’t be sent to jail. Unfortunately for him, his dreams of winning the Presidency appear to be mostly a fantasy on his part.
Martin Luther King was a ferocious opponent of US war-mongering and imperialism, a fact conveniently overlooked by those who pose today as his spiritual heirs..
The death of Northern Ireland blues singer Ottilie Patterson has gone largely unnoticed. But she was a genuinely revolutionary force in the staid sixties.
Feminist campaigner and literary critic Germaine Greer is still taking stick for suggesting that British soldiers involved in war might be capable of rape.
Kofi Annan is just one of many global dignitaries urging cannabis and ecstasy be legalised. Plus, why rumours of Iran’s nuclear programme amount to so many lies
Military Intelligence analyst Bradley Manning has been shackled, drugged and kept in solitary confinement at Quantico for the last year for supplying damning video footage of US war crimes to Wikileaks.
Unspeak labels it collateral damage, but murder is murder. Remote operated drone missiles shot from Nevada have killed an estimated 2000-plus Pakistani civilians in the last five years.
Criss-crossing the North with unnecessary roads was always a waste of money. With the economy cratering both sides of the border, perhaps the folly will finally be abandoned.
It’s now widely accepted in scholarly circles that a sizable proportion of other gods born to virgins around December 25 used dope. But was the man from Bethlehem of the same dreamy mind?
Usually when you see a bunch of brightly dressed men in funny hats poncing around Derry, the Orange Order is involved. This year, however, the local Gay Pride Community was getting in on the act for the first time. And no one discriminated against women!
In the same year that the findings of the Saville Inquiry into Bloody Sunday were finally published, how ironic that the powers-that-be in the North should try to clamp down on the public’s right to protest.
It took the British government 38 years to apologise for the massacre in Derry. Meanwhile, they're going all-out to obscure the truth about a far more recent massacre in Basra...
Diarmuid Martin was wrong when he said 'forces' within the Church are covering up sex abuse cases. When it comes to clerical scandals, the entire edifice of Catholicism is corrupt
The Hurt Locker is the toast of Hollywood, with a slew of Academy Awards under its belt. But why are we rushing to cheer a film which so fundamentally distorts the truth about the Iraq war?
As if we were in any doubt whose side Jesus is on, the bearded bringer of fishes and loaves has apparently given his blessing to one of the companies who furnish the US military with bullets. Go get ‘em tough guy.
Why the wrong-headed hysteria being drummed up against legal highs is putting lives at risk. Also, fresh revelations about Brendan Smyth’s trail of abuse shows just how deeply corrupt the Catholic Church really is...
It’s widely believed that the Irish State no longer fears the Catholic Church. But it still fears facing up to State collusion with Church criminality.
A new organisation of musicians has written to Barack Obama protesting against the use of music to torture detainees. Also: a closer look at the individuals behind the recent An Bord Snip report, which recommends systematic fleecing of the poor in order to keep fat-cats in the style to which they’re accustomed.
In the aftermath of the horrific report into institutional child abuse, let us not forget that the higher echelons of the Catholic Church was perfectly aware of the evil being perpetrated in its name – and refused to do anything.
Having dragged Britain into war, former Prime Minister Tony Blair is now touting his services as a peace-dealer in the middle east. With Christmas on the way, no wonder he's looking crazier than ever before
When the Northern powder keg went off, the conflict was painted as an ethno-religious one, rather than as a clash of political principles. But what was really going on remains unfinished business...
Over 50 artists came together to pay their respects to Jimmy Faulkner in an unforgettable show of more than four hours of emotionally-charged performances.
The joys of poetry: Abby Oliviera enlivens Pride Week with a little ditty about her Highness's oral expertise. Are you sure Willy Wordsworth did it this way?
There’s nothing more pathetic than a rheumy-eyed hack reading over a sentence scribbled half a lifetime ago and drooling, ‘Jeez, that was a good one right enough.’
Bertie Ahern lied in public about his finances - but is still looked on with fondness by the public. What does this say about our attitudes towards wrongdoing?
We arrived just in time for Ham Sandwich – soft vibes, floating vocals, bass-player with the best rhythmic leg scratch in Ireland. It might have been the midges.
Shouldn't those who hailed the appointment of Willie Walsh as British Airways boss be cringing with embarrassment after the airline's part in the recent Heathrow Terminal 5 debacle?
Why the ultra-rich, and their media mouthpieces, don't like the thought of lowly proles sticking their noses into the ruling class's financial jiggery-pokery...
Following the exhumation of Padre Pio's body, two teenaged entrepreneurs are asking ten grand for a phial of what they say is the bearded bi-locationist's blood.
Eleven cannabis dealers have been murdered in Northern Ireland, victims of the IRA’s Direct Action Against Drugs vigilante killings. So far, no one has even been questioned in relation to the killings...
Pet sounds of Ulster: Kharma 45, The Undertones, Triggerman, Red Organ Serpent Sound and the late great Billy Browne. Not to mention masturbating monkeys.
Is it credible that the man who commanded the British Army in Iraq never voiced his misgivings about the war to the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair?
When 28 people died in an Israeli massacre at Qana, Lebanon, the Derry Anti-War Coalition occupied Derry's Raytheon Plant. Eamon McCann reports on their visit to Qana.
In recent weeks, we have been subjected to a slew of new headlines announcing the alleged dangers of cannabis. But this is just blatant scare-mongering...
30th Anniversary Retrospective: Thirty years ago, the USA was engaged in a bloody and illegal war, and led by a discredited President with no compunction about breaking domestic or international law. Sound familiar?
So they say. And so too was David, who slew Goliath in the bible. In fact, there is ample reason to believe that key characters involved in two pillars of the DUP’s view of the world would be deeply offended at recent remarks by Ian Paisley Jnr in Hot Press.
Garda corruption resulted in a Donegal publican’s false imprisonment under horrifying circumstances. But the input of Republican vigilantes in the framing of an innocent man should not be forgotten.
Bomb materials made in Northern Ireland are killing people in the Middle East while the PSNI arrest protesters against the manufacturers, including this HotPress columnist.
Semi-literates campaigning for the preservation of elite schools? Catholic journals displaying ignorance of the core elements of Catholicism? Where will it all end?
The gospel according to Engels: when the capitalist shit hits the ecological fan, the goats shall inherit the earth. Also, the unpleasantly Gore-y details.
With politicians up in arms about flower-beds while Raytheon helps destroy Lebanon, it’s enough to make even Tony Blair frown. Thank god we still have rock.
The kids at St Eithne’s have a dazzling take on today’s world – a blessed relief when saintly politicians take bribes for no reason and self-styled worthies line up to celebrate the slaughter at the Somme.
Female guppies are so sick of being pestered by their sex-crazed male counterparts, they often prefer to take their chances in dangerous predator-filled waters. Another Saturday night in Temple Bar then. Also: our columnist is mobbed by Boss-obsessed anoraks.
When the Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain appointed two members of the Orange Order to the Parades Commission, he set himself up for a political bruising. But worse than that, he may have fatally undermined the ability of the organisation to function.
Or how the Christian right detected family values in the sex lives of penguins. But only the heterosexual ones. Plus: the bizarre parable of the Eyeballs In The Sky.
Travellers have been barred from the town of Larne in Northern Ireland, in what amounts to one of the most extreme uses of an ASBO yet under UK law. Report by Eamonn McCann.
Lord Laird’s chequered past and unsavoury acquaintances make his criticism of Phil Flynn somewhat strange. Plus: Our columnist recalls a difficult meeting with Van Morrison and explores the origins of the singer’s legendary pugnacity.
Bearing in mind the chequered history of his predecessors, Eamonn McCann reckons Pope Benedict XVI may be letting himself in for a hell of a lot more than he bargained for.
Football fans in North Korea enjoy a good deal more freedom than many might have suspected. Plus: The story behind John Hume and David Trimble’s decision to bring arms manufacturer Raytheon to Derry and why Skruf are one of the bands to look out for in 2005.
A question mark continues to hang over Bono's motivations for associating with sundry right-wing politicians. Plus: why there has to be an alternative to the dogmatic positions adopted by the Provos and the Indo on the Northern issue.
Parishioners and priests alike have responded angrily to attempts by the Bishop of Derry to surreptitiously impose a levy aimed at covering the costs of clerical sex abuse cases. Plus: The different face Sinn Fein presents in the US and the hypocrisy of Cardinal Cormac Murphy O-Connor.
The hitherto undisclosed links between 'Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds' and Our Lady Of Fatima. Plus: Why the current impasse in the Peace Process reveals the fatal flaw in the Good Friday Agreement.
Why aren’t more artists protesting against the US government’s refusal to grant visas to Cuban musicians? Plus: The inside story on Mark E. Smith’s infamous appearance on Newsnight and why the controversy over Derry airport has exposed the hypocrisy of Michael O’Leary.
Our columnist wasn’t exactly popping open the champagne at the news that Mark Thatcher had escaped with a suspended sentence for his part in the attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea. Plus: why Bono’s gushing endorsement at the Labour Party Conference has allowed Blair and Brown to continue to get away with murder.
Religious leaders have reached new levels of bolloxology in their attempts to explain the tsunami in South East Asia. Plus: the unlamented demise of Fr. Martin Tierney and why documentarist and author Jon Ronson is in a field of his own.
It was the year Annie Kelly posthumously made her mark on the Northern Prison system and Janet Jackson caused uproar with her mammary moment at the Super Bowl. All in all, 2004 was a weird but not always wonderful 12 months.
It was the year Annie Kelly posthumously made her mark on the Northern Prison system and Janet Jackson caused uproar with her mammary moment at the Super Bowl. All in all, 2004 was a weird but not always wonderful 12 months.
Mainstream opinion on Third World debt as espoused by Geldof, Blair et al is grievously wrong. Plus reflections on the many bitter ironies at the heart of the Bloody Sunday inquiry.
Anybody who came hoping for an extended howl of cathartic defiance will have come away unfulfilled. This was a subdued performance from the non-pareil mistress of politically-charged, polymorphous folk-funk.
Our columnist recalls the elegant prose of literary craftsmen and footballer Percy M. Young. Plus: The unlamented resignation of EU commissioner Rocco Butiglione and why the American public is perhaps more radical than the recent election results indicated.
Why the similarities between FF and SF may be greater than first anticipated. Plus: linguistic weirditude on The Irish Times letters page and our columnist launches a new book which gleefully satirises the Northern political process.
Bigotry is alive and kicking in 21st-century Ireland – in the form of anti-traveller discrimination. Plus: why croquet is more genuinely Irish than Gaelic football.
The equine casualties of the IRA’s Hyde Park bomb of 1982 (pictured) have never been forgotten – but none of the names of the human dead have achieved iconic status. plus: computer war games.
If we can force the Western armies out of Iraq then we will have put a halt to the gallop of those who are using the might of the US military to impose their brute agenda on the world.
While Mary Robinson falls foul of the new accepted definition of “anti-semitism” in America, in dear old Ireland a republican can joke about “the black ’n’ prams”.
Why Derry city fans can no longer stand up to be counted; why the rich are so disgusting; and why we haven’t heard much about the British-Al Qaida plot to kill Gadafi.
Eoghan Harris is the latest disciple of ayurvedic medicine – the origins of the currently popular version of which go back, via Deepak Chopra, all the way to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
This is a band bubbling and bristling with intelligent musical and literary references. Bowie, the Stripes, Cockney Rebel, Madness, D. H. Lawrence, the Wasp and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
If Mel Gibson’s The Passion of The Christ is to be true to the bible then it has no alternative to be anti-semitic. Plus: why Sir Bob and Bono are on the wrong side.
Why, for some people, R. Kelly, “the pied piper of R&B, is the hero to Michael Jackson’s villain; and the chance to reclaim dead prods for the true faith!
Why the royal mutts take after the royal family and why Mother Teresa was a scheming liar, hypocrite and fraud. words Eamonn McCann
Politics | McCann
6 Jan 2004
Eamonn McCann
Eamonn McCann reflects on a tumultuous twelve months in which anti-Bush sentiment reached unprecedented levels of intensity, Dr. David Kelly’s suicide opened a can of worms, and, at home, the stem-cell debate swung into full flow .
“There’s no sense running for election unless first you suspend all sense of shame.” From that starting point, Eamonn McCann went on to exceed all expectations in the Northern Ireland election. Here, he recalls the highs and lows of the campaign.
“There’s no sense running for election unless first you suspend all sense of shame.” From that starting point, Eamonn McCann went on to exceed all expectations in the Northern Ireland election. Here, he recalls the highs and lows of the campaign.
While the provisional IRA might not have a British licence to murder, they might be allowed a certain leeway when it comes to tackling dissident Republicans.
The evidence of two British soldiers about the shooting of unarmed civilians, heard in public for the first time, but largely overlooked in coverage of the Saville inquiry, is a direct challenge to the “official” line on bloody sunday which has held for more than 30 years.
I’m sorry to hear of an old acquaintance, John Eddie McNicholl, taking a hit from the Bush regime, and even sorrier to note the reaction of an influential element of Irish-America.
Too many gardai with guns; the international role of the soldiers of bigotry; and a potentially significant advance in abortion law in Northern Ireland.
The Catholic Church may snatch the bodies of non-believers and dodge responsibility for child sex abuse, behind a cloud of legal obfuscation – but the heathens are growing in strength.
As the dust settles on the war in Iraq, the US government are said to have roped in Recording Industry Association Of aAmerica CEO, Hilary Rosen, to help draft copyright law for the new Iraqi administration.
Prayer as the best remedy for pre-menstrual tension? So says one of Bush’s boys as misogyny stalks the US establishment. Plus: the passing of the great writer and activist Howard Fast.
Hysteria sells well in the US; “the gentle, much-maligned torquemada”; Bin Laden’s reading habits; and the importance of thinking globally and acting locally.
Why Derry’s often warring politicians are happy to link arms; why John Hogan is bigger than Bono (in St. Lucia); and the lie of the decade award
Politics | McCann
18 Feb 2003
Eamonn McCann
why unionists and nationalists helplessly wring their hands at job losses but go on the offensive over a city's name; the origin of the "axis of evil"; and a hail of abuse to the chief
why unionists and nationalists helplessly wring their hands at job losses but go on the offensive over a city's name; the origin of the "axis of evil"; and a hail of abuse to the chief
In 1972, the British government “swept clean” the Chagos Islands and handed the biggest – a tropical paradise called Diego Garcia – over to the US. 30 years later no one seems to care what happened to the natives who were uprooted and exiled. words Eamonn McCann
The US army graverobs Hendrix… the death of the man who exposed the Turin Shroud… the international court hamstrung at birth… the lonely death of Annie Kelly
The Catholic Church has added Pope John Paul I to the long list of deceased pontiffs who are being considered for canonisation, so does sainthood now come with the job?
Wwhy, despite his best efforts, Bruce Springsteen's take on September 11 is ultimately a let-down; and how the Catholic Church in the US is experiencing simultaneous accountancy problems and sex abuse scandals
Important questions of the Stevens inquiry team were left unasked by the recent Panorama investigation into collusion between loyalist paramilitaries and the security forces, and the murder of Pat Finucane
The link between sacked airport workers in Belfast and Israeli intelligence; and the controversy surrounding Alex Maskey's wreath-laying at the war memorial
Unfortunately, it may mean the US getting into a huddle with "rogue states" but the important business of keeping women and gays in their place has seen the creation of an unlikely Islamic-Christian alliance
While they may disagree about context and certain details, the two new television documentaries about Bloody Sunday, far from being the "bloody fantasy" alleged by critics, offer accurate and powerful recreations of the events of that tragic and pivotal day. EAMONN McCANN, an eye-witness on Bloody Sunday, reports
EAMONN McCANN reports on detailed, eye-witness claims of the Catholic Church’s involvement in the Rwandan genocide of 1994 – and of the Vatican’s efforts to protect the guilty
I was listening to a TV discussion of sexuality the other night when one of those women comedians with a sharp line in anti-man routines said, "The trouble with men is that they can't control their penises", which was maybe the hundredth time I'd heard the same point made by the same sort of person but the first time it ever occurred to me that, as a matter of fact, it's true.
Papers released through the Bloody Sunday Inquiry show that, as far back as 1972, even a Tory government in Britain could contemplate the idea of a united Ireland. EAMONN McCANN reports on bad news for the Unionists
EAMONN McCANN has all the latest news from the wild and wacky worlds of sex, prostitution, death cults and wildest and wackiest by far mainstream religion.
EAMONN McCANN journeys to America s west coast and encounters the same GLOBAL issues of bigotry and prejudice. To compensate, though, he also savours the pleasures, musical, cultural and alcoholic, of San Fran.
Considerable as the controvery has been over the decision of Judge Kevin Haugh to send questionnaires to the 1,100 potential jurors in Charles Haughey case, one significant factor has been missed.
RAYTHEON, the armament-technology firm which manufactured Patriot and Sidewinder missiles, is establishing a plant in Derry and the local politicians couldn t be happier. EAMONN McCANN reports.
Down in Sandino s, just back from the High Court in London where named Bloody Sunday Paras were looking for anonymity, I had my routine off to a T within hours of the Nato liberators going into Kosovo. But the Paras were too quick for me.
Between the unattractive alternatives of the Belfast Agreement and a return to war, there has to be a new way forward for the Republican movement. So says former IRA man and respected Republican TOMMY McKEARNEY. Interview: EAMONN McCANN
PICS: CATHAL DAWSON
The bombing of Serbia is not about the fate of Kosovar Albanians. Rather, the colossal NATO military machine has been unleashed to establish the right of the United States, as the sole remaining superpower, to impose its will on the world.
By EAMONN McCANN. Pics Courtesy: The Star
The last untouched institution of State has finally come under media scrutiny", the Sunday Tribune told us on April 4th, apropos the Philip Sheedy affair.
It is a measure of how far Bill Clinton has dragged the US down that so much of the media remained paralysed for months over the Juanita Broaddrick story.
I suppose I should say I am sorry. It s just that I find their music completely devoid of humour.
So says David Baddiel, one of the two least funny men in the world, the other being his partner in cringe, Frank Skinner.
Could we organise the Second Coming for January 1st 2000? Yes. We have the technology, in the fields of embryology, genetic engineering and the application of DNA to the study of miracles.
“Bigots obsessed with men’s bums”. That was one commentator’s apt description of the galoots who gathered in the House of Lords at Westminster last month to vote down a proposal to equalise the age of consent for gays.
There are fewer refugees living in Ireland than there are Irish emigrants in Munich, but that hasn’t stopped Justice Minister John O’Donoghue, however inadvertently, whipping up race hate on the refugee issue.
The world is full of well-meaning people making things worse.
After the murder of the three Quinn children, well-meaners jammed the lines to phone-in programmes with suggestions, for example, that a covered walk-way should be constructed along the length of the Garvaghy Road
It's been a difficult birth and the infant institution remains weak. But at least the Assembly is alive at last, and fitfully kicking. With a bit of luck we can look forward to real politics.
None of the obituaries to Frank Sinatra that I read mentioned that he'd been accused by Senator Joseph McCarthy's House Un-American Activities Committee of being a communist. Maybe few are interested in the political aspect of Sinatra's complex and colourful life. But to ignore it entirely is to miss a salient dimension of the man.
The Garda Commissioner Pat Byrne is worried that the "Blue Flu" business has "brought the law into public disrepute". Oh, I don't know. I heard Brendan from Rialto on The Last Word saying that the public should treat the striking gardai the way gardai sometimes treat strikers. If they demonstrate, kick the fuck out of them, and don't worry if they complain, they'll be denounced in the O'Reilly press as troublemakers who weren't hit half hard enough.
To make the case against State forces for the murder of Aidan McAnespie is not to give expression to Catholic Nationalism. To show unconcern about the matter is not to express the thinking or the interests of Protestants.
Monica McWilliams of the Women's Coalition says that Northern Irish society is "immature" and that this can be put down to the domination of politics and public life by people of the male persuasion. Something to that effect. I'm told John Hume is livid.
I've known Mary Murphy (not her real name) for about two years now. I think by this stage we are good friends. She's 24 and lives with her husband and four children on one of Dublin's biggest housing estates.
Even if the Peace Agreement is accepted it might not work and will almost certainly result in the alienation of many northern citizens. The politicians, however, will have us believe that a No vote would automatically mean a return to all-out war. Eamonn McCann thinks otherwise. Pics: PETER MATTHEWS
Rev. James Porter was a Presbyterian Minister who wrote savage satirical tracts for the United Irishmen's newspaper in 1798 - and was hanged for his efforts. There's a lesson in his story, 200 years on, for Catholic, Protestant and dissenter alike.
There was an item on the RTE Nine O'Clock News a couple of weeks back about the Vatican's sort-of apology for the failure of Pope Pius XII forthrightly to condemn the crimes of the Nazis. The programme which followed was the second part of John Bowman's documentary on the life and times of the late Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid.
There will be a secret meeting in Belfast next Thursday (April 23rd) to mark the centenary of the birth of Paul Robeson, the prototype for Muhammad Ali.
As the dust settles in the wake of the Stormont Settlement, eamonn Mccann assesses the situation and wonders just how much of their ideology Republicans are in the process of jettisoning.
All the lobby correspondents at Westminster seem agreed that Paymaster General Geoffrey Robinson is for the chop. The urbane member for Coventry, they say, is soon to be shifted to a less high-profile position.
The inner life of the alienated Catholic intellectual is something else again. Take the late Monsignor de Brun of Maynooth College, a Limerick man, you might say, who may never have set foot in the place.
Well, there s another Paddy s Day gone, and good riddance. What an embarrassment. Even a stroll around town with a hand-spray of weed-killer for squirting on shamrock didn t ease my sense of mortification.
More than four years ago, Hot Press called for a Tribunal of Inquiry into the Catholic Church s handling of the issue of child-sex abuse by priests. We have regularly repeated the call since. Now it has been taken up in another publication. Maybe we are getting somewhere.
From the nun on the bun to Allah on a training shoe, blessed eamonn mccann says 'Amen' to the unholy year of 1997 with all the news that fits through the eye of a needle.
Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrist?
And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists?
And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air?
Oh they re taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.
Found this in the Guardian, tucked away anonymously, page 29, Sept. 19th:
Goodbye Elton John,
though we never liked you all that much,
You inspired Diana,
even though you were hardly butch
And it seemed to me
you lived your life
like a candle in the wind,
your hair never knowing what to cling to
When the rain set in.
And though we would have liked
to love you,
It would be a great big fib.
Your talent burned out long before
Your chutzpah ever did.
I spent two hours cleaning the cooker this morning. I have not done this before in my life. I wonder how much time other people spend cleaning their cooker. Do you wipe it clean after each time you?ve cooked? Do you do a weekly blitz on all the kitchen, including the cooker? Or do you simply wait for years until something inside you goes ?ping?? Answers on a postcard please.
The powers and remit of proposed cross-border bodies will be one of the knottier problems negotiators will face when the Northern talks resume next month. But I have an idea which might help.
As Gerry Adams and friends bask in the glory of another public relations triumph, EAMONN McCANN analyses the historical context of the current ceasefire, and assesses the scepticism surrounding the IRA s motives in calling it.
Jimmy Mulhall is in the Joy for writing on walls while Charlie Haughey roams the streets in broad daylight. The reason is that Jimmy is a decent man who lives in Rutland Cottages in inner-city Dublin while Charlie Haughey is a liar with two luxury homes. This is representative of the way justice works in Ireland.
That s it, then. Or will be by the time most of you read this. Five more years of conservative government. Logical enough that most political journos from across the water that I talk to tell me to expect no change. One man who went to Mo reports back that Mowlam follows the straight Mayhew line: her security advisers will be the arbiters of any new ceasefire.
Rosa Luxemburg once wrote that anyone who steps needlessly on a worm on the road to revolution has committed a crime. But even she might be dismayed by how daft the British media sometimes go about animals.
GIVE the devil his due , we say. But we don t. A county Carlow priest has spoken of his fears that local teenagers are practising devil worship . Fr Edward Dowling (PP, retired) last month told church-goers in Bagenalstown to be permanently vigilant for signs of involvement in the occult by local youngsters.
25 YEARS ago this month, on January 30th, 1972, Bloody Sunday, British soldiers stormed up the street where I was born and shot 13 people dead. I watched some of it happen.
ANY notion that the days were over when Irish politicians were hand-in-glove with the Catholic Church should have been dispelled a few weeks back when the education minister, Niamh Breathnach, led an eleven-strong parliamentary delegation to Rome for the beatification of Edmund Ignatius Rice, the founder of the Christian Brothers. Perhaps we hadn t realised just how deeply the hand is, again, snuggled into the glove.
PROFESSOR RICHARD LYNN of the University Of Ulster has produced a body of research designed to prove that ‘blacks’ are less intelligent than ‘whites’. A major influence on the authors of the controversial bible of the New Right The Bell Curve, Lynn now stands accused of “a truly venomous racism, combined with scandalous disregard for scientific objectivity.” Report: Eamonn McCann.
The people Northern Catholics should be looking to for support are Northern Protestants. And the Protestant working class should ensure in their own interests that the Catholics don’t look to them in vain.
“The best four million pounds I ever spent,” beamed Dermot Desmond last month from the front page of Celtic View, the official magazine of Glasgow Celtic FC.
Peer through the murk keenly and you can see the general shape of the settlement promised by the “peace process” that nobody, on pain of being perceived as a bigoted violent bastard, is permitted to oppose. You can even, I think, plot the rough course of the negotiations which might bring it about.
I’m dandering down the Strand Road the other night wondering whether Jacky is on in Mullen’s and, if he is, whether the chances of him advancing me another sub to see me through to the weekend are good, bad or indifferent to the circumstances I find myself in following the inexplicable failure of Queen’s Consul to do the business at Southwell, when who do I encounter but three citizens by the names of Robbo Terry, Barricade Joe and Rosemount Tom and all of them with expressions upon their faces suggesting that they are anticipating this very evening an occasion of passionate joy.
1994 was the year when paedophile priests were finally forced out of the closet. But the Church is still refusing to answer the vital questions. Report: Eamonn McCann.
Should the illegal arms be handed over? The Northern Ireland Secretary, Sir Patrick Mayhew, was, understandably, very anxious about the answer to that question. And he’s probably even more anxious now as he awaits publication of the report of the Scott Inquiry into arms-related sales to Iraq.
Richard Lynn is the University of Ulster’s dirty secret. He is Professor of Psychology at the university’s Coleraine campus. The authorities there hope that he will go away quietly when his tenure ends next year.
It took some old duffer in the House of Lords last week to bring back to mind one of the great crimes of recent years – the deaths of more than nine hundred people when the roll-on roll-off car ferry Estonia went down in the Baltic at the beginning of October.
What’s come over Eamonn Dunphy that he’s writing sensible? A fortnight ago on the back page of the Sunday Indo, he lashed out at Liam Hamilton, the man who wrote the report of the Beef Tribunal and was soon afterwards appointed Chief Justice by Albert Reynolds’ Government.
There was great consternation at government buildings on the day a few weeks back when Albert Reynolds, as he saw it, welcomed Gerry Adams into the constitutional fold as the de Valera of the 1990s.
A note dropped through the letter-box last week from the British Home Secretary Michael Howard, telling me that I’m not welcome at his place any more, which was a surprise and a sore disappointment, since not only has there been a cease-fire in the meantime but I was welcomed in by kind strangers the last time I called.
Over the past decade in ‘The Hot Press Political Interview’ the subject of Northern Ireland has, not surprisingly, surfaced time and time again. What follows is but a small selection of these quotes, specifically those that look to the future rather than to the past.
REMEMBER the Beef Tribunal? Forget it. There were other issues, too, which might have brought Reynolds to grief before now, and didn’t. But he could well come a cropper even yet, over Parkingate.
A very eminent British QC was passing through town recently so we finished up in the Dungloe Bar listening to the Jim Armstrong Band singeing the ceiling with John Lee Hooker, Eddie Boyd and Eric Clapton (eh?) numbers, and getting drunk. Us that is, not the band, necessarily.
Controversy rages about whether the papers should have published the story about Michael Cleary being a da. What fun. Some say The Phoenix was way out of line printing the yarn when his corpse wasn’t cold in the grave. Others engage in earnest disputation as to whether the story is actually true.
Down in Dublin for a couple of days a fortnight ago, I bumped into a rubicund retired diplomat in a Merrion Row pub. How long will Albert the Statesman last? he enquired. And we had a warm chuckle to ourselves over hot ports and brandy.
As 1993 draws to a close, considerable optimism is being expressed about the possibility of bringing peace to Northern Ireland. But no process or initiative grounded in Catholic Nationalism can bring about enduring peace, says Eamonn McCann.
What do you feel, what do you say, what do you do, when someone you love – in this case a Loyalist gunman – is accused of deliberate, cold-blooded premeditated multiple murders? The conflict in the North has generated thousands of stories of the brutalisation of innocent victims. This is just one of them.
It hasn’t been an easy time to raise political arguments. I was on UTV’s Counterpoint programme the Thursday after the Greysteel massacre and had sharpened my thoughts in advance for cut-and-thrust interplay with ex-UDA chief Glen Barr, Gregory Campbell of the Democratic Unionists and Mark Durkin of the SDLP.
THE CATHOLIC hierarchy won't get away for much longer with its lack of response to the rush of revelations about physical, sexual and psychological abuse done to children placed in its care.
Speaking as a holder of the Sam Maguire Cup, I can only concur in one GAA correspondent's description of the triumph by Henry Downey's heroes at Croke Park on September 19th as "the dawn of a new era".
Any day now a hombre called Padre Alessio Parente will arrive on these shores to whip up support for the canonisation of an Italian madman who called himself "Padre Pio."
On August 22nd the Sunday Independent carried a number of articles attacking Michael D. Higgins for remarks he had made in an interview in Hot Press. One of these articles was by Conor Cruise O'Brien. I want to comment on it.
THE USUAL people have been spluttering the usual outrage since the revelation in the Sunday Tribune (August 29th) that a former senior civil servant, Michael Lillis, met Gerry Adams on two occasions earlier this year to discuss peace in the North.
I think I know how Ireland could win more gold medals at athletics. The thought struck me as I watched the wondrous performances of the Kenyan squad at Stuttgart, and recalled both the role played in Kenyan athletic success by the Irish Catholic clergy and the rather different role played at home by the Christian Brothers.
Bowling down through the centre of the country on Friday afternoon en route from Derry to fabled Thurles I tune in to 2FM and hear that there are many thousands of folk already foregathered for the Féile. Also I hear the chief of the local gardai saying that so far the behaviour of all concerned has been 'perfect'.
You pick up your newspaper or switch on the television these days and there's a good chance you'll encounter an attack on political correctness - or "PC".
OMAR KHAYAM knew about libel lawyers. Remember how he put it? "The moving finger writes and, having writ, moves on in elaborate circumlocutions."
So I'm not about to say anything too straight or overly explicit about the case of Gay Byrne, the popular media personality who, at the time of writing, might be banged up at any moment in Mountjoy on account of having broadcast an item about the 1976 Sallins mail train robbery - the so-called "Nicky Kelly case".
The conflict in the North is commonly analysed in terms of the kind of people involved in the violence. Paramilitaries, for example, are frequently explained, or explained away, as psychopaths or racketeers.
In all of Ireland s hydra-headed entertainment industry, no other act simultaneously inspires as much love and loathing as The Wolfe Tones, a band who, annually, attract huge support at Siamsa Cois Laoi, while, no less vociferously, their detractors continue to dismiss them as the musical wing of the IRA, and worse. On the occasion of The Wolfe Tones celebrating 25 years together as a group, Eamon McCann went to meet them.
Philip Chevron's career has been nothing if not varied. From the early days with the Radiators through his collaborations with people like Agnes Bernelle and right up to his current work with The Pogues, he has proved himself to be a consistently fine songwriter and performer. In the first part of a lengthy and intense interview, he talks to Eamonn McCann about his childhood, his love of Broadway musicals, the Horslips connection, the genesis of the Radiators and his fleeting career as a journalist.
Eamonn McCann accompanies The Pogues across the sea to Scotland s centre of Irishness, Glasgow, and enters a complex world of fiercely divided loyalties, joyous celebration and soccer madness.
