SAOIRSE32

BBC
23 May 2008

The victims of the Irish Famine are to be remembered in an annual official memorial day, which is to be established in the Republic of Ireland.

Illustration of Irish Famine (Mary Evans Picture Library) - About one million people died in the famine in the 1840s

It is believed that about one million people in Ireland starved in the 1840s after the failure of the potato crop.

Hundreds of thousands of others emigrated during the disaster, sparking a worldwide Irish diaspora.

The Irish government has set up an expert group to organise a yearly event.

Making the announcement, Community Affairs Minister Eamon O Cuiv said a committee would consider the various possibilities.

The minister, a grandson of former Taoiseach and President Eamon De Valera, said: “The effects of the Great Famine are still evident today and its legacy has given Irish people an appreciation of issues such as food security and a strong commitment to humanitarian aid and relief.

“If the Famine didn’t happen, there could be 12 million people living in Ireland and eight million could be native Irish speakers.”

The Famine resulted in large Irish communities settling in countries like the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

“These diaspora communities - the Irish abroad - still demonstrate a significant affinity with their migrant predecessors of the Famine,” said Mr O Cuiv.

Michael Blanch felt the famine’s place in history was neglected

The Famine has also been blamed for the decline of the Irish language.

The Dublin-based Committee for the Commemoration of Irish Famine Victims, has run a lobbying campaign for five years for such a memorial.

Taxi driver Michael Blanch, who set up the committee, first held a commemoration in central Dublin in 2003 when only he and his wife Betty attended.

The committee has since held an annual procession from the capital’s Garden of Remembrance to Famine sculptures on the banks of the River Liffey.

“Today is a great day to be Irish. The Famine was a sad part of our history but has been badly neglected by successive governments,” he said.

“The victims of the Famine and generations of Irish emigrants who contributed so much to Ireland will be given the respect and recognition they deserve.”

An annual Famine commemoration day has been held in Montreal in Canada since 1859.

The population of Ireland, which exceeded eight million in the Census of 1841, was reduced by approximately 1.5 million through death and emigration.

Only 10 years later, the 1851 Census recorded a population of only 6.5 million.

BBC
24 May 2008

Four of the earliest known paintings of Belfast have been returned to the city after being hidden from public view for more than 200 years.

The Chief Executive of Ewart, Nick Reid, with the paintings of the Belfast landscape.

The four landscapes, valued at £1m, date from 1766 and capture what was then a burgeoning settlement on the River Lagan a century before the golden age of the industrial revolution.

The works were commissioned by Arthur Hill, the 1st Viscount of Dungannon, and depict the views of the town from his then residence on the Belvoir estate.

Painted by Dublin artist Jonathan Fisher, they are acknowledged by art historians as the earliest images of Belfast still in existence.

After being in private hands for more than 200 years, the landscapes were recently purchased at auction at Sotheby’s in London by Belfast developers William Ewart Properties.

Company owners Frank Boyd and Andrew Creighton, who are both avid art collectors, have now agreed to lend the works to the Ulster Museum for its re-opening exhibition next year.

Eileen Black, curator of pre-20th century Irish paintings at the museum, said she was delighted to have to chance to display them.

“We are privileged to help facilitate the first public viewing of these paintings in over 200 years,” she said.

“Jonathan Fisher is a very accomplished landscape painter of the period and these are exceptionally fine examples of his work.

“However, perhaps even more importantly, the local historical value of these works is immense.

“We know of no other such views of Belfast and its environs in the 1760s and what the four paintings show of the town nestling in the Lagan Valley is of enormous worth.

“In my view, these paintings are an extremely important part of Northern Ireland’s heritage and we are immensely grateful that Ewart has brought the paintings home and is willing to lend them to us for our launch exhibition when the Ulster Museum reopens next year.”

BBC
25 May 2008

The leader of the UVF-linked Progressive Unionist Party has said she would like to see loyalists decommission their weapons.

The PUP is linked to the UVF

Dawn Purvis said minds would be focused on the issue after Secretary of State Shaun Woodward warned legal ways of decommissioning would not last forever.

The UVF announced it was putting its weapons beyond reach last year.

“We would like to see decommissioning happen within loyalist communities,” Ms Purvis said.

“That would be an indication, I believe, that loyalist communities are feeling safe, that they have been brought into the new political dispensation and they are reaping the benefits of redevelopment and regeneration.”

Mr Woodward has signalled he would wind up the decommissioning body sooner, rather than later.

At the moment the Independent International Body on Decommissioning oversees the process.

However, Mr Woodward said Northern Ireland could only be a normal society when such a body no longer existed.

ukpress.google.com
25 May 2008

A film about an IRA hunger strike in a Northern Irish prison has won an international award.

Hunger, which focuses on life at the Maze Prison and the hunger protest in 1981, received the Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

Steve McQueen with the Camera D’or received for ‘Hunger’

It is directed by London-born Turner Prize winner Steve McQueen and stars Irish actor Michael Fassbender as IRA prisoner Bobby Sands, the leader and the first to die in the Maze prison hunger strike.

Co-producer Laura Hastings-Smith, who worked alongside Robin Gutch, said: “We’re all absolutely thrilled, and thrilled for Steve, thrilled for the film and for everyone who’s worked on Hunger.

“The key to the film was that it looked at the humanity of the story and how this place, Maze Prison, at that time in history, how it was a brutalising place for everyone - be you prison officer, prisoner, orderly or riot guard.

“It was a tragedy for everyone. We looked at what happens when dialogue stops and that has a resonance across the world.”

The film was shown as part of the ‘Un Certain Regard’ section of the festival, which encourages innovative works and young talent.

The film is set in one of the H-blocks at Maze Prison in 1981, where Republican prisoners were on protest.

New inmate Davey Gillen (Brian Milligan) shares a cell with Republican prisoner Gerry Campbell (Liam McMahon) who trains him how to smuggle items and exchange communications, passing them on to their H-block leader Bobby Sands.

The film tells how the rioting broke out and violence spread beyond the Maze.

Independent.ie
Sunday, 25 May 2008

Defendants sit expressionless through CCTV evidence as court hears of the final moments of Robert McCartney’s vain fight for life, writes Alan Murray

THE prone figure lying awkwardly on the pavement was the nearly lifeless body of Robert McCartney. It was an image his sisters and partner had never seen, and fortunately their absence from Crown Court 12 last Thursday morning spared them the distressing image of the 33-year-old Belfast man’s vain fight for life.

Photo: Robert McCartney

The city centre CCTV footage briefly captured some of the last minutes of Robert McCartney’s life from 10.50pm on the night of January 30, 2005, after he had been fatally stabbed following a row in a Belfast city centre bar.

Behind him in the grainy footage, his companion on that evening, Brendan Devine, can be seen clutching his abdomen where he had been stabbed by the same gang following the incident at Magennis’s pub.

In the dock, Terence Davison, James McCormick and Joseph Fitzpatrick who deny all charges sat expressionless, arms folded staring at the CCTV images of Robert McCartney dying.

Davison, a 51-year-old from a well-known Belfast republican family, sat seats apart from co-defendants McCormick and Fitzpatrick in the glass and wood enclosed dock — perhaps to emphasise that he is the defendant charged with murder while those in the dock with him face charges of affray. Fitzpatrick is also charged with assaulting one of the deceased’s friends Edward Gowdy.

Davison, the prosecution alleges, was the man who witness C, a woman motorist, says she saw deliver a fatal stab wound to Mr McCartney in Cromac Street.

The silent footage shown to the court could have come from any street in these islands on a Friday or a Saturday night after a violent ruck when the pubs emptied.

What has made this case stand out from the rest is the huge international interest shown in it, the embarrassment it has caused Sinn Fein and the difficulties it created for the halted Northern Ireland peace process for the two years after Robert McCartney’s murder.

Last week was the first time the criminal legal case against Davison, McCormick and Fitzpatrick had been publicly outlined.

Other CCTV footage shown in Court 12 on Thursday depicted Davison’s nephew Gerard ‘Jock’ Davison inside the Royal Victoria Hospital after the stabbing, with his right hand wrapped in a makeshift cloth bandage.

That footage is timed at 23.04pm, half an hour before Robert McCartney and his companion were ferried to the hospital. Gerard Davison, a convicted IRA member, is not charged in connection with the McCartney murder but the footage of his presence at the RVH accompanied by his uncle Terry and veiled legal references suggest that he may feature more prominently in the proceedings at a later stage in the trial.

Robert McCartney’s last words to his companion Brendan Devine were “no one deserves this”, Crown Counsel Gordon Kerr QC told the court.

By the time two plainclothes detectives arrived at the scene where he lay critically injured close to the BT carpark near Hamilton Street, the father of two was unconscious.

Detective Constable Clarke recalled that Mr McCartney had suffered a two- to three-inch wound on the lower side of his abdomen which seemed clean and was not gushing blood. He applied a towel to the wound and placed him in the recovery position. He recalled that Robert McCartney regained “some measure of consciousness and mumbled some words. They were inaudible to me,” he said. The ambulance arrived five minutes later and he then left the scene to travel to Magennis’s bar to try to recover any CCTV footage of events inside the pub earlier that evening.

Constable Clarke informed the court that he spoke to the bar’s manager who was called Simon but was informed that the CCTV footage had only commenced at 11.20pm, crucially, after the fracas had stopped.

On day three of the trial, the evidence of other police officers and surgeons at the RVH was read.

Reserve Constable Michael McMurray’s statement outlined how he attended the dying man who he noted had blood on his hands, head and clothing.

He concluded that Robert McCartney was in a very serious condition but discovered that there were no field dressings in his police vehicle to apply to his wound.

He used one he carried on his person for such emergency situations and then put his fingers in the wounded man’s mouth to clear his airways. There was, he recorded, “a lot of blood coming from his mouth”.

Mr Justice John Gillen had invited family members to depart the public gallery before the medical evidence was presented to spare them distress but McCartney’s sister Paula and his partner Bridgeen remained throughout the sitting.

Evidence from Consultant Surgeons Terence Irwin and Dennis William Harkin at the Royal Victoria Hospital recorded that bleeding was heavy in Robert McCartney’s abdominal area.

His heart was empty of blood but his abdomen was full of blood from a major haemorrhage.

At 7.15 on the morning of January 31 in an intensive care ward, Robert McCartney suffered a cardiac arrest and was pronounced dead 57 minutes later.

When the court adjourned until Tuesday, defendant Davison and his short blond-haired female partner, to whom Robert McCartney is alleged to have directed an insult on the night of his murder, squeezed past Robert’s partner Bridgeen Hagans outside the courtroom, while the only other accused present Jim McCormick slipped past Paula McCartney on the other side. Neither man spoke to the other.

Independent.ie
Sunday May 25 2008

**Over the years, I have posted articles and pictures on Rory, and some of these links can be accessed from this Google search link

Two festivals get underway from next weekend, in Cork and Donegal, to celebrate the music of rock legend Rory Gallagher.

The Rory Gallagher International Blues Festival takes place next weekend in Ballyshannon featuring some 32 bands from Germany , Holland, Italy, USA, UK and Ireland.

RTE presenter Barry O’Neill, the festival organiser, says: “We are gearing ourselves for an invasion of Rory Gallagher fans from all over the world. It’s a real testament to Rory, who toured the world extensively for close on three decades.

“It’s a voluntary organised festival that has become a labour of love but its only right to recognise one of Ireland’s first international rock musicians.” The Cork Rocks for Rory festival will take place on June 6 and 7.

Gerry Adams leads tributes to Republican fighter as thousands take to the streets of Belfast to pay their final respects

Henry McDonald, Ireland editor
The Observer
Sunday May 25 2008

Brian Keenan, who was once branded the single biggest threat to Britain, was buried yesterday amid claims that without him there would be no power-sharing in Northern Ireland.

Gerry Adams told mourners at a secular service in west Belfast that the peace process would have been impossible without the 66-year-old’s support. Keenan died of cancer last week.

The Belfast republican was pivotal in key IRA and Sinn Fein decisions such as decommissioning and accepting the Police Service of Northern Ireland - compromises that Keenan would have been against just a few years before.

Adams told hundreds of republicans gathered at a memorial garden in honour of IRA members from the Ballymurphy and Whiterock areas of Belfast: ‘He was central to securing the support of the IRA leadership and rank and file for a whole series of historic initiatives which made the peace process possible.

‘And for the sceptics within unionism, let me remind them that the recent watershed moments in our history, including the election of (the Democratic Unionist leader) Ian Paisley as First Minister, would not have been possible without the work of Brian Keenan and his colleagues.’

Keenan, a former trade unionist and father-of-six was in prison from 1979 to 1993 for conspiring to cause explosions.

The keen hurler initially joined the Official IRA but later left to follow the more militant Provisionals. He remained a key ally of Gerry Adams throughout his career inside the IRA.

In the early Seventies he controlled the arms of the Belfast IRA as quartermaster and was later involved in the bombing campaign in England. During Keenan’s time directing ‘operations’ in England, the IRA planted bombs in Birmingham and Guildford, killing dozens of civilians. He was also IRA ‘director of operations’ when the Provisionals murdered British Ambassador Christopher Ewart-Biggs in Dublin.

The son of a former RAF officer, he resigned from the IRA’s ruling Army Council in 2005 due to ill health.

He was branded the single biggest threat to the British state by Tony Blair’s former head of staff Jonathan Powell. However, he was influential in securing the IRA’s 2005 decommissioning of weapons.

Adams told republican supporters that Keenan believed in the primacy of politics. And he understood the need to build Sinn Fein as the vehicle of republican struggle.

‘His working class politics and his republican and socialist principles were his constant guide through four decades of unstinting activism.

‘That was his hallmark, plus an ability to attract and work together with other highly competent and talented men and women; to motivate and inspire and encourage.’

Family and friends from across Ireland, including Chrissie his wife, his four daughters and two sons and his grandchildren had gathered for the speech in west Belfast’s Ballymurphy.

Keenan was later cremated at Roselawn cemetery on the outskirts of east Belfast. Adams, Sinn Fein Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness and West Tyrone MP Pat Doherty helped carry the coffin. It was flanked by supporters wearing black berets and white shirts. Thousands of mourners lined the Springfield Road.

By Victoria O’Hara
Belfast Telegraph
Saturday 24, May 2008

Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams was among hundreds of mourners today attending the funeral of former IRA commander Brian Keenan.

West Belfast came to a standstill as the coffin of the 67-year-old was removed from New Barnsley Crescent, Ballymurphy.

Mourners walked behind the funeral cortege to a republican memorial garden on the Springfield Road where tributes were paid to the Mr Keenan, who died last Wednesday from cancer.

In an address to mourners, Gerry Adams said he remained dedicated to republicanism.

“Even in the face of great illness he never gave up, never stopped plotting and planning and arguing and looking to how republicans could best develop our policies and advance our struggle,” he said.

“He was central to securing the support of the IRA leadership and rank and file for a whole series of historic initiatives which made the peace process possible.

“And for the sceptics within unionism, let me remind them that the recent watershed moments in our history, including the election of Ian Paisley as First Minister, would not have been possible without the work of Brian Keenan and his colleagues.”

“His working class politics and his republican and socialist principles were his constant guide through four decades of unstinting activism.”

There was no religious element during the funeral ceremony after which the lifelong republican socialist remains were taken to Roselawn crematorium.

Mr Keenan, a former member of the IRA’s Army Council, received an 18-year prison sentence in 1980 for conspiring to cause explosions.

By Chris Thorton and Victor Gordon
Belfast Telegraph
Saturday 24, May 2008

Mark Burcombe (27) is due to be sentenced next month after admitting a role in the horrific cut-throat murders of Andrew Robb and David McIlwaine.

He is then expected to testify against a man accused of playing a leading role in the attacks on the Portadown teenagers in February 2000.

Cricket-loving Burcombe (27) from Ballynahinch Road, Lisburn, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to cause grievous bodily harm to the 18-year-olds. He made the plea after reaching a deal with prosecutors that could see him receive a reduced sentence and escape a murder charge.

The supergrass trials of the 1980s saw scores of terror suspects jailed but the Court of Appeal later threw out their evidence.

Ever since the system collapsed prosecutors have been reluctant to use the evidence of one accused person against another in the Northern Ireland courts.

However, the law was changed in 2005 to make it easier for defendants to turn Queen’s evidence in exchange for lighter sentences. It was first used last year, when two informers testified that a number of loyalists were drug dealers.

Burcombe is believe to be the first to give evidence against a co-accused in Northern Ireland under the new legislation.

Andrew Robb and David McIlwaine were accidentally caught up in a loyalist feud, abducted and stabbed repeatedly at a remote roadside near the village of Tandragee, Co Armagh.

The families of the two victims have objected to the deal for Burcombe, claiming his evidence will not strengthen the case against Steven Brown, also known as Steven Revels, also 27, from Castle Place in Castlecaulfield.

They are considering a judicial review of the decision to accept him as a witness. Andrew’s mother Ann and David’s father Paul recently met a representative of the Prosecution Service to tell them of their unhappiness.

“I am totally disgusted,” Mrs Robb said. “The truth of the matter is that Burcombe is telling the police nothing new against his co-accused Steven Brown.

“I was originally told there were eight to 11 men at the murder scene and the understanding was that Burcombe would give evidence against them all.

“But the fact is that he is only giving evidence against Brown and he’s telling the police nothing they don’t already know.

“He’s telling them a fraction of what happened and there is a disgusting deal to have his charges reduced and he is to be sentenced accordingly. I’m gutted.

“I am hoping my request for a judicial review will be granted and the murder charges will be reinstated concerned this bloody murder, for that’s what it is.

“I simply want justice to be done and this isn’t justice by any stretch of the imagination. My son was cut to pieces. It was murder, nothing short of it.”

Mr McIlwaine said he is “quite angry” about the deal.

“When Burcombe first gave himself up, at the time I thought it was a good thing that somebody was coming forward and telling the truth in the case,” he said.

“But what’s happening now is absolute madness. He took police to where the weapons were supposed to be and then couldn’t remember where they were.

“They shouldn’t be using him.”