Pearse and Carson by the late Joe McWilliams

Easter, 1916 – a terrible beauty was born. It had a dark and little seen twin; a terrible ignorance of the people of the North. 

South of the border, the Easter Rising is almost universally acclaimed. A singular understanding of history imposed, and a singular way of being Irish understood. Professor Michael Laffan wrote:

“When I was a schoolboy… reading Carter’s history of Ireland, more space was devoted to Pearse than to all the other leaders put together or to the Easter Rising. There was almost a state-imposed distortion whereby not only are the Irishmen who fought in the British army in the First World War airbrushed out, the constitutionalist tradition was seen as a dead end.”

Not only did Ireland of the twentieth century airbrush the constitutionalist tradition, they erased the avatar of a loyal Irish-British person and burnt the hard-drive.

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George Bernard Shaw portended Northern Ireland as “an autonomous political lunatic asylum”. How right he was. I’m not sure that was the creator’s intention, however. Read more »

Back in the late 1980’s I got to know a guy who was an Inspector in the RUC, a very interesting character, a Catholic policeman incidentally, who could sometimes be quite forthright in his views on the force he worked for.

That he didn’t care who knew we were friendly was evident by an invitation one time to meet in the canteen of the police station where he was headquartered, in full sight of colleagues and canteen staff. I could never work out why but I suspect he had a reason. Read more »

By Dr John Coulter

9/5/2016

Introducing compulsory voting, lowering the voting age to at least 16, and making Citizenship Studies on the importance of the ballot box part of the school curriculum should be three crucial parts of the planned Programme for Government over the next five-year Assembly mandate.

The outcome of the Stormont poll can be easily summarised: compared to 2011, the DUP, UUP, Alliance, Independent and TUV got the same final tally of seats; Sinn Fein lost one seat in its tally; the SDLP lost two; the Greens up one, and the Left-wing People Before Profit Alliance won two. Read more »

Two pictures tell the tale. The first was taken in 1983 in the aftermath of that year’s British general election, the second on Friday in the wake of the Assembly election count in West Belfast.

Gerry Adams is carried shoulder high by jubilant supporters after the Sinn Fein leader won the West Belfast seat in the June 1983 Westminster general election.

Gerry Carroll is carried shoulder high by jubilant supporters after the People Before Profit (PBP) candidate topped the poll in Friday’s NI Assembly election count in West Belfast

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