Dromintee GAA and 'Strictly' Sinn Fein

The recent Sinn Fein version of 'Strictly Come Dancing' attracted a lot of attention ... and even more ridicule.  It even had its own dedicated Facebook page, which was hosted by Mickey Brady MP.  As well as hosting it he posted on it and one of his posts was about the official launch of this Sinn Fein event.

Mickey Brady

15 January at 08:52 · 

Sinn Féin Does Strictly will be officially launched tonight in Dromintee GAA Club at 7.30pm. Music, dancing and refreshments will be available so feel free to come along and get a taster of what's in store on February 6th!

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Dromintee GAA Club

This was clearly a party political event, organised by Newry & Armagh Sinn Fein, and the promotional video, which featured several Sinn Fein politicians, explicitly linked the competition to the forthcoming elections in Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.  Yet it was launched in Dromintee GAA Club.

Sean 'The Surgeon' Hughes

That official launch in the GAA club was filmed and this became the basis for the promotional video which featured, as well as Sinn Fein politicians, another Sinn Fein figure who was identified as Sean Hughes but is generally known as Sean 'The Surgeon' Hughes.

Now the GAA have stated that GAA premises should not be used for party political events so it seems that Dromintee have simply ignored the rules of their organisation.

Of course we shouldn't be surprised by that for the home of Domintee GAA Club is Pairc Ui Luachra agus Mhic Cathmhaoil.  This is the.Irish translation of Lochrie and Campbell Park for the grounds are named after two Provisional IRA terrorists, Jim Lochrie and Sean Campbell, who were killed when a land mine exploded prematurely at Kelly's Road, Killeen, on 6 December 1975.

The GAA speaks of 'reaching out to unionists' but any gestures in that direction are contradicted by situations such as that in Dromintee.

The Ulsterman who designed the National Museum of Scotland

Captain Francis Fowke (1823-1865)

The National Museum of Scotland dates back to 1866 and this year it is celebrating its 150th anniversary.  

The National Museum was formed in 2006 with the merger of the new Museum of Scotland with the adjacent and much older Royal Museum.  The two connected buildings stand beside each other on Chambers Street.in central Edinburgh.

There is an Ulster connection with the museum and in particular with the original building of 1866 because it was designed by an Ulster-born officer in the Royal Engineers, Captain Francis Fowke (1823-1865).

He was born on 7 July 1823 in the townland of Ballysillan, which was then in the countryside, north of Belfast, and he was the son of an English army officer named John Fowke and a young Ulster-Scots woman named Jane Ferguson.  She was the daughter of John Stevenson Ferguson, a Belfast linen merchant.

National Museum of Scotland - Royal Museum

Francis Fowke was educated at the Royal School, Dungannon, and the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich and then joined the Royal Engineers.

The Royal Scottish Museum was originally established in 1854 as the Industrial Museum of Scotland  and Captain Francis Fowke worked on the plans for the building from 1859 to 1860.  Construction work started in 1861 and the foundation stone was laid by Prince Albert, who had been a driving force in the movement to open museums and galleries.

Royal Museum - Main Hall

The east wing and part of the main hall were opened to the public in 1866 as the Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art and thereafter work proceeded in phases.  In 1904 the institution became known as the Royal Scottish Museum and it was Scotland's first national public building.

Captain Francis Fowke also designed public buildings in London and Dublin including the Royal Albert Hall, parts of the Victoria and Albert Museum and the National Gallery in Dublin.

He was primarily an engineer and architect but he was also an inventor and his inventions including an early folding camera.

Captain Francis Fowke died suddenly in London on 4 December 1865 and he was buried in Brompton Cemetery.

The Gaelic League and Irish republicanism

Sometimes the mask of the Irish language movements slips and we see how much it is political as well as cultural.

There was a letter in the Irish News (8 February 2016) from Fionntan McCarry in Ballycastle and it was a reminder of some of the history of the oldest and foremost Irish language organisation in Ireland, the Gaelic League, otherwise known as Conradh na Gaeilge.

This is the text of the letter:

I'm requesting some assistance in putting together an exhibition on the Gaelic League commemorations of Roger Casement held in Murlough, Co Antrim, throughout the 1950s and 1960s.  Casement's requested grave site  was deciated by Eamon de Valera on his first visit north as taoiseach at the inaugural Casement Sunday on August 2 1953, as part of the campaign for repatriation that led to the state funeral in Dublin in 1965.  I have a lot of the official photographs that were left with us, as well as the advertising materials, a programme signed by Sergeant Kavanagh and The Irish News reports.  What is missing though are photographs taken by those in attendance, as around two dozen cameras can be seen in the press photographs.  Any photographs or memories of subsequent years would be most welcome.

Fionntan McCarry, Ballycastle

I look forward to this exhibition, which will confirm what many of us have been saying about the Irish language movement for some time, and I hope that those behind the project get plenty of photographs and plenty of information.

Today it is often said that Sinn Fein politicised the Irish language but it was politicised long before Sinn Fein took it up as the main weapon in their cultural war.  Yes it was Sinn Fein that coined the slogan 'every word spoken in Irish is another bullet in the freedom struggle' but the association of the Irish language with Irish nationalism and republicanism goes back long before that.

If we go to the start of the Gaelic revival and the formation of the Gaelic League in 1893, it was clear even then that the Gaelic League was an organisation dedicated to the advancement of 'cultural nationalism' and not just culture.

It is not really surprising therefore that the annual Casement Sunday event at Mulough Bay in north Antrim was a 'Gaelic League commemoration'.

Roger Casement is one of the heroes of Irish republicanism and Irish nationalism and he was executed in 1916 in Pentonville prison for 'high treason'.  His body was then buried within the prison walls.

The campaign to repatriate his remains to Ireland was one the issues on which Irish republicans campaigned and the annual commemoration at Murlough was an opportunity for participating organisations, including the Gaelic League and the GAA, to assert their nationalism.  Participants also included the Old IRA and later these organisations were joined by the Wolfe Tone Society, which was a front organisation for the contemporary IRA.

They hoped that Casement could be buried in Northern Ireland, at Murlough, but in 1965 the Labour government of Harold Wilson sent his remains back to the Irish Republic.  After a state funeral organised by the government of the Irish Republic the remains of Roger Casement were reburied at Glasnevin.

The forthcoming exhibition will tell the story of the annual Casement Commemorations at Murlough Bay and will serve to expose the true nature of the Gaelic League in those years after 1953.  This was not simply an Irish language organisation, it was an Irish nationalist organisation as well.

The letter-writer in the Irish News states that on 2 August 1953 the gathering was addressed by Eamon de Valera.  However he omitted to say that it was also addressed by Sean MacBride and Frank Aiken, two men who had something in common - they were both former chiefs-of-staff of the IRA.

Supporters of 'Integrated Education'?

Official IRA press conference in 1975

The Workers Party has reaffirmed its support for 'integrated education'.  

It brings to mind a photograph I see from time to time in BBC Broadcasting House in Ormeau Avenue, a photograph I saw again this morning and one which always brings a smile to my face.

It was taken back in 1975 and relates to a press conference and protest by the youth wing of the Official IRA.

(1) there is something incongruous about the association of masked members of the Official IRA and 'integrated education'.

(2) If you are promoting 'integrated education, don't produce a placard saying 'we demand ITEGRATED education'.

Back in 1975 the Official IRA was formally on ceasefire but during that year there was a feud between the Officials and the INLA during which three INLA and five OIRA members were killed.

Their political wing was Official Fein, which became Sinn Fein, the Workers Party and eventually from 1982 just the Workers' Party.

Casement Park - 'out of time'

The dereliction that is Casement Park

Yesterday afternoon I was in West Belfast to speak to the boys in the politics class at the Christian Brothers School on the Glen Road. On the way there I took a wrong turn and ended up on the Andersonstown Road. As I drove past Casement Park, workmen were erecting a new hoarding along the outside wall of the park. It looked well and it screened off the park from passers-by but the site is still derelict and the GAA have still not produced a new design to take to the planners.

In spite of what Caral Ni Chuilin has said, it certainly won't be built 'under her watch' and it won't even get started 'under her watch'.

The derelict site must be a constant reminder of a project gone badly wrong and it may be that someone is hoping, especially with an election looming in the near future, that 'out of sight' will mean 'out of mind'. I'm not sure that will be the case.

I suspect more people will simply thin kof the phrase 'out of sight' and say 'out of time'. Ravenhill has been completed, Windsor Park is almost completed and Casement hasn't even started.

An Ulsterman in North Carolina

Some years ago I visited the North Carolina Museum of History in the city of Raleigh, North Carolina.  It is an excellent museum which explains the history of the state, including the influence of the Scotch-Irish.

Recently I came across their Facebook page.  On Tuesday 22 December their FB post was about one of the state's historic sites, Fort Dobbs, which is the only site in North Carolina dedicated to the French and Indian War (1754-1763), some years before the War of Independence.

There was a drawing of the old fort and link across to the website This Day in North Carolina History for 21 December.

Fort Dobbs

The fort was named after Arthur Dobbs (1689-1765), who was the governor of the royal colony of North Carolina.

He chose the location in present-day Iredell County and charged Colonel Hugh Waddell and his frontier company of fifty men with protecting both the fort and the colonists against the encroaching French.

Arthur Dobbs was born on 2 April 1689 and was the eldest son of Richard Dobbs (1660-1711) of Castle Dobbs and his wife Mary Stewart, who was one of the Stewarts of Ballintoy in north Antrim.  Those were unsettled times in Ulster and Richard had sent his wife across to Scotland for safety.  As a result Arthur Dobbs was born in Girvan.

When peace was restored his mother brought him back to Ulster and he remained there until he moved to America as governor of North Carolina.

Arthur Dobbs became an engineer and surveyor and also served in the army before taking over the management of the family estate in east Antrim, near Kilroot.  He was elected MP for Carrickfergus in the Irish Parliament in 1727 and held that position until 1760.

Meanwhile he became a major landowner in North Carolina and encouraged many Ulstermen to settle there.  Following the death of the previous governor he sought for appointment as the new governor and he was confirmed on 25 January 1753 but he did not arrive in the colony until 31 October 1754.  The previous year he had finished rebuilding Castle Dobbs and it seems that he was determined to finish that project before going out to the colony.

The Dobbs family had been in Ulster for several generations and his house was just yards away from the ruins of the old castle that had been built by his grandfather.

He was the most prominent organiser of Scotch-Irish emigration to pre-revolutionary America and he remained governor of North Carolina for twenty years until his death on 28 March 1765.

Arthur Dobbs was just of the many Ulster-Scots who helped to make modern America.

The Wright Brothers

David McCullough is a renowned American author, historian and narrator.  He was born in Pittsburgh in 1933 of Scotch-Irish ancestry.

His parents and his grandmother, who often read to him, introduced him to books at an early age and they also introduced him to history.

As well as writing about American history he has narrated many great television programmes and documentaries including The American Experience and The Civil War.

Earlier this year he wrote a book about The Wright Brothers.  Wilbur and Orville Wright were inventors and pioneers of aviation.  They are credited with inventing and building the world's first aeroplane, which took to the air on 17 December 1903.

Wilbur was born in Indiana and Orville in Ohio and their father was a bishop in the Church of the United Brethren in Christ, a conservative evangelical denomination.  

McCullough's book was one of the most acclaimed books of the year and of the two Wright brothers he said:

They had something many houses didn't have.  They had books.  They had parents who encouraged curiosity about everything.

There were two libraries in the home of Bishop Wright, a theological library and a general library and looking back on his childhood Orville once commented that he had his brother had:

special advantages ... we were lucky enough to grow up in a home environment where there was always much encouragement to children to pursue intellectual interests; to investigate whatever aroused their curiosity.

David McCullough has highlighted two things about the brothers, two things that undoubtedly contributed to their achievements, They had books and they had parents who encouraged them to read and to ask and find out.  Those things were still important when David McCullough was growing up and they are still important today!