Sinn Fein candidate compares Orangemen to KKK

Dermot Kennedy, Sinn Fein candidate in Strangford

A veteran member of Sinn Finn has created a tweet depicting four member of the Ku Klux Klan in full KKK uniform above a photograph of a Belfast Orange parade at Carlisle Circus in North Belfast with the comment:  ‘Spot the difference.  Answers on a tweet please.’  

The Orange brethren are members of the colour party of the County Grand Orange Lodge of Belfast.

This tweet is thoroughly sectarian and offensive.  

The author of the tweet is veteran Sinn Fein member and businessman Dermot Kennedy, who is the prospective Sinn Fein election candidate in the forthcoming Assembly elections in the constituency of Strangford.  He has been a member of Sinn Fein for almost forty years and is an experienced politician as well as a businessman.

Dermot Kennedy has worked at the heart of Sinn Fein.  He was a college lecturer before going in to business but has also worked in the policy department of Sinn Fein.  So we know a little more about the sort of people employed by Sinn Fein.

Dermot Kennedy contested the 2003 Assembly election in Strangford, the 2005 General Election for Strangford, a Castlereagh seat in the 2005 Local Government election and the 2007 Assembly election in Strangford but has always been unsuccessful.  However when he contested the Strangford seat at the 2003 Assembly election he said he was 'keen to reach out and to work alongside unionists and fellow nationalists within Strangford to build relationships across the community.'  That was what he said in public but we now know what he really thinks about us.

On this occasion his mask has slipped and we see the sectarianism and bigotry that permeate his party.

Dermot Kennedy is not the first prominent member of Sinn Fein to make such a remark.  In October 2000 Sinn Fein MLA Dr Dara O'Hagan compared the Orange Order to the KKK on the floor of the Assembly.

This is a particularly nasty element of the Sinn Fein narrative but it surfaces from time to time and is part of the Sinn Fein strategy of demonising Orangemen and indeed the wider unioinist community.

In his book Northern Ireland and the Divided World, Professor John McGarry, a political scientist, said that those Irish republicans who opposed Orange parades 'frequently refer to the Orange Order as akin to the Ke Klux Klan' so that is something that Dermot Kennedy will have heard many times in Sinn Fein gatherings.

Ruth Dudley Edwards has confirmed this.  She said: 'During anti-parade protests of the 1990s - which the IRA army council deliberately organised to foment community violence - republican propagandists ruthlessly demonised Orangemen, depicting them as the Klan with Orange sashes.'

So it's over now to the leadership of Sinn Fein. What do they make of Dermot Kennedy's KKK tweet and what are they going to do about it?

Dermot Kennedy has never been convicted of a terrorist related offence but he was mentioned in court in April and May 2010.  During the summer of 2004 his brother Kevin Kennedy had been forced to resign from a job with the Policing Board after failing a security check.  Kevin Kennedy, a former Roman Catholic priest, had worked as a civil servant for many years but had failed security vetting ‘because of historical and recent intelligence regarding his brother, Dermot Kennedy, which had been assessed and reliable and accurate information.’

Dermot Kennedy also appeared in court as a businessman and developer after demolishing a listed building in the Malone area of South Belfast.  For this offence he was fined a paltry £150.

Holywood and the American Civil War

In Holywood, county Down, there is a fine house named Carnwood House in Victoria Road.  This magnificent house was built in 1855 and it has an interesting historical connection to the American Civil War, for it was once the home of Captain Theophilus Alexander Blakely.

The London Gazette (23 November 1860 & 26 February 1861) reported that Captain Theophilus Alexander Blakely, of Holywood, a captain in the Royal Artillery, had been granted a patent for 'the invention of an improved method of increasing the strength of steel and wrought iron'.

Captain Theophilus Alexander Blakely (1827-1868) was born in Sligo on 7 January 1827 and was the son of Rev Theophilus Alexander Blakely, a Church of Ireland minister of English descent, and his Ulster-Scots wife, Mary William Stewart of Belfast.  Although his first name was Theophilus he tended not to use it and preferred to be called Alexander.

He was a British ordnance expert and from the 1850s through to the 1880s he designed a series of muzzle-loading cannon which were best known for their use by the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War.  During the Civil War his sympathy was with the Confederacy and he did much to assist the Southern states, who did not have enough modern artillery.  He sold finished guns to both the Confederate States Army and Navy and his knowledge of ordnance and his patents were extremely important.

We often think of associations with the Civil War in terms of the role of Scotch-Irish Americans and Irish-Americans but this is an almost forgotten association.

During the 1860s Captain Blakely spent much of his time in Holywood, where he had a house, but it seems that he had to leave Britain to escape the courts and went to Peru, where he lived in near poverty.  He died of yellow fever at Chorrillos in Peru on 4 May 1868, at the early age of forty-one.

There is a commemorative inscription to Blakely on his mother's grave: 'Mother of CAPTAIN BLAKELY Royal Artillery, Original Inventor of Improvements in Cannon and the Greatest Artillerist of the Age.'

St Patrick's Day in Belfast

I have long had an interest in the story of Patrick, a man whom God sent to spread the gospel across Ulster and whose followers then took it across the island.

The man, his message and his ministry should be of interest to all who profess to follow Christ and indeed to everyone with an interest in the history of this island.

For some the interest will be spiritual, for some it will be historical and for some of us it will be both.

As I look at the film footage of  the crowd chanting IRA slogans in Donegall Place this afternoon, many of them dressed in Celtic shirts and draped in Irish tricolours, one thought occurred to me.  Patrick would have had no time for the IRA or indeed any other terrorist organisation.

As a young man he was taken from his home, along with many others, by raiders who terrorised his community and took him into slavery.  He had experienced terrorism.

What we saw in the centre of Belfast today and what occurred in South Belfast last night and again today was nothing to do with Patrick.  It was simply the expression of another generation of sectarian bigots who were well fuelled with alcohol.  Such people have no interest in an inclusive day and simply see it as giving them licence to drag their bigotry into the heart of the city.

Talkback and those FAI team shirts

Yesterday morning I received a telephone call from the Radio Ulster programme Talkback.  

They wanted me to on to discuss the fact that the Irish Republic's football team have shirts commemorating the 1916 Easter Rising.  The invitation came on the back of newspaper coverage of a statement I had issued on the matter.

I asked the woman who rang, who else would be on the programme with me and she said she didn't know.  I made the point that I would not be going on to discuss this with a 'commentator' or a nationalist politician. I explained that there was no point in going on if they could not get someone from the Football Association of Ireland and preferably their chief executive John Delaney.

John Delaney, FAI chief executive

She asked if I would debate it with someone from the football world in the Republic but I pressed the point that it had to be someone from the FAI.  They are responsible for the team and for the choice of a team kit commemorating the 1916 Easter rebellion. 

A short time later she rang back to say that the FAI had declined to put up a spokesperson for Talkback, so I said that I wouldn't take part in the programme.

I would have been keen to confront John Delaney on the programme because it would have been an opportunity to discuss 1916 team shirt with the chief executive of the organisation that chose it. 

It would also have been an opportunity to discuss the statement he once made about their team singing rebel songs on the team bus.  Indeed he himself was once recorded in a Dublin bar singing a song about a member of the Provisional IRA.  So it is probably not surprising that the FAI didn't put up a spokesman.

But this raises a wider issue about Talkback and similar programmes.  They let certain organisations and individuals off the hook.

Some time ago there was a controversy about Carrick Hill republican Frank 'Dipper' Dempsey.  I was invited into the Radio Ulster studio but Dempsey went AWOL and they said they couldn't contact him.  In that way Dempsey was able to avoid scrutiny and he was allowed to avoid it.

I'm rather tired of being brought on to programmes and then set against a nationalist politician or a 'commentator'.  It allows Radio Ulster to have a lively debate but it reinforces a public perception of constant political bickering and allows people like John Delaney and Frank 'Dipper' Dempsey off the hook.

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.