The play is a tragicomedy about a small rural town in Ireland where many of the townspeople are extras in a Hollywood film. The story centres on Charlie Conlon and Jake Quinn, who, like much of the town, are employed as extras for the filming. The key point in the play is when a local teenager commits suicide, by drowning himself with stones in his pockets, after he is humiliated by one of the film stars. The script calls upon the cast of two to perform all 15 characters (men and women), often switching gender and voice swiftly and with minimal costume change. Comedy also derives from the efforts of the production crew to create the proper “Irish feel” – a romanticised ideal that often conflicts with the reality of daily life.
The play is first shown as a DubbleJoint Production premiering in West Belfast in August 1996. The set design, by Jack Kirwan, is simple – a backcloth depicting the cloudy sky above the Blasket Islands, a row of shoes (symbolising the myriad characters) and a trunk, a box, and two tiny stools. The lighting design is originally by James C. McFetridge and this design is used in both the London West End and the Broadway versions of the show.
The show moves to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1999. It then returns to Ireland and has a brief run in Dublin before moving to London‘s Tricycle Theatre. It then transfers to the New Ambassadors Theatre in London’s West End. The show, however, proves so successful, its run is extended and moves to the Duke of York’s Theatre up the road, where it remains for three years.
The original cast of Hill and Campion take the show to Broadway and, as its West End run continues to play to packed houses, actors line up to play Charlie and Jake, most notably Bronson Pinchot, Rupert Degas and Simon Delaney.
The play wins the Irish Times/ESB Irish Theatre Award for Best Production in 1999, wins two Laurence Olivier Awards in 2001 for Best New Comedy and Best Actor (Conleth Hill) and is also nominated for three Tony Awards in 2001.
The play is revived at London’s Tricycle Theatre in 2011, with Jamie Beamish as Charlie and Owen McDonnell as Jake, and at the Tron Theatre, Glasgow in 2012 performed by Robbie Jack and Keith Fleming.
For the 20th anniversary of the first production, The Dukes in Lancaster and The Theatre Chipping Norton co-produce a touring production which opens at The Dukes on February 25, 2016, and tours 35 venues between then and May 28, 2016. Charlie de Bromhead plays Jake and Conan Sweeny plays Charlie.
The original version of the play is created in collaboration with theatre director Pam Brighton, who later sues Marie Jones for co-authorship rights. Brighton loses the case in the high court, and subsequently becomes bankrupt.
Gerard “Jock” Davison, a former commander of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) in Belfast and later a supporter of Sinn Féin’s peace strategy, is shot dead in the city shortly after 9:00 a.m. on May 5, 2015, in the Markets area of south Belfast at the junction of Welsh Street and Upper Stanfield.
One of the first operations Davison is involved in is the shooting of Irish People’s Liberation Organisation (IPLO) Belfast Brigade commander Sammy Ward on October 31, 1992, during the Night of the Long Knives in Belfast.
Davison, the former IRA man, who more recently is a community worker in the working-class Markets area of Belfast, is questioned about the murder of 33-year-old Robert McCartney in January 2005. He is released without charge. He always denies ordering the murder of the father of two following an argument outside Magennis’s Bar in the city centre.
On May 5, 2015, around 9:00 a.m., Davison is shot numerous times at Welsh Street in the Markets area of south Belfast. While police do not identify who killed him, Kevin McGuigan, a former subordinate of Davison’s, is named as the chief suspect after he is also shot dead, reportedly by members of the Provisional IRA, on August 12, 2015.
On the evening of the killing, The Guardian’s Henry McDonald reports: “Davison is the most senior pro-peace processrepublican to have been killed since the IRA ceasefire of 1997. Security sources said it was highly unlikely that any Ulster loyalist group was behind the murders, adding that the killers may instead have come from within the nationalist community, possibly from people who had a longstanding grudge against the victim.”
Alasdair McDonnell, the Belfast SouthSocial Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) Westminster candidate, condemns the shooting, saying, “This is a horrendous crime and those responsible have shown no regard for anyone that could have been caught in the middle of it during the school rush hour. My thoughts and prayers are with the individual’s family at this traumatic time.” He adds, “People here want to move on from the violence of the past. This community will reject those who bring murder and mayhem to our streets. I would appeal to anyone with any information to bring it forward as soon as possible.”
Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams says, “People will be appalled by this morning’s murder in the Markets area of south Belfast. This brutal act will be condemned by all sensible people. There can be no place today for such actions. I would urge anyone with any information to bring that forward to the PSNI (Police Service of Northern Ireland).”
Following his arrest in Fuengirola in August 2021, it is revealed Gerry ‘The Monk’ Hutch is to be questioned in relation to a weapon used in Davison’s murder.
Orr is the son of James Orr, who farms a few acres and is a linen weaver. His mother’s name is unknown. They live in the small village of Ballycarry, in the parish of Broadisland, County Antrim. He is an only child, born when his parents are middle-aged. They are unwilling to risk sending him to school, so they carefully educate him at home, his father having been very well educated. A near-contemporary source George Pepper (1829), claims that the youngster is something of a prodigy, able to read Spectator essays at the age of six. Later in life, partly thanks to membership of a local reading society, he is remarkably well read. Handloom weavers are reputedly one of the most literate and politically radical groups in the period, and he certainly fits the stereotype. Pepper also claims that William Orr is James Orr’s uncle, and that the younger man lives for three years with William Orr and his family, where his literary talents are nurtured and where he develops an interest in radical politics. Other sources do not support this account, but if there is a relationship it might explain an almost morbid interest in assizes, executions, and gallows, evident in several poems. This also might have been prompted by witnessing William Orr’s trial and execution.
Pepper “heard from good authority” that Orr in 1797 is secretary to the Antrim Association, of which William Orr is president; presumably this means the Society of United Irishmen. He sings a patriotic song called “The Irishman,” one of his most celebrated compositions, at a meeting of that body. The earliest publications traced are poems published pseudonymously (1796–97) in the Northern Star newspaper. This paper, edited by Samuel Neilson, is sympathetic to United Irish views, and it is clear that Orr, like many of his neighbours, is actively involved in the 1798 rebellion. Several poems dealing with the events of June 1798, provide a rare participant’s perspective. He takes part in the skirmish at Donegore, and flees after the defeat at the Battle of Antrim. Local sources record his successful efforts to prevent cruelty and looting by his colleagues. He goes into hiding in an Irish-speaking area, perhaps in the Glens of Antrim or in the Sperrin Mountains. After a short time, he escapes to the United States, but unlike many of his former comrades he finds himself unable to settle there, and very soon returns home to Ballycarry, and thenceforth makes his living as a weaver. In 1800, he seeks to join the militia set up to counter a feared Napoleonic invasion, but the local gentry in command rejects his application because of his United Irish associations.
Orr’s first verses are composed at meetings of a local singing school, where rival versifiers produce impromptu verses for the company to sing to the psalm tunes being practised, and he later writes songs for masonic meetings. He publishes poems in the Belfast newspapers. A few carefully written essays on morality and education, signed “Censor, Ballycarry,” are apparently also his work. A collection of poems is published in 1804, with almost 400 subscribers, and another selection is published in 1817 after his death by his friend Archibald McDowell. Orr had requested that the proceeds should go to help the poor of Ballycarry. His poems are an excellent source of information about the life and concerns of a fairly humble stratum of late eighteenth-century Ulster society.
Many of Orr’s best poems deal with subjects of interest to his community – weaving, social life, and farming – and are written in the Scots language still widely spoken in the area. He expertly uses Scots stanza forms, and joyously participates in the almost competitive composition of verse typical of the Scots tradition. Several of his poems rework themes found in Robert Burns or other earlier writers. His An Irish Cottier’s Death and Burial is derived from a Burns poem, The Cottier’s Saturday Night, but later critics acknowledge that the Orr poem is much more successful. He and his friend Samuel Thomson are pioneers in the use of written Scots in Ulster and are regarded as the two most skillful Scots poets in Ulster. Both are celebrated in their day, and their work in Scots has been rediscovered in the twentieth-century revival of interest in the traditional literature and history of the north of Ireland.
Orr’s verse in standard English is equally competent, even more ambitious and almost as interesting. The best of his work, particularly in Scots, is characterised by pleasing cadences and assured control of tone and technique. His novel and generally impressive experiments with soliloquies, verse epistles, and versified direct speech, in English and Scots, parallel his interest in extending the registers in which he could use the vernacular Scots language. He seems not to have known of William Wordsworth‘s poetry, but, apparently independently and arguably more successfully, produces verse written in “the language really used by men” (Wordsworth, preface to Lyrical Ballads (1798)). As well as fascinating foreshadowings of romanticism, his work more often reveals the influence of the enlightenment and of New Light presbyterianism. He is a member of the congregation of the Rev. John Bankhead, whose theological views are decidedly liberal, tending even towards unitarianism. His poems provide a great deal of evidence on his reading, interests, radical aspirations and convictions; and in them and in the prose essays, the reader encounters a humane and generous personality. Like many other United Irishmen, he is an enthusiastic freemason, and believes that freemasonry and education will help to usher in a peaceful millennium. His poetry reveals humanitarian concerns, not yet common in the period. He opposess slavery and cruelty to animals and children and expresses support for a contemporary popular rising in Haiti. In 1812, he signs a petition in favour of Catholic emancipation.
Orr never marries. His friend McDowell believes that the resulting lack of domestic comforts drives the poet to socialise in taverns, and it is said that local fame and popularity encourages his excessive drinking. He suffers from ill health in later life. A neglected cold in 1815 leads to tuberculosis. He dies on April 24, 1816, and is buried in the old Templecorran graveyard at Ballycarry. Some years later, freemasons erect an impressive monument over the grave.
Orr’s poems are republished by a group of local enthusiasts in 1935. Another selection appears in 1992. A plaque put up by the local district council commemorates “the bard of Ballycarry,” probably the most significant eighteenth-century English-language poet in Ulster.
(From: “Orr, James” by Linde Lunney, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)
Long comes from a carpentry and blacksmithing background. In 1959, he enters Queen’s University Belfast to study civil engineering. He graduates with first class honours and then takes a PhD at Queens. In 1967, he moves to Canada, working as a bridge designer for Fenco Engineering in Toronto.
Long, however, spends only a year in Canada, returning to Belfast in 1968 to become an associate professor of civil engineering at Queen’s University Belfast. In 1976, he is promoted to a full professorship. His work is largely in the field of concrete structures, particularly in chloride resistance, maintenance problems and arch bridge structures. He publishes twenty papers in journals managed by the Institution of Civil Engineers and wins eight of the institution’s medals for these, including the ICE Gold Medal.
From 1997 Long works on the FlexiArch, a precast concrete arch in which the individual voussoirs are joined by a flexible polymeric membrane. The arch arrives to site flat packed and when lifted into position by a crane, the gaps between the voussoirs close under gravity and form the correct arch profile. He patents the product, which is produced by Irish precast manufacturer Macrete, in 2004. The product can be constructed within a day and, containing no corrodible elements, has been stated to have a design lifespan of 300 years. More than fifty FlexiArch bridges have been constructed in the UK and Ireland and spans up to 30m are possible.
By 2002, Long is appointed dean of the faculty of engineering at QUB. In November of that year, he is appointed president of the ICE for the 2002–2003 session, the first Northern Irish person to hold that position. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and of the Institute for the Advancement of Engineering.
Long is appointed an officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2006 New Year Honours for services to higher education and civil engineering. He resigns as professor at QUB in 2006 but remains there as an emeritus professor in the School of Natural and Built Environment. Since 2015, the ICE Northern Ireland awards the Adrian Long medal to the best paper in an ICE journal to be authored by a Northern Ireland member. The medal features a bust of Long.
Born in Blackwater Street off Grosvenor Road in west Belfast in 1916, White is one of ten children (five sons and five daughters) of Billy White, water technician with Belfast Corporation, and his wife Kathleen (née McKane). As a boy he sings in the choir of Clonard Monastery. He plays in a céilí band as a teenager and is a lifelong aficionado of Irish music and plays the banjo and other string instruments (often smuggling guns in their cases). As a young man he is also an active member of Granuaile GAA club, playing hurling and Gaelic football.
White works as a plumber and joins the Irish Republican Army (IRA) at an early age, being imprisoned several times during the 1930s. He travels to England to take part in the IRA’s “S-Plan” bombing campaign of 1939 to 1940, then returns to Dublin to pass his bomb-making skills on to new recruits, including Brendan Behan. He then returns to England to become the IRA’s Manchester Operations Officer but, after a bomb he is working on goes off in the flat he is renting, he flees to Glasgow, then back to Ireland.
Shortly after returning to Ireland, White is arrested while giving a lecture on explosives in County Offaly and is interned at the Curragh Camp. The republican prisoners are split into two groups, one led by Pearse Kelly, and the other by Liam Leddy. White is unhappy with the situation and refuses to take sides. Shortly after his arrival, IRA Chief of StaffSeán McCool is also interned, and is concerned that the locations of many of the IRA’s arms caches are known only to him. McCool asks him to get the information to the new leadership by “signing out,” declaring that he is no longer involved with a paramilitary group. He refuses as doing so would be breaking IRA orders, but McCool persists, suggesting that he could resign from the army before signing out, thereby not contravening IRA rules. Once released, he immediately rejoins the IRA and passes on the information. He is also made IRA Quartermaster General by Chief of StaffCharlie Kerins. However, he is suspected of involvement in the killing of a police officer, Dinny O’Brien – something which he always denies – and has to go on the run.
In October 1942, White and a comrade are cornered in a house. Here the details are unclear. Tim Pat Coogan claims that White is in a house in Donnycarney in County Dublin with Maurice O’Neill (executed in Mountjoy Prison on November 12, 1942), while Danny Morrison claims that White is at a wedding reception in Cavan with Paddy Dermody. Both agree that there is a shoot-out in which one officer is killed, enabling White to escape, but he falls down a railway embankment and hides for two days before emerging, hoping that the police hunt is over. In Coogan’s version, he catches a bus to Dublin, covered in blood and mud; while, according to Morrison, he is assisted by a sympathetic soldier who helps him recover and cycles to Dublin with him. They agree that he reaches a safe house once in the capital. Morrison claims that the Donnycarney shootout occurs four months later and that White travels north, rather than returning to Dublin a second time.
On arrival in the north, White is made Officer Commanding of the IRA Northern Command. Kerins is arrested in Dublin in June 1944, and later tried for murder and hanged. White becomes the only member of the IRA leadership still free. A wanted man, he travels around until work is arranged for him by supporters in Altaghoney, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. There, he works as a handyman and barber and sets up a dance band, also managing to acquire some explosives from a local Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) officer who wants rocks cleared from his field. For at least part of his time in Altaghoney, he serves as the IRA Chief of Staff.
White is finally captured and tried in October 1946, and is handed over to the Irish authorities. He is sentenced to death, but this is reduced to twelve years’ imprisonment on appeal, a defence in which his former comrade Seán MacBride is involved. He is actually released early in 1948 following a change in government which leaves Mac Bride in a ministerial post.
Following his release, White remains active in the IRA, but in a less high-profile way, as he is married and settles in Dublin. He supports the Provisional IRA following its split in 1970 and is involved in smuggling weapons across the border.
White publishes his autobiography in 1985, actually ghostwritten by Uinseann MacEoin. Entitled Harry, it attracts press attention for naming the IRA members who killed Kevin O’Higgins, names which Peadar O’Donnell separately confirms. White’s nephew, Danny Morrison, becomes a prominent Irish republican from the 1970s onward.
Henry is the third of four sons of the Rev. Robert Mitchell Henry, minister of the Reformed Presbyterian Church, and his wife Kate Ann Berry, eldest of four daughters of Thomas Berry, minister of the Baptist church, Athlone. His father becomes a Baptist in 1858 and pastor of Great Victoria Street Baptist Church, Belfast, resigning in 1875 to join the Plymouth Brethren.
Henry marries the painter Emily Grace Mitchell on September 17, 1903, in London at St Peter’s Anglican church, Bayswater. He returns to Ireland in 1910. From then until 1919 he lives on Achill Island, where he learns to capture the peculiar interplay of light and landscape specific to the west of Ireland. In 1919, he moves to Dublin and in 1920 he is one of the founders of the Society of Dublin Painters, originally a group of ten artists. He designs several railway posters, some of which, notably Connemara Landscape, achieves considerable sales. He separates from his wife in 1929. His second wife is the artist Mabel Young.
In the 1920s and 1930s, Henry is Ireland’s best-known artist, one who has a considerable influence on the popular image of the west of Ireland. Although he seems to cease experimenting with his technique after leaving Achill and his range is limited, he creates a large body of fine images whose familiarity is a testament to its influence.
Henry’s use of colour is affected by his red-green colour blindness. He loses his sight in 1945 and does not regain his vision before his death.
A commemorative exhibition of Henry’s work is held at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1973 and the National Gallery of Ireland holds a major exhibition of his work in 2004.
A painting by Henry is featured on an episode of the BBC‘s Antiques Roadshow, broadcast on November 12, 2006. The painting is given a value of approximately £40,000–60,000 by the Roadshow. However, due to the buoyancy of the Irish art market at the time, it sells for €260,000 on December 5, 2006, in James Adams’ and Bonhams’ joint Important Irish Art sale.
Pictured: “Roadside Cottages, below Mweelrea Mountain” by Paul Henry, RHA, oil on panel, 1940)
Brownlow’s father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had been MPs, and in 1753 he wins a hotly contested by-election in which his opponents accuse him of papist and Jacobite sympathies. The unsuccessful candidate is Francis Caulfeild, brother of James, 1st Earl of Charlemont, his petition to parliament causing a furor and is defeated by only one vote in one of the most celebrated electoral struggles of the day. Brownlow represents the county for over forty years, from 1753 until his death. In 1753, he supports the government on the controversial money bill.
Brownlow marries Judith, daughter of the Rev. Charles Meredyth, Dean of Ardfert, of County Meath, on May 25, 1754. They have two sons. After her death in Lyon, France, in October 1763, he marries Catherine, daughter of Roger Hall of Newry, County Down, on November 25, 1765. They have two sons and five daughters, three who marry into the nobility. In 1758, he is one of the Wide Streets commissioners in Dublin and owns an imposing house in Merrion Square. He is a trustee of the linen board in Ulster, and makes many improvements to his estate, castle, and demesne, the local church, and the town of Lurgan. However, it is alleged that private roads in his demesne were built with public money. He is one of a few landowners in County Armagh who are believed to have misappropriated the unusually high county cess levied by the grand jury, of which he is a member. In 1758, he suggests that salaries be paid to government officials, and one official, Henry Meredyth, his first wife’s uncle, subsequently receives an annual salary of £500.
In June 1763, large numbers of Presbyterian farmers and weavers, calling themselves the Hearts of Oak, in a notable show of dissatisfaction with the privileges of landlords, march on the homes of the gentry to demand redress. Brownlow is in England and avoids a confrontation. Despite the allegations of abuse of public money, he is generally recognised as one of the more independent and reform-minded MPs of the day. He captains a Volunteer troop of dragoons which march from Lurgan to assist Belfast after the French commander François Thurot lands at Carrickfergus in 1760. As one of the supporters of Henry Grattan, he is prominent in the Volunteer movement of the 1780s. He is captain of the Lurgan Volunteer company and lieutenant-colonel of the northern battalion and backs the movement in parliament until displeased by the Volunteer national convention (November 10 – December 2, 1783), which seeks franchise reform and seems to challenge the authority of the existing parliament.
Brownlow subscribes £9,000 to help found the Bank of Ireland in 1783, and in parliament on February 7, 1785, vigorously opposes William Pitt‘s proposals on Ireland’s commercial relations with England, seeing in them the danger that Ireland would become a “tributary nation.” He is appointed a privy councilor in 1765. He organises horse races in his locality and is a talented harpsichord player. After his death on October 28, 1794, the Belfast News Letter prints an unusually long and glowing tribute, expressing admiration for his “incorruptible integrity” and patriotism, as well as two poetic elegies. He is succeeded by his son William Brownlow.
(From: “Brownlow, William” by Linde Lunney, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009 | Pictured: Portrait of the Right Honorable William Brownlow, oil on canvas by Gilbert Stuart, circa 1790)
The two leaders meet at Hillsborough Castle and begin their sessions on April 7 with a half-hour walk through the gardens before dinner. The following day they hold a press conference and further talks, including a session on the Northern Ireland peace effort.
Bush and Blair, Bush’s closest ally in confronting Saddam Hussein, come together to discuss questions made increasingly urgent by the rapid military progress American and British forces have made and to plan for a postwar Iraq. They seek to bridge their differences over how much of a role to give the United Nations in rebuilding the country and putting together a new government.
Blair has been under pressure at home and from much of Europe to support giving the United Nations a strong role in stabilizing Iraq. The White House, however, has consistently signaled that it wants the United States and Britain to play the lead role in creating a new Iraqi government.
United States Secretary of StateColin L. Powell tells reporters traveling with the president that the United States is sending officials to the region to begin assembling a group of Iraqis who will constitute an interim governing authority and will be put in place alongside the American-led military and civilian authorities. In a sign of the speed with which the maneuvering for power in post-Hussein Iraq is unfolding, Ahmed Chalabi, the leader of the main Iraqi exile opposition group, the Iraqi National Congress (INC), is reported to be heading to Baghdad from southern Iraq.
“The hostilities phase is coming to a conclusion,” Powell says. “It’s time for all of us to think about the post-hostilities phase, how we create a representative government consisting of all elements of Iraqi society.”
Powell and British officials play down the magnitude of the differences between the United States and Britain over the United Nations role. The United Nations, Powell says, will have “an endorsing role to play to the interim authority to give it legitimacy,” a formulation that appears to reserve for the United States and Britain the right to select the leaders of the temporary postwar administration. A spokesman for Blair uses similar language, referring to the United Nations’ being involved “in a way that endorses that new Iraqi authority” as a step toward establishing a full-fledged Iraqi government.
Initially, primary responsibility for administering Iraq would rest with a team led by a retired United States Armylieutenant general, Jay Garner, and the interim Iraqi authority would be likely to begin assuming power after that, perhaps 90 days later, the British spokesman says.
Clearly wary of getting into another diplomatic squabble with other members of the United Nations Security Council, Powell and other administration officials have emphasized in recent days that the United States and Britain, having waged the war and paid for it with blood and money, will not be drawn into a negotiation with countries like France and Germany over the immediate postwar period.
Powell emphasizes, however, that part of his focus will now be on “healing” diplomatic wounds and granting the United Nations an important role once Iraq is stabilized.
At the United Nations, Secretary-GeneralKofi Annan says he will travel to Britain, France, Germany and Russia in the coming week to test whether the Security Council might be able to agree on a postwar plan. He announces that he has been working on post-conflict issues with a special adviser, Rafeeuddin Ahmed. He says he expects the United Nations to play an important role, whether as a political facilitator or dealing with issues like reconstruction or human rights. “Above all, the U.N. involvement does bring legitimacy, which is necessary, necessary for the country, for the region and for the peoples around the world,” Annan says.
Bush’s trip to see Blair here is the third British-American summit meeting in as many weeks. It coincides with news that American forces are attacking the presidential palaces and other symbols of the Iraqi government in the heart of Baghdad and that British soldiers have taken control of Iraq’s second-largest city, Basra.
The presence of the two leaders draws crowds of antiwar protesters and set off a local debate about whether this city, which has been trying to put behind it a history of sectarian violence, is an appropriate location for a war council.
The city authorities in Belfast have to divert traffic and clear public buildings in various locations following a series of bomb scares. The scenes are reminiscent of the conflicted time before the Northern Ireland peace agreement in 1998 put an end to organized sectarian violence that cost the lives of more than 3,600 people over three decades.
In the conversations about Iraq, Blair plays his customary role of trying to bridge trans-Atlantic differences. He hopes to placate criticism at home and ease relations with his European neighbors by pushing for a United Nations resolution authorizing an interim governing authority.
He had earlier envisaged a more prominent role for the United Nations, but he emerged from his last meeting with Bush, at Camp David on March 27, emphasizing the need for the United Nations to endorse the transition plans rather than play a central part in the plans, as he had advocated at the first summit meeting, in the Azores on March 16.
Europeans express alarm at what they see as the marginalization of the United Nations. At the same time, European critics of the war, like France, Germany and Russia, may object to Blair’s compromise proposal on grounds that it legitimizes a war they oppose. Even in Britain, the one European country where the war has majority support, there is great resistance to American domination of the postwar running of Iraq. An opinion poll in The Daily Telegraph shows that while Britons’ enthusiasm for the war has grown to a high of 60 percent and their approval of Blair’s conduct has also risen, there is only 2 percent approval of an American-controlled administration of Iraq.
Powell says the United States is only trying to lay out a plan under which military control of Iraq can give way to a mix of civilian and military control, including substantial involvement by Iraqis, and then to a full-fledged government. He says United Nations involvement might be necessary to convince banks and financial markets that they can safely and legally lend money to Iraq. Asked about peacekeeping duties, he says NATO is open to the possibility of helping to provide postwar security or assisting in the search for weapons of mass destruction.
Planning for the peace has exposed differences not only between the United States and Britain, but also within the Bush administration and between the administration and Congress.
Blair chose to hold his meeting with Bush in Northern Ireland in part so that the president can lend his support to the long-running efforts by Britain and Ireland to find a peaceful solution to the strife between Catholics and Protestants in the province. The White House, however, seems not to be paying much attention to Northern Ireland diplomacy. The schedules and credentials it distributes to reporters list the site as “Belfast, Ireland.”
(From: “Bush Meets With Blair to Discuss Postwar Iraq” by Richard W. Stevenson and Warren Hoge, The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com, April 8, 2003)
Ahern is urged by Paisley to ensure that criminals who flee across the Irish border are arrested. The Democratic Unionist leader makes the proposal during a cordial one-and-a-half-hour meeting at Farmleigh in Phoenix Park, where the two leaders exchange their first public handshake.
Afterwards Paisley, who receives an invitation from the taoiseach to visit the Battle of the Boyne site later in the year, says that they had also discussed the need for the new administrations in Northern Ireland and in the Republic of Ireland to work for each other’s best interests. “We can confidently state that we are making progress to ensure our two countries can develop and grow side by side in the spirit of generous cooperation,” he declares. “I trust that old barriers and threats will be removed in my day. Business opportunities are flourishing. Genuine respect for the understanding of each other’s differences and, for that matter, similarities is now developing.”
Earlier the DUP leader, who becomes the First Minister of the new power-sharing government on May 8 alongside Sinn Féin‘s Martin McGuinness as deputy First Minister, firmly shakes the hand of Ahern in public for the first time. As he arrives at Farmleigh, he quips, “I better shake the hands of this man. I’ll give him a firm handshake.”
Paisley, who is accompanied by his son, Ian Paisley, Jr., affectionately grabs the taoiseach by the shoulder. There is another handshake after the meeting at Farmleigh is finished.
Paisley says, “Mr. Ahern has come to understand me as an Ulsterman of plain speech. He didn’t ever need a dictionary to find out what I was saying. We engaged in clear and plain speech about our hopes and our aspirations for the people we both serve. The prime minister kindly congratulated me on my election victory.”
Paisley says that he had raised a number of issues crucial to unionists. “I have taken the opportunity to raise with the prime minister a number of key matters including ensuring that fugitives from justice who seek to use the border to their advantage are quickly apprehended and returned without protracted legal wrangle.” He adds, “I raised other legal issues of interests to unionists, and we discussed cooperation of an economic nature that will be to our mutual benefit.” He also says he had raised the issue of bringing Northern Ireland’s corporation tax into line with that of Ireland.
Regarding the invitation to visit the site of the Battle of the Boyne, Paisley says, “We both look forward to the visit to the battle site at the Boyne… Not to refight it, because that would be unfair, for he would have the home advantage. No Ulsterman ever gives his opponents an advantage. He adds, “Such a visit would help to demonstrate how far we have come when we can celebrate and learn from the past, so the next generation more clearly understands.”
Ahern pays tribute to the leadership shown by Paisley in helping to deliver a better future for the people of Northern Ireland. As Northern Ireland’s politicians continue at great pace to prepare for the return of power sharing, the taoiseach says that the progress has been very encouraging. “At this important time in our history, we must do our best to put behind us the terrible wounds of our past and work together to build a new relationship between our two traditions,” he says. “That new relationship can only be built on a basis of open dialogue and mutual respect. I fervently believe that we move on from here in a new spirit of friendship. The future for this island has never been brighter. I believe that this is a future of peace, reconciliation and rising prosperity for all. We stand ready to work with the new executive. We promise sincere friendship and assured cooperation. I believe that we can and will work together in the interests of everyone on this island.”
Ahern says he believes that the Battle of the Boyne site can be a symbol of the new beginning in the relationship between governments in Belfast and Dublin. “I believe that this site can become a valuable and welcome expression of our shared history and a new point of departure for an island, north and south, which is at ease with itself and respectful of its past and all its traditions,” he declared.
The Battle of the Boyne was fought in 1690 between the followers of England‘s King William of Orange, a Protestant, and the deposed King James, a Catholic, in Drogheda, eastern Ireland. Ireland was at that point under English rule. The battle is commemorated by many Northern Irish loyalists on July 12 each year.
Ministerial posts within the new devolved Stormont government have yet to be finalised. Already Sinn Féin has announced that MPs Michelle Gildernew and Conor Murphy and assembly members Gerry Kelly and Caitríona Ruane will be members of the government. However, the party has not yet indicated which of the four will take the three senior cabinet posts in education, agriculture and regional development and which one will be the junior minister in the Office of First and Deputy First Minister.
The DUP has also yet to name its ministers, but it has chosen finance, economy, environment and culture arts and leisure as the government departments it will head. The DUP’s deputy leader, Peter Robinson, and Nigel Dodds, the Belfast North MP, who both served in the last devolved government, are tipped to be the finance and economy ministers.
The Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) has yet to declare who their two ministers will be at the Departments of Health and Employment and Learning.
(From: “Upbeat Paisley shares first handshake with Irish PM” by Hélène Mulholland and agencies, The Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com, April 4, 2007)
Warfield is raised in the Dublin suburb Inchicore, the second born in a family of four boys. Today, he and his wife June Warfield (née Radburn) reside in Blessington, County Wicklow.
Warfield is one of the founding members and lead singers of the Irish Folk band, The Wolfe Tones. He has written many songs for the band, notably “Up and Away (The Helicopter Song),” “Irish Eyes” and “My Heart is in Ireland.” “Let the People Sing” is written in dedication to those Irish ballad singers who were banned from singing Irish songs. It has been performed by many Celtic and Irish Rebel bands, including Celtic band Charlie and the Bhoys. The song is popular among fans of Celtic F.C. and a version is performed by The Malleys, omitting the second verse, at Celtic Park on match days.
Warfield’s affiliation with Celtic F.C. leads to him being asked to write a song for the club to celebrate its 100th anniversary. As a result, “Celtic Symphony” is composed. It is a song popular with many Celtic fans, but controversial due to its chorus, which features the words “ooh, ah, up the RA.” This is often seen as being a pro-Irish Republican Army (IRA) stance, but according to Warfield, the words were included in the balladic tradition of writing what is observed at the time.
As a songwriter, Warfield’s writing is typically a social commentary on Ireland and its issues. For the 2012 album, Child of Destiny, Warfield composes “Swing A Banker,” which is a comical ballad referring to Irish bankers as chickens. The music video is recorded outside the Treasury Building in Dublin.
The Wolfe Tones continue to tour but have announced that they are set to retire in 2024, after 60 years of performing together. In addition to gigs in the United States, there will be concerts at Galway Airport, Castlebar, County Mayo, and in the 3Arena in Dublin, with the band’s final gig taking place in Belfast in October 2024.
As of January 2024, Warfield has not communicated with his brother Derek Warfield since he left The Wolfe Tones in 2001.
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