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Oh the breezes blowing o’er the
sea from Ireland,
Are
perfumed by the heather as they blow,
And the women in the meadows digging pratties
Speak a language that the strangers do not know
For the strangers
came and tried to teach us their ways,
They scorned us just for being what we are,
But they might as well have tried to catch a
moonbeam,
Or light a penny candle from a star.
And if there’s
going to be a life hereafter
As somehow I am sure there’s going to be
I will ask my God to let me make my heaven
In that dear land across the Irish Sea.
Galway Bay*
“So near to home, - so far
from care”.
Thus the Irish tourist board describes the emerald isle to
potential visitors from Britain. Despite its turbulent history and
troubled present (in some parts of the north), Ireland has been and
remains a happy country with a delightful people. The Irish are welcoming,
and hospitable. They love to sing and to converse, and are at their best
when expressing their priceless humour. They are a down-to-earth people,
generally unsophisticated and unpretentious, but that does not mean they
lack perception, and if Paddy senses you are trying to trick him, he will
string you along as though totally unaware of your intentions, but in the
end will turn the tables on you with remarkable skill.
Map of Ireland
I used to visit Ireland
during the summer holidays from school when I was given a much prized
opportunity to serve as a cabin boy on the family boat. I remember
fishing in Galway Bay when sailing hookers carried peat around the
Arran Islands and Connemara, and when curraghs were rowed out into
the Atlantic to fish for basking sharks. The curragh was a light
canvas covered boat with a high stem and flat stern, and fine seaworthy
lines for coping with the Atlantic swells. The master boat builder with
whom I was privileged to work on Lake Kariba, Dick Heath, chose the lines
of the curragh as a basis for the planked canoe he designed for
Zambia’s fisheries. It proved to be an excellent boat for the sometimes
short sharp waves on the large lake. But back to west Ireland, - we spent
the odd night in Kilronan in the main Arran island of Inishmore. At the
home of Mrs Joyce, a prominent lady of the island, we sat around a peat
fire on a stone floor under an oil lamp, and were served tea and home
bakes. As a special treat I was given a glass of milk. It tasted odd to
me, till I realized it was goat’s milk. Connemara was another fascinating
area where houses and dress had changed little in centuries. When I go to
Ireland now, it amazes me that there seems to be not a single old thatched
cottage left there, - just one large modern bungalow after another.
Old Galway harbour
Aran Isles, the town of
Inisheer
My father’s family loved
the Irish. Four of the family boats fished round the coast there several
years for a Dublin firm. Every port they went into, they were met with
kindness and friendship. In the 1940’s and 50’s Ireland was a poor
country, - a far cry from the ‘yuppy’ society one sees in Dublin today. I
used to think it surprising that those Scots fishers, - mostly
fundamentalist, non-conformist types, were so drawn to the devout
Catholics of the Republic, - and the Irish Catholics to them. But so it
was. Mercifully, the tensions in Ulster did not affect their
relationships. The Scots were regarded as fellow-Celts, and if their
home-spun religion appeared strange to the devout Roman Catholics, they
still recognized a common bond of faith, uncontaminated by political
agendas.
The four vessels operated
by H J Nolan’s and the Thomson family, 1949 to 1956. They were Moravia,
Casamara,
Kincora and Kittiwake.
Ireland suffered from the
time of Henry VIII due to it being regarded as a potential enemy or
supporter of the Catholic powers in France and Spain that threatened
England from time to time. Not that England did not threaten Europe also.
– reading the history of those costly and pointless wars with France and
Spain, - it all appears so foolish now. But through the reigns of the
Henry’s, Elizabeth, James 1st, Charles 1st, Cromwell, Charles 2nd,
and on to King William of Orange and the George’s, - how Ireland suffered,
- used by the continental powers, and punished in return by England. All
this led to much absentee landlordism, and prevented the development of
truly representative local government.
The country was never
wealthy, it had an exploitative land-owning class, and there was little
industry except in the north, and that developed after the plantation of
protestants from the Netherlands and Scotland first by James 1st, and
later by William of Orange. Then came the dreadful potato famine of the
early nineteenth century, when hundreds of thousands died of starvation,
and many thousands emigrated. Yet through all those troubles, Ireland
supplied much cannon fodder for English or British armies, and much cheap
labour to further the industrial revolution. The surprising thing to me,
is not the strength of Irish nationalism, or the growth of a small but
murderous IRA, - the surprising thing to me is the amount of goodwill
towards England that still exists throughout the emerald isle.
The horrors of the potato
famine are largely forgotten today, yet they occurred a mere 150 years
ago. Whether the potato blight caused by a fungus Phytophthora
infestans could have been prevented or controlled at that time is
doubtful, but what most certainly could have been avoided was the death by
starvation of close on a million persons, and to some degree, the
emigration of close to another million in desperation for survival in
foreign lands. Four and a half million pounds left Ireland annually at
that time, in payment of rents to absentee landlords, - far more than was
needed to feed the population during famine.
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A glimpse of the Irish famine, 1846 – 1851
In a report to
the British Parliament, one of the first to put on official record the
stark facts arising from the starvation of thousands upon thousands of
Irish peasants, told of the horrors taking place that till then were
largely hidden from the British public, and tragically ignored by
authorities :
“Tipperary is
in insurrection, Clonmel in a state of siege, government bayonets
displayed. The people’s food is locked up. Hilltops are covered with
thousands of men, livid with hunger. Provision boats are boarded,
mills and stores ransacked. Galway, Cork, Clare and Limerick are
counting their deaths from starvation. Families in Cavan are resolved
on a suicide of starvation to escape beggary. Thousands wait for
typhus or other hideous phantom to rescue them from the griping
horrors of want. Meanwhile the British Government vacillated and
observed complacently that ‘in many of the most distressed
districts, the patience and resignation of the people have been most
exemplary’,”.
An eyewitness
reported more graphically, “We are here in the midst of one of
those thousand Golgothas that border our island with a ring of death
from Cork to Loch Foyle. There is no need of enquiries here, no need
of words. Grass grows before the doors and we fear to look inside
lest we see yellow chapless skeletons grinning there. We walk amidst
the houses of the dead and out at the other side of the cluster, and
there is not one where we dare to enter. They are all dead: the
strong man and the dark-haired woman and the little ones with their
liquid Gaelic accents. They shrunk and withered together till they
hardly knew each other’s faces. The father was on a ‘public work’ and
earned the sixth part of what could have maintained his family, which
was not always paid to him. But it kept them alive for three months,
and so, instead of dying in December, they died in March”. [Quoted
in chapter 8, ‘What Parliament Did’, in The Trial of Patrick Sellar
by Ian Grimble, R Paul, London, 1962.] |
Tradition tells us that it
was an Irish monk who first brought the Christian gospel to Scotland. He
was Colum Cille or Columba as he is now known. His original settlement in
Iona has been restored and now functions as a non-denominational centre of
Christian ministry and concern for the third world. Irish monks preserved
the Christian faith through the dark ages, in their lonely abbeys and
hermitages built in the most isolated rocky islands or remote hillsides.
Irish priests and poets enriched European culture for centuries. And some
surprising non-Catholic Irish writers and theologians had an influence on
Britain. It was a Church of Ireland cleric, John Nelson Darby that
founded what came to be known as the Plymouth Brethren. Their first
meeting place was in Merrion Hall, Dublin, - not in Plymouth. A brilliant
Irish lawyer and evangelical theologian, Sir Robert Anderson, was head of
the Scotland Yard CID in Queen Victoria’s time.
Connemara in the 1950’s.
(It does not look like that today)
An old Hooker sailboat in
Galway Bay
My favourite Irish poet is
W B Yeats, who was also a playwright and a mystic. I spent some time
around his beloved Sligo when fishing out of Donegal Bay, and often
thought of him when admiring the heights of Ben Bulben beneath which he is
buried at Drumcliffe. Most of Yeat’s poetry is pleasant and romantic.
“When you are old and grey and full of sleep”, is one of the most
touching of love poems. But Yeats had his mystic and prophetic side
somewhat like Blake and Shelley, and there are a couple of lines from his
poem, “The Second Coming”, that I feel are sadly relevant to these
dark modern times :
“The best
lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”
Irish music also stirred
me as did Scots plaintive songs and pipe tunes. The Irish have an
abundance of folk songs (of varying quality), that are best heard in a
singing pub of which there are many scattered throughout the land. When I
first visited the country, it was a common place event to have a young lad
wander off the street and start to sing in a corner of a pub, with no
musical accompaniment, and in some cases, rather little ability. I guess
it was one of the few ways they could pick up a few pence then. Public
houses had their own character in Ireland. They were not the hard
drinking places that one found then in Scotland, but neither were they the
more genteel tavern – restaurants for which England is renowned. Most
Irish pubs served only drink, but they were social centres where people
gathered to share the news of the day. They also served delicious ‘club
orange’ and ‘club lemon’ drinks. I have tried them since, and somehow
they don’t taste the same today.
Three pictures of Andrew
Irvine, his book, and his parent’s home.
Pogue’s Entry, Antrim, the birthplace of Andrew Irvine.
Irvine’s moving book
My Lady of the Chimney Corner.
Andrew Irvine
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Memorable Irish Books and Films
If
there is a book that portrays the beautiful side of the Irish people
more than any other, to me it is Dr Alexander Irvine’s poignantly
inspiring portrait of his mother who lived in Pogue’s Entry in Antrim.
– “My Lady of the Chimney Corner”. [My
Lady of the Chimney Corner, First published in 1913. Republished
1993 by the Appletree Press Ltd, Belfast]. His
parents, of poor peasant stock, were unusual in Ireland – from
opposite sides of the religious fence, - farm labourer Jamie a
Presbyterian and Anna a Catholic. In consequence, neither attended
their churches much thereafter, but both displayed remarkable
Christian faith and character through periods of severe poverty. For
years, their little house was a haven of consolation and encouragement
to the local people in Antrim, hospitality and counsel being
administered liberally with rich helpings of couthy Irish humour.
The home is now a museum, and Anna and Jamie are buried in the
churchyard nearby. Irvine described his moving book as only “the
torn manuscript of the most beautiful life I ever knew”. He
wrote, “I have merely pieced and patched it together, and have not
even changed or disguised the names of the little group of neighbours
who lived with us, at ‘the bottom of the world’.”
Another book, less well known outside of Ireland, is “Paddy
the Cope”, [My
Story – Paddy the Cope, Patrick Gallagher’s autobiography, c.1947,
reprinted 1979, by The Kerryman Ltd Tralee, for the Templecrone
Cooperative Society, Dungloe.]
the amusing yet instructive autobiographical story of Patrick
Gallagher who founded and ran one of the country’s most successful
rural cooperatives. Gallagher was illiterate, and the book is written
as taken from his verbal accounts, with all the grammatical forms and
the pronunciation he used. But the book is
a remarkable account of the resilience of a community intent on
achieving some control of their economic future, in the face of
powerful local vested interests. I referred to it often when
encouraging poor fishers in Africa and Asia to work together to
improve their lot. It was surprising how well they related to the
Donegal farmer, and the constraints and obstacles he overcame in life.
One of my treasured possessions is a concert programme signed by all
of the actors in the film The Quiet Man, and by its Director
John Ford. The family boats were fishing out of Galway and Connemara
in 1952 when the film was made, and they lent some of their new fish
boxes to make a stage for the concert which was a kind of a thank-you
by the cast to the local people. John Wayne, Maureen O’Hara, Victor
McClaughlin and Barry Fitzgerald were among the stars of this light
and entertaining picture of life in rural Ireland in the 1930’s. When
first released, the film played to packed audiences in Dublin, night
after night, continuously for three years.
Much later I was to see the film “Michael Collins” on the Irish
struggle for independence and the tensions between De Valera and
Michael Collins (played by Liam Neeson) which led to Collins death.
It is a moving film, spoiled for me by the way the crowds were dressed
– they were attired more like middle-class Americans than Irish of
1922 – few black shawls and no homespun trousers.
We were often
in O’Connell Street Dublin where much of the early IRA / British
fighting took place, and in the main Post Office which still bears the
bullet marks from 1916 when it was held for a period by Patrick Pearse
and a contingent of the Irish Nationalists. In the middle of
O’Connell Street was a huge stone column with a statue of Lord
Nelson. We used to climb the steps inside to get a glorious view of
Dublin from the top. Nelson’s Column is gone now, blown up by the IRA
over 30 years ago. |
Dublin Post Office,
O’Çonnell Street, where much fighting took place in the early 1920’s
Nelson’s monument O’Connell
Street, 1955, later blown up by the IRA
On a visit to the House of
Commons in 1990 at the invitation of Lord Winchilsea [Sir
Christopher Denys Stormont Finch Hatton, the Rt Hon the Earl of Winchilsea
and Nottingham, Liberal Peer.],
we went to get a cup of tea at one of the many bars in the House, I found
myself face to face with a bust of John Redmond, the highly respected
Member of Parliament for Waterford, and Chairman of the Irish
Parliamentary Party who did much to facilitate the granting of
self-government and later independence to the Irish Republic. I had
stayed with the MP’s niece, Maud Redmond, for a summer holiday in 1954.
She was a retired music teacher who had worked in that capacity for the
Austrian Empress and her family in Vienna before the outbreak of WW1.
Miss Redmond’s cottage was full of priceless antiques, and she was kind
and patient enough to introduce me to that world. She taught me how to
recognize gold and silver stamps, Sheffield plate, Adam’s fireplaces and
Chippendale furniture. She was secretary of the local RSPCA and loved
animals, her favourite being a Shetland collie that my father had brought
over for her from Scotland. Miss Redmond was never happier than when she
would fill her living room on a Saturday evening, with the finest
musicians from Waterford, plus the motley crew from our fishing boat. She
was as delighted with the crewmen’s attempts to serenade or recite
doggerel poetry, as she was with the accomplished performances of her
musical friends.
Dunmore East harbour light
with the Hook
lighthouse in the background
Looking back, the fishing
system used in Ireland over 50 years ago, compares well in terms of
quality and freshness of produce, with any in use today. The four
Scottish boats that supplied H J Nolan’s with fish, would gut, wash,
select by size, and pack, whiting, cod, haddock, hake and flatfish in 7
stone (98 lbs) boxes with ice, and cover them with a sheet of greaseproof
paper. When fishing in the Atlantic off the Arran Isles, the four boats
would inform the Galway agent daily by radio of the catches and he would
telephone Dublin for an appropriate amount of empty boxes and ice. The
fleet would come inside the islands to put all their catches on a single
boat that would then take them the 3 hours to Galway where the fish truck
from Dublin would be waiting. After unloading, the vessel would take ice
and boxes back for all four boats. Each boat would take its turn in
making the Galway trip. In this way, there was fresh fish on Dublin
market at 6.00 a.m. each weekday morning, that had been caught the
previous day in the Atlantic off the west coast. I doubt if any market in
Europe can surpass that standard for fresh fish, even today.
My best personal friend in
Ireland was Sean Cotter of Castletown Berehaven in County Cork. Along
with myself he was an apprentice deckhand on my father’s boat in the
mid-1950’s. A gem of a fellow, Sean (Johnny) had a rich store of tales
from that wild and remote south-west part of Ireland, which he would
relate with appropriate colour and exaggeration. He was as cool as a
cucumber when encountering more sophisticated society. I will never
forget him bargaining with a draper in Dun Laoghaire for the purchase of a
suit. No Jew or Arab could have beaten the price down better or gotten
more extras out of the draper than Johnny did. He was a fine seaman, and
later went on to become a successful skipper of a French-built trawler
fishing on the wild Porcupine Bank in the Atlantic, west of the Arran
Isles. After a gap of forty years I had an opportunity to go to
Castletown and look him up, and found him aboard his vessel in the harbour.
He did not recognize me at first. When I said I was “one of the
Thomsons from Lossiemouth”, he responded, “do you know David?, -
how is David these days?”. Within minutes I was given the royal
treatment, and ended the evening in his bachelor house round a roaring
fire while his crew brought up huge fresh Irish ham sandwiches from the
shop and Sean poured mug after mug of hot steaming tea. He had given up
drinking for health reasons some time before, but had never married. He
lost his life a few years ago, sadly, but somewhat appropriately, at sea.
He had semi-retired to a one-man boat, the Kyle Mhor,
which he fished with skill, but something went wrong that last morning,
31st May 2000. The vessel capsized south of Black Bull Head,
and he was drowned. The fishermen of Castletown called me and gave me a
moving account of how they bid Sean their last farewell. His sister and
brother-in-law in England, also wrote of him with deep affection and
admiration. Sean was the third of three young Irish fishermen I knew in
1955 who all lost their lives at sea.
Another fine young
Irishman I got to know was Pat Kelly-Rogers. Pat was the son of Captain
Kelly-Rogers, then the head of Aer Lingus, the Irish airline. During the
war years he had been Winston Churchill’s personal pilot. I had the
privilege of meeting Captain Kelly-Rogers through his son Pat. His
daughter Aine also became a friend of my wife’s. Pat could have had any
career he wished I think, but he loved the fishing. He had served in the
US Navy during the Viet Nam war, but came back to Ireland to pursue his
real interest. He served for a while as a crew member on a herring trawler
I operated for a year in Ireland. Later he acquired a boat of his own,
and fished well for a period, but lost the vessel following a collision at
sea when pair trawling for herring off the south coast.
Taking locals out for the
blessing of the bay, Galway, 1950
In Dunmore East there was
an interesting character engaged in both fishing and the sale of nets and
chandlery. He was Alan Glanville from England, who had served with FAO in
Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in the early 1950’s, along with Einar Kvaran of Iceland
with whom I worked years later in Indonesia. Alan had also worked with
John Garner and Gourock trawls on the early development of wing trawls in
Britain. Alan was regarded as a “gentleman fisher” by other fisherman as
he went to sea only when it suited him and when it was profitable.
However, he did well in Dunmore East, both at the herring fishery and in
selling nets and gear. I was to meet Alan occasionally at fishery
exhibitions and when visiting the south coast. At the age of 75 Alan was
operating a steel vessel off the south-west coast, fishing for bluefin
tuna by deep sea rod and line. He was then thinking of establishing a
tuna ranch in one of the Irish bays. Following the tsunami disaster in SE
Asia, at the age of 80, Glanville had some fishing boat hulls of suitable
design built in Chile and sent from there to the fishermen of Sri Lanka.
A bag of saithe (coley)
west Ireland, 1949
Other fishermen in the
Republic who I came to know and admire included James McLeod, a qualified
merchant navy captain and airplane pilot, who pioneered herring fishing in
the west, and set up a net factory in Killybegs. James lived to over 90
years of age, and when he was no longer permitted by age to fly aircraft,
he took to piloting gliders. Albert Swan was another skilled fisherman,
who established the large Swan net company. Then there were the McAllig
brothers from Dunkineely who operated several trawlers. Willie McCallig
was a crew member on my father’s boat when we fished in Ireland. He was
killed in a car crash along with a relative, in 1994. In Castletownbere
there were the O’Driscoll brothers, and in the Aran Isles, Pat Jo
O’Donnell, Pat Jennings and Keiran Gill.
Ulster, (Northern
Ireland), was not a part of the island I visited much, though my father
had fished before from Ardglass and Portavogie. There was one family in
the north we knew well, and sometimes visited, as they had many
connections with Scotland and with my father and his brothers. They were
the Chambers family of Annalong, a village beside Kilkeel in County Down.
Jack Chambers was the oldest brother, but Victor was the leader, and a
real pioneer in Irish fisheries. He had four vessels in succession, each
breaking new technological ground in the capture of demersal fish and
herring. The family boats had names like Green Pastures, Green Isle,
and Green Hill. Recently I met a grandson of Jack Chambers in
Malaysia where he was serving on an ocean going mission ship.
Ireland is a favourite
holiday destination for our family. My wife and I particularly enjoy a
week on the Shannon – Erne waterway where you can rent a small cabin
cruiser for less than the cost of a bed and breakfast room for two, and
cruise up or down most of the length of Ireland, in leisurely fashion and
surrounded by pleasant scenery and interesting bird life. Truly, - so
near to home, and so far from care.
All of the above, I hope,
paints a cameo picture of the land of the shamrock and its much admired
people. But it is a background against which I would like to consider the
problems of Ulster and the bloody work of the IRA and the UDA. Sadly, few
national symbols are more prophetically accurate than the ‘red hand of
Ulster’. I knew many Irish nationalists, - in fact there are few in
southern Ireland that would not fit that description. I also knew several
members of the IRA, and more indirectly, some members of the UDA. Once I
sat beside the formidable MP and Free Presbyterian Minister Dr Ian Paisley
on a flight from Rome (of all places) to London. He was a most courteous
and congenial traveling companion, and I was surprised to learn that we
had some acquaintances in common.
Structural injustice has
led to civil disobedience and violence in many countries. The cries of
Unionists in the North, for Irish Catholics to obey the laws of the land,
reminded me very much of similar injunctions (in pre-Apartheid days) from
whites in South Africa, to their disadvantaged black citizens. The
attitude of hard-line whites in the American south to the civil rights
movement of the 1960’s is another example. Historical injustices have to
be rectified. That is why the root cause of the Irish troubles are often
referred to as “the sins of our fathers”. Domination of Ireland by
successive English and British Governments from the time of Henry the 8th,
has caused untold sorrow. The fierce vengeance of Cromwell’s and later
King William’s armies, and the plantation of Protestants in Ulster,
centuries ago, sowed the evil seeds of the current tensions and
conflicts. While British attempts to create coalition governments in
Ulster have been regarded with suspicion or lack of cooperation by
political parties there, a sea change is taking place as the Republic is
no longer the ‘poor brother’ since it joined the EU and became a
prosperous financial centre. Unionist determination to stick with the
United Kingdom has been weakened by Britain’s industrial decline, and by
the coolness of UK governments towards Ulster.
I recall sitting next to a
young red-headed IRA activist in London airport in 1965 while he railed to
his lawyer about the British Government having killed his father, and how
he owed them no allegiance and they held no authority over him. I had
another zealous IRA man join my crew on a trawler I fished briefly from
Killybegs, but he turned on the organization when it tried to get his
brother to go on a hunger strike to the death. The problem for Eddie was
that those who wanted his brother to die that way, in his opinion, would
not miss a meal themselves for the cause.
One of the fishing boats
part-owned and operated by my uncles when working with H J Nolans in the
early 1950’s, the Casamara, was used to carry arms shipments from
Libya to the IRA in 1985. That was long after Nolans sold the vessel.
Commanded by an Adrian Hopkins of Dun Laoghaire from where we often
fished, Casamara was reported to have made three arms shipment
voyages in the year in question, carrying from 10 to 16 tons of weapons
and ammunition, including AK 47 rifles, pistols, anti-aircraft machine
guns and rocket launchers. Also in the cargo were a million rounds of
bullets and thousands of mortar shells. General John de Chastelain who
inspected arms that the IRA had put out of use, identified some as coming
from the Casamara shipment. I find it hard to believe that that lovely 65
foot seiner built by Tyrrell’s of Arklow in the late 1940’s, which was
manned by such fine crews of fishermen and which had harvested fish all
round the emerald isle for 30 years, was to be used for the murderous
weapons trade in the 1980’s.
Hopkins was reported to
have used three different vessels over a 2 to 3 year period, - the
Casamara, the Villa, and the Eksund. At one time he
changed the Casamara’s name to avoid detection. He and his
Eksund crew, including IRA member Gabriel Cleary, were arrested by
French authorities in the Bay of Biscay in 1987, and spent the next 3
years in French jails. Released on bail, Hopkins made his way to Ireland
where he was picked up by Gardai police in Limerick. Numerous reports,
including Ed Moloney’s 2003 book, The Secret History of the IRA,
claim that the arms shipments were financed and organized by one Thomas
‘Slab’ Murphy, a wealthy pig farmer whose property adjoined the Irish
Republic border. These reports describe Murphy as a veteran IRA
commander, and its most lucrative smuggler. It was also suspected that he
was behind the brutal murder of Eamon Collins near Murphy’s farm. Collins
had been a witness against Murphy in a British court case. Thomas Murphy
was said to be on the beach at Clogga Strand in County Wicklow when the
Casamara discharged her cargo of weapons and ammunition. In 2006,
Northern Irish and Republican police raided Murphy’s farms after British
police had searched over 240 properties in England, valued at £ 55
million, that were believed to be part of an IRA money-laundering
operation.
The Casamara when operated
by Nolan’s and the Thomson family.
Some 20 years later it was used for gun-running by the IRA.
Most Irish persons
supported the movements to rid all of Ireland from the UK, though only a
few would agree with the violent means of the IRA. So it was hardly
possible to have a Catholic Irish friend who did not harbour national
symathies. Rather, I suppose as it would be difficult to find ordinary
Arabs in the Middle East who did not want their lands to be free of
American or Israeli domination. However, and despite all of the violent
background, and the historical injustices that have beset Ireland, rather
wonderfully, even avowed Catholic nationalists and Protestant unionists
can be great friends cooperating effectively and in harmony. I knew some
who were in that category. Two who come to mind, Paddy Smyth and Bobby
McCullough, a fish merchant and a skipper of a large vessel, worked
marvellously together, though they constantly teasing, and playing
practical jokes on one another. The core problem of Ireland is political,
not religious, and it relates to basic justice.
Nevertheless, the
political divides are drawn largely along denominational lines, and so
Catholic – Protestant tensions live on in Northern Ireland where it would
seem that the Reformation and the European religious wars occurred only
yesterday. Elections in Ulster are seeing a polarization of votes for the
extremist parties, the DUP and Sinn Fein. Both the propagators of armed
struggle and armed resistance, use religion for their political ends. For
all the sworn adherence of the IRA to the church, or of extreme
Protestants to Biblical truth, both parties in Ulster would do well to
take to heart the words of Pope John Paul II in Drogheda 1979 :
“Violence is a lie, for it goes against the truth of our faith, the truth
of our humanity, the life, the freedom of human beings. Violence is a
crime against humanity for it destroys the very fabric of society. O my
hearers I beg you to turn away from the paths of violence and to return to
the ways of peace.”
The solution to Ireland’s
problems lies with the Irish, with the thousands upon thousands of
peace-loving men and women and young people, and with those who once
practiced violence but have since renounced it. Men like former loyalist
para-military Billy McIlwaine, and women like former republican para-military
Mary Smyth, and the Soldiers of the Cross movement they supported. Billy
McIlwaine, former man of violence has written:
“I appeal to the men and women in the various paramilitary organizations
to examine in their hearts what they hope to achieve by violence and
bloodshed in Northern Ireland. … Is there not a better way? Is there not
another way than the bomb and the bullet? I love this country and its
people, and I pray that Catholics and Protestants, Loyalists and
Republicans, might live together in peace”.
A peaceful future is being
carved out of the landscape of bitterness by courageous people like the
women who campaign tirelessly for peace, and organizations like the the
Corrymeela Community of Christians for justice and peace. There are also
outstanding men like Dr John Robb who as a surgeon at Lismore Hospital
Ballymena, had often to repair the horrendous damage done to human bodies
by the indiscriminate bombs. His father Dr John Charles Robb, a pioneer
in medical and hospital work, served in Downpatrick Hospital for many
years. My father was placed under his care in 1953 when he was landed
unconscious from a brain hemorrhage due to excessive hours at sea without
sleep. Thankfully, my father recovered, and in the process he got to know
the Robb boys, Johnny and Jimmy, both of whom spent some time at sea with
us later when on vacation. They were great fun, keen rugby players, and
real gentlemen. Both graduated as medical doctors, though Jimmy had
intended a different line of work, but changed to medicine after a
life-changing visit to Calcutta where he observed human misery and
suffering to an extreme degree.
Johnny became a renowned
surgeon, often operating on bomb victims at Lismore Hospital as mentioned
above. He was made an honorary Senator by the Dublin Government in
appreciation of his efforts to promote peace in the north. I mentioned
his name to the Rev Iain Paisley during the conversation we had on a
flight to London. The leader of the Democratic Unionists said, “ah,
... - he’s all mixed up. But, … he is a very good surgeon”.
MFV Dayspring en route
Ireland from Norway |
