No going back to the horrors of disrupted lives

Irish Current Affairs Blog of the Year 2018

A mock border post brings of a reminder of more troubled times

It’s never nice to feel that you are an irrelevance, that your very existence does not matter and that your views are better left ignored.

It’s never nice when things most people take for granted – security, safety, the freedom to pop out to the shops or to enjoy a night out on the town – are being threatened by people who are oblivious to the impact their politics have on other people’s lives.

And it’s pretty appalling when the people who threaten your fragile peace have little concern for history or the true consequences of the damage they are about to cause.

In the US, President Donald Trump’s obsession with a wall disrupted the government for weeks and provoked tensions across the land.

In the border communities of Ireland, older people in particular know all too well about the divisions caused by walls and the trouble they cause.

A hard border is the last thing they want to see in the small towns and tight-knit rural communities where life has been utterly transformed, for the better, over the past two decades.

I remember a Belfast lady once telling me, with a sense of wonder in her voice, that her mother had spotted two Japanese tourists in the vicinity of City Hall. That was 1996, hardly a lifetime ago.
But it was a very different land.

Checkpoints dotted the landscape until the 1990s.
Photo: Carly Bailey, via Facebook. 

Local people remember the checkpoints, the watchtowers, the military helicopters, the barbed wire fences, and the soldiers brandishing machine guns along the Irish border.

How a short ten minute drive to the supermarket in Strabane, Crossmaglen, or Newry could turn into a two hour nightmare, with long queues, intolerable delays, guns being brandished and hostile interrogations at the side of the road.

They have to tell their children that a seemingly uneventful or boring life is so much better than a life defined by fear. And remind them that there was a time when 3,600 people lost their lives because of walls, barriers, and the conflict between two opposing tribes; when it was simply too dangerous to cross the city at night.

Back then, a mother in Derry or Belfast could only dream of the carefree attitudes of parents in Donegal or Dublin when they watched their teenage children head out for the night.

As a child, a trip to the shops involved British soldiers pointing machine guns at my dad. The only British people we knew wore military uniforms and mothers cried at night that this was no place to bring up a child.

When I was a youngster, one of my best friends had part of his hand blown up by a British Army grenade. It had been discarded, casually or wrecklessly, in a field near our homes. It prompted my tearful mother to beg my father to move back to Galway. No border community deserves to witness those kind of scenes again.

People remember the celebrations in 1998, when we thought (no, we were sure) we had left all those dark days behind. The Good Friday Agreement guaranteed peace and prosperity to everyone  – for the unionists, there was the guarantee they would not be railroaded into a United Ireland against their will; for the nationalist minority, a guarantee they would never be treated as second class citizens in a sectarian state again.

The horror of Bloody Sunday alienated nationalists in Northern Ireland
and drove many young people into the arms of the IRA in Derry

In just a few months, we have seen so much optimism evaporate.

It is unimaginable that the simplest of journeys could be fraught with danger, bureaucracy, and security concerns again. But people are having to face those fears again.

The majority of the people in Northern Ireland did not vote for Brexit. The people who live along the border are now being told they should have no say in a decision which could have such drastic implications for their lives, by politicians in London who have no understanding of the reality of their lives.

They are being asked to forget that Northern Ireland came into being in order to create an artificial pro-British majority, meandering through villages and rural communities who would be cut off from their own hinterlands.

For 21 years now, they have been able to live peaceful, normal lives. The Queen of England might still appear on their pound notes, but a trip to Donegal, Cavan, or Monaghan is no longer fraught with danger, lengthy interrogations, or fears of exploding bombs.

As British politicians continue to discount and dismiss their fears, people who live and work along the barely visible border are expressing and hearing growing, frantic concerns.

There are farmers who proclaim they would dismantle the hated checkpoints or turn a blind eye if their neighbours took out guns – but their fears, concerns, and frustrations are rarely heard in the corridors of power in London.

In recent weeks, Irish people have had to deal with their elected leader being described as a “liability” in the British press.

A tabloid newspaper, infamous in the past for its anti-Irish venom, said that Taoiseach Leo Varadkar would “deserve much of the blame” for the “misery and chaos” a No Deal Brexit would cause to the Irish people.

Anti-Irish venom is all the rage in the UK tabloids again

All for reflecting the fears of people living all along the border, that a vote which had nothing to do with them would have a drastic impact on the quality of their lives.

People in the Republic had absolutely no say in the Brexit referendum, but they are already being blamed in case it all goes wrong and the British go crashing out of the European Union without any kind of a deal.

People in Fermanagh, Derry, or Tyrone were seen as an afterthought, an irrelevance during the 2016 Brexit campaign.

But the people who have real life experience of a 'hard border' have a right to be frightened that the violence which scarred so many lives could be set to return. Even though they are being told by those who haven’t a clue, or no memory of living through terrible times, that there is no need for concern.

It’s clearer than ever now that many of those who voted for Brexit could not have cared less about the implications for the people who live alongside the 200 border crossings on the 300 mile frontier which divides the island of Ireland.

A protest against Brexit along the Irish border

Pro-Brexit British politicians like Jacob Rees-Mogg, Nigel Farage, and Boris Johnson tell the people living along this invisible line that they are being over the top in their opposition to the prospect of the return of border posts and checkpoints to their small rural communities.

But none of these jingoistic ‘Brexiteers’ has ever explained to those who live along the border how the UK can make new trade deals across the globe, and have different tariffs and agricultural standards, without huge disruption to their lives.

How convenient it is to forget that, for almost a century, the border in Ireland has been an artificial line – designed almost a century ago to maintain a contrived ‘pro-British’ majority in the north-east corner of the island.

How convenient it is to forget that 56% of the people of Northern Ireland voted against Britain leaving the European Union in the shock 2016 poll.

We keep hearing about the 17.4 million who voted for Brexit, but not so much about those on the island of Ireland who had huge concerns about being cut adrift from the rest of the island.

We keep hearing about the pro-Brexit Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), who have held the balance of power in London since the last General Election, but far less about the farmers and small businesses whose livelihoods have been placed under a severe threat by the return of walls, checkpoints, and the return of a hard border.

We keep hearing about how the DUP even turned down a special deal for Northern Ireland, because holding on to their British identity seems to be even more important than the economic prospects of the people they represent.

And we hear so little of the alarm in small towns and villages over the threat to a fragile 20-year peace because old divisions and animosities have never really been resolved.

In Belfast, the history of a terrible conflict is painted on the walls
Photo Ciaran Tierney Digital Storyteller. 

Belfast is a great place to visit these days, but they still close off the roads along the ‘peace walls’, which split divided communities, late at night. When tour guides joke that they cannot go for a pint on the other side of those walls at night, they are not really joking at all.

Old tribal divisions and hatreds are still hidden away just behind those walls.

A few miles away, along a once bitterly disputed border, tourists hardly even realise when they are crossing from one part of Ireland into the other.

But the local people know, understand, and remember. With Brexit now less than two months away, there is a growing sense of alarm over the prospect of seeing the hated checkpoints, armed soldiers, and watchtowers return.

There is still a terrible fragility to the Irish peace process, even after 21 years of peace, a fragility which becomes all the more disconcerting the more the fears and concerns of those who are most affected by a hard border are being denigrated and ignored.

* Ciaran Tierney won the Irish Current Affairs and Politics Blog of the Year award at the Tramline, Dublin, last month. Find him on Facebook  or Twitter here. Visit his website here - CiaranTierney.com.

* If you would like to hire a professional journalist to blog for your website, you can get in touch at ciaran@ciarantierney.com

Ciaran Tierney with the Irish Blog of the Year award

How could the Irish forget their own history?

Irish Current Affairs Blog of the Year 2018

The Great Famine: an appalling period in Irish history

How can we learn from history if we never even studied it in the first place?

How can we understand where we are today without reference points which will help us to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past?

With Brexit and the rise of populism, old animosities, mistrusts, and misunderstandings have risen again. And some people have shown an astounding ignorance of the troubled history between Ireland and its nearest neighbour.

Just over a year ago, Irish people were shocked by the reaction of TV viewers in the United Kingdom who showed that they really did not have a clue about the devastation the British Empire caused in Ireland.

British TV viewers jammed switchboards, and took to Twitter, to express dismay at the depiction of starving Irish people during the Great Famine. A period drama called ‘Victoria’, beamed into their sitting rooms on a Sunday night, was the first they ever heard of a disaster which claimed a million Irish lives and saw another two million emigrate to North America.

Many British TV viewers had never heard
of the Famine which took a million Irish lives

They were horrified to hear the Great Famine described as “the judgement of God” and an "effective mechanism for reducing surplus population” by the British civil servant whose job was to provide relief to the starving Irish.

Irish people need no introduction to the callousness of Lord Charles Trevelyan, because we teach our children history and he’s immortalised through the words of sports anthem ‘The Fields of Athenry’.

As hundreds of thousands died of starvation, Trevelyan persuaded the British Government to do nothing to halt mass evictions. As corn left the Irish ports for the ‘mainland’, he preferred to leave the fate of the dying peasants to the free market.

Most people in Britain had never heard of him, because Irish history is not taught in British schools.

And, just to prove that history can repeat itself, Tory MP Priti Patel said this week that warnings of food shortages in Ireland should have been seized upon by the British. She said her Government should been more firm, to force the Irish to drop the 'backstop' which has caused so much controversy during the Brexit debate in Britain.

She sees the possibility of food shortages in Ireland, a smaller country with a much more open economy than Britain's, as an opportunity for our former colonisers.

Such wilful - or deliberate - ignorance.

But let's not forget there are huge concerns that the same level of ignorance could spread to the Irish, as it is planned to remove History as a core subject in our secondary schools.

By making History optional, is it possible that Irish children will not even learn about the horror of the Great Famine and the impact it had on the psyche of our people?

In generations to come, could be we become as ignorant of our past as many people in the UK?

Here’s a few other things our young people need to be mindful of, while arrogant Tory Brexiteers are so quick dismiss concerns over a ‘hard’ Irish border and a potential return to ‘The Troubles’: 

The decline of the Irish language since 1800. Source: Reddit.com

Why don’t we speak Irish anymore? 

Imagine an Irish child growing up without any awareness of the Penal Laws and the impact they had on our native language and culture. Would they even question why we speak English and why Irish is largely confined to the remote western fringes of our island? Would they know about the ‘hedge’ schools which sprung up when Catholic people did not have a vote and their own language was banned from schools in Ireland?

Would they learn that the number of Irish speakers fell from four million in 1841 to just 680,000 in 1891? This shocking decline was all part of the process of colonisation. People were taught to mock and taunt native speakers, to see them as backwards, and they forget that hundreds of thousands of the impoverished Irish who landed on the east coast of America did not even speak English until they arrived in New York or Boston.

A mural in West Belfast recalls the fight for Irish freedom
Photo by Ciaran Tierney Digital Storyteller

Why is Ireland partitioned? 

It is almost hilarious to hear Unionists and British Tories proclaiming that the UK could never be divided, given that the partition of Ireland in 1922 led to a bloody Civil War and has led to bitter divides on both sides of the border to this day. Ask anyone in Derry or Tyrone if they are “less Irish” than people in Galway, and yet many of them faced discrimination in a sectarian state for decades.

Thankfully, the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) of 1998 brought an end to decades of conflict and discrimination against the Catholic minority. How could any Irish teenager understand the divisions which run through the island without some knowledge of 1609 and the Plantation of Ulster? 

The arrival of planters from Scotland and England changed the face, culture, and language of the northern province. The descendants of those settlers still consider themselves to be British today and the GFA respects that.

What ‘terrible beauty’ was born? 

The Easter Rising of 1916 was just one of a long litany of heroic failures as generations of Irish people struggled to break free of the British Empire. It was also seen as a stab in the back of the Empire, given that thousands upon thousands of Irish men were fighting on the same side as the British in World War One at the time.

It’s important to remember that the Irish rebels who rose up against their colonisers had little support from the ordinary people of Dublin in 1916. The city centre was destroyed and people were angry at the destruction. They abused the rebels as they were being taken away by their British captors.

But the execution of ten rebel leaders at Kilmainham Gaol showed ordinary Irish people the ruthlessness of the British justice system. They rose up against the colonisers. The rebels may have failed in the short-term, but, in the words of poet W.B. Yeats, a “terrible beauty” was born.

A cheeky depiction of modern Ireland

Who were the Black and Tans?

In 1919, Irish nationalists began a violent campaign against the British forces but, unlike three years earlier, they used guerrilla tactics such as ambushes and assassinations. Instead of taking over city centres, they would attack and disappear.  With the republican leaders such as Michael Collins and Eamon De Valera, who later fought against each other in a bloody Civil War, in hiding, the British decided to send in reinforcements.

The hated Black and Tans became known for their violence and vengeance, sometimes against innocent civilians, throughout the island. In 1920, they opened fire on the crowd at a football match in Croke Park, in what became known as the first Bloody Sunday. The gunfire was in response to Irish terrorist attacks. In one day, 32 people were killed, including 13 members of the British forces, 16 Irish civilians and three Irish republican prisoners. 

Without any knowledge of history, people would not understand what a monumental event it was when the Irish rugby team hosted England at Croke Park in 2007. The respectful silence during ‘God Save The Queen’ showed that time really can heal old divisions and animosities. Respect can grow from a knowledge of our shared history.

Bloody Sunday: scarred the city of Derry and
boosted recruitment for the IRA

What caused ‘The Troubles’? 

After partition, Northern Ireland – which stayed part of the UK – became a “Protestant Sate for a Protestant people” and the Catholic minority, who made up a third of the population, found it difficult if not impossible to get a house or a job. The province was made up of six of the nine counties in Ulster and partition was introduced to maintain this “artificial” Unionist majority.

Strangely enough, the wider availability of televisions in the 1960s played a huge part in bringing about change. Catholics in Northern Ireland saw images of African-Americans marching for Civil Rights in the United States and felt that they, too, were entitled to be treated as equals.

Heavy-handed policing turned their peaceful protests into riots and led to the British Army being deployed onto the streets in 1969. One particularly appalling atrocity, when soldiers fired on peaceful protesters in Derry, killing 14, became known as the second Bloody Sunday. 

The horror inflicted on civilians boosted recruitment to the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and prolonged the conflict for decades. It’s impossible to understand ‘The Troubles’ without understanding the atrocities and humiliations which alienated and angered the nationalist people of Northern Ireland.

Our fragile peace has vastly improved
life across Ireland over the past 20 years.

Why is the Good Friday Agreement so important? 

In 1998, there were celebrations all across Ireland when people on both sides of the border voted in favour of a hard-won peace agreement. People were sick of violence and the old tribal hatreds. The document guaranteed that Northern Ireland would stay part of the UK as long as the majority wanted to do so, but it also gave the Republic some say in the governing of the North and guaranteed  equal rights for the minority.

It brought an end to three decades of violence and, indeed, centuries of tribal hatreds. Anyone who understands Irish history recognises what a monumental agreement this was and how appalling it is to hear anyone talk about a return to a hard border and our ancient divisions.

Thankfully, the Minister for Education, Joe McHugh, announced this week that he is set to review the decision to remove History as a compulsory subject in Irish schools.

If we don’t study History in our schools, the Irish too might come to forget how much progress we have made in turning conflict into peace and animosity into a shared sense of respect between our two islands.

Faced with such an uncertain future, the more we know about (and understand) the past, the better.

* Ciaran Tierney won the Irish Current Affairs and Politics Blog of the Year award at the Tramline, Dublin, last month. Find him on Facebook  or Twitter here. Visit his website here - CiaranTierney.com.

Blogger for hire! Did you know that I also blog for businesses and charities. Send an email to ciaran@ciarantierney.com to see if you can avail of the services of an award-winning Irish blogger! 

Brexit border implications never even entered some minds

Reviving memories of troubled times at the Irish border last year

In recent weeks, as Britain has hurtled towards a seemingly uncertain Brexit, many politicians in the United Kingdom have shown little or no interest in recent Irish history - or memory of the anguish of those who lived through 30 years of conflict.

Unlike those living along the 300 mile Irish border, who are waking up with increasing alarm as to the reality of what a “hard Brexit” actually means with every passing day.

People remember Bloody Sunday.

They might not have been in Derry on that terrible January afternoon, but they remember the black flags flying from houses all across the country, the sense of hopelessness, anger, and despair.

Bad enough that 14 innocent people were gunned down, but when the atrocity was committed by the State – the very forces who were supposed to protect ordinary people – the sense of isolation, of a city under siege, was palpable throughout the nationalist areas of Northern Ireland.

And the IRA described the atrocity as the greatest recruitment drive they could have hoped for in the province’s second city. Young men were queuing up to join.

Atrocities such as Bloody Sunday prolonged The Troubles

People remember Ballymurphy in Belfast, 1971.

Even though they may not have been told about it at the time.

Six months before the slaughter of innocents in Derry, British soldiers ran amok and massacred 11 people in two days.

Only nobody knew the full extent of the massacre, until a brave British TV crew put all the pieces together for a Channel 4 documentary 47 years later.

The inquests into those shootings, set to take place this coming November, will open up old wounds. How in the late 20th century the slaying of innocent people in their own housing estate could be spun into a grotesque parody of the truth.

The devastation of the Miami Showband Massacre.
Photo courtesy of Stephen Travers. 

People remember the Miami Showband massacre.

Talented young musicians, Catholic and Protestant, travelling home across the border after a wonderful gig in Co Down. Their music brought communities together at a time of too much polarisation and division.

Three men were hauled out of a van, gunned down at the side of a lonely road, after an attempt to frame them with a bomb. Their band mates left to die.

Collusion? That attack was all about the Irish border. It would have been so much easier to persuade the Irish Gardai to ramp up security at the 300 mile long border if people believed young musicians were driving around with bombs in the dead of night.

To this day, the survivors of that 1975 atrocity have never got justice or the sense of peace which comes with finding out the truth.

People of a certain vintage remember . . . and this week they have been choking on their breakfasts as Tory Brexiteers tell them that Ireland would be better off rejoining the United Kingdom and leaving the European Union.

“Re-joining the UK is the only way to reunite Ireland and the British Isles. Brexit makes Irish EU membership less logical,” tweeted one of them this week.

Irish people may have reservations about the growing power and bureaucracy of the European Union, but you would be hard pressed to find too many people who would countenance a new political union with the country which colonised our island from 1169 to 1921.

Talk of rejoining the old colonial power would be hilarious if it was not such a tragedy, if people did not worry that the Brexit drama was playing with people’s lives.

A mural in Belfast recalling one of the worst atrocities of 'The Troubles'
15 people - including two children - were killed at McGurk's Bar

Many British Brexiteers have no idea regarding the impact their words and deeds are having or the impact the return of border posts and checkpoints would have on people all along the 300 mile frontier.

In less than six months, Britain is due to have left the European Union and, already, the Irish Government has begun recruiting 450 customs and veterinary inspectors.

British politicians like Jacob Rees Mogg, Boris Johnson, and Nigel Farage do not seem to give a damn about the impact a “hard border” will have on ordinary people.

Instead, they rail against the EU for daring to contemplate splitting up the UK, seemingly with no memories of the damage caused to communities along the 300 mile long Irish border by the partition of Ireland.

Try telling a person who lives in Newry and works in Dundalk about what life will be like if he or she had to face border checkpoints every day.

Try telling young people living in Inishowen in Co Donegal that a trip to the cinema or a night club in Derry is set to become a logistical late night nightmare. After all, the border was never a ‘”real” border – it cut places such as Derry and Strabane off from much of their natural hinterlands.

Northern Ireland was created from six of Ulster’s nine counties in order to have an artificial two-thirds Unionist majority and the experience of being treated as second class citizens led the nationalist minority to rise up in search of civil rights in the late 1960s.

Of course, the British were not solely responsible for three decades of ‘The Troubles’. Far from it, in fact.

You only have to list the names of places – Omagh, Enniskillen, Manchester, Warrigton, Guildford, Mullaghmore, Kingsmill – to recall some of the terrible atrocities committed by the IRA in the name of Irish “freedom”.

Belfast's famous murals are now seen as a tourist attraction

But the British state played a huge part in creating the conditions which led to The Troubles and prolonged the violence by committing atrocities of its own.

Without Bloody Sunday, Ballymurphy, and the internment of young Catholic men, would so many young people have joined the IRA?

Would the conflict have gone on for so long?

And how can the concerns of people who have genuine fears of a return to violence, the hated border posts giving dissident republicans the motive they require, be dismissed so lightly?

People remember border checkpoints, watchtowers, and aggressive searches from gun-toting soldiers every time they popped across the road to a neighbouring town or village.

And they wonder if those awful scenes will return.

Belfast is now a fantastic place to visit, thanks to a fragile peace process.
The Titanic Quarter is now a 'must see' for tourists from all over the world

They remember the sense of elation which followed the Good Friday Agreement, the first sightings of tourists on the streets of Belfast, and how deserted those streets used to be after 7pm in the bad old days.

Not only did that historic vote bring about peace, it gave the unionists of the north a cast iron guarantee that they will never be steamrolled into a United Ireland against their will. It showed that, for all our differences, ordinary Irish people value peace and compromise over ancient tribal divisions.

Now the murals on the Belfast walls teach tourists about a bygone era.

Now people flock to the wonderful Titanic Belfast, because it's one of the most amazing attractions in Europe. Tourists in Belfast . . . what a strange concept that would have been three decades ago!

People have had 20 years of a fragile peace now and they cannot believe how quick jingoistic politicians in London are to dismiss their concerns.

Such as Jacob Rees Mogg MP, who said there was no need for him to visit the Irish border in order for him to understand it (although he was shamed into finally doing so in July).

Or his Conservative party colleague Boris Johnson, who pointed out that there was no border between two suburbs of London as some sort of a valid contribution to the “hard Brexit” debate.

Or Nigel Farage, of UKIP, who called on the Irish people to leave Europe when he visited Dublin in February of this year. He accused the Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, of “taking Brussels’ side against Britain”, which was not “in the best interest of his country”.

Not for them concerns that 56% of the people of Northern Ireland voted against leaving the EU, that 3,600 people died in the conflict, or that peace remains fragile in a place in which two communities largely live their lives apart from each other, in terms of schooling, housing, or even where they socialise or work.

Twenty years after the Good Friday Agreement brought a welcome peace, transforming life in the North completely, 90% of the housing estates are still segregated; and nationalist and loyalist communities are divided by 90 “peace walls”.

The European Union underpinned the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which is tied into 142 areas of north-south co-operation, and yet blustering Brexiteers are claiming that the EU should have no role in the future of Northern Ireland.

It’s not nice to realise that you are seen as peripheral, that your concerns don’t matter in the corridors of power in London.

People in Northern Ireland look around now and see a place brimful of hope, of normal life, with tourists enjoying themselves from all over the world, and wonder how anyone could even countenance a return to a “hard border” and the hated signs of division they were sure they had left behind.

And all because some people in Britain were so keen to break their ties with Europe that the implications for Ireland’s border communities never even entered their minds when they voted for Brexit two years ago.


Ciaran Tierney is a journalist, blogger, and digital storyteller, based in Galway, Ireland. Find him on Facebook at http://facebook.com/ciarantierneymedia/

The desperate cry of a people calling out for help

Young Gaza footballers in Galway in 2016. 

They feel as though the wider world has forgotten about them.

They live in what has been described as the world’s biggest open-air prison camp, 1.8 million of them crammed into a tiny strip of just 140 square miles, and they want the world to remember that they exist – and that they are finding it almost impossible to breathe.

For 11 years now, they have been blocked into an area which is smaller than County Louth by fences, bullets, and occasional bombs.

Travel is an impossible dream for most of them, a life-saving hospital visit can become a logistical nightmare, and even the fishermen risk being murdered if they dare to venture just a few miles offshore.

Gaza is a humanitarian catastrophe in the making and yet when the local people protest, as they have done in their thousands over the past three weeks, they are demonised, dehumanised, and gunned down.

Shot at by snipers located behind a fortified fence, murdered, or hospitalised, for daring just to protest, even if they are unarmed.

If it happened closer to home, there would be an international outrage. The perpetrators would be hauled before the International Criminal Court for shooting unarmed protesters but, in Gaza, life just goes on.

Irish people can relate to the slaughter surrounding the Great Return March because the shooting of protesters at the border fence has been described as Gaza’s ‘Bloody Sunday’, the terrible day in Derry when the murder of 14 people by occupying soldiers traumatised a city and prolonged a terrible conflict for decades.

The Great Return March is a desperate plea by a desperate people to be heard, it’s also a courageous declaration that refugees who were run out of their homes and villages have a right to freedom, a right to return, and to forge out some sort of a life for themselves.

The vast majority of those crammed in behind the fence in Gaza are refugees from what is now the south of Israel. Some of them even have the keys of the houses their family members fled in terror seven decades ago.

An old Palestinian man holds the keys to
his former family home in what is now Israel

The Gaza Strip was designated as a place to imprison them after they were forced to flee their homes. Israeli soldiers and ‘settlers’ may have withdrawn from the tiny enclave 11 years ago, but every movement in and out of the strip by land, air, or sea is controlled by Egypt and Israel.

If you need life-changing treatment in Israel, you face harassment and humiliation at the Erez crossing, if you are even allowed through at all. You might have family members just a few miles away in Jerusalem or the West Bank, but visiting them has become an impossible dream.

And yet the tendency among many members of the Western media is to demonise and dehumanise these people who are crying out for some sort of a shot at having normal lives.

When unarmed protesters are shot by armed snipers, and hundreds end up in hospitals, the shootings are described as “clashes” as though they were some sort of exchange between equals.

In the first three weeks of the Great Return March, 34 people were killed and at least 1,500 were injured, rushed to hospitals which are already struggling to cope in the face of the 11 year siege.

In Gaza, life is anything but normal.                                        

When the talented young footballers from a soccer academy in Gaza came to Ireland in 2016, the complications surrounding the trip brought home to Irish people just how horrible life is for ordinary Palestinians on the strip.

The trip was delayed by three weeks, forcing a raft of cancellations of flights, accommodations, and games. The Israeli authorities decided at the last minute that the boys and their mentors from the Al-Helal academy were not allowed out of Gaza.

Irish activists, who had been planning the trip for three years, were crushed. A lot of organisation had gone into sourcing host families, clubs to play ‘friendly’ matches, and a schedule which would allow them to make the most of their ten days in Ireland.

Then, suddenly, almost three weeks after the trip was called off, the Israeli authorities allowed 14 of the 15 boys on the squad to travel, along with two of the seven adults who were supposed to accompany them to Ireland.

The only talented young footballer who was refused permission to travel, Karam Zaidan, was badly injured when Israel bombed Gaza in 2009.

The only reason anyone could come up with for his omission from the squad was concern among the Israeli authorities that his visible facial injuries would upset Irish people or cause them to ask too many questions.

Only two of the seven adults who were supposed to travel were allowed through the militarized Erez checkpoint which blocks Palestinians in Gaza off from the international airport at Tel Aviv and any connection with the outside world.

The two adults who did travel with the boys were visibly stressed by the trials and tribulations of having to look after the youngsters whose lives have been scarred by bombing attacks and the deprivation caused by the relentless 11 year siege.

No explanation was given when exit permits were denied to five of the coaches and child psychologists from the academy, which attracts the best young footballers from throughout Gaza.

And yet the boys represented Gaza, and Palestine, with so much pride. They won all six games on their Irish tour, outplaying Irish boys of the same age who were in some cases twice their size.

The Al-Helal boys represented Palestine with such pride
Photo courtesy of John Kelly, Co Clare

Footballers in Gaza are subjected to controls and restrictions which would be unthinkable to their counterparts in any country in Europe.

They are regularly harassed at checkpoints, prevented from travelling, and forced to cancel games. The Al-Helal ground in northern Gaza, where the boys play their home games, was bombed by Israel in 2012 and again in 2014.

And yet the children from Gaza have delighted Irish people when they were allowed to visit Ireland over the past two summers.

Those of us who met the boys were struck by how serious and proud they were about representing Palestine, how courteous they were to their hosts, and how keen they were to present a positive image to the world.

The children appreciated the trips all the more because they were acutely aware of how rare it is for a team from Gaza to represent the enclave in any part of the world.

Children in Gaza are among the most traumatised in the world. Many of the Al-Helal boys were emotionally scarred by the 2014 Israeli military assault on the Gaza Strip, in which more than 2,250 Palestinians, including 551 children, were killed.

Although the world has quickly moved on from that atrocity, most of us can remember the image of the four little boys playing on a beach – aged nine to 11 – who were killed by an Israeli missile that year.

Innocence and all hope for the future are lost when the simple act of playing hide ‘n’ seek on a beach is punishable by death.

And yet, repeatedly, we hear that the people of Gaza deserve their terrible fate, that they must be punished for voting for the appalling ‘terrorists’ of Hamas.

Two days after 30 unarmed people, including a journalist, were shot dead by his troops the Israeli Defence Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, said there were “no innocent people” in the entire Gaza strip.

“There are no innocent people in the Gaza Strip,” Lieberman told Israel’s public radio. “Everyone’s connected to Hamas, everyone gets a salary from Hamas, and all the activists trying to challenge us and breach the border are Hamas military wing activists.”

Presumably, his comments include even the little 10 to 14 year old boys – much smaller and yet more skilful than their Irish counterparts – who captured the hearts and minds of Irish people with their skills, dignity, and innocence over the past two summers.

So when Dublin City Council votes to support the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, to pressurise Israel to end the occupation and obey international law, the councillors are not being racist or prejudiced.

They are supporting a people who are living under a horrible occupation.

When Galway City Council votes to call on the Irish Government to recognise the state of Palestine, they are not neglecting their duties to the people of their own city. Rather, they are trying to give a tiny glimmer of hope to desperate people living under occupation who are inspired by Ireland’s own struggle for self-determination.

The people of Gaza only want to remind us that they exist and, like everyone else, they are entitled to some sort of a decent life.

·         The gifted young footballers from the Al-Helal Football Academy are due to return to Ireland from July 28 to August. To find out more, to raise funds or awareness for the trip, or to help out in any way you can find details at http://gazaactionireland.weebly.com/gaza-kids-to-ireland-2017.html

Thanks to Sean Ryan, John Kelly (Clare), and Andrew Downes (Xposure.ie) for the photos. 

Ciaran Tierney is a journalist, blogger, and digital storyteller based in Galway, Ireland. Find him on Facebook at http;//facebook.com/ciarantierneymedia/

Marching in solidarity with the people of Gaza
on the streets of Galway. Photo by Ciaran Tierney.

No poppy for the innocent victims

For an Irish footballer who lives in England, it’s a source of annual abuse. 

For An Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, it’s become a new cause for

An Taoiseach brandishes a poppy in the Dail

derision.

And for a small, but brave number of high-profile people in Britain, including Channel 4 presenter Jon Snow, not wearing one is a courageous statement in the face of a wave of xenophobia and jingoistic nationalism.

The red poppy.

Is it right to wear one on Remembrance Sunday?

And is it ever right for an Irish person to wear a symbol which honours the members of the British Army?

An Taoiseach broke new ground when he became the first Irish leader to brandish a poppy in the Dail this week.

It hardly came as a huge surprise, given that this is the leader who tweeted about remembering “where he was when Princess Diana died” on the day two homeless people passed away on the streets of Dublin.

The Irish people clearly have a very problematic history with the British Army, even though more than 200,000 men and women from this island served with the crown forces during World War One.

Is it right that we remember their sacrifice?

Others will point out that the same army executed 14 leaders of the Easter Rising, taking out some of the greatest minds of 20th century Ireland, in the midst of that war.

Is it really appropriate that the leader of our land should wear a poppy to commemorate an army which caused so much pain and suffering in Ireland?

Footballer James McClean doesn’t think so. Growing up in the Creggan, he knew all about the 14 innocent people – marching for civil rights – who were gunned down by members of the British Army in his part of Derry City.

On Saturday, the 28-year old Derry native was the target of abuse when he claimed that fans of Huddersfield Town threw bottles, coins, and lighters at him during an English Premier League game. His ‘crime’ was refusing to brandish a red poppy on his team shirt.

James McClean

Just over 48 hours later, he claimed the adoration of Irish fans when he picked up the Confederation of Republic of Ireland Supporters Clubs Player of the Year award for 2016/2017 in Dublin.

On Saturday night, he was dismayed that the most widely watched football programme on British TV, Match of the Day, singled him out for criticism after he picked up a yellow card for a challenge on rival player Tom Ince.

He noted, wryly, that the TV cameras failed to notice the missiles being thrown in his direction after came on as a substitute in his side West Bromwich Albion’s 1-0 defeat at Huddersfield.

“Convenient how match of the day cameras pick up my tackle. But fail to pick up bottles, coins and lighters being throwing in same incident,” he tweeted on Saturday night.

In a separate post on Instragram, he said that those who launch objects from up in the stand were “cowards not hard men”.

He is consistently singled out for abuse during club games in England in the lead up to Remembrance Sunday.

What the abusers fail to grasp or choose to ignore, though, is that McClean grew up within yards of one of the worst atrocities carried out by the British Army during ‘The Troubles’.

He was not even born when 14 unarmed protesters were shot dead by British paratroopers on January 30, 1972, a day which became forever known as ‘Bloody Sunday’ in Derry.

After the initial shock, trauma, and despair, a deep sense of injustice ran through the communities of the Bogside, Brandywell, and the Creggan, where McClean grew up.

People used to say that the massacre was the biggest recruitment drive the Irish Republican Army could have asked for and helped to prolong the conflict for another two decade.

Bloody Sunday in Derry. One of the worst atrocities
of The Troubles in Northern Ireland

The local people had to wait almost 30 years before the then Prime Minister, David Cameron, stood up in the London Parliament and apologised to the people of Derry on behalf of the British people.

“What happened should never, ever have happened. The families of those who died should not have had to live with the pain and the hurt of that day and with a lifetime of loss,” said Cameron in June 2010.

“Some members of our armed forces acted wrongly. The government is ultimately responsible for the conduct of the armed forces and for that, on behalf of the government, indeed, on behalf of our country, I am deeply sorry.”

For anyone who was in the Bogside that day, marching for civil rights in a sectarian state, the idea that anyone among them should wear a poppy to honour the war dead of the British Empire was laughable.

McClean says he is not “anti-British” and he would wear the poppy if it honoured the British dead of World War One and World War Two. But he cannot wear it because it remembers those who died in other conflicts since 1945 and he would find it impossible to honour those who killed innocent people in his neighbourhood in cold blood.

“When you come from Creggan, like myself, or the Bogside or Brandywell or the majority of places in Derry, every person still lives in one of the darkest days in Ireland’s history,” he wrote in 2015.

“Even if, like me, you were born nearly 20 years after the event. It is just a part of who we are, ingrained into us from birth.”

He said it would be an act of disrespect to his own people, the people of Derry City, if he was seen to wear a red poppy on Remembrance Sunday.

McClean’s refusal to wear the poppy comes amid some soul-searching across the UK over the way in which the poppy has been hijacked by some ultra-nationalists who target anyone who dears not to wear one on British TV.

'Crimes of Britain' have released their own version of the poppy

Last weekend, England cricketer Moeen Ali was criticised vehemently because he had not worn a poppy during a team photo. It turned out that he had worn one earlier in the day and that it just fell off his jacket, but that did not wash with those who engaged in Islamophobic criticism on social media.

The original idea behind the wearing of the red poppy was to honour the one million British soldiers who died, and the two million who were seriously wounded, in the First World War.

Remembrance Sunday now includes all British soldiers who fought in all wars, including the paratroopers who committed the atrocities on the streets of Derry in 1972 or those who executed the 1916 rebel leaders in Kilmainham Gaol.

A few years ago a campaign began to promote the wearing of a white poppy, which would honour all victims of war. That campaign seems to have evaporated in the wave of nationalism which seems to spread across Britain in the wake of last year's Brexit vote.

Money raised via the Poppy Appeal goes to the Royal British Legion, who help out those who have suffered terrible losses and injuries in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq.

It seems that the British Government would rather ordinary people direct their ire at hate figures such as James McClean than focus on how poorly they look after 21st century veterans when they return home from war.



• I’m acutely aware of the sensitivity of publishing this blog on the day a ceremony took place to mark the 30th anniversary of the Enniskillen bomb, in which 11 people were killed and more than 70 injured. That IRA bomb was one of the worst atrocities of ‘The Troubles’ and can never be justified. But the red poppy honours the people who caused so much heartbreak and loss just 50 miles up the road in Derry.


Find Ciaran Tierney on Facebook http://facebook.com/ciarantierneymedia

Hire a journalist / blogger / content writer http://ciarantierney.com/what-i-offer/

Find Ciaran Tierney on Twitter, @ciarantierney