Dean Victor Griffin
The week after Dean Victor Griffin was called "Paisley" in the Dail Mary Holland was on Saturday View with Brian Lenihan. She told him that this was just the start, that this was what the Amendment campaign had unleashed, that there would be more. Michael Mills of the Irish Press has been speaking very passionately on the same programme over the past two months about the Amendment and what it is going to do to our society. Michael Mills is speaking for many people when he says that the Amendment
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Take me home country roads
The Anti-Amendment Campaign was touring the heartland. Monday was Mullingar and the rest of the week would include Birr, Tullamore, Carrick-on-Shannon. The Campaign was even going to visit Boyle, the very home of PLAC and SPUC. The Campaign was travelling in a mini bus. One of the blokes was wearing an earring in each ear.
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When the vote comes In
The voting was nearly finished at the polling station in Andersonstown. At first Gerry Adams' supporters thought that the Army and the RUC had come to take away the ballot boxes. Things had gone well for Gerry Adams so the supporters were ready to follow the ballot boxes down to the City Hall just to make sure that none of them were thrown away. Almost directly over the polling station a helicopter hovered motionless....
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Ollie Campbell: Asking for More
Ollie Campbell has built up such a reputation as a goal kicker that he had the New Zealand forwards in fear and trembling when they played against the British and Irish Lions in the first test in Christchurch. ...
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As Time Goes By - July 1983
There I was, February 1973. A young man in a world of infinite promise. A bit worried about some of the things in that world, but confident enough that it would all come right in the final reel. And we all had a chance to make sure it did. Here came an election. My first general election. The first election in which the kids of the Sixties could vote (they wouldn't let us vote in '69, you had to be 21). ...
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Old Father, Old Artificer
Hugh Leonards play, Da, currently running at the Abbey, opens with an episode which is conducted without words. The central character, Charlie, is burning his father's papers and other rubbish in the cottage in Dalkey, having just come back from the funeral. He botches the job, through indecision, interruption, uncertainty; and out of that emerges the play. But just for those opening moments we witness, in dumb show, one of the cruellest and most painful occasions in life, the reading and the sh...
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Bowie Live
It's a cool and cloudy Friday night as our taxi cruises to a halt outside the Wembley Arena. Hundreds of hopefuls are hanging around in the unlikely chance of getting a ticket at some kind of reasonable price. The ticket touts have them, and they're all over the place asking up to £400 for a £10 ticket. Inside, stall-sellers are flogging every conceivable form of Bowie paraphernalia. Earrings, key-rings, various teeshirts, glossy souvenir programmes. Money changes hands even faster a ...
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To Westminster And Back: The Life And Times Of Gerry Fitt
The banqueting room in Belfast's city hall is used for the really big occasions. It is there that the politicans gather to hear the verdict of the electorate upon them. It is here that they are wined and dined in the successful years. A large stained glass window spells the message out for them. Pro Tanto, Quid Retribuamus. For all this, how will we repay you? ...
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A grain of truth
On 24 June a full-page article on the Ranks dispute appeared in the Irish Independent. The article was called "The Breaking of Ranks" and was advertised prominently on the front page. Inside it was claimed that Independent journalists Michael Brophy and PJ Cunningham had gone "behind the scenes to catalogue the lead-up to the fall of the Ranks empire in Ireland". ...
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A Question of Judgement
Gerard Cowzer, a 23 year-old Dublin man who has been entangled in the Irish legal system for the past year and a half, is back in Mountjoy Prison, serving a five year sentence for the 1981 robbery of the Irish Permanent Building Society in Baggot Street. ...
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The Armalite and the Ballot Box
"The military struggle will not slow down to relate to Sinn Fein's political activity". Michael Farrell interviews two spokespersons authorised to speak on behalf of the leadership of the IRA....
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Fear in the valley - Sequel
The cover story of the June issue of Magill was discussed at the meeting of South Tipperary County Council on 13 June. One local councillor pointed out that people in the area around the Merck Sharp and Dohme factory in Ballydine were worried that the council was not monitoring the factory. "We must bend over backwards to get results and to show people publicly whether it is damaging or not", he said. Another councillor pointed out that it was "never more necessary to have everything seen to be
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How TDs Subvert the Dail
It starts, sometimes, with It Says In The Papers. That early in the day. A TD is chomping the toast when he hears mention of some story from, say, page three of the Indo. The story might, perhaps, be about how some government department bought a few boxes of Belgian blotting paper. To most people it's a story of little importance, but a certain kind of TD has the imagination and sheer hard neck to work this up into an electoral asset. ...
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