Moore Street, partition demographics and abortion updates

Last October I wrote about efforts to block the redevelopment of Dublin’s historic Moore Street, scene of the rebels last stand in the 1916 Rising.

Happy to report that not only are the buildings being saved, but they will be repaired and conserved, the Irish Independent reports.

*** 

In May I wrote about the “People’s Referendum” that showed support for ending partition and noted a Facebook page for “Protestants for a United Ireland.”

Gerry Moriarty of The Irish Times filed this very interesting piece about “The Catholic unionists.”

Many nationalists – and quite a number of unionists – dismiss the notion of Catholic unionists. “They are like unicorns,” is an often-repeated line. “They don’t exist.” But though they are small in number, they are not mythical creatures, and they could have a role in determining the constitutional future of Northern Ireland.

***

I’ve written about Ireland’s abortion bill several times over the summer, most recently this July 11 post that compared and contrasted legislative debates in Ireland and Texas.

Nine days after I posted the blog, columnist Roth Douthat filed this column in The New York Times. I am not accusing him of copying me, only pointing out that somebody else was drawn by the coincidence.

Is the term paddy wagon offensive? (Yes)

In Tampa, at least one local Irishman is offended by the name of a new bar, The PaddyWagon Irish Pub, and he has written to the mayor with his complaint, the Tampa Bay Times reports:

“Your Honour, I fail to understand why your administration granted a license to The Paddy Wagon since this uniquely American perjorative term was instigated by the Know Nothings in the 19th century to denigrate Irish-Catholics.”
So begins a recent letter to the mayor from Séamus S. ÓhEarcáin of Sun City Center, where he is president of the Hillsborough County division of the Ancient Order of Hibernians in America.

Known locally as James J. Harkins IV, the letter writer is a historian, lecturer and author who specializes in the history of Irish monks in medieval Europe. He blogs at The Irish Mastryoshka.

The origins of paddy wagon are muddled, though it is generally agreed the term was pejorative when first used in the 19th century. Some say it first appeared during the New York City draft riots of July 1863. Many of the men protesting Union conscription were Irish or Irish-Americans. So were many of the police officers charged with arresting them. The term “paddy” is also said to refer to the initials P.D., or Police Department, on the side of prisoner transport vans.

Still other sources say the term “Paddy” is a shortening of Patrick, which is Padraig in Irish.

Paddy Wagon

Of course, using the term paddy for a drinking establishment just perpetuates the stereotype of “the drunken Irish.” St. Patrick’s Day has become so associated with inebriation, Irish and non-Irish, that a growing number of heritage groups have created Sober St. Patrick’s Day events.

Tampa’s Mayor Bob Buckhorn, an Irish-American who has formalized the city’s St. Patrick’s Day celebration by ordering the Hillsborough River dyed green each year, said he isn’t offended by the pub name. “I would have chosen another name, but it’s not my restaurant and it’s not my job to pick the names,” he told the Times.

The city’s written response to Harkins said local government can’t regulate business names (although I can easily imagine the city would find a way to block businesses that used more direct ethnic slurs against other groups).

Tampa officials suggested Harkins contact the pub’s owners, Linksters Management Group of Sarasota. For those who want to voice their protest, or support, here’s a link to the company’s online contact page and telephone number.

Buckhorn said “at some point political correctness can be taken too far.” Or is the The Paddy Wagon pub the still-hurtful vestige of once virulent American prejudice against Irish Catholics?

Personally, I’m with Harkins. I say walk past this new place and visit Four Green Fields, Tampa’s authentic thatched-roof Irish pub.

(Image above from Irish Central, which picked up the Times story.)

Clipping the news of Ireland

News about Ireland and Northern Ireland caught my attention from the time I began reading newspapers and magazines in the 1960s. During the 1980s and up until the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 I kept my own clip file of stories, most of them about the Troubles.

On the day of the Belfast Agreement I paid for online access at an Internet cafe in Mobile, Ala. to get the latest details. I did not have my own computer or online access at my newspaper job.

Today I take my online access for granted. I read the Irish papers from my home and work computers, as well as my smart phone. I pull up audio and video reports from any of these devices, and directly access contemporary and historic documents. I scroll through a torrent of Irish-related Twitter feeds on my @markieam account. I publish my own blog about Ireland.

Newspaper clippings once were common in correspondence between families in Ireland and America, typically obituaries and birth or wedding announcements. My uncle from Kerry kept an August 1933 clipping from the The Gaelic American, which republished Padraic Pearse’s 1915 oration over the grave of republican patriot O’Donovan Rossa. “They have left us our Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree shall never be at peace,” the speech famously concluded.

I was reminded of all this the other day when my local newspaper, the Tampa Bay Times, published two Ireland-related stories on page 6 of the Nation/World section. ” ‘Lifesaving’ abortion bill passes in Ireland” read the first headline under a Dublin, Ireland kicker. “Northern Ireland braces for violence” said the second headline under a Belfast, N. Ireland kicker.

scissors

The two stories were located at the bottom inside corner of a six-column page dominated by a five-column-wide department store advert for a one-day furniture sale. The pair of stories were easy to miss if you are not in the market for a sofa, turned the page to fast or not too interested in Ireland.

I thought for a moment of grabbing the scissors. The twinge of an old habit.

Abortion laws nearing passage in Ireland…and Texas

The abortion question remains as contentious as ever in capitals as different as Dublin and Austin.

In Ireland, the “Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill 2013” that liberalizes the procedure is nearing passage in the Dail. Several TD’s have bolted from their party leadership to vote against amendments to the the bill, a signal of the final vote, but it appears there is not enough support to defeat the proposed changes to Ireland’s longstanding abortion ban.

Texas legislators are also holding marathon meetings to pass a bill that places tougher new restrictions on abortion. It’s the second such session in a month after pro-choice protesters turned back an earlier effort.

In both places the abortion debate is marked by bitter words and other protest inside and outside the legislative chambers. Such contentiousness has been a fixture in America since the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973. Debate over abortion isn’t entirely new in Ireland, but the likely passage of the current bill will take the cultural and political divisiveness to an uglier level.

The issue will not leave the headlines after lawmakers adjourn.

Marching in Ireland

Two big marches occurred in Ireland over the weekend, one a political protest in the heart of Dublin, the other a Protestant parade in rural County Donegal.

  • Some 7,000 Orangemen paraded in Rossnowlagh, the only such July 12th parade in the Republic of Ireland. “The march was highlighted as a tourist attraction for the first time as it received the official backing of the Government’s tourism initiative aimed at attracting the Irish diaspora to the country during 2013,” The Irish Times reported.
  • An estimated 35,000 anti-abortion protesters packed the streets of Dublin ahead of a crucial vote this week. Some carried signs that said, “Kill the bill! Not the child!” The Washington Post reported that speakers demanded that the government put its bill to a national referendum.

July 12

Not Northern Ireland. RTE photo of Orange Order parade in the Republic of Ireland.

Pope John Paul II to be canonized 34 years after Ireland trip

News from the Vatican that Pope Francis has agreed to canonize Pope John Paul II and Pope John XXIII before the end of the year has prompted The Irish Times to republish several photos of JPII’s September 1979 visit to Ireland, including the image below at Clonmacnoise. CatholicIreland.net also posts a collection of quotations from JPII during the trip. This one covers the broad span of the Catholic church’s experience in Ireland:

I am thinking of how many times, across how many centuries, the Eucharist has been celebrated. How many and varied the places where the Masses have been offered, in stately mediaeval and in splendid modern cathedrals, in early monastic and in Modern Churches; at Mass rock in the glens and forests by hunted priests, in poor thatched-covered chapels, for a people poor in worldly goods but rich in the things of the Spirit., in “wake houses” or “station houses” or at great open-air hostings of the faithful – on top of Croagh Patrick and at Lough Derg.

Pope

What would Saint John Paul II have to say about the church’s problems in Ireland today, from child sexual abuse to declining Mass attendance? At least he might take some comfort in knowing that many Polish immigrants in Ireland are keeping the faith.

Irish Brigades at Gettysburg, plus New York draft riots

There was a lot violence in America in July 1863. The Irish were right in the middle of it.

Most attention has focused on the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. The Irish Brigades were among the men who fought and died on the famous battlefield and earlier skirmishes of the American Civil War. These post-Famine Irish and Irish-American soldiers joined units from New York, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. They had a reputation as fierce fighters, but their participation was prompted by more than patriotism. History.com says:

Ethnic units were a way for the Union Army to help win Irish support for its cause. This support was not guaranteed: Though most Irish immigrants lived in the North, they were sympathetic to (as they saw it) the Confederacy’s struggle for independence from an overbearing government—it reminded them of their fight to be free of the British. Also, many Irish and Irish Americans were not against slavery. On the contrary, they favored a system that kept blacks out of the paid labor market and away from their jobs. As a result, Union officials had to promise many things in addition to ethnic regiments—enlistment bonuses, extra rations, state subsidies for soldiers’ families, Catholic chaplains—in order to assure that the North’s largest immigrant group would be fighting with them and not against them.

Two weeks after Gettysburg, a predominantly Irish mob erupted in a five day anti-conscription riot in New York City. These urban working-class poor believed they were being forced to fight a “rich man’s war.” Their views were stoked by anti-emancipation newspapers and Democratic politicians:

Irish Catholic rioters targeted Protestant charities, such as the Magdalene Asylum and Five Points Mission. By the late afternoon, protesters had entered the city’s arsenal, which they burned (killing ten of their own) when the police arrived. The rioters also began attacking blacks, shouting racial slurs, and torching homes of poor African Americans on the west side of 30th Street. In one of the most infamous incidents, a mob burned the Colored Orphan Asylum on west 44th Street, although its 237 children escaped to safety.

New York riots

 

 

 

 

 

Image from New York Public Library.

Federal troops were needed to finally quell the riot, one of the worst outbreaks of insurrection in U.S. history. At least 120 people were killed and hundreds more were injured. The outburst ended organized Irish participation in the Civil War. Tensions between Irish immigrants, Irish-Americans and the African-American community would continue through Reconstruction and deep into the 20th century, including the Boston busing crisis of the 1970s and 1980s.

Blog celebrates first anniversary with 100th post; Gathering year at halfway mark

This is the 100th post of my Irish-American Blog, which also reaches its first anniversary this month. Thanks for the support.

For the occasion, here’s a link to Niall O’Dowd’s recent post on Irish Central, which celebrates the success of the Gathering 2013, a year-long tourism initiative encouraging people of Irish ancestry to return to the motherland. O’Dowd writes:

The weather has been cooperating with the warmest summer in some time which has really helped….There is always a match or a festival or some event to go to, and the people themselves seem energized by the foreigners who flock to their shore….It is as if Ireland has cast aside its penitent robes after the shock of the bad times and found a new suit that fits the upbeat mood perfectly….Sure there will be problems ahead, and winter’s dark days will draw in again, but the summer of 2013 will rightly be remembered as when The Gathering called countless Irish home.

Second quarter tourism numbers should be forthcoming from Fáilte Ireland later this month. Travel to Ireland was up 7.4 percent during the first quarter of 2013 compared to the previous year.

TheGathering_logo

 

Great Hunger Museum acquires “The Ragpickers”

I’ve written several posts about Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut. The museum has just acquired a new painting, “The Ragpickers,” by Henry Allan.

ragpickers

 

 

 

 

 

Niamh O’Sullivan, the museum’s consultant curator and Professor Emeritus of Visual Culture at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, writes in a museum newsletter:

Ragpicking was a common occupation in the late 19th/early 20th centuries. Ragpickers eked out a living by rummaging for scraps of cloth and paper and other discarded items to identify anything that could be recycled or sold (even dead cats and dogs could be skinned to make clothes). Ragpickers turned over what they salvaged to a master who would sell it, usually by weight; anything of value was to be returned to the owner or the authorities….Painters and writers of the Romantic period turned the ragpicker into a type of street philosopher who, living from day to day and unburdened by material things, understands human nature. Unobserved, he observes others.

Allan’s image dates to 1900. O’Sullivan suggests the scene “is consistent with the dunes of Ringsend, Dublin, seen from South Lotts,” which is on the south bank of the River Liffey at the eastern edge of the city, near the open sea. The name Ringsend is a corruption of the Irish “Rinn-abhann”, which means “the end point of the tide,” according to Wikipedia. The area went into decline about the time of Allan’s painting as shipping activity moved to other parts of Dublin and ports further south along the coast.

Arrogance and deceit exposed at Anglo Irish

The Irish government is scrambling to launch an investigation of the 2008 Anglo Irish Bank collapse after the Irish Independent uncovered damaging internal telephone recordings between two senior executives from the period.

The newspaper says the recordings reveal “a dual strategy of deception and scare tactics to the lure [the national government] into a financial trap that eventually cost billions and bankrupted the country.”

The arrogance and deceit of the two bankers is shocking to hear. The recordings are available on the Independent‘s website.

Anglo Irish eventually required a 30 billion Euro bailout from Irish taxpayers. One of the bank’s toxic assets is located near my home in Tampa, as detailed in my blog post for the Tampa Bay Business Journal.

Anglo Irish Bank held a defaulted $27 million note on Channelside Bay Plaza, below, a retail and entertainment complex in Tampa, Florida. TBBJ photo.

Channelside