Saturday, August 11, 2007

Hurrah for the Fearless Senator Eoghan Harris!


Imagine .........a community forum event held in staunchly Unionist East Belfast, in this imaginary crowded hall are dozens of victims of the troubles from within the Unionist community many of them naturally still grieving over the loss of loved ones.
Widows of RUC officers, sons and daughters of bomb victims, relations of the victims of war, still suffering its dreadful aftermath , raw and still concerned that the recent Democratic Unionist Party move towards a power sharing government with Sinn Féin perhaps represents a profound betrayal of their loved ones.
On the platform is an English man , a newly created member of the House of Lords, Lord Tweedy of Fleet, a journalist who has been in his time, variously, a Marxist, a Tory, and even for a while a Liberal. Now appointed to the House of Lords, by a grateful Prime Minister for his rousing call on peak-time TV for his benefactors re-election as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom .
The audience applause as he begins his address soon turns to shocked silence as he turns on his compatriots and lectures to them that their tendency to what he calls "Unionist victimhood" will only '"hold back the healing process in the North" forgetting that throughout the worst of the 'troubles' he had observed the war from the relative safety of various Fleet Street newspaper office chairs.

Lord Tweedy said pursuit of Unionist grievances over issues like 'unsolved murders' would hold back the peace process and accused his Loyalist audience of being 'out of tune with the rest of the UK '.

“That cultivation of victimhood is not going to bring any peace to this country....“The people of Britain would likely as not regard you as extremely odd people. You appear to have moral problems with the 'Unionist victimhood. ”

There would, of course, be a storm of outraged reaction to such crass insensitivity from a jumped up journo posing as a man of substance. In all likelihood the many defenders of fair play for the Unionist community in the media of the 26 Counties, Ruth Dudley Edwards and Capt. Kevin Myers et al would call for an apology to the victims of Republican violence from the hapless Lord . In all likelihood the most vituperative and viscious of castigations of Lord Tweedy's arrogant and crass insensitivity, would flow in a fluent venomous torrent from the pen of newly created Senator Eoghan Harris in his column in Sir Antony O'Reilly's Sunday Independent, for Senator Eoghan Harris has a sharp eye for injustice and ill treatment of the weak and powerless at the hands of the strong and powerful .

For a potted biography of the fearless Senator Harris

http://www.tribune.ie/article.tvt?_scope=Tribune/News/Home%20News&id=74564&SUBCAT=Tribune/News/Home%20News&SUBCATNAME=

To read what Senator Harris ACTUALLY said when HE was in Belfast go to....

http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/mhcwcwgbojmh/rss2/

13 comments:

bobw said...

I read your article on Spain and the civil war, liked it a lot, and then lost track of your site, until my SO showed me how to find it again through Google.
Keep it up. You've got one more loyal reader now (yankee, too, for what that's worth.)

Gabriel said...

thanks Bob keep reading and commenting, its really appreciated.
gabriel

Frank Partisan said...

You don't hear day to day news about Ireland, outside the UK.

Voltaire's Priest said...

Got the link to your site from Shiraz sorted, I'm glad to say!

bob said...

Gabriel- noticed you left a comment at the Lewisham '77 site saying you were there. Please consider getting in touch with them lewisham77@gmail.com They're trying to get memories of the day recorded, and also get some veterans along to the commemorative walk in September.

And thanks for visiting my site - despite different very views on Cuba!

Organized Rage. said...

Gabriel,

I did not know about this site, thanks for heads up, I enjoyed reading through your archive and have linked my own site Organized Rage to it. I especially liked the photos of theGerman Comrades from the Ernst Thallman Battalion.[IB] The 'Hurrah for Our Boys'....(families not welcome) article was also spot on.

Gabriel said...

Thanks Mick, I hope you will be a regular visitor and commentator.

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