Sixteen years ago, I wandered down to the Forty Foot to take some pictures of winter swimmers, one of the first swimmers I encountered was Tim; every week that winter I took pictures, building my collection and getting to know Tim and the other hardy swimmers, of which there was very few.
I was going through some personal issues and had just sobered up, so Tim prompted me to give it – swimming – a go. A few months later I took the plunge, and so began my own swimming journey, a now nearly daily addiction.
I’m now coming up to my sixteen year anniversary, I still bring the camera down and continue my study of swimmers and, more importantly, life down at the Forty Foot.
In summers it comes alive, a real life West Side Story; the winter tranquility overtaken by hordes of teenagers observing the end of school traditions; jumping into the Forty Foot in uniforms; posturing and shaping in ther gangs; drinking and flirting – the passage to adulthood.
I exhibited this work last year in the nearby Sandycove Store and Yard, and hope to produce my book next year, on a decade long study of Forty Foot life.
For many years Tim was absent, and last November he rocked up to Sandycove, dived in and then as he emerged from the water, I captured him. He remarked ‘are you not famous yet ?’
Early this summer I submitted this picture to the Zurich Portrait prize. I was pleasantly surprised to hear as the summer ended that this picture – Forty Footer – had been shortlisted for the Portrait prize and will hang in our National Gallery from December.
Did I mention that I remember seeing Queen Elizabeth II not as a very old or medium-old or middle-aged woman, the way everyone alive now remembers her, but as a youngish-looking woman in her forties? Okay, my seeing her didn’t take place in real life, but still… for a child living in the Soviet Union, it was a bit unusual. Here’s how it happened.
My father had a huge stamp collection in Moscow. In the sixties he corresponded with stamp collectors—philatelists—from all over the world, and when I say “the sixties,” it’s important to keep in mind that those were the Soviet sixties, and if you know what the Soviet sixties were like, and what Soviet censorship was like, you might imagine what it felt like to correspond with people from Australia, New Zealand, France, FRG/ФРГ (the usual Russian acronym for West Germany), Belgium, and so on, simply to exchange some stamps for a stamp collection. My father’s stamps were kept in special albums—kliassery in Russian.
I learned names of foreign countries from them: a stamp from Sweden, a stamp from Hungary, a stamp from Denmark, and always the British stamp, with a portrait of dainty Queen Elizabeth, still a youngish-looking woman in her forties, with a little crown on her head, like a silvery bird on a dark nest.
It was thanks to my father’s stamp collection that we were able to leave the Soviet Union. I won’t go into all the details of what it was like, in the early seventies, to apply to the OVIR (Office of Visas and Registration) for permission to emigrate, and I won’t compare the process to Russian roulette, although it would have been the right comparison.
One day we were lucky and got our permission. Now my parents had to buy four plane tickets to Vienna, and they didn’t have enough money. My father sold his whole stamp collection to a well-known philatelist in Moscow, and with that money, he was able to buy us four plane tickets to Vienna.
So here’s how I saw Queen Elizabeth II. If you missed the part about the queen… Psst-psst, it was in the middle.
Whether we’re regularly reading sports news or contributing to a comical WhatsApp group, many of us have become heavily reliant on our smartphone devices. In fact, smartphones have impacted the world’s population greatly and have added a sense of convenience that wasn’t there before, be it for shopping online or ordering in some food using a popular app like Uber Eats.
The sheer amount of functionalities a modern-day mobile phone possesses is remarkable when you really think about it. Gone are the days when texting and playing Snake were regarded as innovative opportunities, instead being replaced by internet-based products that can perform an incredible amount of tasks. People find love using apps, they’re booking holidays on a smartphone device, tucking into pirate-themed casino games, posting images on Instagram, and even conducting banking enquiries through an official banking app. While these miniature computers in our pockets highlight how far technology-based innovation has come, they do contribute towards some concerning negative societal effects, though.
After all, given the fact that devices made by the likes of Apple have become more sophisticated year on year, as a society, we’re ultimately being exposed to something new and untested. Nobody knows the impact constant smartphone usage will have on youngsters as they progress into adulthood, for example. For now, though, despite smartphones providing a range of benefits, there are many negative effects of phones on day-to-day life. Let’s assess a number of concerning developments around smartphone usage below.
The social aspect
While instant messaging apps and online dating products enable people to converse in a more casual manner, there is no doubting that we’re yet to see the full effects of them when it comes to establishing relationships in real life, particularly when assessing the youth of today. From being judged constantly on social media to disturbing sleep patterns that can then hinder progress in daily life, society has become glued to their smartphones screens. The art of conversation has been lost somewhat, with the rise of the introvert becoming inevitable as social skills diminish throughout society as a whole. Of course, there is nothing wrong with people in this category, but there is no denying that smartphones have resulted in a lack of conversation between people. Who knows how this could impact our future.
Negative impact on parenting
According to research, parents are not fully present when they’re on their smartphones devices. As such, there are concerns that many modern children are growing up with a whole host of emotional issues, perhaps through being starved of attention and feeling emotionally neglected. With limited research around what has become a modern-day parenting issue, there are growing concerns surrounding the impact of smartphones on parenting. Smartphone addiction is a genuine issue, no matter the age group.
Smartphones are ruining relationships
Smartphones are having an impact on romantic relationships, too. With some people paying more attention to their social media feed than a loved one, Dr. Suzana E. Flores, a clinical psychologist, says: “This sends a message that their phone is more important than their partner. When a partner feels dismissed or unappreciated, they will eventually choose someone else who values their company.”
Self-worth based on social media likes
Another concerning trend has seen an increasing amount of the global population seeking approval from their social media audience. In 2022, sharing a viral post online is an accomplishment for many, with “likes” being the main aim of the game. This has led to more people comparing themselves with other social media users and basing their self-worth through the traction their posts get on popular on popular platforms like Instagram and TikTok.
This week Cassandra Voices editor Frank Armstrong sat down for a chat with veteran Italian journalist Concetto La Malfa, who has been living in Ireland for almost sixty years.
He initially arrived for a two month work placement with Aer Lingus, before embarking on a chequered career that includes founding a magazine for the Italian community, which he edited for almost thirty years, acting as the Irish correspondent for the Corriere dello Sport, and teaching Italian in UCD.
He continues to work as a journalist, principally throught the site he runs: http://italvideonewstv.net/, where he mainly broadcasts short videos discussing important international events.
Concetto explains how he came to Ireland at a time when the country was still relatively poor, and he says, a little depressing, compared to his native Sicily at least. At that time, Dublin was he says: “a poor capital in a poor country”.
Indeed, he was slightly disturbed to find that there were only five Italian restaurants – four run by the same brothers – and he struggled to adapt to the Irish lifestyle, missing his native cuisine in particular.
Since then, Ireland has developed considerably, economically at least, although Concetto likens the country to a dwarf with a giant heart, given the disproportionate size of Dublin’s c. 1.5 million population compared to the c. 3.5 million in the rest of the country.
Dublin he argues, ‘is a capital city that has grown in a hurry’ and that many things should work better, pointing to the state of the streets and, in particular, the prevalence of street crime.
In terms of Sicily, he asserts that the mafia is as visible as the IRA was to the ordinary Joe Soap in Ireland. Although he acknowledges that organised crime has has hindered development on the island.
He keeps away from the intricacies of Italian politics, preferring to concentrate on the big picture, but cites a telling statistic that there have been 67 governments in just 74 years. He wonders whether this is a sign of a democracy that goes too far.
During his period as correspondent for Corriera dello Sport he became acquainted with Giovanni Trappatoni and Liam Brady, who spent seven seasons in Italy playing for Juventus and Inter Milan.
Finally, Concetto has formed the view that the West is conducting a war by proxy in Ukraine, with the blood of the Ukrainian people, and that every single weapon sent from the West makes the possibility of a diplomatic resolution more distant.
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The following is a submission to the Citizens Assembly on Dublin by a former Lord Mayor of Dublin Dermot Lacey, who argues for a new regional approach to Dublin that would include provision for a directly elected mayor with real power and responsibility for the whole city.
Throughout the developed world Regional and Local Government is taking its rightful place at the heart of sustainable decision making. From the Scottish Parliament, the Northern Ireland and Welsh Assemblies in the United Kingdom, to the Federal Parliaments in Germany, the Cantons in Switzerland local-relevant decision-making is growing. One of the founding principles of the European Union is subsidiarity – however that particular guiding principle seems to have been lost somewhere in the Irish Sea.
Here in the Republic of Ireland, with a nod to European Union objectives but a more stellar eye on European money we have invented three new Regional Assemblies; the Southern Regional Assembly, the Northern and Western Regional Assembly and here on the east coast and adjacent counties the Eastern and Midlands Regional Assembly.
Comprised of Councillors from twelve Local Authorities this artificial construct has no real power, no funds, no democratic mandate and Government ignores it at their pleasure. Meanwhile Dublin the only City Region by real international standards and the economic powerhouse of the State is deprived of any co-ordinating body covering the full County. Without such a co-ordinating body, without a Regional Authority for the Dublin area with power and resources Ireland is the principal loser. So, what do I want for Dublin? But then again What Dublin do we mean when we refer to it?
Dublin is often described as the ‘Fair City’ – but is it? Is it a city that treats its people equally? Is it fairly run? Does it treat all its citizens fairly? Does it protect its culture, heritage and environment fairly and sensibly? Is it a democratic city? Is democracy necessary? Or is democratic consultation and decision making central to the future of Dublin. Does any of this matter?
The answer, of course, is that yes, it does matter – or at least it matters to me. Dublin is my home. It always has been and I hope, it always will be. It was and will again, be one of the finest cities of Europe. It is a great and beautiful city, ideally located between the scenic natural beauty of the Dublin Mountains and the incredibly clean and majestic Dublin Bay. A Bay that has been so sadly neglected and indeed damaged by decisions taken by unelected Public Servants and in reality, unaccountable Politicians from outside its borders.
It is a city with a great history and culture; a city of literature and with a genuine appreciation for the arts; above all it is a city and county with a resilient people still enthused by the notion of community.
Unlike Margaret Thatcher, Dubliners do believe there is such a thing as society. This is demonstrated every day of every week in the volume of community work, youth and sports activity and community activism actively engaged in by, and for, Dubliners. Perhaps this has never been expressed so forcibly as it was during the Covid crisis and now in the response to the War in Ukraine.
It is also, however, a city of unnecessary complexity. It is a deeply undemocratic city, with decisions made at a remove from the people of Dublin and, in far too many cases, at a remove from the democratically elected representatives of those people.
It is poorly served by the administrative and governance structures imposed on it by successive national governments. It is scandalously under-funded and under-resourced. It has a confused transport system, unacceptable poverty, inadequate housing and a divided and unequal series of communities. None of this is necessary. We need to imagine a better future for Dublin and we need to create that better future for Dublin.
The tragedy for Dublin and Dubliners is that when times were good and finance available, we had one of the least imaginative, backward looking governments in the history of our state. It is true also that when times were bad and the opportunity for real reform was there that Local Government was set back decades by the pretence of “reform” that was “Putting People First”.
It is why we need a new approach to build a new and better Dublin. It is but one of the many reasons why we need a New Deal for Dublin – a Fair Deal for Dublin. It is also a very clear example of why the model suggested by a few commentators of introducing a Minister for Dublin, is not the answer.
Can we solve Dublin’s problems – yes we can. Can we make it a better place for all – yes we can. Can we have a democratic and inclusive Dublin – yes we can. The pertinent question is how do we achieve at least some of these objectives? How do we make Dublin the inclusive and democratic county that it can be and I want it to be? How do we create our own future for Dublin?
The answer lies in real reform of our local government structures. This should not have had to wait until, as some would have it, the country’s problems are fixed. Local government reform is not an optional extra – it is, in my view, integral to our country’s future. Ireland can be transformed through the reform of local government. We cannot do it any other way. It is not possible to reform our political, economic and public sectors if we do not at the same time reform local government.
In the case of Dublin, my preference would be for a directly elected Mayor and a new Dublin Regional Assembly. In the course of this submission I hope to outline why that is the case.
While Dublin is a changing city and county, it is a city and county that administratively and politically does not work. The city and county does not work for citizens, for business, for communities, or for Ireland. Despite it being the engine of growth for the economy and the fact that, in a European context, it is the only real city-region in the country, the governance of Dublin has largely been ignored and any real reform avoided since the establishment of the State.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) categorises city regions by their population size and the smallest size considered is 1.5million (OECD Territorial Reviews: Competitive Cities in the Global Economy 2006).
Tinkering with the boundaries in breaking up the old County Councils, thereby reducing the power to seriously drive the region, and a collapse in funding have sadly been the hallmarks of government intervention over the last decade or so. Incompetent interference, followed by inertia, has been the closest thing to positive action from those on ‘the inside’ those really in power.
The legislation introduced by former Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Phil Hogan TD, seriously set back local Government in Dublin and abolished the Dublin Regional Authority. While much political comment since has been on his unwise abolition of Town Councils the reality is that it was bad, very bad for Dublin.
Politically it gave more power to bureaucrats, reduced the powers of Councillors, removed a realistic Regional dimension and imposed more work, on more un-asked for Councillors. In doing so the Minister simply compounded the indefensible record of the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government – a Department, which one well known commentator, has described as the one Department of State actively hostile to the three nouns in its [then] title, Environment, Heritage and Local government.
Any real reform proposals must provide for a better future for Dublin because a better future for Ireland will in reality be predicated on Dublin sustaining real economic growth and administrative and governmental cohesiveness.
No doubt any serious changes will meet political, departmental and institutional opposition to real reform. For far too long power and authority in Ireland has rested with unaccountable mandarins in government departments and their agents, whether via quasi-independent agencies or through the city and county managers process.
Real change is, however, necessary. Irish people are open to new ideas and new ways of doing business and exercising governance. With courage and vision, and above all a serious commitment to reform from the top, we can have a meaningful, inclusive, democratic and relevant local government system. We can make Dublin work and in turn make our country work.
Regrettably, what is equally true is that despite all the recent talk of reform, changes to our local government structure hardly featured at all in public debate. Reform of governance at a local level was discussed not at all during recent General Elections. The truth however, in my view, is that is simply impossible to reform our national political and public sectors if we do not start on the ground, in our communities and in the chambers of our city and county councils and the regional authorities.
Before any decisions are taken, or any reforms contemplated, we need agreement on what is meant by local government itself. Quite simply, we need a collective ‘buy in’ on local government. For me, local government is about the delivery of comprehensive public services in a manner required, demanded and agreed to by the local community. It must be about the provision of services, in an accountable and democratic manner, to the people in receipt of, or entitled to, those services. Without these attributes it is neither local nor government. Sadly, here in Ireland, that is the present reality.
Bemoaning the plight of local government is also easy. There are library shelves bursting with reports and analysis. I would like to be more positive and constructive. There are others, more capable than I, who can comment on the national situation. I hope they do. I want to concentrate on Dublin. It is a City I had the privilege to serve as Lord Mayor and a county the privilege to serve, as Cathaoirleach of the Dublin Regional Authority and as Cathaoirleach of the Eastern and Midlands Regional Assembly – the only person to have held the three roles.
In the context of this submission as well as defining local government itself, we need also to define: where and what we mean by Dublin; Is it the City? Is it the County? Is it the Dublin region?; or, as some would have it, is it the larger Metropolitan area? While there are many reasons to define a new governance area as being the greater Dublin area or, as it has been described, the ‘drive-to-work’ Dublin area, my view is that here in Ireland, rightly or wrongly, local identity is important, loyalty is important and a clear definition of boundary, in a governmental context, is important. In all respects, therefore, I believe we should focus on the traditional County of Dublin.
It is this County of Dublin that needs our focus and attention. It is this area that has been and will again be the engine of our economy. Rebuilding and growing that Dublin will help once again to grow our economy and strengthen our society. It will help Ireland grow and develop. Part of my role as an advocate for Dublin, is to dispense with the old and very outdated argument of ‘Dublin versus the rest’. The reality is that what is good for Dublin is invariably good for Ireland. Our future as a people is intertwined. Dublin is our collective capital.
For Ireland’s sake, Dublin needs to run Dublin. That is the very essence of this argument. The present situation, in which disinterested quangos (largely unaccountable state bodies and often disconnected governmental departments) interfere in the affairs of the county without any appreciable knowledge or sympathy, cannot be allowed to continue. Power and authority currently lies with the unelected and the unaccountable, whilst the elected city and county councillors see powers removed on a near daily basis. Dublin deserves better. Ireland needs better.
The existing situation in which more than 60 bodies have responsibility for traffic is the most obvious example of this. At least nine separate bodies are responsible for Dublin Bay and most absurdly national government appoints the St. Patrick’s Day Festival Committee, which largely, though not exclusively, affects Dublin. There are far more examples than this. Surely this cannot continue into the future.
Perhaps, more than anything else, Dublin needs someone who understands how things work, or more accurately, how things do not work, and who will stand up for the city and county. To create that better future that we seek, Dublin needs a spokesperson for the whole community. It needs someone, who can be a political advocate armed with the mandate of direct election. That is why I believe that central to any meaningful reform must be a longer-term Mayor and that direct election would provide the mandate. The Mayor needs to be a champion for Dublin who will market and promote the region internationally and who will stand up for it nationally.
The proposal to have an election for a Mayor of Dublin would give us an opportunity to create that voice. The election campaign itself would provide an opportunity for a collective debate on the future of Dublin.
The visibility and accountability of such an office holder would considerably help inform the public on the choices involved on issues of concern. That is why, with all its imperfections and limited powers, I welcomed the publication by former Minister for the Environment and Local Government, John Gormley of the Local Government (Mayor and Regional Authority of Dublin) Bill draft legislation in 2010. All political institutions grow and evolve over time, and I believe the implementation of that Bill would have proved no exception.
That legislation clarified some issues. It specified the county as the area involved and provided a new structure for the regional authority. The proposal that the Mayor would chair the authority, to whom he or she would be accountable, was, I believe, a rare defect in the draft legislation.
Similarly the proposal to establish a Regional Development Board was unclear, as was its composition and democratic mandate. Unless the public service agencies are accountable to this body, and not equal participating parties as at present, it would not have worked.
The creation of the proposed Dublin Transport Council was inadequate but a significant step in the right direction. Yes, there were deep flaws and absences from the legislation. There was a real lack of integration of services and roles. There was uncertainty about the relationship with the department and the Minister.
It was however an important start – unfortunately one not taken. While some Political Parties are once again raising the issue and this Citizens Assembly has been established it does seem to me to be a “can kicking” exercise and I am not convinced that the permanent Government will do anything to facilitate it happening. Nevertheless, I believe there is still a need for the debate and for the campaign to continue. It remains an aspiration worth pursuing.
The absence of an independent source of funding was a major flaw in previous proposals and must be addressed whenever a future government is serious about reform.
Many believe that we need more than the simple introduction of a directly elected mayor, and they are right. A new mayor can and must drive further reform and a real debate about the future of Dublin.
Two of the arguments used against the introduction of a directly elected mayor are cost and the issue of ‘celebrity’ candidates. Both are bogus. Properly structured, a newly elected Mayor, working with the Dublin Regional Authority, will see the need for many of the existing agencies reduced and or incorporated into the mayoral structure with significant savings.
On the ‘celebrity’ candidate issue, the answer is simple: we are meant to live in a democracy, so let the people decide. I have great faith that, subject to a fair and balanced media presentation, the electorate will decide intelligently. While not the subject of this essay, it is this issue of media coverage of a campaign – the absence of a fair and informed media on Local government matters – that would concern me most.
This is particularly true of the national broadcasting service – RTÉ – whose understanding and knowledge of local government is virtually non-existent and access to the airwaves is a rare privilege accorded only to a chosen few. Clear guidelines for their coverage of a campaign and debate on the issues would be crucial if genuine progress is to be made.
It is clear to anyone interested that our current system of local government requires renewal and reform. Clear too is the fact that the various local councils are directed, unofficially, but in reality, by city and county managers, answerable to the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government and the permanent officials therein. It is striking that the term of office for a city and county manager is seven years – which can and usually is extended to ten years and that under our current system the term for a mayor is usually one year. Longevity itself is power.
Understanding that relationship is the key to understanding our present problems and breaking that relationship is the key to resolving them for the future. The proposals in the Labour/Fine Gael Programme for Government to abolish the role of county managers and replace them with ‘Chief Executive Officers’ was executed but the change in title was all that was delivered – not a change in role or powers.
None of this should be taken as a personal reflection on the four very fine public servants, Frank Feely, John Fitzgerald, John Tierney and Owen Keegan with whom I have worked during their terms as Dublin City Manager/Chief Executive. They all served Dublin well. It is the structural and relationship issue and problem that need to be resolved.
I believe that Dublin desperately needs a longer term Mayor who would serve for the full local government term, and a Mayor directly elected by the people who would have the authority and mandate needed to serve for such a term. We also need substantial reform of the structure of the four local authorities in the Dublin city and county areas. Such a Mayor working with the members of the Council and with sufficient powers and resources is needed now more than ever to rescue this city and county from the clutching, incompetent and disinterested control of central government and administration.
Shamefully, the sections of the 2001 Local Government Act, enabling this, courageously and correctly introduced by Minister Noel Dempsey, were reversed by his successor, Minister Martin Cullen.
More shamefully, the Green Party Minister, John Gormley, was thwarted in his efforts to introduce plans for a directly elected mayor and Regional Authority. Even more shamefully was the pretence of reform introduced by Minister Phil Hogan at a time when people were crying out for real reform. It was perhaps the greatest wasted opportunity of all.
There are many ways in which real reform could be achieved. I want to propose a simple model that I believe would be in the best interests of the future of Dublin city and county. While there may be debate about the appropriateness of retaining the existing four Dublin local authorities I believe that it is better, for the present, they remain. This would also allow that for a period of five years they would continue to elect their Chairpersons/ (Lord) Mayors in line with current practice.
I propose that the number, jurisdiction and roles of the four existing Local Authorities should be reviewed after a period of five years, or one term of office, of a proposed Dublin Regional Assembly. This period should be used to assess the possibility of introducing a series of genuinely local District Councils – perhaps along the lines of the Municipal District Councils that exist outside Dublin. These would serve populations of approximately 100,000 people each. It would also allow for a timely debate and gradual merging of the roles of Lord Mayor and Mayor. Whilst for many this is an obvious step, I believe that there are distinct roles and we should assess the respective merits of retaining them as separate roles or combining them into one.
Essentially these different roles stem from the unique requirement of the Lord Mayor of the City of Dublin to regularly act as the official host for guests to Dublin and Ireland and often as a sort of unofficial Ambassador for the whole country. There is also the role of Civic Cheer Leader and Ceremonial office holder for appropriate civic occasions. The new role envisaged for a Mayor for Dublin will be more executive and more political. I remain open to persuasion as to which is the best way forward.
Contrary to common perception Ireland has a very low ratio of elected councillor per head of population. The following table gives some idea of the European average. It is worth noting that the UK figures do not take account of the existence of the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh and Northern Ireland Assemblies. These bodies have respectively: Northern Ireland Assembly 108 members; Scottish Parliament 129 members; and the Welsh Assembly 60 members.
Country
Country Population (m)
No. of councils
Average population per council
Population per councillor
France
59.6
36,700
1,600
118
Austria
8.2
2,350
3,500
209
Sweden
8.8
310
28,400
256
Germany
83
15,300
5,400
350
Finland
5.2
452
11,500
410
Italy
57.7
8,100
7,100
608
Spain
40
8,100
4,900
610
Belgium
10.3
589
17,500
811
Greece
10.6
1,033
10,300
1,075
Denmark
5.4
275
19,600
1,115
Portugal
10.1
308
32,800
1,131
Netherlands
16
548
29,000
1,555
Ireland
4
114
35,000
2,500
U.K.
59.6
468
127,350
2,603
Source: Hughes, Clancy, Harris and Beetham (2007), Power to the People: Assessing Democracy in Ireland. New Island.
In Dublin the figure is a staggering figure of 12,400 people to each Councillor.
Such District Councils, as I propose, would, over time, replace the existing, South Dublin, Fingal and Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Councils and Dublin City Council. In order to enhance a sense of local identity and ownership, these Councils should be based on real communities of location and interest. Areas such as Tallaght, Lucan, Swords, Dun Laoghaire and Ballyfermot are obvious possibilities for this. With the increasingly global nature of our world real social cohesion in the future can be best enhanced through the promotion of the local and community awareness.
Pending completion of the overall reform project there is no reason why such pilot town or district councils could not be established at an early stage. Composition of these councils should also be used to create greater equality in terms of councillors and population with the rest of the country and a consequential equalisation of Seanad voting rights if the Seanad is to retain its present form.
I am also suggesting that in order to provide a local/national link that the directly elected mayor would be ex-officio member of Seanad Éireann and that a similar provision be made should directly elected mayors be introduced for the other larger cities. This should be done without increasing the overall membership of Seanad Éireann and could be done in tandem with other proposed reforms of the Seanad.
Dublin also needs an over-arching strategic regional approach. In that context I suggest that a new Dublin Regional Assembly be established. Such an assembly would be comprised of about 30 members. This would entail six constituencies electing five members each. In order to ensure best internal regional balance there would be two north-side constituencies, two south-side constituencies and two to the west of the county. This would enable a sufficiently broad based (political and regional) membership to ensure a robust and inclusive assembly. The assembly would have one committee for each of the policy areas listed in the next section.
An alternative model would be to have three such constituencies, north, south and west with five members each leading to the election of what would effectively be a fifteen-member executive for the county. Each policy area would be overseen by three members of the assembly who would have executive responsibility for the area involved. In this scenario, the overall scrutiny and monitoring role would be provided by members drawn from the four Dublin local authorities on a basis similar to the previous Dublin Regional Authority.
The Leader of the Assembly would be the Directly Elected Mayor of Dublin.
I am suggesting that the powers and responsibilities of this suggested assembly would be as follows:
1) Land Use Planning and Strategic Development. This would deal with devising strategic planning guidelines and monitoring and planning development across the region. Responsibility would also include implementation of national spatial strategies and economic development.
2) Traffic and Transport Co-ordination. The assembly would be the Dublin Transport Authority and would provide for an accountable and integrated approach to traffic and transport, including responsibility for all public transport, active mobility and taxi provision and regulation in the Dublin region.
3) Social and Affordable Housing. The assembly would replace the existing agencies in the Dublin area and co-ordinate housing provision and allocation across the Dublin Region. It would also have responsibility for developing new initiatives for housing provision and responding to the issue of homelessness.
4) Dublin Bay, Waterways and Mountains. These great assets of the region are presently largely under-appreciated. The Dublin Mountains Partnership initiated by Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown and South Dublin County Councils has shown the possibility that does exist with imagination in this area.
5)The Assembly would also have a coordinating and/or monitoring role in relation to county-wide services provided by agencies such as the HSE, Education Training Boards, Enterprise Ireland, tourism development, policing and relations with other regional authorities and relevant bodies. One of the first tasks in this area would be to develop coterminous boundaries for all public service providers in the Dublin region.
Some of the above would be done in conjunction and co-operation with the existing local authorities.
I am also suggesting that the Dublin Regional Assembly would provide a forum to which, and in which, the Dublin Members of the European Parliament could report back and consult on issues of relevance to their work. This would significantly enhance engagement with the European institutions and improve the opportunity for Dublin and Dubliners to engage with and benefit from European Union initiatives.
In addition to the elected Assembly I want to see established a Dublin Civic Forum, comprising representatives of civic society across the county. The forum members would receive no payment and would convene as appropriate to advise the Assembly on matters of relevance.
I have previously suggested that the Dublin Regional Assembly should be based in the old Parliament Building on College Green with the remainder of the building housing an Institute for Dublin Affairs and a much-needed Dublin Museum building on the fantastic work of the Little Museum of Dublin. The Institute would be a collaborative model drawing on the expertise of the third-level institutes in Dublin and would act as a policy feeder to the Assembly.
The old Parliament building would also be the location for meetings of the Civic Forum. This could all be done in conjunction with other proposals to develop the building as a National Cultural Centre and the creation of a major Public Plaza to the front of the buildings. Transferring ownership of these former Parliament Building might provide some recompense for the €8.5billion pumped into Bank of Ireland and relocating the bank headquarters to Docklands might help the rejuvenation of that area.
There is also much scope for the development of new forms of democratic participation such as citizens’ juries and participative budgeting. These could be facilitated through the Dublin Regional Assembly office and could enable citizens to engage with public service providers in a meaningful way.
There is a widespread consensus amongst politicians, commentators, academics and the public that we need to reform local government. This is articulated regularly in a general rather than specific sense and is thrown into the wider debate about Political Reform. However, that is where the consensus ends. The promise offered by the optimism of the Better Local Government project initiated by Brendan Howlin TD, and the early enthusiasm of Noel Dempsey TD, were followed by inaction, inertia and, on occasions, outright hostility to democratic local government, by the very ministers and the government department that should have been its champions, reformers and defender.
Of course we need real reform, and of course we need Councillors to take more responsibility. As Lord Mayor of Dublin, in difficult circumstances, I did accept such responsibility in relation to the city budget. Since then the majority in favour of the budget has increased with each passing year.
A directly elected mayor should only be one small – though important – part of a total reform of the failing system of local government. Powers which have been stripped from elected representatives and handed over lock, stock and barrel to city and county managers, effectively, if not officially, answerable to the minister of the day, need to be restored to city and county councillors across the country. If we are truly to build a better future for Dublin and for Ireland, Local government must be the heart that drives that forward.
The issue of the financing of local government also needs extensive review. Quite simply there is no real governance role without independent finance raising responsibilities. There must be a clear link between local spending and local revenue and the accountability of the councillor. The successful operation of the BIDS (Business Improvement District Scheme) scheme in Dublin city centre shows that there is a willingness to work such initiatives if there is sufficient benefit and adequate explanation and consultation. Local government also requires more opportunities to introduce appropriate local taxation, subject of course to the law and the right of the people to comment on same through local election campaigns and possibly local referenda.
At present, Dublin City Council is losing out on millions of euro every year (€30 million for 2022 alone) from commercial rates which Government has abdicated its responsibility to pay. While applicable across the entire country, this has hit Dublin more than anywhere else and is a further example of the cost involved in being the capital city.
Since the expedient abolition of domestic rates in 1977 every local authority has lost significant income. The promise to allocate a sum equal to the amount that would have been raised has been consistently broken. I have calculated that the loss to Dublin City Council since that decision was imposed has been in the order of E8billion. Other decisions imposed such as National Wage Agreements increased that with local government denied any opportunity to participate at the negotiating table. The concept and practice of ‘social partnership’, it would appear, included everyone except the democratically elected arm of local government. Once again, as in so many instances, it was a case of National Government decides but Local Government pays. A proposal some years ago by members of Dublin City Council to introduce a €1 per night hotel/bed tax for all visitors would have, on average, delivered approximately €28million additional resources to the city. Despite the fact that, at the time, some hotels were charging rates of up to €500 per night, the proposal met with outright hostility from the trade and, as ever, a compliant, not to say hostile Department and Government, refused to introduce the necessary legislation. This money could, and would, have been invested directly into providing better experiences and facilities for all, residents and visitors alike, and would, over a four-year period and spread across the Dublin county, have delivered approximately €180million to make Dublin a better place at relatively little cost or inconvenience.
A reduction in the number of agencies and quangos, with their roles and responsibilities transferred to local councils would enable swifter and more ‘on the ground’ decision making. It would ensure a better integration and delivery of services and would also save money.
National Forum on the Financing of Local government
I have previously proposed that a National Forum on the Financing of local government should be established as a matter of urgency. The Forum would draw its membership from the main political parties, the two councillor representative bodies and the social partners. It would be given six months to a year, to agree an approach that would provide sufficient funding, on a nationally agreed basis, and one that would allow some degree in local flexibility as to appropriate local fund raising.
Introducing the direct election of longer- term Mayors is not the panacea for all our problems but it would be a major starting point. Quite simply, the people whom we are meant to serve deserve better. The current mess suits no one except the mandarins in the Custom House and their temporary ministerial masters. This cannot be allowed to prevail. We need to create something better. We need to dream of a better future and to turn those dreams into realities. We need to create and drive forward a Dublin that is all the things we want it to be.
But let us do more than just imagine – let us truly create it. We have an opportunity to put behind us the mistakes and the errors of the past and to learn from them. As a society we need not be bound by old agreements, old alliances or old commitments. Indeed we must not be bound by them. We have the opportunity and duty to fight back and to stand up for real local decision making and to build a truly inclusive, progressive and sustainable city and county. We can and must build a better future for Dublin and Dubliners. In short this Assembly has an opportunity to stand up for Dublin. Let us truly make it “One Dublin for many Dubliners”. In doing so, we are also standing up for Ireland. If we don’t, no one else will.
This is a personal submission from Councillor Dermot Lacey.
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And the people came from far, And they came from near, To see the troubadours. From ‘The Troubadours‘ by
Van Morrisson.
I – Lockdown Daze
I was strung out on the bed, for the zillionth time, listening to a Van Morrison record. For a large part of the lockdown Van’s music played over and over. I walked the driveway at Glenstal Abbey in the evenings with my dogs, mostly in dark. And most of the time, I would side with Van: his music luring me into the ‘viaduct of a dream.’
The lockdown isolation was anything but a lightning rod for the imagination; but music was a panacea for the humdrum banality of days lurching into each other. Music satiated my thoughts as I wandered up a driveway originally designed by the Barrington family in the nineteenth century. The same estate was handed over to the Irish state in the 1920s and handed over to the Catholic Church later. It is now Glenstal Abbey, a Benedictine monastery and elite boarding school for boys.
Every day I walked the dogs, one a mature border collie, the other a young puppy of the same breed, to the top of the driveway, I imagined a different century. I would enter the ‘viaduct of a dream’ Van sings about on ‘Astral Weeks’, the song from the album of the same name that has been my guiding light since my teens.
And to further escape the banality of lockdown my mind would conjure up a time when the young mistress of Glenstal, Winnie Barrington, rode her horse along the driveway, her friend following on a bicycle, en route to Newport.
There she would encounter the notorious Black and Tan officer, Ronald Biggs and his entourage. They would drive to their death at Coolboreen in Tipperary – killed in a rebel ambush during the War of Independence. Winnie had worked as a nurse during WWI in London, and her savage death – many believe – sparked the familial retreat.
And as the spirit of Winnie’s seemed, for me, to linger somewhere on the landscape, pushing into my thoughts, Van’s focus on rebirth on the song ‘Astral Weeks’ was like a sumptuous call to the imagination. It triggered my desire to escape the lockdown boredom. I would imagine Winnie, a woman gunned down a century before (May 21st 1921) engulfing the spirit of a puppy called Janey Mac.
Janey Mac.
Janey Mac, a gift from a friend the previous September, was a handful for six months. Border collies are such energetic, intelligent dogs that to raise one is not entirely different to raising a child. A certain level of care and attention is required. They push you to your limits, bite at your ankles at dawn, chew treasured sofas, display an incessant need to engage everything in sight. And then, just as you begin to reach the tether of your wit, along comes a lifelong companion, attentive to every need.
The tarantula becomes a soul mate, as close to you as a family member. The rain kept pouring down as the dogs pulled me along the former Barrington Estate. I imagined the ghost of a woman dead almost a hundred years to the day passing into the soul of a little collie pup. ‘Could you find me,’ Van sang, ‘could you kiss-a my eyes, lay me down, silence easy, to be born again.’ ‘Born again’? As the Indian mystics say.
Winnie Barrington.
The same evening, I was sprawled on my bed, having just finished a short manuscript that gave expression to these ideas in prose. The manuscript weaved the facts of the assassination on Winnie and Biggs a century prior, into a tapestry of the imagination.
Janey would embody the young mistresses’ ghost, and I would bear witness to rebirth: the phrase ‘to be born again’ simmering in my thoughts as I walked the driveway each day. In my mind it was no mere coincidence my daily walk with a puppy in tow was taking place a century after the ambush had led to the young woman’s untimely death: it was an arrow pointed in my direction from the angel of history. I would tell her story in my own way.
I would draw inspiration from music. I lay on the bed googling upcoming Van Morrison concerts, as answers began to trickle in on-screen. For some reason I purchased – tired and wine sodden – and with an electronic swish of the hand, two tickets for a rescheduled festival gig in Derry that coming November. It was still months away. The Delta Wave was consuming the airwaves and the pandemic seemed never-ending. I was nervous. For two years I had been working from home, with intermittent days on site. I was a natural extrovert confined to a small circle of contacts.
Most of my free time at this time – mostly in the early hours of the day – was taken up writing interconnected stories about the border collies in my life. The second, From This World, is a fiction woven from within the ‘viaduct of a dream’ – the imagined life that hovered like a ghost over the surrounding landscape. I would travel back in time, back to an Ireland before independence – when corncrakes sung out in nearly every valley – and when vast swathes of land lay unclaimed by commerce.
Along the driveway the dial on my phone would always seem to congregate on the name Van Morrison; ‘Crazy Love’, ‘St Dominic’s Preview,’ ‘Sweet Thing’; songs that directed my thought to the story of Winnie like an obsession that would not relent until her death made its way onto the page. I sourced material from journals, sought people from the village from whom the story had been passed as a product of myth as much as truth, visited her grave in the cemetery. I even hovered around the Church of Ireland in Abington thinking of her playing with friends before Sunday service.
Abington’s Church of Ireland church.
In the end, the limitations of the factual confronted me. No matter how much rooting I did, how many articles I read, the same hollowed truth edged out: we must always imagine certain details of the past. In uncovering the myths of the ambush, piecing together reasons for Winnie’s motivation in travelling that day into a text worth reading, I would set upon the same thing set upon plodding through the fields listening to ‘Saint Dominic’s Preview’: imagination. I imagined Van wandering the streets of San Francisco, thinking of home. Suddenly, a sign for a forthcoming mass dedicated to peace in Northern Ireland at the Church of St. Dominic appears.
Entrenched in thought, mystery overcomes him: someone, irrespective of religion, is thinking of his home in a corner of the world. ‘It’s a long way to Belfast city too’ he will later write, San Francisco and Belfast City edging close together in his heart. All around him is a banal conformity, preying on the modern urban city.
Some otherness of spirit has materialised in this unforseen act of care: prayers offered in a distant church for the Troubles in his homeland. Years later, as if these prayers have been answered, a US envoy helps to broker peace in Northern Ireland. And around the same time, I begin to suspect, Van starts to think about the album he will call The Healing Game. The album is a much-heralded return to form for the singer; a compelling vision of healing in its many forms.
I was on a long journey through a catalogue of music while dreaming of a dead woman, letting each of Van’s albums spark new ways to think about landscape. The Waiting Game played a role. Alone in my thoughts one evening the first side played through. The song ‘Waiting Game’ shuffled into the light with its recognizable harmonica. ‘I am the observer who is observing’ ushered forth in those enticingly vague lyrics, giving no indication that the song is anything but a personal lament. Perhaps Van is passaging through middle age, seeking ‘the presence deep within you.’ But it is the same presence he calls ‘higher flame,’ in possible reference to the wait for peace in Northern Ireland. Here’s the thing: it was a spiritual quest I identified with in these songs; a yearning to connect with something beyond the material grist. Is it possible the goal of Van’s search in song is the same thing that I was yearning for?
In the early days of the pandemic, before Winnie’s story gelled in my mind with the music of Van Morrison, I spoke for some amount of time with a priest about the effects of isolation; the wave of destruction he believed would result from delayed grief. We stood outside a church in conversation.
My thoughts began to drift back to a time when I had stood in a funeral parlour, shaking hands with the different people who came to pay their respects. My hands were so badly blistered after. Yet the procession of people, their faces contorted in shock, was a panacea for the grief that would begin to manifest in the months that followed. What might have happened without that show of tradition unique to Ireland and its culture, I thought? A delay of sorts. A drift into unfettered pain: a world without others to soften a fall?
The faces that evening were pillows laid out in time. When removed a body would fall on a cold floor. These thoughts came to me outside a church while I was talking about death with the priest of a religion I no longer practiced, each of us struggling with the covid restrictions in our own interminable way. Our two-bit conversation brought some relief from the sudden descent into a half-life of zoom classes and waited upon DHL deliveries. At that time my social life consisted of one weekly outing: a trip to a supermarket to see those waiting in line.
Then something strange happened during the lockdown. I was listening to Van Morrison records when Van began speaking out about lockdowns and restrictions on musicians. Rolling Stone ran a story about Van as anti-lockdown.
Then Van took to YouTube in defense of his views. The comments below his video post unfolded in a spew of hate. He was selfish, inconsiderate in wanting to play live music. He was working on Latest Record Project, a record with a considerable number of protest songs rallying against the state’s incursions into his life.
For Van, the lockdown policy was a gross overreach, an intervention he felt lacked scientific proof. Fair enough, I thought at the time. Our world is made of different points of view. But then I began to think about these statements in relation to my own frustrations. Was it really that strange that a seventy-five-year-old old man wanted – in whatever way possible – to play live during a pandemic?
‘Stay home, stay safe’ was the public health moto of the time but it was far too obtuse in the way it equated isolation with being safe, particularly at a time when the WHO called isolation a major killer. So much public health policy in the period leading up to that time had focused on ageism: attempts to determine a person’s value based on age alone. Van was ageing. He wanted to play the music that defined his profession. Like me, he found it frustrating to stay away from others. Beyond everything, I admired his honesty in speaking.
But suddenly Van’s name brought the baggage of Covid 19 politics to bear on pop music. Lifelong fans dumped his catalogue in a show of partisanship. Van called out Northern Ireland health minster Robin Swann for intervening in his life. He did not help himself when a video began to circulate of him cavorting with Ian Paisely jnr. in a Belfast hotel. Undoubtedly irked by the ban on music events in Northern Ireland, maybe at his age, I thought, time was slipping away.
Each minute away from the stage was an incursion into a life of music. Was this selfishness? Was it a lack of concern for those who believed we could defy the virus? Or was his decision to risk his health to perform music for others something eminently admirable in him? I lay on the bed thinking about this, as the needle dropped on a cover of Van’s ‘Sweet Thing’ by The Waterboys from the album Fisherman’s Blues. Then, all at once, the next song played. ‘Strange Boat’ seemed to reach from the past into the present:
We’re living in a strange time Working for a strange goal We’re living in a strange time Working for a strange goal
And then – of course – the conclusion:
We’re turning flesh and body into soul
Things then began to click. At Abington cemetery the epitaph ‘here lies all that could die of Winifred Frances Barrington’ appeared on a newly renovated gravestone. Flesh and bone withered away, leaving something of a ‘soul’? It was an ephemeral quality that had lost currency in our time. And just as The Waterboys turned their strange times into a spiritual quest, it felt I was searching – not even consciously so – for something eternal in a world defined by fear. It was fear directed at a future point; a time that might never even materialise as real. Every evening I walked into the blanket darkness of the pandemic night, the ghost of a dead woman breathed down upon me. I moved into the ‘viaduct of a dream.’ It began to dawn on me I was searching for something that had yet to die, something known in the vernacular as soul. ‘Chambois, cleaning all the windows’, I heard Van sing on ‘Saint Dominic’s Preview’ – a metaphor he returns to on mid-career masterpiece ‘Cleaning Windows’ — before stressing, ‘singin’ songs about Edith Piaf’s soul.’ Maybe Van’s window cleaner is a soul seeker, I thought, cleaning away the grime that prevents us from seeing clearly?
In my imagination Van was standing on a Derry stage singing ‘Cleaning Windows’, the lights shining down. Love, labour, the transcendence sought after in the blues dwindled into rock n roll bliss. Is there a beter celebration of pop as a panacea for the ills of working-class life, I imagined, than a song about a window cleaner who dreams of Jimmy Rodgers? Perhaps not?
The song, beyond all of Van’s songs, concerns perseverance in the mundane: physical labour typical of urban life. As I started to dream of a journey North, passing from County Limerick to County Derry, passing along the stonewalls of Galway and Mayo, against the looming shadow of Ben Bulben, a crystalline image of a window cleaner formed in my mind. The image ushered me back to a summer spent packing tiles in a Bavarian factory. Loneliness and boredom marked each passing day. What did I dream of then? Was it music? Love? Was it the desire to turn flesh and body into soul?
All the time away from family and friends during the never-ending pandemic impacted upon on me to such a degree I yearned for some kind of mystical experience: a kind of commune. On ‘Deadbeat Saturday Night’ Van gives voice to a similar craving, a yearning to escape the daily grist and to finally to sing for others. ‘I’m alone, telephone, virtual reality,’ he bristles angrily, ‘it’s no life, no gigs, no choice, no voice.’
Latest Record Project is made up of protest songs slammed by critics. More online criticism surfaced on its release. Van was called an anti-vaxxer, conspiracy theorist etc. There was even talk of burning his records. It was difficult to express a judgment of Latest Record Project without succumbing to the politics of the pandemic: the pro or anti binary regarding lockdown.
Rarely had the politics of popular music been so intensely focused on a singular point of view in my lifetime. One evening during the lockdown – long before I began contemplating journeying North – I looked for inspiration in old live albums, turning eventually to Nirvana’s Unplugged.
As the album played out, all knowledge of the junkie Kurt Cobain became in later life, prisoner of his body, seemed to dissipate in a moment of soul. Beyond the opprobrium of fame and celebrity, beyond the cravings of a drugged body, was a sense of peace. ‘I formulate infinity,’ Kurt sings on the band’s sumptuous cover of The Meat Muppet’s ‘Oh, Me’ cushioning the lines by saying ‘and store it deep inside me.’ Years after death something like a soul still resided as the aura of the physical record: the infinite.
II – Northbound
You were only waiting for this moment to be free..
‘Blackbird’
The Beatles.
The night before the journey North I had two dreams. Both would resurface in my consciousness when driving the next day. In the first dream I was walking in a forest. A metal object in the shape of a breast stared up at me. I turned to look around, peering through the gap in the trees, as the sun made its way in through the branches. A bird swooped down upon me, its lifeforce fading in my presence.
I picked up the body to see if it was dead, before attempting to replace its breast with the metal object that had been left on the ground. But I was unable to make the object work. Instead, I ran home in tears.
In the second of the dreams, I was lying on a steel bed in a room that formed part of an office in a university accommodation. Several staff members were welcoming me onto a campus in a country that seemed to be somewhere in Eastern Europe. I mentioned that the lodgings were perfect for my stay and that I planned to stretch my legs. The others got up to leave the room, smiling at me, saying goodbye in a broken English. No sooner had they gone than a sudden urge of excitement – one that travel brings – overcame me. I got up from the bed, grabbed my jacket, and checked around for my keys. I tentatively opened the door to discover the apartment was on ground level, situated at the center of an old Roman university. The door opened to a sea of students moving at pace. They were all bunched together into groups, in deep conversation.
There was something unusual about the second dream: none of the students wore face coverings. There were just faces, of which no two are the same. It was a thought that heralded my waking up: no two are the same. Life had returned to normal. The lockdown was over. I was on route to Derry, thinking of where to stay in Sligo and of what to do while in Donegal.
Once I got to Ballyboffey a friend would drive us to Derry. Everything was planned to get to the gig on time but the dreams, so incredibly different in tone, troubled me. I mulled over their content pushing into a turbulent sky. The dying blackbird had brought such sadness I immediately fled the forest of my dream.
In contrast, the second dream brought some elation. All the months of isolation, unable to identify the faces of people I met in shops, relented into antithetical bliss. Were the dreams an oracle of the future? A wish? And if so, was the blackbird shorn of its essence? Why did faces bring such elation? What did it mean? The time I had spent thinking through the two contrasting dream sequences passed quickly when driving. Then it appeared on the landscape like it always does: a signal of majesty in the land.
Image (c) Daniele Idini.
Ben Bulben towers over the county of Sligo like a beached whale. It interrupts all movements of the gaze. We stand aghast in its shadow. Once it appears the mystery of the landscape also makes itself known.
As you follow the sign for Bundoran, when bypassing Sligo, Ben Bulben meets your every gaze. I had planned to walk at Mullaghmore, before pulling into a B&B for the night. But no sooner had I arrived at the car park and stepped out of the car to begin walking, then along came a torrential downpour.
Image (c) Fellipe Lopes
It was near impossible to appreciate the views. An elderly woman, decked out in the gear needed to survive the weather, saluted at me while walking with her dog. ‘Not a bad day for a walk’ she said smiling. But I was soaked to the bones, and my jacket was still battling hard to resist the rain. I saluted back at the lady before closing the car door and taking a deep breath. I was glad to escape the weather. Twenty minutes later I drove through a village that, because of the rain, was difficult to make out by name: not knowing whether I had ventured into the North (as Donegal is known in the vernacular). Usually, it is clear: hillside sheep signal an untrammeled beauty in your midst.
It was at that point a small B&B sheltering a little shebeen-like pub appeared on my eye line. Both establishments seemed like variations on traditional cottage style, devoid of the thatch roof typical of pre-nineteenth century builds (signifiers of an older time persisting in the present).
I rang the B&B bell a few times before a hunched over woman suddenly appeared inside the door. Her mask concealed a smile, her soft Northern brogue welcoming in tone. A room on the ground floor was available for a night, she said, and a Chinese takeaway would open in the village at seven.
The pub didn’t do food since reopening, apart from toasted sandwiches, and there was no restaurant in the vicinity. If it was cooked food I was after – I think she meant a gastropub – I would have to drive to Donegal town. Whatever the name of the village – and I didn’t want to know given the point of the journey was to cultivate uncertainty – drinks followed by a takeaway seemed more than an ideal proposition.
I had a shower in the room, changed clothes and did a little jig to celebrate the unknown breaking through the habitual. The jig was designed to augur in the wrenching back of a spontaneity from the clutches of the Covid pandemic. I was at the pub in minutes, ready to forget the rain.
It took me some time to locate the cert adopted for pubs and restaurants by the Irish government, before I stumbled in the door. Since the restrictions were introduced, I had hardly ventured near a pub, feeling a certain unease with everything: the virus and the regulations.
Maybe it was a distrust of authority, a yearning for the old ways. But once I had opened the door, expecting to see one or two people, the artificial light was blinding, like it was battling the darkening of winter. A young man – with a moustache and a Kangal hat turned the wrong way around – appeared on my right behind the bar. A sprightly young woman was stood beside him. The bar was full of drinkers in breach of the protocols. My instinct was to turn away, but the occasion lured me in. It was a ‘life before’ that called to me.
On the bar counter baskets of sandwiches were sitting beside baskets of cooked food. It seemed like I had interrupted a party. There were people standing at tables, sandwich and sausages baskets untouched, yet no television or music was on that would distract from conversation.
The lights were blinding bright. I crept to the bar, trying to blend in as best I could. Faces turned in my direction: I was taken aback by the groups of people together. It was like stepping back in time. And then the occasion made itself known. I had arrived at some kind of Irish wake. A blown-up photograph of a man’s face was placed at the cabinet bar.
It was the familiar that me pushed me in the door. I would come to learn of the man in the photograph’s fate when ordering my first drink, once it had seemed ok to intrude. The people at the bar welcomed me in without any fuss. Although difficult to understand the brogue, to adjust to the old way of life – a culture temporarily replaced with the public health protocols of the Covid pandemic – that had vanished to such a degree in the years that had passed since the pandemic began, I settled in at the bar. It was just folk waking the dead in the only way they knew. Soon I was helping them on their way.
Public houses, bars subject to much criticism during the years of the pandemic, saw purpose return as a place of communion. We come to drink and remember. We come to raise a glass to the eternal: the soul that lives on after death. A local GAA man, wearing a green and yellow Donegal scarf, returned from the toilet to take his seat beside me. He spoke about a ‘wild sadness’ that had befallen the village.
But, in truth, it was not all sadness. It was a scene I understood: a ritual of sorts. To raise a glass is to say – in the gesture of a tradition – ‘we miss you.’ You, the other person, one of a community transcending the ‘I.’ The time that I spent in the pub was a sort of unexpected gestural confirmation of what the journey North was meant to affect. All the isolation of the previous months gave way to something immeasurable. I stayed to hear about the man in the photograph; to hear he left the pub in good spirits; waving goodbye to his friends in good health. He was known all around for his wit, the numerous pranks he liked to pull on friends.
The man’s face stayed with me as an image waiting in the rain beside the local Chinese takeaway in a village that name of which I cannot recall. As I write now, I wonder did the village exist? Did the pub exist? Or had a dream taken the place of reality?
Two friends had passed away during the pandemic. When news broke, I walked country roads trying to repress a desire to jump in the car and drive; to pay respects in whatever capacity possible. On one occasion, my group of friends took to a Zoom meeting as a virtual substitute for the pub experience. We wanted to raise a glass to a friend, celebrate his life. But the screen meant to connect people seemed to contradict the message it was meant to impart.
Cut off from the other, material bodies were mere images, dependent on the vagaries of a Machine. At any point the connection could break, the face of another no longer visible. Presence is shadowed by an imminent threat of absence: a void that can swallow up the connection at any given time.
I returned to the B&B with a fried rice in one hand and my phone in the other. In the distance Ben Bulben bore down like a God of the mountains. There was such a mystique to its presence: a gateway into the sublime landscape of the Northwest. When driving the same landscape the next day, bypassing Donegal town in the process, I took the decision to stop at Murvagh Beach. I wanted to gaze across the terrain – so impressive in reach – at the cliffs of Slieve League.
In more accessible counties, the cliffs would attract huge numbers. The morning was taken up in conversation with the proprietor of the B&B, a retired lady in her late 60s, over cups of tea. She said the cliffs viewed from Murvagh are the biggest in Europe.
A few hours later I was waiting in my friend’s car outside Jackson’s Hotel in Balyboffey for him to return. A river bridge was at my rear, like a postcard. Its autumnal colour seemed designed for the gaze. Tommy would drive that evening, once we had eaten. The last stage of the journey North would see us lost in conversation. Time would pass unnoticed. Darkness soon began to cover the night as our car moved from country roads into Derry’s urban décor, a contrast to the distant bogside. We passed by the new developments along the river, before a P sign stood out for a carpark Tommy said was in walking distance of the Theatre. Once we had parked and arrived at the Theater, the concert goers were waiting outside, ready to enter.
The venue was practically full when Van and his band arrived on stage. Van was a diminutive figure who had lost a significant amount of weight. He was an elderly man with renewed purpose. From our balcony seats we could gaze at the band from ahigh. Wearing black sunglasses and a trilby hat, Van had the aura of a singer finally given back a stage; happy to know he could do his job again.
For the duration of the show, he just leapt from song to song, never speaking directly to the audience. He began the gig by playing songs from his most recent album, all – to some degree – commentaries on the stay-at-home orders he was so critical of. But he then went on to play a load of songs from his back catalogue that drew me in so many different directions. ‘Sometimes We Cry’ was a cue for joy, Van moving between numerous instruments during the song, his saxophone like a magical wand.
Awe of a sort arrived with ‘Baby, Please Don’t Go,’ drifting into a rendition of Muddy Waters’ ‘Got My Mojo Working,’ signaling that we were witness to a great blues musician and testament to a lasting tradition. It was also testament to the power of live music, a feeling the performance of ‘Cleaning Window’ confirmed. I had played the song repeatedly throughout Covid, trying to harness the pleasure of labour and music in our youth. But it soon began to dawn on me, however, as I gazed upon an elderly man singing ‘what’s my life?’ that Van was asking his audience an important question. Is to sing for people – nothing more – a source of our being?
It was the affecting moment the journey North was intended for: the words ‘no 36’ sang in a soothing Belfast twang. Van has a singular (as an artist) ability to alter intonation to maximize lyrical affect. The way he sings ‘No. 36’ in a Northern accent is one example. But there are many. ‘Angelou’ builds by way of difference and repetition, ‘in the month of May, in the city of Paris’ repeated with intonation amplified each time.
The music, all the while, builds in tempo. Van left that evening after two hours performing on stage, departing the scene with an affirming rendition of a song that personifies the above-mentioned lyrical affect: ‘Gloria.’ Once he had left the stage the band members went solo for a few minutes. The crowd then began to clap and sing along with the remaining musicians, shouting ‘G-l-o-r-i-a’ in something of a fervour. I looked around, thinking, for no reason, of Winnie, of Janey, of lockdowns and isolation. Then a strange sensation came over me: a grandiose feeling of hope.
In 1978, ten years after the release of Astral Weeks legendary music critic Lester Bangs wrote,
My social contacts had dwindled to almost none; the presence of other people made me nervous and paranoid. I spent endless days and nights sunk in an armchair in my bedroom, reading magazines, watching TV, listening to records, staring into space. I had no idea how to improve the situation and probably wouldn’t have done anything about it if I had.
Lester’s reflections chimed with my own experiences during the stay-at-home policies of the pandemic. The famous critic found in Astral Weeks something of a spiritual retreat: an album that helped release him from paranoia’s clutches. Lester’s was a dilapidating malaise, a condition pushing body and soul into competing realms.
Astral Weeks was a Godsend. The album helped him to live again. It was a cold and dark winter night when we left the Millennium Theatre once the concert had ended. There was a film crew in situ outside, shooting the latest series of the TV show Derry Girls set in the city. The night, nonetheless, seemed to glisten with possibility. ‘It’s the great search,’ I thought, recalling those writings on Astral Weeks, ‘fuelled by the belief that through these musical and mental processes illumination is attainable.
Or may at least be glimpsed.’ Illumination, a glimpse of the divine, seemed more than abstraction. Maybe, faithful to Lester’s experience, I too had glimpsed something of the divine, without really knowing, like watching a firefly moving in the sky at dawn.
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The Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea. Knightsbridge. Notting Hill. Property. Harrods. Money. Bourgeoisie. Rolls. Bentley. Chelsea Tractor. White & uptight. Rich.
A series of stereotypes. A series of assumptions made. A series of images. Of great wealth; of London gentry, all suits and ball gowns; of the richest in society; of politicos and financiers; of big businessmen and banks; of embassies and Royalty.
An Alternative View
Wornington Word is about none of these. It is an alternative view of a complex, multi-layered place, as told by the residents who live there, and by reading between the lines of the propaganda of gentrification.
The project focusses on and celebrates the numerous overlapping communities that make up this diverse area. The gentrification is reflective of broader trends across London, but seen through the specific lens of a single housing estate in the midst of redevelopment.
Wornington Green is an estate of mixed council and private homes, built between the 1960s and 1980s, comprising of 538 flats, housing approximately 1,700 residents.
The regeneration was initiated by what was then Kensington Housing Trust (now Catalyst Housing Ltd), in response to ‘problems arising from both its design and construction methodology; … inherent problems with access, security, poor design and layout of homes.’
Initially – when the redevelopment was first proposed in the early 2000s – long-term residents, mindful of the shared experiences and community which had flourished, fought hard to save the current buildings on the estate.
Keith, former Chairman of the Wornington Green Residents’ Association, has been an active voice in the community since the 60s: ‘These buildings should have lasted a lot longer than this from the 60s and 70s. You shouldn’t be building buildings like this and then have to pull them down again after such a short time. It’s ridiculous. It’s only because they weren’t maintained to a decent living standard.’
‘Changes? Nobody likes changes. We was all in uproar when we heard that they were going to knock it down. My block, which is fortunate for me, is in Phase 3 [of the development] and I love my little flat so I’m hoping they’ll run out of money by the time they get to me, but I know that’s not going to happen,’ adds Cheryl, who has lived in Ladbroke Grove since the 70s, first moving into her current flat in 1975. ‘It’s a nice quiet block I’ve been living in, and I’ve been fortunate to have good neighbours. What I used to like; if anyone in the block died, you’d get someone come and knock and say ‘Oh do you know so and so died’, and they collect money, you can put in 50p,10p, £5 and they’d buy a wreath and say this is from Pepler House …’
Many residents have thankfully been rehoused in the new builds on the estate. Vanessa experienced a similar sense of community spirit growing up in Wornington Green in the 1990s: ‘There was a good community feel, very multi-cultural, especially on our floor. We had Moroccans, we had Vietnamese, we had Ethiopians, we had Africans, and us Colombians. So on our grounds, you know you would walk down the corridor you could smell lots of nice food from all around the world… When they were allocating the [new] flats we did try [and make] it so we could be together, next door to each other because that’s all we’ve known. But it didn’t work out that way. So yes, it’s different. We don’t have that same familiarity … We are starting again.’
Whilst Vanessa has now moved away from her family home to start her own family, housing co-op resident Micky laments the difficulties younger generations have if they want to stay in the local area: ‘…you know they can’t afford to live there, unless they’re living at home with their parents you can’t rent a flat in Notting Hill, it’s really, really expensive.’
‘My fondest memory of the area is bringing up my children here and being happy with the diversity, the different people that they meet, people they play with from all over the world. Really important to me… They’ll talk to anybody, they’ve got no prejudice and I really put that down to living on this estate.’
Renegade
This diversity is rarely discussed in relation to Kensington – it is usually only in the context of tragedies such as the Grenfell fire in 2017, or the Notting Hill Carnival that such rich cultural heritage is acknowledged.
The Wornington Word project, instigated by Renegade Theatre, aims to record and archive the everyday of this diverse community through the history of Wornington Green estate residents, from the 1960s to the present, through a time when the estate was permanently changing.
The images here were made in partnership with Renegade, to develop a personal documentary response to living on the estate, alongside a programme of residents’ workshops, to capture these stories before they disappear into London’s background hum.
Natasha of Renegade Theatre managed the project:
The people who live on the Wornington Green estate have contributed to the diverse, close and distinct character of Portobello and Golborne roads. They are part of North Kensington’s culturally rich fabric and their warmth, experience and history cannot be allowed to fade away. Nor can the estate’s expansive views across London, wide walkways and mature green trees disappear without record. The Wornington Word catches the estate at the end of its era. So that, after the buildings are demolished, it can still be seen, and its unique working-class voices still heard.
The project began through uniting two independent practices. Natasha conceived of the oral history side of the project as a result of her previous community theatre projects and her interest in documentary theatre, whilst I had been documenting the local area and the development on-and-off for several years.
When Natasha began working on the proposal for Wornington Word, it became clear that she wanted to explore several methods of recording the estate. We began to collaborate together- I donated my existing archive of photographs, and added more as we engaged residents in recording oral histories.
We ran workshops for the residents: photography, filmmaking, creative writing, oral history taking, social media training and acting. Part of my role involved documenting the community participation as well as continuing my on-going photography of the estate.
As we had both lived on the estate for a long time, it was essential to us that the residents be involved throughout the process. At the beginning of 2020 there were three key outcomes: a collection of seventeen oral histories and accompanying portraits, a collection of over two hundred photographs taken by residents, and a forty minute documentary film.
All of the above were archived on a purpose-built website and at RBKC Local Studies & Archives.
One of the most densely populated regions of the UK, a 2017 study by Trust for London and the New Policy Institute found that, Kensington & Chelsea has the greatest income inequality of any London Borough.
Private rent is the least affordable in London – yet these communities still exist, in many cases over multiple generations, on the same estates.
Oumayma still lives on the estate with her mother, in what has been their family home for three generations: ‘I feel like Moroccans in general just decided to stay here and I feel like my grandad made that decision to stay here, because he didn’t have to fear […] experiencing you know racism or anything like that, because it was already quite integrated at the time. Spanish, Portuguese, Jamaican, Caribbean; really mixed which is really good.’
The importance of the diverse community came up time and again in conversations throughout the project, but the reality is that the cost of living in the borough is gradually reducing this diversity and forcing many residents to re-evaluate.
Though many on the council register will be able to stay in new flats on Wornington Green, their children may find themselves priced out of living locally to their parents. In addition, many of the prejudices shown by RBKC, their contractors and associates during the on-going Grenfell Tower Inquiry, continue to be present in discussions with residents on the Green.
‘It’s always been a diverse area.’ Latifa begins very carefully. ‘However, at the moment, people have just come in from other places and [those] people have found that this place is very trendy and they want to claim it for themselves. We were having a viewing of [my mum’s] new flat, her new permanent flat, and my sister and I, were saying that it was, “Oh, it’s a bit small” blah, blah blah. And then somebody turned round and goes, “Do you know how much this cost? At least £2 million”. Do you know what I mean? So you already feel like somebody’s doing you a favour by letting you stay here.’
Latifa’s experience is not unique. When the original plans were drawn up, resident consultation indicated a strong preference for low-rise accommodation at a similar height to the current blocks, and the regeneration was designed accordingly.
These plans were approved by RBKC (despite fierce resident objection on other grounds), who indicated that the new buildings should not exceed the height of those currently on Wornington Green. Having started in 2006, the final phase is currently under consultation, as the original planning permission was granted so long ago.
Catalyst are now proposing to include a fifteen-storey tower block in Phase 3 of the regeneration program.
And the new-build flats already have teething problems. Oumayma’s grandmother moved into one of the new flats and quickly had difficulties: ‘…they build them too quickly, she’s not a massive fan because she’s experienced some issues – no heating, no hot water.’
Other complaints include burst water pipes and cracking plaster. In 2021, scaffolding was erected around some of the first new builds completed on the grounds of fire-safety.
Set against a background of austerity and gentrification; crime and poor design are often cited as the primary motivations for the estate redevelopment.
Though Catalyst do admit that the perception of crime was in many ways far worse than the reality, due to the closeness of the community. However strong the argument for the development, it remains important to acknowledge what will be lost – how residents’ connection to their homes, their place, will be changed.
As I write, the latest phase of demolition is in full-swing outside my window in the blistering June heat (on what will be the hottest day of the year).
Despite the temperature (nearing 25C at 10am) my windows remain closed. The blocks opposite: five inter-connected low-rises, have been largely reduced to grit.
The earth movers grind brick and concrete ever smaller, ever finer in preparation for their final exodus. Dust worries at my ageing glazing and coats cars throughout the estate in sticky layers.
Gallons of water are sprayed across the grinding diggers and over a procession of cars, in a Sisyphean endeavour to enable residents keep using their vehicles.
With some luck the interlocking communities of Wornington Green will continue to exist in west London, but it seems clear that their place will remain forever changed.
As for my existence on the estate, this will come to an end within the next two years or so, and whilst I’ve enjoyed my time in this community, I will not miss the relentless reminders of gentrification. It seems appropriate to give the final word to estate resident Rashid: ‘We made the estate, and the estate made us.’
You can hear more of the resident’s stories in their own words and watch the documentary film here: https://worningtonword.renegadetheatre.co.uk/ around the balance of council housing to market flats.
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1. Don’t be prepared. 2. Honour both the living and the dead. 3. Be prepared to give offence. 4. And to take offence. 5. Stand your ground. 6. Listen. 7. Express. 8. Accept. 9. Don’t fall into the ground. 10. Be kind. 11. Leave it all behind. 12. Enough said.
Feature Image: Daniele Idini
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In 1960 when I was seven, before TV, Radio Éireann was our window on the worId. I understood the gist of rumblings on the news over breakfast in the kitchen. The Congo. It used to be called the Belgian Congo now it was just the Congo. My father intimated, buttering a piece of toast at the kitchen table before whacking the top off a boiled egg with the knife, that the Belgians were still sticking their noses in.
His remark was to no one in particular, almost sotto voce. Over the years on matters of the Irish nation you’d be listening out a long time without a single revelation concerning his party-political pedigree. Years after his passing, my adult siblings had no idea was he a de Valera man or a Michael Collins man.
On global affairs he was only marginally more loquacious. Maybe, I inferred in this case, the Belgians were the Congo’s version of the English only not as big. Over the radio newly familiar names resonated across our kitchen. Patrice Lamumba- he had something to do with it. Lamumba was the new man in charge over there and he didn’t want any English or Belgians or outsiders of any sort coming over and interfering in the newly decolonized country. That seemed fair to me.
Katanga, that was another new name on the news. It was a province, like Leinster. They wanted to rule themselves; the Katangans didn’t want Lamumba running things at all. Tshombe was the big man in Katanga. Congo, Lamumba, Katanga, Tshombe; distant names were rendered close by the radio, formed part of the backdrop to the morning kettle steaming, bobbing eggs boiling in a pot on the cooker and toast smoking aromatically under the grill.
Irish lads were to be sent off with other U.N. troops to keep the peace; stop the Katangans and Lumunba’s army from getting stuck into each other. The Baluba tribe in Katanga, it turns out, were also very unhappy about the whole situation – so we heard another new name on the radio. Baluba.
Two Irish battalions were being dispatched. I hadn’t a clue what a battalion was only it was a lot. My father took me into town on the 13 bus to see them off.
Our journey started at the terminus behind Beechwood Avenue Church, officially the Church of the Holy Name. I loved hopping onto the open-backed bus, straight up the narrow stairway to the front seat at the top, to wait a few minutes for the busmen to finish their cigarettes and start her up to head into town via Ranelagh, Appian Way, Leeson Street, Stephen’s Green and Dawson Street.
The soldiers’ journey from Ireland to the Congo started with a march down O’Connell Street (picture above) to mark this moment of significance in our national life. After marching, the troops were to be loaded onto gigantic transport planes along with armoured carriers at Baldonnel airfield outside Dublin.
We got off the bus on Dawson Street near the Hibernian Hotel and joined the masses walking along Westmoreland Street, kept going and got across O’Connell bridge. Near Daniel O’Connell’s statue, in the middle of the street where cars usually parked, up toward Clery’s department store, my father was trying to squeeze me up to the front row but he couldn’t get by with me so we sandwiched in as best we could, he lifting me up from time to time.
Throngs crammed the streets and footpaths to gawk or cheer the column of soldiers marching by, their hob-nailed boots clattering along with a metallic after-sound. A man said the Garda Band had led the way with big brass instruments but we missed it. We couldn’t get near the GPO; people were jammed ten thick or more. Dignitaries, someone said, were on a platform in front of the GPO reviewing the troops.
A woman said there were Guards and soldiers holding the crowds back. Some lads had climbed up near the top of lampposts – to the part where two iron handles stuck out near the light. How they got up there was something of a marvel; I envied them the birds-eye view.
“They’ll roast in them outfits,” one woman said presciently. (It transpired that the troops were woefully unprepared – with not enough gear or the wrong gear, wooly dark green uniforms that would hamper them in the ferocious equatorial heat).
A man asked if they’re walking all the way to Africa and people laughed. Another wag said they’d be getting a free trip in a Yankee plane blessed by his Holiness John Charles McQuaid, a reference to the fearsome Archbishop of Dublin.
Archbishop John Charles McQuaid (1895-1973)
I joined my father in frowning at that bit of disrespect for the lofty bishop while wondering did we not have our own planes. I was a bit confused by the parade, unsure what the Army was doing parading down the middle of the street – though I got a look in between the adults in grey coats at bands of red-faced soldiers bunched together swinging their arms, stomping their way down O’Connell Street with intent. There were swarms of them – hundreds- and they had guns over their shoulders, real guns. I had never seen real guns before, never mind so many.
It was a new thing for Irish soldiers to be sent off into the middle of an African civil war. The last civil war any Irishman took part in was our very own one in 1922 and the contemporary national army, such as it was, hadn’t seen combat of any kind. But they were dispatched off anyway because everyone knew Irish people were respected the world over.
As a boy, I only heard of the Irish Army in jokes – passing around the one gun like a shared cigarette; halting maneuvers in the Furry Glen because the missus forgot to pack the sandwiches.
That we were Irish I knew, but there was an accompanying feeling that Ireland was barely a country. For decades government ministers made an art of going on the radio insisting that nothing could be done about anything ailing the nation: dire poverty; a shite economy; high unemployment; mass emigration.
Sure Ireland is a small country, they’d say, the message being we should not get our hopes up about ever approaching England’s standard of living, never mind row in with the U.N.
We’re a small country – for years that was the party-political consensus for upholding and excusing a mediocre status quo. We were scarcely a country so every family, including ours, had relatives who had been forced to climb aboard trains, boats or planes, to England, America or as far away as Australia. American wakes they used call the send-off parties for emigrants in towns and villages across the country.
Despite being underdeveloped, Ireland the fledgling republic had joined the U.N. at the end of 1955 just like a proper country. England had nothing got to do with it this time. The troop deployment bypassed England and the uncomfortable fact of our complete economic dependence on trade with and emigration to England.
This was U.N.-led, strictly international. Our soldiers representing the U.N. were to wear blue helmets. I had a plastic replica of a blue helmet for playing war down the end of the back garden with a bit of rifle-shaped ash.
Though I couldn’t know it, this was a big moment in the emergence of Ireland into nationhood. As relatively new members of the U.N., we were taking on an international commitment, helping out in a fight not of our making.
For my father among the many who turned out, to go and bear witness in O’Connell Street must have been important. He was born in 1906 into the last throes of the British empire in Ireland, bore witness to the civil war as a teenager.
To have me along was to teach me about Ireland, to affirm that we had our own place among the nations of the world. To the legions of gallant nuns and priests that routinely went off to Africa on the missions to spread the one true faith, we could now add battalions of our very own troops.
Outings with my father for big occasions were rendered all the more significant by their rarity. He was distant though affirming and not lacking in affection for his offspring; unquestioned Lord of the household, ministered to and royally fed by my mother, who mediated and did what she could to prevent occasional eruptions of his anger, though it simmered like a bubbling stew more often than exploded.
Always impeccably dressed, his black brogues shined to a sheen, he was not around much during a work week, just one evening and week-ends.
Weekday Routine
The family just got on with the weekday routine, ended the day listening to Radio Éireann, later it would be watching American TV shows on Telefís Éireann.
When it arrived into the house, my mother thought the TV was no harm, a bit of diversion. My father worried quietly to her that we would get notions from American rubbish like the Donna Reed show with its idealized portrayal of privileged, prosperous suburbia. Luckily for me, cowboys like Bonanza were fine all around.
Appointed County Manager of Meath, adjacent to Dublin, in 1959 he had moved the family from Sligo where he had been manager to 42 Merton Road in Dublin’s Rathmines, down the road from our grandparents Joseph and Margaret Hynes of 72 Cowper Road.
Commonly, houses were given names – Ivydeane, Cospicua. As we were moving in a man came to paint the name on two concrete pillars by the front gate, black Gaelic lettering on a white painted background – Dún Mhuire, the fort of Mary.
I suspect my mother was the instigator but it seemed natural enough. We were a Catholic household in a Gaelic Catholic culture. Clear but unspoken messages were conveyed to me – nobody sat me down to declare it explicitly – that being Irish and under the auspices of a dominant church whose parish Mass we attended faithfully every week along with crowds of our neighbors, offered a form of protection, a kind of psychic immunity, from the seeping depravity of England.
People in England, unsanctioned, could get a divorce and skip Mass if they were Catholics or not even attend church at all if they were Protestant. The English were more likely than the Irish to be in danger of falling off the cliff edge we all traverse that overlooks the fires of hell.
My father had landed us squarely in the emerging professional middle class respectability of 1960’s Dublin, my siblings and I in the best schools. Gifted with brains he had forged his own road, starting off as a lowly clerk in the Port and Docks Board in the Custom House, going to night school in Rathmines Tech to qualify as an accountant.
His big break into the civil service as County Secretary in Kildare came after winning the 1938 Gardener Gold Medal for attaining first place in Ireland in accountancy subjects – I still have the medal. He progressed from County Secretary to an appointment as County Manager of Sligo, a place I still love deeply having been born there, then Meath.
Throughout the 1960’s, unprecedented in those days, he commuted along country roads to Navan, the County seat, taking the guts of an hour to get there. Nowadays, thanks to urban sprawl, Navan is a dormitory suburb of the capital.
Throughout the 1960’s he would stay one or two nights a week at the Headford Arms hotel in Kells, “the Manager” becoming a well-known local fixture. We had no idea what his life there was like. Instead of watching TV in the bosom of his family he would, no doubt, be in the hotel bar nursing a pint or a snifter, getting the full Irish served up for his breakfast of a morning before driving over to the town hall in Navan.
I remember precious little dinner table conversation about his work. Meath had the richest grassland in the country – cattle would be moved from the West to fatten them for export, we were told. Sure, wasn’t Irish beef the envy of the world? The inference being that it was a more prestigious County to manage than Sligo.
He would arrive home on Wednesdays and on Fridays with a prime side of beef for the Sunday roast, set aside by the butcher especially for the Manager. At Christmas, he would land home with seasonal fruitcake, the kind it takes ages to make with marzipan and white frosted icing to look like snow courtesy of the nuns who ran the hospital. There was never a question, let alone a debate, about whether he should be home more often.
Though absent a lot, he seemed no more distant than the fathers of my friends who were always at home. That was the way things were; the mothers were warm, the fathers diffident, to be addressed formally. Without exception my pals’ fathers were cut from the same cloth. Like my own, most of them were not native Dubliners but were making it in Dublin.
Entrepreneurs, lawyers and civil servants, they had roots in rural Ireland, including rugged Western counties like Mayo and Kerry. They wore greatcoats and sported hats, didn’t smile much and enquired how we were doing in school, thinly disguising a suspicion that there was too much playacting going on and not enough knuckling down to study.
A weekend stayover in a small caravan in Donabate North of Dublin by the perpetually grey-clouded seaside – a treat hosted by my mate’s old man for a couple of pals – involved a degree of tension as the ogre-like father complained crankily about the poor quality of the boiled egg served up by his son at breakfast, while the other guest boy and I stifled tense giggles behind the curtain drawn across the caravan.
We were accustomed to our eggs and toast or cornflakes being served up by our mothers; we weren’t called upon to service our fathers. We surely didn’t envy our mate his role as butler to his old man. Shortly after breakfast, relieved, stepping out the caravan door into the morning wind, we scarpered and stayed gone for most of the day.
1903 Gordon Bennett Trophy. Athy. Alexander Winton in the Winton Bullet 2.
Athy
It was far from the middle class that my father was reared. He was the seventh of nine to be born in a single room in a one-up-one-down two roomed place, 15 Leinster Street, Athy, Southwest of Dublin in County Kildare, for years a British garrison town where the grand canal from Dublin meets the river Barrow.
My grandfather Michael was a carpenter employed as casual labor in a local factory while my grandmother, a Doyle, labored at home, trying to manage the scarcity of necessities including food and shoes, her home caught in abject poverty.
As an adult, I stood in the claustrophobic upstairs room with my Aunt Patricia and two cousins, one who had bought the place, another who grew up and still lived in Athy. You couldn’t swing a cat in the place.
We cousins shared awed glances as my devout aunt Patricia sprinkled holy water about in honor of her parents. “They were great people, God bless them,” she said as the hair raised along my arms.
A cousin recalled a story his mother – another aunt of mine – had told once about remembering as a girl a visit from a priest who offered a blessing to the household – perhaps someone had been newly born or more likely was very ill as a clerical visit would have been rare to a poverty stricken household.
Protocol dictated that the priest be offered money when leaving, money he had no hesitation in accepting despite the blindingly obvious. He was pocketing the last note and bits and pieces of coins from the household cash tin. The little girl looked on knowing they would miss a meal as the priest stuffed the note and coins into his pocket on his way out the door. Such callous treatment would have been the norm; people were “read out” from the pulpit at mass, poor families shamed as donation amounts were publicly announced by the priest.
“I’m going places.”
There’s a photo – a family portrait (see featured image above) – grandfather looks resigned, grandmother holds a vacant stare; to me they appear defeated. A sheet hangs precariously forming a partial backdrop to the scene. One of the standing elder sisters rests her arm on my father’s shoulder who sits in the center with arms crossed – twelve years old maybe- as he beholds the camera with a confident look as if to say, “I’m going places.”
Indeed, he was and he did. But growing up we knew little of his roots or the road he had travelled from poverty to the middle class. I had an inkling, a feeling that he felt he had escaped, broken free of Athy, and wanted to leave all that behind him.
For years I never knew how many siblings he actually had. We had lots of contact with my mother’s family – I knew all of my cousins on her side.
Silence enveloped the partial story emerging about our Kildare roots. He was close with Patricia in Dublin and her husband John O’Brien of Kimmage Road West, a gentle uncle to us who, smoking Sweet Aftons, held court in their dining room at the top of a large table squeezed into the room, with barely enough space for chairs and a sideboard.
My hospitable aunt doled out scaling tea, sandwiches and fruitcake. We grew up connected to our O’Brien cousins. Visits from them or my mother’s family were occasions of joy and celebration, especially the Christmas night gathering around our piano played by my aunt Ita and lubricated by my father as barman, conductor and on rare occasion warbler in chief.
River Barrow, Athy.
Kildare Connection
The Kildare connection though was opaque. As a boy, I remember from time to time – once or twice a year – my mother and father would get all dolled up and go off for a Sunday drive to Athy.
No account of their day would later be offered. As an adult, I learned that one of the nine siblings had been institutionalized – but where, more to the point why? Were they put in the county home or mental hospital? We never knew.
As children we had overheard whispers. The lore I picked up as an adult was that one sister had unspecified mental health issues but was really put away for falling in love with a British soldier. That didn’t add up. Such romance would hardly have been an aberration in a garrison town, surely?
Despite emerging Home Rule and fledgling republican movements Athy had, per capita, one of the highest rates of young Irishmen volunteering themselves into the British army for the great war of 1914 – 1918.
For the survivors, participation would end up placing them on the wrong side of Irish history. Whether generally tolerated or frowned upon, surely at least a few local young women were forming liaisons with working class squaddies in barracks in the town. Or perhaps the very presence of soldiers billeted in the town lends plausibility to the narrative I received – Irish families clamped down on liaising with British troops, even locals. To this day, a blank canvas remains where that story should be.
In Dublin, rare paternal expeditions are preserved to me as wisps of memory, incomplete fragments encased in my mind like the gold ornaments in the glass cases of the archeology section of the National Museum in Kildare Street, where he took me and my sister once or twice when we were eight or nine to see the Ardagh Chalice.
Some young lad dug it up out of the ground over a hundred years ago, he said. I was thinking I would have held on to it if I were him, or maybe flogged it for a new bicycle. At least once he dragged us around the National Gallery, frog marched us past white marble sculptures on plinths to a gallery beyond to eyeball the Jack B. Yeats paintings.
Jack B. and his more famous brother the poet had Sligo connections, developed a love of the county while spending youthful time with relatives there. Jack had painted Memory Harbour in Rosses Point and was known as the painter who chronicled the emergence of Ireland into nationhood, representing Sligo fishermen going about their hard labor as “men of destiny.”
As County Manager, my father had walked behind the painter and Yeats family members in the procession to reinter the remains of W.B. Yeats in the churchyard at Drumcliff. Whether on approaching our pre-teen years we balked or he abandoned the cultural outings based on a sense of having completed our cultural education or maybe felt it a waste of his time “casting pearls before swine” was never clear.
The blank page of his family narrative dramatically came alive in three dimensions one routine winter early evening enshrouded in the usual darkness and damp. I was around ten, waiting for my mother to dish up the tea when she, my sister and I were stunned into incredulity, the lot of witnesses.
I answered a ring at the door to find an uncle from Kildare, brother of my father, smilingly arriving for an impromptu visit. The doorway banter drew my mother from out of the kitchen. She welcomed him in officially and directed me to sit with him in the living room to the left off the hall while she improvised a pot of tea and a few of her prized home-made sweet buns.
The brother, a bit disheveled, sat in front of the fire in one of two chairs with the red covers; asked me how was school going, wasn’t completely sure who he was looking at, not distinguishing me one hundred percent from my older brothers.
I got that a lot; my elder brothers were six and seven years older; occasionally relatives lost track of me. I was happy enough to pour him a cup of tea, the better to get my hands on a one of the old dear’s prized buns; after baking she typically hid them to prevent their rapid disappearance.
He took a sip of tea from his mug; kept smiling with a slightly vacant, almost wondrous glint in his eyes. My mother excused herself, explaining that she was in the throes of cooking the teatime meal, though she didn’t automatically invite him to stay for it. That would have been the usual protocol; insisting over the mild protests of guests that of course they’ll stay for a meal; we wouldn’t hear of you stepping out the door on an empty stomach. We were anticipating my father’s arrival for tea – our supper; dinner was the midday meal.
I heard him pulling the black Ford Cortina in the front gates and was waiting in the hall when he turned the key in the front door, eagerly on hand to give him the good news, “Dad, your brother is here!”
Far from the joy I was expecting, his jaw dropped as the news registered. Failing to acknowledge or greet me, he brushed by without removing coat or hat, almost dived in the living room door.
Left behind in the hall, suddenly without warning I could hear him erupt on the brother, shouting and roaring at the top of his lungs. I poked myself just inside the door as my father continued unloading, upbraiding him from a height, what the hell was he doing here, how dare he, get out this minute, called him a right blackguard showing up in that state – an uninterruptable diatribe that went on for several minutes.
“Sure, I only stopped by to see you,” the taken aback brother said defensively. My father had completely lost the plot. I froze in shock, wanted to head for the hills.
My sister remembers hiding in another room scared by the roar of unrestrained anger. Our household followed the Irish norm, emotions were kept bottled up tight, corked. Like the seafarers of the Aran islands, their curraghs bobbing on a rolling sea, we lived with the awareness, unspoken, that a storm induced wave could any minute sweep us away without warning.
But a deadly wave was a rare phenomenon, feared yet far from the normal run of things. My father’s emotion was a storm unleashed, out in the open, triggered we’d call it today, and landing not only to sting him and his brother but collaterally to unnerve my mother, sister and I. M
y upset father marched out of the living room, disappeared up the stairs, his part in the drama for now complete, to stew in his own upset. Mother was left to pick up the pieces. She had to drop everything – never mind the meal. She surely felt rattled, perhaps herself annoyed at having to mop up after him, because she asked me to accompany her as she loaded my uncle into her brown Austin A40. I sat in the back.
We never did this, drop our daily routine to drive into town in the darkness of the early evening. She drove down Palmerston Road, then over the canal and into town via Camden and Georges Streets, around by College Green and Westmoreland Street where animated neon advertising lit up the city, to turn left down the quays near McBirney’s department store where he could get a bus back to Kildare.
There was quiet in the car but tension had abated. She was concerned for him. “Are you all right,” she asked him as he alighted, “do you have enough for a sandwich and the bus?” He thanked her and got out to walk across to a parked bus. I hopped into the front seat wondering if that was the right bus, who would meet him at the other end.
We drove home wordlessly through the Dublin rush-hour, ate our teatime meal in silence, my father quiet, not a word out of anyone. The visit, the anger, nothing was alluded to. He turned to the newspaper. A calm had redescended. Later that night I came upon her practically whispering into the phone, ringing a relative to make sure he had made it home in one piece.
Baluba militiamen in 1962.
The Niemba Ambush
Having seen the soldiers off to the Congo my father made it his business to take me up to Phibsboro in November 1960 for the second massive gathering in Dublin in a single year. Once again, we joined thousands, this time crammed along a funeral route to Glasnevin cemetery. Nine Irish soldiers from the Congo were to be buried, the first to be killed in combat in the modern era. The Niemba ambush.
I thought that nobody was supposed to really attack or shoot at soldiers with blue helmets- not guns nor poisoned arrows nor anything of the kind. Yet, eight of them had been wiped out in Katanga in a Baluba-led ambush, smitten by arrows we were told, in what was thought to be a case of mistaken identity, the assailants having possibly mistaken Irish U.N. troops for European mercenaries.
A survivor wandered in the wrong direction only to be caught and killed later. The funeral after a solemn high mass led by the archbishop was massive. I’m not sure how I got chosen to accompany my father; my elder brothers tells me he would have made his own way there on the bus.
My father and I set out in the Ford Cortina. I watched him closely as he as he worked the wheel-mounted gearshift. Crossing the Liffey near the Four Courts, he parked on a residential street before we walked to join legions of others gathering from all directions near Dalymount Park.
The closer we go to Glasnevin the thicker the crowds got, thicker even than at the send-off parade only much quieter. When we could get no further, he huffed and puffed, tried to lift me up to see. Soldiers with blue UN shoulder patches and guards saluting solemnly lined the route in front of the crowds.
Eventually, slowly, quietly, as the cortege drew nearer, all the men took their hats and caps off. A green jeep appeared pulling a gun carriage for the officer, with an honor guard astride at walking pace.
The slowness of it, respectful, solemn, gave me a sad feeling, like a pang of hunger in my belly. Someone whispered the officer’s name, Gleeson. God be good to them, a woman intoned. Four huge open top lorries followed at that same slow pace and flanked also by the uniformed comrades of the dead.
Four lorries with two coffins each for the ordinary soldiers. Nobody remarked on the different treatment for the officer and enlisted men. The coffins had Irish flags, with flowers and soldier caps on top, along with blue UN insignia.
They were crawling toward Glasnevin cemetery and there was no talking or bantering going on this time– just silence in the crowd, everyone blessing themselves, straining to get a look at the coffins, then staring at the ground, a few people working rosary beads, reciting away in murmurs.
The cortege passed in slow motion; slow marching soldiers’ accompanying the lorries to the sounds of their own boots and the low hum of engines. I got a really good look at the gun carriage. Gleeson.
The mournful funeral procession gliding by, honored by the presence of thousands standing in respectful silence, made sense in my young boy’s world, a blend of reality and fantasy – national solidarity expressed in Catholic prayers.
Glasnevin Cemetery.
“You couldn’t get near Glasnevin with the crowds and dignitaries,” Dad told my mother later.
“Daniel O’Connell, the Liberator, is buried up there,” he told me, “the soldiers will be up there with him.” I used to get mixed up between the multiple patriots across the seven centuries we were under the thumb of the English, except for the executed leaders of the 1916 Rising at the GPO – Pearse, Connolly, Joseph Mary Plunkett, Tom Clarke and all. They issued a proclamation to Irishmen and Irishwomen – lots of people had it framed on their walls but I never read the whole thing. “Imagine shooting a sickly poet or a wounded Labour man; that’s what the English did after the Rising. The gobshites,” I heard people say, even fifty years on.
The crowd thinned away slowly after the last of the procession passed but my father lingered, knowing the funeral was still going on up the street at the cemetery where the Taoiseach, Lemass, and government ministers awaited hats in hand. Finally, we started the long trek to where he had parked the car, near the North Circular Road. He threw his shoulders back and walked quickly. I had to take big steps, nearly run, to keep up.
When we got home, my mother doled out scalding hot tea, a rasher, egg and fried bread in the dining room. “God rest them and keep them, the poor divils,” she said. Later, the old man would read the paper and smoke a Carroll’s Number One at the table when she cleared off his plate. I would have scampered out the back garden to kick a plastic ball with my black brogues or maybe donned the plastic blue helmet and marched in the twilight along the path to the bottom of the garden, keeping a sharp eye out for Balubas or Belgians.
We hadn’t talked in the car on the way home – there was nothing to say. As the light faded in the garden, I was wondering if the soldiers would still be up there in Glasnevin now that everyone had left; were they glad to be home in Ireland; would they be lonely, miss being at home for their tea; were they in heaven or Glasnevin or where were they?
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