Billy King shares his monthly thoughts
Well, the last cucumber of summer is faded and gone – but I remember the taste of it still. That isn’t too difficult as there are a few smaller ones left in the fridge though the, outdoor, plants have shrivelled up and snuffed off their mortal coil – which seems an appropriate phrase for outdoor climbing plants. Winter and winter time is here. So it is the period for kale time rather than killing time since winter gives different opportunities for doing things than summer – that is a summary of my views on the matter.
Oh, and before I get going, you may or may not have noticed the research which said the climate damaging effects of exported LNG/Liquefied Natural Gas can be worse than coal https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/04/exported-liquefied-natural-gas-coal-study?CMP=share_btn_url Talk about hot air concerning the benefits of LNG…… On Thursday 7th November a private members bill against LNG from Deputy Neasa Hourigan TD will be debated in the Dáil, a final opportunity for the Government and all parties to reject polluting gas infrastructure like Shannon LNG (last piece of info from FOE).
Bann the bomb
The premises of Mediation Northern Ireland in University Street, Belfast, a k a Mediation House, has four meeting rooms, all named after northern rivers; Bann, Erne, Foyle, and Lagan. Erne is a lough, or loughs, as well as a river but just as well they didn’t name the rooms after loughs – Neagh would be difficult to avoid using and those involved in mediation and conflict work, at least in the English language (as opposed to the Irish language origin of the names), want people to say ‘yay’ rather than ‘Neagh’ and not be ‘loughed’ in conflict.
Rivers give the feeling of movement, so that is definitely a positive in the context of a building where conflict is dealt with. Mind you, mediators have to Erne the trust of the parties involved through impartiality and friendliness. While they will have clear ground rules and try to Bann inappropriate behaviour, like talking over someone already talking, they also have to deal with the situation if someone is Lagan behind in making their contribution, to make sure the process is fully inclusive. If trust is built up then a positive result is likely and the process will not be Foyle-d at the last minute. So there you have it.
Continuing on to rivers in Donegal, once the mediation stream or process is Finn-ished the mediator should reflect on how it went but this does not necessitate Corabber-ation. [If there is one thing that should be binned and Bann-ed it’s your puns – Ed – though it does remind me of the old humorous saying “If you weren’t so Ballymena with your Ballymoney we’d have a Ballycastle to be our Ballyholme”].
It will be Grand
Belfast has a spanking new transport hub [Why ‘spanking’? – Ed] [I wouldn’t go there but actually I’ll be there frequently – Billy], Grand Central Station. This is certainly a bit more central than the ‘old’ (1970s) ‘Central Station’, now called Lanyon Place which was always to the east though it served as ‘central’. The new Grand Central Station is not too far from the older, Victorian, Great Victoria Street train station which fronted, colonnaded, onto Great Victoria Street but was sent on its way by both redevelopment and IRA bombs (and its Great Victoria Street successor from 1995 which closed this summer).
It is good that Translink, the Northern transport authority, has planned for the future of public transport, and upping its role in travel, with this integrated bus and train station though the work there in the shorter term affects traffic for the worse. Belfast has also had, for some years now, a Grand Central Hotel so if meeting someone at the ‘Grand Central’ you need to specify hotel or station (people also don’t expect a city the size of Belfast to have two airports so you need to be specific on that too or you may end up at the wrong one, ‘tis easy done).
While it is certainly ‘grand’ in term of size, Grand Central is not ‘grand’ in terms of architectural quality, it is modern-functional and cavernous. To put it prosaically it is what I would call a big bus station. As you approach it as a pedestrian the train platforms are on one side on entering and the bus bays on the other. It could do with lots of medium to large artworks like the John Kindness tiled ‘waterfall’ piece that stood for some time in Belfast’s Glengall Street/Great Victoria Street/Europa bus station composed of kitschy tourist items – a real artwork made up of of individual pieces of kitsch imagery. The Headitor of this publication prides himself on having introduced an old John Kindness cartoon on the (Northern) difference between Catholics and Protestants into ‘community/good relations’ circles, see https://www.flickr.com/photos/innateireland/9024657125/in/photolist-HYigiP-eKtJ9D-eKF8ky and frame beside that [But pride comes before a waterfall – Headitor].
I wanted to explore for a minute the word ‘grand’, and I think in Hiberno-English one of its connotations may be different to other English-speaking countries. Words can be very precise or vague and depend entirely on the nuanced context. ‘Grand’ can simply mean very big. ‘Grand’, as in saying someone is ‘very grand’ can imply uppity, aloof, opinionated, classist, wallowing in their wealth and a few more things as well. Someone making a ‘grand entrance’ is implying an aspect of theatricality.
But – and international English-speaking readers correct me if I am wrong – uniquely in Ireland ‘grand’ can also mean just about adequate or minimally satisfactory. “It will be grand” about a situation or a repair, for example, means it will be OK, it will work or work out, it will do, don’t worry even if there is something to worry about. This meaning depends entirely on the context. If you broke your mother’s most loved vase and I was giving you a hand to superglue it back into shape then I might say “It’ll be grand” – well, it will and it won’t. If you were worried about an event you were participating in and I said “It’ll be grand” well, that is a supportive wish rather than an established fact given it is referring to the future, and it is a gesture of reassurance more than a judgement of what will come to pass, whatever I might think of how it will go for you.
Grand Central Station, Belfast – it will be grand.
Cáin Adomnáin
Cáin Adomnáin 21st Century is a fascinating venture in taking an initiative from 697 CE into the 21st century. It is amazing, surreal, to even state that and be inspired by something that took place more than thirteen centuries ago. You have, I hope, read about it in the news section of this publication and maybe even seen the pics at https://www.flickr.com/photos/innateireland/albums/72177720320507627/ I wanted to briefly explore some of the themes around it.
The original Law of the Innocents/Adomnán’s Law was very much of it time. It also didn’t challenge war as such, only the conduct of war by offering protection to women, children and non-combatants, and in this regard has been labelled the ‘Geneva Convention’ of that time. There was no impetus to stop war and fighting, only about how it should be conducted or at least who should not suffer because of it. And the penalties were very much of their time too. Mind you, yer man Adomnán must have been a quare class of organiser to get it all together at the time – OK, the church had its networks but you couldn’t just send out an email and ask people to be there and they book a flight on Ryanair, and people travelled to Birr from all over Ireland and from Scotland and the north of England.
So is it justified to take something from the best part of a millennium and a half ago and remodel it for the 21st century? Yes indeed. A new “people’s” law for today has to be of our time. The 21st century version has no state or ecclesiastical power behind it but it does have moral power in relation to the situation we find ourselves in with wars such as those in Sudan, Ukraine and Gaza making life a death trip or at least a dive into hell.
As for extrapolating in the 21st century version into a condemnation of war as a crime against humanity is justified, it assuredly is. War may be taken for granted by some people but as a means of deciding things it is bottom of the pile, a negation of people’s right to life and any possibility of progress or happiness. The new law doesn’t proscribe who are innocent victims but personally I think the vast majority of people who suffer in war, including soldiers, are ‘innocent victims’ in that they didn’t deserve to die. After all, the death penalty is killing people to prove that killing people is wrong. And similarly in war. The people who are most guilty are those who ordered the war in the first place along with a probably relatively small number of soldiers who take pleasure in inflicting pain and death.
Including the earth as a victim in war is fully justified too. The kind of world we are bequeathing to our descendents, literal and metaphorical, is a disaster and becoming the source of great violence and conflict – over water, resources, and migration from areas becoming uninhabitable, as well as more general disruption. The military are a major contributor to pollution and global warming. It is right that the earth should be specified as an innocent victim of war.
War will not go away because of Lex Innocentium 21st Century or even a load of people signing it. But at a time when even in ‘neutral’ Ireland the powers that be are trying to sign the country up for participation in current and future wars, it is important that people stand up and say – No, there is another way, there are other ways, and war is an escalator to hell which it is difficult to get off. You can read all the information around Lex Innocentium 21st century, and sign up, at https://lexinnocentium21.ie/
Talking quietly
If you or your listeners in conversation are not being threatening or abusive, heaven forbid, then talking is likely to be A Good Thing. Obviously we can learn by example but talking to people who others think we shouldn’t talk to can be exemplary too, and we can learn a lot from rather different opinions to our own.
However there arises the issue of whether we should talk to The Enemy. In Norn Iron, especially during the Troubles, there was a long list of certain people that other certain people wouldn’t talk to. Except that they did. The British government definitely, definitively, wouldn’t speak to the IRA or their representatives…..except when they did. Ditto unionists. Lots of the great and the good got exercised angry when John Hume worked to involve Sinn Féin in talks. And as it turned out that was indeed A Good Thing. Edwin Markham’s words come to mind: “He drew a circle that shut me out – / Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout / But love and I had the wit to win: / We drew a circle and took him In!” (available as a print-it-yourself poster under ‘Inclusion’ at https://innatenonviolence.org/wp/posters/ ) An organisation like Quaker House in Belfast helped the peace process by enabling talking and contact ‘under the radar’ and participants knew that their discussions would be neither publicised nor abused.
Paramilitary disarmament observer Rev Harold Good’s new memoir, “In Good Time”, covers how the DUP were engaged in discreet talks, sanctioned from the top, with the Sinners at a time when they were vehemently denying any such contact and stating that they would not engage in same. Even today it looks like they are saying the sort of thing “well, odd members might have engaged in such informal talking but as a party we didn’t.” (cf Belfast Telegraph 24/10/24) Plausible deniability. Except it was sanctioned by ‘The Doc’ (Ian Paisley senior). So even today there is an untruth or stretched truth being told about it.
Talking to enemies is how, over time, they may become friends. Paisley and McGuinness became the Chuckle Brothers. Talking may be very difficult and involve stomaching some difficult emotions and lots of angst in dealing with thorny issues but it is the only way to go. International war participants and cheerleaders please copy.
Wallpaper
INNATE doesn’t make it a habit of promoting religious – or indeed secular – organisations except where there is a peace, human rights or environmental element, and there is that with the Quakers and their peace witness – so the Headitor felt justified in including the news piece about the ‘Quaker Hub’ at Frederick Street Friends Meeting House in Belfast in this issue. Whether there will be a hubbub at this hub remains to be seen, though not when worship is in session, given the Quaker use of silence.
This reminds me of an ancient ‘Punch’ (a British humorous magazine, long dead) cartoon on new religious sects; one showed a man rushing to a meeting of the ‘Quick Quakers’, with a sign saying “Sunday Worship, 11.00 – 11.03 am”! That is the antithesis of the Quaker style, that is the joke, but anyway, if you look at photos of INNATE’s old conferences (these days more happen online), a fairly constant theme is the then wallpaper in Frederick Street Friends Meeting House with its distinctive pattern! For the wallpaper – along with some people inconsiderately getting in the way of your view of the wallpaper – see https://www.flickr.com/photos/innateireland/albums/72157609198950838/
Poppying up again
There are credible reasons to wear a red poppy for remembrance at this time of year. Now I have said it. Remembering resistance to fascism and nazism is one. But the problem is both its limitations (only remembering British soldiers, not others, and no civilians) and the use to which it is put (glorifying the role of the British military today, promoting its role and recruitment, and ignoring past misdeeds). If you want to wear a poppy, wear a white one which remembers all the victims of all wars, and is also a commitment to peace for the future, a commitment against war as a method of politics and international policy. And war, and commitment to going to war, is very much back on most European governments’ agendas.
One controversy which arose some years ago was Irish footballer James McClean’s refusal to wear a poppy on his team shirt in England, in his case because of the role of the British Army in Northern Ireland. And the demand by the BBC, including totally inappropriately in Northern Ireland, for presenters to wear a red poppy is crazy. Ironically, and to their credit, the Royal British Legion (which sells and promotes the red poppy) defended McClean’s right not to wear one. Meanwhile Damien Dempsey has written a song about James McClean and the poppy issue. https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/sport/football/irish-folk-singer-releases-james-mcclean-tribute-song-defending-footballers-poppy-stance/a1133489759.html
Me? It is not as big an issue in the Republic for obvious reasons but in the Norn Iron context I just go for the quiet life and don’t wear anything and wait for the ‘Remembrance season’ to blow over. Cowardice? Maybe. I admire those who do wear a white poppy; the late SDLP councillor Dorita Field in Belfast wore two poppies, a red and a white one https://www.flickr.com/photos/innateireland/51154967921/in/photolist-2csmVmA-2kWozKx – though maybe that was a Field of poppies…. But I choose to raise peace issues in other ways.
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That’s me for this month as we enter the darkest portion of the year….but there is always light at the end of the tunnel and spring at the end of winter, so far anyway. And meanwhile you can have cosy nights tucked up with your favourite book or film, and maybe you’d like to avoid endless discussion of the US presidential election and whether an orange skinned liar and demagogue might win and what will happen when he or his perhaps more rational but even more war-supporting alternative gets the nod. Let’s hope there is some light at the end of that tunnel. See you soon, Billy.