Billy King shares his monthly thoughts

Well, Michael D is finally about to up on his bikeldee and away and CC (cc Heather Humphreys), Catherine Connolly, will very soon be there in the Áras. She has been a staunch peace and neutrality supporter, sound on many social questions, as well as being a very unassuming and likeable person. The government indicated that her being elected would make no difference to plans to ditch the Triple Lock. But perhaps some Fianna Fáil TDs will look into their hearts, and that of voters in their constituencies, and find some backbone to resist Micheál Martin’s protracted and ill thought out onslaught on said Triple Lock, based on the support shown for Connolly.

The Irish presidency is primarily a representative rather than a purely political, and certainly not a party political, one. Michael D pushed the boat out in a different way to Mary Robinson who initiated the demand by Irish people for someone in the role who was not a time or place server. The office is in good hands with Catherine Connolly. It would have been interesting to have an Ulster (Monaghan) Presbyterian in Heather Humphreys in the role but on social issues and on peace she is a typical conservative Fine Gaeler so Connolly is streets or fields ahead on a wide number of issues. There were some deficiencies in the presidential election process, including the criteria to ‘enter the contest’, but Catherine Connolly won by a landslide.

Biodiversity and my-cology

The world is an amazing place. While we can get thoroughly depressed about many aspects of what is happening in the world due to the actions of Homo Sapiens (title open to dispute for a number of reasons), we can still share amazement for the wonder and adaptability of nature. We can destroy all the flora and fauna we want (or, rather, don’t want enough to alter our behaviour) but ‘nature’ will go on – and would go on even if we, Homo Sap, do not, and we are still being foolish beyond measure.

There were two stories in the Gordian recently that speak about the resilience of nature, one from Canada and one from Iceland. One is about the restoration of natural ecosystems on Toronto’s waterfront: “The century-old plants bursting from newly exposed soil initially made headlines, but it was only the first of a string of extraordinary discoveries. Pollen from the American chestnut, a tree now extinct in the area, was discovered in the dirt. So too was a seed from the 1500s. The remains of one of the largest and most important peat bogs in the region were rescued. Then, last year, the team submerged soil samples and made the astounding discovery of water fleas, trapped in the soil since at least the late 1800s, which had sprung back to life. So too had worms, larvae and zooplankton….” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/09/toronto-waterfront-soil-plants-worms

And a new, volcanic island off Iceland has amazed scientists with the speed at which life has established itself after it began to emerge in 1963. “Scientists had expected algae and mosses to be the first colonisers, building up a base of soil that would eventually support vascular plants. But that step was skipped completely. More plants were washed ashore in the following years, and some clung to the island’s bare volcanic rock……..In the early 1980s, black-backed gulls started to nest on sections of the island, sheltering in one of the stormiest parts of the Atlantic Ocean. Their arrival kicked off an explosion of life. Guano carried seeds that quickly spread grasses along the island, fed in turn by the nutrients from the birds. For the first time, whole areas of bare rock became green….” https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/oct/13/nature-volcanic-island-surtsey-iceland-ecosystems-aoe

Meanwhile, coming not only closer to home but to my actual home, we have a patch of grass at the front of our house which is less than a couple of metres wide with a hedge before the suburban footpath. And a hornbeam tree there in the footpath. The grass might have last been dug up many decades ago and what grows there, including clover, is let grow. But what I saw this autumn amazed me; not one, not two, not three, but four varieties of fungi growing, a couple overlapping but mainly in succession, presumably in symbiotic relationship with the tree outside. I did check out the possibilities for the names of said fungi but not being enough of a fun guy to be a mycologist a) I am highly unsure of identifying them correctly, and b) because of that and this not being a mycology journal I will spare you the names. I will say one was smaller but somewhat similar to a field/edible mushroom, one a thin, pale ‘toadstool’, and one was a mottled globe headed fungi.

The appearance of such fungi is just part of a cycle but I did institute a ‘no mow September’ and longer to let them do their thing, and presumably spare the spores, it wasn’t a spore-adic reaction [Spore us the puns – Ed], apologies if any of them are allergenic. I would do the same next year. It was a brilliant example of biodiversity not in my back yard but in our small front garden. There might not be much room in our front patch of grass but there is enough, indeed ‘mushroom’, for fungi.

Do you want to die for NATO?

The answer that I would give, by the way, is ‘no’ [Surprise, surprise – Ed] – and I don’t want anyone else to do so either. But in my look at oul books – last month I covered Mary Condren’s “The Serpent and the Goddess” – I dug out my rather worn and tired looking copy of Patrick Comerford’s book with that title, “Do you want to die for NATO?”. This dates from 1984 (published by Mercier Press). How topical can you get? And this was 41 years ago.

Of course much has changed in those four decades and the Irish state, underhandedly and against the wishes of the broad mass of citizens, has cosied up as much as it can to NATO. I should point out that it is INNATE practice to refer to said entity in capitals rather than the cosier looking ‘Nato’ (cf The Irish Times, the change even being made in a published letter by the INNATE coordinator) – there is nothing cosy about NATO, its practice or its commitment to first use of nuclear weapons should it deem it necessary.

The Do you want to die for NATO? Book is short but packed with detail. The context in 1984 was the risk of nuclear war between NATO and the USSR/Russia, either because of deliberate policy or because of accident (the real possibility of this happening has been well documented, where one side believes an attack is coming). Plus ca change….. As to who is winning an arms race, Patrick Comerford says “No one wins a mad race over a cliff edge” (page 12). Plus ca change…

While the Wolfe Tone quote from 1792 is included (page 50) that “We should spurn the idea of moving an humble satellite around any power”, the book does deal with the times and people with whom neutrality can be particularly identified, and those times and people who opposed it or were prepared to ditch it of the time and terms were right. But the independent Irish state got off to a good start with involvement in the League of Nations and opposition to the Italian invasion of Ethiopia and opposition to (Blueshirt) pressure to support Francoist fascism in Spain despite its supposed ‘Catholicism’.

The book details how NATO and Warsaw Pact maps or exercises assumed that in a nuclear war there would be Irish targets; 23 potential targets, North and South, are identified in total by the author in the book. It looks at Irish involvement in communications networks for NATO, including Mount Gabriel in the Republic and the (then) Bishopscourt radar base, operated by the RAF, in Co Down.

When the practice of neutrality was fearless and determined, e.g. with Frank Aiken, there were positive results, as with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which came into effect in 1968. However people on all sides of the Irish political scene could be positive or ambivalent; Charles Haughey is quoted from 1981 saying Ireland was militarily neutral but not politically or ideologically neutral – that old let out, much used since by those wanting closer involvement with NATO and EU military developments. On he other hand Garret Fitzgerald, from a party traditionally less inclined to support active neutrality, said in 1993 that Ireland “can also challenge the emergence of a European military super-power” (page 65) – while contemporary governments have attempted to jump on the militarist EU gravy train through involvement in the arms industry and the military-industrial complex.

The EEC, as it then was, is identified, rightly, as a particular challenge to neutrality. But neutrality was never just a bargaining chip to gain a united Ireland; in 1940 Dev refused Churchill’s offer to abandon neutrality in return for a united Ireland. The book also looks at some of what a non-aligned defence could be including the mining of ports and airports so to be useless to an invader.

The history of Irish neutrality is not straightforward but there is much to be proud about. Some of the historical and contemporary complexities of the time (1984) are explored in this book. Patrick Comerford says (page 89) that neutrality could be thought of as a unique contribution or gift “to an EEC seeking political union”. It is a shame and a waste if contemporary Irish politicians and commentators feel that Ireland would be better as a small cog in a large military machine rather than striking out fearlessly for peace. I consider that a failure of imagination, nerve – and backbone – in standing up to the powers that be.

Telling it like it is

There is one inveterate veteran when it comes to letter writing on peace issues in Ireland and that is former Irish army officer and Veterans for Peace and Shannonwatch activist Edward Horgan. He has more letters published than most of us have hot dinners. And all of them make sound sense. Here is one which appeared in different Irish newspapers in mid-to-late October:

“Instead of bringing peace to the Middle East the Trump dictated Gaza peace plan may end up establishing the virtual success of the Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people. Hopefully, the killing will stop in Gaza in the short-term. The 20-point peace plan makes no provision for justice for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, or the establishment of peace in the wider Middle East, especially in Lebanon and Syria. Israel has ensured by its environmental and physical destruction, that the Gaza Strip will be unsafe for anyone to live for decades. On 7th Oct 2025 the health ministry released details on Palestinians killed and wounded in Gaza. The recorded death toll since 7 October 2023 is now 67,183 killed, with 169,841 injured. These statistics include: 20,179 children killed, 44,143 children wounded, 4,900 children with amputations or disabilities, 51,196 children under five years old suffering from malnutrition.

This amounts to genocide, yet the present peace plan fails to hold Israel and its US and European supporters to account. The peace plan says that Gaza will initially be governed by a new international transitional body, the “Board of Peace,” which will be headed by President Donald J. Trump, and others including Former Prime Minister Tony Blair. President Trump and his predecessors, and Tony Blair, have been responsible for waging wars of aggression since 2001 that have caused the deaths of millions of people. An International Stabilization Force (ISF) will be immediately deployed in Gaza. A similar stabilization force was deployed in Afghanistan which brought twenty years of chaos to the Afghan people. The quote by Roman historian Tacitus seems appropriate “To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.”

QCEA on EU

QCEA, the Quaker Council on European Affairs, always has interesting things to say about the way western Europe is heading, including the realities of the EU in what had been a ‘peace’ project becoming much more of a ‘war’ project. Their summary of Ursula von der Leyen’s State of the Union address on 10^th September is “In her 10 September speech, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen spoke of peace mainly through security and defence, with 16 mentions of “fight.” We had hoped to hear more about peace as justice, dialogue, or cooperation, but competitiveness prevailed. Climate was framed as decarbonisation, overlooking nature and the environment. Migration was addressed in terms of management, without reference to the EU’s Anti-Racism Action Plan.” Von der Leyen’s speech is at https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/ov/SPEECH_25_2053 and the QCEA is at https://www.qcea.org/ where you can find out more about their work and read their publications.

Supporting genocide

I find unionist politics in Norn Iron sad in a different way to how I find some Sinn Féin policies sad – I understand why the latter support previous IRA actions but no, IRA violence was not necessary or unavoidable, it is that people on all sides saw no alternative – there were nonviolent alternatives that people did not see or know about. I recently wrote about unionist support for British militarism (they are joined by the current government in Dublin in their support of militarism). But on many questions, whether on education – dividing children into academic and less-academic schools at age 11 – or international issues, well words fail me. [That would be a first – Ed.] Support for Israel ‘to the hilt’ – appropriate as this is a sword metaphor – comes from ideological and theological but not-very-logical sources, as well of course for the all important reason of them’uns supporting Palestine.

Recently a unionist delegation went to Israel, paid for by the Israeli state (‘No expense to UK taxpayers, folks!’). The cross-party unionist group included Norn Iron Minister for Education Paul Givan and the amazing Sammy Wilson, both of the DUP. They visited an Israeli school in occupied East Jerusalem and Paul Givan had a photo put up on the NI Department of Education website. Naturally all hell broke loose with activists on Palestine and those who are not unionists and also teachers unions and bodies. The DUP are of course standing by their man or men. But I wanted to express how very thoughtful it was of the Israeli state in a war situation to offer an all expenses visit to look at educational approaches, obviously there were no ulterior motives whatsoever, and there is absolutely no question of the unionists themselves being political stooges……

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Well, it may not be meteorological winter until December but it feels We Have Arrived there. But every season has its pluses and minuses. Winter can be a time for relaxing at home, hopefully in the warmth, with a good book or film and maybe a pleasant chat with your partner or a friend or two. And winter weather is an excuse to stay put there rather than attend to other matters. The winter solstice is a wee bit away yet but, come the end of January, there is the chance to see days getting longer again and the process of regeneration begin. I hope you are sitting comfortably as you read this. I will see you again soon before what can be, for many people, the mad social whirl coming up to Christmas. Hibernia abu, Billy.