Billy King shares his monthly thoughts
Hello, I was hoping that this Colm [I think you are trying to be Uncle Colm from Derry Girls? – Ed] would be a TFZ – a Trump Free Zone – but it proved impossible. However I will keep it short and sweet and not mention the Donald again, this issue, I promise. You may have read that according to Atlantic magazine, the occupant of the POTUS post has stopped comparing himself to Abraham Lincoln and George Washington and decided he is more in the league of Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Napoleon. Maybe that makes him a bit of a dick-tator but on a serious note it also makes him incredibly dangerous when in his last few years of insuperable military power he can obliterate what he wants to destroy with no repercussions for him personally.
So we may be in for a rollercoaster ride at best and a downward spiral at worst. Lets hope he gets wrapped up and obsessed with his boorish monuments to himself so he can’t be obnoxious and violent to others. He is a walking illustration of the perils of militarism (the egotism perhaps goes without saying though I have just said it) – as have many US presidents before him. Actions can have a myriad of consequences; for example, the US blockade of Cuba has doubled of even tripled the infant mortality rate there, with much other hardship too.
Meanwhile here we are into meteorological summer which in Ireland means the rain is warmer, or if you are logical and look at a clear night sky long enough you are likely to see a meteor. Well, you never know what will be thrown at us. Cue the old old story about someone from Norn Iron trying to book holiday accommodation in Britain by phone “for the Twelfth fortnight in July” and wondering why they were getting an incredulous response…. The longest day comes later this month and it always strikes me as strange – though obviously not meteorologically – that ‘summer’ comes when the days are already getting shorter. Mind you we have had a few days of record heat in late May which for most people in Ireland were pleasant – but not as a harbinger of ongoing global heating, and not in some places in Europe where temperatures were 10°C or more hotter than in good old Atlantic facing Ireland – tourist slogan “Come for the craic and stay for the cool”….
Own goal
There are own goals and own goals, and would you like to own a goal? [I will keep you goal posted on that – Ed] But the biggest own goal of the last month in relation to Northern Ireland was scored by Kemi Badenoch, leader of the Conservative Party in Britain. Her office issued a social media post on the usual – and totally discredited – theme that there is a vendetta against British army personnel, veterans, who operated in the North and that Labour government proposals would facilitate that. In fact the number of cases taken show that this is a non-issue but it has become an English/British nationalist shibboleth (as well as a means to try to avoid state culpability).
However the post carried film footage of British soldiers in Derry during Bloody Sunday in 1972 when 14 unarmed people were shot dead by the British army. Her post was withdrawn when it was pointed out that this was what the clip showed. But by including this what it unintentionally said is that the full rigour of the law should be applied to soldiers who were involved in shootings and violent activities outside of human rights law. This was bad enough for her and it was the opposite of what Badenoch and her office were trying nothing should exonerate those much higher up the military and political chains of command who set the parameters for engagement and sent the soldiers in, but that isn’t how these things work, is it? If anyone gets done it is the people at the bottom and in the Norn Iron case that hasn’t even been happening.
Dream time Fianna Fáil
As the two recent by-elections in the Republic show, it is not a dream time for Fianna Fáil, even losing their deposit because their vote was so low in the Dublin election. As regular readers will know, I try to take an interest in polly-ticks on both sides of the border [Shouldn’t that be ‘regular reader’, singular, rather than ‘regular readers’? – Ed] [That is just you being singularly unpleasant again – Billy]. However I was surprised by a recent dream and its vividness in remembrance of it on waking; in the dream I was responsible for putting up an exhibition about Fianna Fáil with various panels and these included accounts of FF misdemeanours and mishandlings – but activists from said political party had stolen the panels which were especially critical of them. I had to threaten that I would publicise their theft if they didn’t return them – which they did, considering that that was the lesser of two evils.
Well, how do you interpret that dream? Where did it come from? I consider said party should have gone out of existence entirely after the economic crash debacle of 2008; Bertie Ahern and the powers that were in Fianna Fail (sic) stupidly did nothing to rein in the property and housing bubble and they made the boom times boomier – which then led to the crash times being crashier and very significant hardship for many different kinds of people.
Their current embrace of NATO and EU militarisation is, I feel, a negation of the positive foreign policy which it has undertaken at various times in its existence, and also a betrayal of what soul it possessed – if a political party, especially a populist conservative one like FF, can have a soul. Micheál Martin being friendly with, and to, unionists is a Good Thing – but not at the expense that he refuses to plan for what a united Ireland would look like. On the latter, let the people decide, as is their right – but they need to know what they are deciding on and such thinking is best done outside the febrile atmosphere of a referendum vote or votes (north, south, east and west) on a u-nighted Ireland.
I am a political animal but not a party political one and I don’t think I could toe the line to be in a political party; I made that choice while (just) still a teenager. So I could do the same critique of many’s another political party. But that was what I dreamt about (see also my next two items which concern FF…) and I have provided a dream interpretation which is not dreamy. Maybe I should dream on. [Are you sure it wasn’t a large dram you had rather than a dream, even a bottle of Dreambuie? – Ed] [That would make me sic – Billy]
T-shock* and nuclear power
Micheál Martin has said Ireland should think seriously about nuclear power, e.g. Irish Times 4/5/26. I have a one word response to this; ‘Rubbish’ – nuclear rubbish or waste that is. Would he like nuclear waste in his back garden needing to be guarded for ten millennia? Of course fossil fuels need to be eradicated from Ireland’s energy mix but the idea that Ireland with its wind, waves, water and sun (yes!) might need to rely on what is the dirtiest fuel of all (and not all it is cracked up to be in terms of carbon dioxide emissions too) is unimaginative and extremely expensive nonsense. High tech junkies keep coming up with their feeling Ireland needs nuclear power – when what it needs is green energy and devolved green energy at that.
*In this case the ‘T’ is for ‘Threat’. I have told you before about a mention of the word ‘Taoiseach’ in the British Parliament many decades ago, at the start of the Troubles, before the word was known on that island; it could have been Gerry Fitt but anyway a Norn Iron nationalist mentioned “a speech given by the Taoiseach in Sligo” – and this was reported in Hansard, the official parliamentary record, as “a speech given in a tea shop in Sligo”!
There has always been hype and spin about nuclear energy from the very beginning. The attractions of small modular reactors is the latest in that hype. There remains the dangers of accidents, environmentally or humanly caused, or even sabotage or attack. Costs can go through the roof. Waste issues haven’t even begun to be resolved. We would do well to steer clear of dangerous white elephants even if that dangerous white elephant is smaller than previously proposed white elephants.
INNATE’s photo album on nuclear power issues, much of it on the 1970s anti-nuclear power movement, is at https://www.flickr.com/photos/innateireland/albums/72157607158367565/with/53807053772 See also Caroline Hurley’s article in this publication https://innatenonviolence.org/wp/2024/02/01/nuclear-power-is-a-regrets-industry-some-facts/
Proud of lethality
Irish people in general have been proud of the role the Irish army has played in international peacekeeping of the military variety. This has been as part of a contribution to peace in the world and has been done without fear or favour and for altruistic reasons. Those of us of a nonviolent persuasion would of course like to see support for unarmed civilian protection (UCP) and other involvements in creating and maintaining peace – including urgent work at home to prevent further climate change which is likely to cause so much conflict on a global scale in the next century.
However the Irish government has been changing tack to align the Republic much more with NATO and with EU militarisation. This has been done by a process of stealth moves so that it does not look like neutrality is being affected – but each chip at the block of neutrality wears it away; removing the Triple Lock on the deployment of Irish troops overseas is just one ingredient in the stage we are at with this. Part of this has been active and increasing engagement with NATO while not formally being a member – to the extent it won’t or doesn’t matter whether we are formally a member of not, that it makes no difference.
While public opinion is clearly in favour of neutrality, the government and Irish elite (sic) have usually been skilful in moving things in their direction; ‘Nothing to see here’ they continually opine while they know damn well they are not just gilding the lily but actively deceiving the population because they, stupidly, imagine that to be a ‘good European’ you have to be a good European militarist. This has repercussions for the Irish army and for expenditure on the military which has, thankfully and rightfully, until now been low by international standards.
But one illustration of the change that has happened appeared in that paper of establishment record, The Irish Times of 21/5/26 https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2026/05/21/it-was-embarrassing-for-them-irish-army-crew-beats-us-military-teams-at-their-own-game/ An Irish army team is proudly recorded as beating the USA in military ‘games’ in the USA which was defined as a “lethality competition”. And you know what ‘lethality’ is – killing people, and in war or military engagement that usually includes women, children and men who are not engaged in armed action, i.e. those traditionally labelled as ‘innocent’.
The Sullivan Cup after a week of military competition was won by an Irish army team and, as the IT proudly recorded, “In the end, the most “lethal” team came not from the US military but from Ireland”. This was despite the Irish team never having previously operated the M2 Bradley, a 35-tonne tracked vehicle, used for the exercise. Yes, armies are trained to be able to kill people but in a neutral state like Ireland which has not been under threat the main active role, international peacekeeping, has been the prevention of lethality. Taking part in a ‘lethality’ competition is a new and unwelcome departure and just one sign of a changed role for the Irish army, and taking part in one organised by the army of the most belligerent – and unlawfully belligerent – country on this planet is disgraceful.
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That’s me for now as summer is a-comin’ in and in a short while it will be July, aye, and holliers for many. But if you are a peace or political activist there is never a shortage of things to do at any time of the year….which is why we all need a break. Cue Christy Moore’s ‘Lisdoonvarna’ which emphasises that we all do need a break….and which I usually quote around this time of year with the best description of a holiday ever – “When summer comes around each year / They come here and we go there”. See you soon, Billy.