I hear a train a coming
We’ve just passed the 20th Anniversary of the founding of the Peace Train organisation which, with the notable exception of the Irish News (ed. & Songs of Praise!) seemed to have attracted little coverage. While sometimes unfairly dismissed as a footnote in history by those commentators more intrigued by the whiff of cordite, the Peace Train was part of that courageous tradition in Northern Ireland of groups facing down the paramilitaries bloody war of attrition.
Set up in the late 80’s after repeated attacks by the PIRA on the Belfast-Dublin line (64 in total) it’s stated aim was to force the PIRA to back away from attacking the train line. In reality it also provided an umbrella for all those opposed to political violence – and primarily that of the Provisional IRA.
The peace train group brought together trade unions, student groups, faith groups, prominent commentators and politicians of all hues – a total of 16 different political parties in Northern Ireland, the Republic and Britain were supportive.
It also attracted a broad range of free thinkers and peace activists such as Sam McAughtry from the staunchly Loyalist Tigers Bay, who became the first member of the Irish Seanad from Northern Ireland and Reverend Chris Hudson from Dublin who is now a Minister in Elmswood, Belfast in the tradition of the Non-Subscribing Presbyterian COI.
The first two chartered trains set off on the 28th of October 1989 from the Central Station in Belfast with around 2000 people on board. Its journey went without hitch and was greeted by the Lord Mayor upon its arrival in Dublin. It returned to Belfast in high spirits.
However when the train attempted to repeat its journey on the next day (29th), it was delayed by a bomb alert outside of Portadown. While many on board opted to take the replacement bus to complete their journey a number of activists and public representatives – around 70 in total – decided to stay on the train until the line was reopened. They ended up sleeping overnight in the carriages. These included Austin Currie, Eamon Gilmore, Paddy Devlin, David Norris, John de Courcy Ireland, John Cushnahan and Proinsias De Rossa.
Chris Hudson said recently “I remember Austin Currie said they would have to carry him off the train by his feet” and that the following morning “The police brought us tea and sandwiches and Ken Maginnis brought us breakfast. The world’s media arrived at the train.” The passengers eventually reached Dublin where they were met with rapturous applause from supporters.
Over the years the train ran mostly north-south on the Belfast-Dublin route but after the rail bombings at Victoria and Paddington it also ran an east-west route travelling from Belfast via Holyhead to London – the so called ‘immigrant route’. It was often delayed by bomb alerts and attacked by stone throwers. Sinn Fein activists used to attack the rallies that followed the train’s arrival in Belfast.
The Peace Train, along with the New Consensus group fed into the Peace ’93 movement in the Republic and provided a focal for those horrified and disgusted at the PIRA’s bombing of Warrington in that year.
Epic
When great events were decided, who owned
That half a rood of rock, a no-man’s land
Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims.
I heard the Duffys shouting “Damn your soul!”
And old McCabe stripped to the waist, seen
Step the plot defying blue cast-steel -
“Here is the march along these iron stones.”
That was the year of the Munich bother. Which
Was more important? I inclined
To lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin
Till Homer’s ghost came whispering to my mind.
He said: I made the Iliad from such
A local row. Gods make their own importance.
Ryan Report
The SDLP’s Carmel Hanna has a motion in the Assembly today discussing the difficult issue of the Ryan Report. The Ryan Report ( or officially the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse report ) was published in May 2009 in the Republic of Ireland
One of the more sinister issues that surfaced in the discussion surrounding the Ryan Report was the practice of moving suspect priests from one diocese to another and often across the border. Coupling this with the culture of non cooperation with the police in the 70’s and 80’s in many catholic areas in NI and it’s clear that this is one of the more concealed legacies of our recent history.
Obviously there are two aspects to addressing this. Helping the victims and prosecuting the offenders should be key priorities, all the while ensuring a situation is developed where this can never happen again.
In the south addressing this legacy is complicated by the Indemnity Deal signed between the Fianna Fail/PD government and the religious orders in 2002. Under the deal, the Government agreed to indemnify the religious orders against compensation claims in exchange for €128m in cash and property. The €128m figure is around 10% of the estimated total cost of compensation awards to the victims of abuse in religious-run state institutions. Efforts to secure prosecutions against individuals have also floundered in many cases due to the lack of cooperation and acts of conscious misdirection from the Catholic hierarchy.
However in the North (if I understand this correctly) Section 5(1) of the Criminal Law Act (1967) provides for a criminal offence of failing to disclose an arrestable offence to the police.
Am I right in that?
Arthur Young gives his thoughts on Belfast in 1776
Belfast is a very well built town of brick, they having no stone quarry in the neighbourhood. The streets are broad and straight, and the inhabitants, amounting to about fifteen thousand, make it appear lively and busy. The public buildings are not numerous nor very striking, but over the exchange Lord Donegal is building an assembly room, sixty feet long by thirty broad, and twenty-four high; a very elegant room. A card-room adjoining, thirty by twenty-two, and twenty-two high; a tea-room of the same size. His lordship is also building a new church, which is one of the lightest and most pleasing I have anywhere seen: it is seventy-four by fifty-four, and thirty high to the cornice, the aisles separated by a double row of columns; nothing can be lighter or more pleasing. The town belongs entirely to his lordship. Rent of it £2,000 a year. His estate extends from Drumbridge, near Lisburn, to Larne, twenty miles in a right line, p. 53and is ten broad. His royalties are great, containing the whole of Loch Neagh, which is, I suppose, the greatest of any subject in Europe. His eel fishery at Tome, and Port New, on the river Ban, lets for £500 a year; and all the fisheries are his to the leap at Coleraine. The estate is supposed to be £31,000 a year, the greatest at present in Ireland. Inishowen, in Donegal, is his, and is £11,000 of it. In Antrim, Lord Antrim’s is the most extensive property, being four baronies, and one hundred and seventy-three thousand acres. The rent £8,000 a year, but re-let for £64,000 a year, by tenants that have perpetuities, perhaps the cruellest instance in the world of carelessness for the interests of posterity. The present lord’s father granted those leases.
I was informed that Mr. Isaac, near Belfast, had four acres, Irish measure, of strong clay land not broken up for many years, which being amply manured with lime rubbish and sea shells, and fallowed, was sown with wheat, and yielded £87 9s. at 9s. to 12s. per cwt. Also that Mr. Whitley, of Ballinderry, near Lisburn, a tenant of Lord Hertford’s, has rarely any wheat that does not yield him £18 an acre. The tillage of the neighbourhood for ten miles round is doubled in a few years. Shall export one thousand tons of corn this year from Belfast, most of it to the West Indies, particularly oats.
Injured on that day
Wave Trauma centre recently launched a new book called Injured on that Day, which tells the story on some of those who survived the Troubles but have been largely unheard in our post conflict society. NvTv made a programme at the book launch and it’s well worth a watch
Carlisle Circus is still empty
City unionists vote to put back ‘Roaring’ Hugh statue
By Phelim McAleer
UNIONISTS on Belfast City Council have voted to re-erect the statue of the Rev “Roaring” Hugh Hanna despite reservations of the nearby Presbyterian church he helped build.
06/12/95
The council voted on Monday to replace the statue – previously sited in Carlisle Circus before being damaged by an IRA bomb in 1970 – although SDLP, Sinn Fein and Alliance members voted against. The damaged 10ft statue has been restored by the council. During the meeting, councillors were shown copies of a letter from the kirk session of Duncairn and St Enoch’s Presbyterian church, which praised “any initiatives being taken to restore normality throughout our city and province”. But the session members of the church which Hanna helped found in 1872 questioned whether now was the right time for the move. “In the current fluid and highly sensitive political climate, not least in the area in question, we would still have some reservations from the security point of view in that the restoration of the statue might provoke a hostile reaction,” they said. Sinn Fein councillor Paddy McManus described Hanna as someone who fostered sectarian hatred and violence in Belfast. He proposed the council should not proceed with the re-establishment and at a future date should consider marking the spot with a statue of someone “more representative of the people of Belfast.” The amendment was defeated. DUP councillor Sammy Wilson described Sinn Fein’s opposition to the proposal as “attempted ethnic and cultural genocide”. Proposing the motion Ulster Unionist Nelson McCausland denied that “Roaring” Hugh, so called because of his loud voice, was sectarian. He said Hanna had set up schools for children from all religions in Belfast. “The people who benefited from his educational efforts were both Protestant and Roman Catholic,” he said. Mr McCausland said the statue could be returned to its original site by next summer. * Earlier this year, an attempt by an artist to erect a peace dove on the plinth failed after it was torn down by loyalists.
