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TPQ
Jim Duffy ✍ I used to work as a tourist guide. 


We had a ghost - a monk with a badly cut tonsure. My colleague and I never saw him, but we repeatedly had the first tourist arriving in (and there is only one way in, past us) coming back and asking "who is the old monk with the cut on his head at the end of the slype?"
 
The first two times my colleague and I panicked, thinking that we had accidentally locked someone in the previous night, and rushed down there to find there was nobody there - and there is only one way in and out.

It always happened on Tuesday mornings around 10am. I took down details of the tourists in case it was some hoax being perpetrated, with a hotel telling tourists to claim they saw a ghost. The tourists were unrelated, staying in different locations, and often were in the country at different times. They all described him identically.
 
My work colleague and I never saw him but we noticed that on Tuesday morning the place would be unearthly cold. It was in the middle of a heat wave but we would have to put on our jackets and gloves. Then the cold would suddenly disappear.
 
The place was cold anyway. We had to wear winter clothes working there, then change to summer clothes to go outside to get something to eat. But this man, about five foot three, with a tonsure and a cut on it, was continually seen by tourists, always in the one spot where a blocked up door was. He'd be looking at the posters explaining the history of the building.

I was fascinated that tourists from the US, Canada, the UK, all across Europe and Asia all saw the man. It was always the first tourist on Tuesday morning who saw him. They all described the same man, and all thought he was a visitor. As I said there was only one entrance. We were sitting there. We knew for a fact the tourist who saw him was the first person in.
 
We presumed he was a monk who lived and died there and probably was buried there. The two of us there weren't unnerved by him. We never saw him ourselves and presumed he was just someone who lived there and kept coming back to visit a place. The spot he was seen standing in was a blocked up corridors. Monks had been buried a few feet away. The old abbey was demolished centuries ago but the chapter house survived in the middle of industrial buildings and was used as a grain silo. A hole had been cut in the roof to pour in the grain. The hole has since been concreted over.

The chapter house features in Irish history. It was the place where the Lord Deputy and privy council met, and into which Silken Thomas stormed to challenge the Lord Deputy when he wrongly thought his father, Gearóig Óg FitzGerald had been executed by Henry VIII. My work colleague and I used to say "can we not have the ghost of Silken Thomas or a Lord Deputy, rather than just an unknown small monk with a badly cut tonsure?"

⏩ Jim Duffy is a writer-historian.

Ghostly

Anthony McIntyre ⚽There was little appetite for this final home match of the season.


A clash, with nothing depending on the outcome - Drogheda will still have to win the play off against UCD in Tallaght Stadium this Saturday to stay in top flight soccer - we turned up nonetheless. We didn't take the car this time, or Jay, which allowed Paddy to have a few drinks. First stop, Ollies at the bottom of the steps just short of the main Dublin Road. A shot of Paddy's for me and the black stuff for him got us in the mood to make the walk across the Boyne and onto the next watering hole, the Market Bar. More Guinness for Paddy and a Jameson for me made the bar stools that little bit harder to get out of. As we sipped or slurped the clock hands crept ever slowly up to kick-off time. By the point we stepped outside the Market warmth the ref's whistle had launched proceedings. Drogs v Galway in a dead rubber fixture just didn't have the same pull as the pub but we persevered,

Paddy left his phone in the pub. I rang it hoping it was not irretrievable. The bar staff had it safely tucked away behind the bar. I suggested to Paddy that we return and grab it, but he wasn't fussed, making the very wise suggestion that it would give us an excuse to take up where we left off on our way home. We walked into the ground and despite it being packed we managed to get two seats next to each other.

Then the hip flask came out. For this occasion I had filled it with Famous Grouse, a Scotch blend not of the preferred peated variety. We shared it. Next time we don't take the car, I'll fill two flasks.

The match was about twenty minutes in when we took our seats, with the score at 0-0. We were less interested in the outcome than we were in the final appearance for the club of Ryan Brennan who would be hanging up his boots for the last time. By sheer chance I bumped into his partner, Stephanie, and their daughter, there to cheer their beloved on for one last game. A late substitute, his entry to the fray was met with a standing ovation. He was always a wily player who led from the front while reading the game with the eye of accumulated wisdom. 


Drogs fans will always remember him fondly for captaining the side to victory in the FAI Cup final two seasons ago. Then it seemed that a corner had been turned. Six days after the Aviva victory over Derry we gathered at Tallaght to watch the Drogs, again led by Ryan Brennan, demolish Bray Wanderers to keep their place in the Premier Division. Now, the worm has turned and the sudden death battle for survival has to be fought again, this time without the wind of an FAI cup at Drogs backs.

Galway travelled to Louth safe in the knowledge that they would play Premiership soccer in 2027. Five points clear of their opponents going into the game, they knew they could not be caught. They had opened up their campaign against Drogheda back in February but suffered a defeat on their own turf. Another defeat in the their final game of the season reduced the gap to two points but it might as well have been a hundred. The maths simply made it all but impossible for the Claret and Blue. A big win over the Tribesmen had to be complemented by a huge defeat of Waterford by Shelbourne. Neither happened and the play-off grimly beckons.

The Drogs played well in a game where they didn't need to play at all. If only they would play well in the games where they need to they would not be in the precarious position of second from bottom, Sligo the only side with a worse record and destined for the drop. Despite our late arrival we were fortunate enough to see a brilliant long range strike from Brandon Kavanagh in the 35th minute. That lead was doubled in the second half with a fine lob of the keeper by Mark Doyle who had provided Kavanagh's assist.

It was nice to see the return of Frantz Pierrot to Sullivan and Lambe, only this time turning out for a different tribe. It was even nicer to see his headed effort saved by Fynn Talley.

Game over, I walked across the aisle to bid goodbye to Stephanie and her daughter. As good fortune would have it Ryan came across the pitch to see them both. We shook hands and I wished him well. While he didn't always start in this his final season, when he did his passion and leadership on the field always meant that the Claret and Blue would not be the whipping boy for other teams looking an easy three points. 


We walked home from the game, calling into the Market for a swifter and to collect Paddy's phone. He stayed consistent as he did the entire evening, apart from the hip flask, whereas I made yet another swerve, on this occasion opting for Jack Daniels.

Our last call of the night was to my local, The Pheasant. This time it was Jim Beam while Paddy stayed in his lane. We parted company, each of us upright and steady on our feet. We knew we would see each other shortly for a clash we had hoped would never materialise: this Saturday's game against UCD. We'll give the juice a miss this time, building up a thirst for the following day's cup final clash between Derry and a resurgent Waterford. That's an all day session, one we perform routinely every year. If there is a hangover at the weekend it will arrive on Sunday morning courtesy of Drogheda being relegated. I don't get hangovers, so here's hoping it is a tradition that continues. 

⏩Follow on Bluesky.

Drogs ⚽ Galway ⚽ Dead Rubber

Caoimhin O’Muraile ☭ On Friday 30th October a Judge at the Special Criminal Court in Dublin jailed for between eight and ten years three racist activists styling themselves the ‘Irish Defence Army’. 

For the record this group of miscreants are nothing to do with the 26 County Defence Forces in any way, shape or form. The Irish Defence Army is a violent extremist group that broke away from the very misleadingly called online network calling itself the ‘Irish Citizen Army’. This name for the online group is no coincidence, naming the group after the original Irish Citizen Army formed during the 1913/14 Dublin Lockout as a worker’s defence force which later, under the command of James Connolly, took part in the 1916 Easter Rising. 

The ICA of days gone by and James Connolly were an antithesis to everything this group of far-right activists represent, no doubt funded by the business fraternity or elements within. The Irish Citizen Army back in the early 20th century was Marxist led and staffed by trade unionists and James Connolly who was, judging by his writings and practices, anti-racist, and opposed sectarianism and anti-Semitism. While he was in the USA Connolly remonstrated with the descendants of George Washington over that family’s treatment of black people and their support for chattel slavery while talking of freedom in the next sentence. He also argued with Irish migrants over their verbal and physical attacks on Chinese and Italian workers, arguing the host workers had issued the same assaults, threats, and insults to Irish immigrants when they arrived claiming the Irish were ‘taking American jobs.’ Ring any bells? The use of the name Irish Citizen Army and therefore indirectly invoking the name of James Connolly is no coincidence and is no doubt the brain child of somebody with a knowledge of Irish history which probably rules out the foot soldiers. If Connolly was around today, he would undoubtedly oppose such neo-fascist organisations as these.

The three jailed racists, Garrett Pollock, Darren Gorman, and Karolis Peckauskas were planning to bomb a Mosque in Galway. The sentencing Judge maintained the men did not represent the majority of Irish people. On this point she was correct but the unsavoury question must be asked how much support do these racist groups have in the Twenty-Six-Counties? Looking at some responses on so-called social media that support appears not as isolated as once thought. Of the jailed men somebody called Darryl Millar claimed they are ‘3 legends’ while Neil Bagani said; ‘Can’t get that song “god save Ireland said our heroes” out of my head all day’. I doubt very much those who the song is about, William Allen, Michael Larkin, and Michael O’Brien hanged in Manchester 1867 and became known as the ‘Manchester Martyrs’ would have anything in common with people like Neil Bagani! Another fool, Gavin Linden, added:

Don’t know who the judge was speaking for when she described them as “embarrassing Ireland”. Certainly was not speaking for me nor anyone I know personally or familiarly. 

These are just a few of the many messages of ignorant support for the would-be bombers and I would hazard a guess that none of these ‘would-be-heroes’, bombing people who have never done them any harm, would lift a finger to remove the British presence in the Six-Counties.

Passing sentence on Friday 30th October at the Special Criminal Court Justice Caroline Biggs stated; ‘modern Ireland is a multicultural and diverse country’ adding these men’s ‘actions bring shame on it’. Obviously, our social media warriors do not share the Judges opinions of the sentenced men’s actions if as one stated they are ‘3 legends’ or should that perhaps be 3 leg ends? Nevertheless anti-fascists cannot ignore the fact that cowards they may be, hiding behind their little mobile phone and Facebook, the numbers of respondents on social media supporting such acts are increasing. Or perhaps being politically illiterate these modern wannabe SA men (Hitler’s thugs during the 1920s) have not worked out how this far-right pecking order works. Firstly those at the very top do not get their hands dirty, that is what the men sentenced are for. The top people in these organisations, and those in the Twenty-Six-Counties are very much the junior partners in the broader scheme of things, remain faceless until such time as a real push for power is within their grasp. They are very often financed by medium to large business concerns who see fascism as their insurance against socialism and threats to their wealth, usually obtained through the principle of exploitation. 

In the meantime populist politicians like Herman Kelly, Malachy Steenson, and Gavin Pepper fill the void but will have no place in any future far-right administration, they too are mere tools of the times. The foot soldiers having served their purpose are then arrested and, just like now, put in prison only for longer. The far-right will use them to instigate trouble, get their candidates elected, then when they continue to cause street problems because nobody has told them not to do it anymore it’s thanks a million and ten years. Malachy Steenson, once considered by some on the left-wing of republicanism now viewed on the far-right, would probably have his leftwards political past evaluated and denied any responsible position in the future neo-fascist regime. 

We are, however, a long way from this scenario and, hopefully, will never live under a right wing ‘terroristic’ regime. For the men sentenced on Friday I would advise they read how Hitler in the Third Reich used foot soldiers just like themselves, a bit lacking when it comes to politics, then claiming ‘only he could stop the violence on the streets,’ (Marine Le Pen is presently claiming in France) or so he told the electorate, was voted into government and threw such street troublemakers into a concentration camp which make any prison on the island of Ireland (now Long Kesh is closed) a picnic!

Any protests against the far-right are dealt with by the Gardai much more aggressively than racist groups protesting against migrants. This is always the case, and always has been, simply because the neo-fascists and racists are no threat to capitalism. The anti-fascists tend to be also anti-capitalists, though not exclusively, and the state view them as a serious threat to the ‘economic stability’ of the ruling-classes. 

Fascism, orthodox or the updated neo-fascism, is an extension of capitalism in crisis. For that reason the bourgeoisie need this form of ‘the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital’ as their defence of class positions against the communists and socialists. 

The media seldom report the times anti-fascists reportedly kicked the likes of neo-Nazi Justin Barret and his cohorts off the streets but they do show the increase in support for racists albeit in a guarded, for now, manner. Of all the isms capitalism fears only one, and that is true communism. Fascism might not be its preferred form of capitalism but if push came to shove, as was the case in Germany and Italy during the 1920s and 30s, the bourgeoisie would lean heavily on this ideology. The time is not right for the likes of the men thrown into jail which is why they were given long prison sentences, their thuggery is not yet needed. Hopefully they will catch themselves on before it’s too late.

Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent Socialist Republican and Marxist.

Is Racist Extremism On The Rise In The 26 Counties?

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Two Thousand One Hundred And Forty Four

 

A Morning Thought @ 3315

Andrew Quinn ☭ Writing in Red Network.

The late great revolutionary trade unionist James Connolly said it best: “As Long as I live I will have no rest, only fighting to destroy the forces that produce poverty”.


Many of us working class people now find ourselves in that very same position as the ongoing cost of living crisis drives up inflation across the board affecting all the everyday workers who keep this country going day in and day out.

This brings me to the news of the upcoming November 12th strike Day across the public sector on account of government and unions failing to come to terms on a real public sector pay increase.

Both the government and our union leaders have been left with egg on their faces for different reasons.

The Government as per usual have shown their true colours not even bringing a credible offer to the table for the unions to ballot their members on. The offer of 1.75% this year when inflation is at 4.1% is a joke.

The same goes for the 2.5% a year for next year and the year after. The governments offer turns out to be a pay cut and they want “productivity” in return?

Yet the government claim its the unions' fault and in turn unions are blaming the government in a cat and mouse game.

The truth is both sides are to blame after two weeks of fruitless talks with no end in sight to this dispute. Unions were wrong to call off the follow up stoppage on October 21st after the first Oct 14th stoppage. They pulled pickets prematurely.

The Oct 14th strike showed great community sprit across the country, however their was a feeling of disappointment from people like myself out on picket lines that union communication needed to be massively improved.

Lack of organising was evident on the 14th. Issues such as not enough union banners, placards and lack of reps on some picket lines and workers not knowing where to go and for how long.

Then came the unions collective mistake off calling the October 21st strike to enter talks when a deal wasn’t even on the table!

Rule number one of negotiations is have something to bargain with and this wasn’t the case at all, and that left a sour taste in workers mouths including mine as many workers were not being kept informed on talks between the unions and government officials.

Merely just email and WhatsApp messages plus whispering information giving little to nothing away and being very vague on how talks were progressing - this only frustrated workers even further and rightly so.

Which begs the question should workers be in the negotiations room?

The answer is yes as the workers are the bread and butter of this country. We are all the means of production and distribution in our workplaces and the unions need to do better.

I’m in the Red Network because the Red Network’s message is simple: put workers in the driving seat of a planned economy. The same needs to happen in our unions. Put the grassroots in control and we’d have fighting unions.

It starts with educating workers on the topics that affect them and holding workshops that target these type of closed door negotiations. Instead of union bureaucrats selling out members to the government we need open democratic discussion at every stage.

Many workers feel let down and misinformed and that’s unacceptable. We will enthusiastically build the November 12th strike. But the power to pull that picket is still in the hands of our leaders. not the members. It would be a huge mistake if they cancelled this strike too.

As we’ve seen across other EU countries such as France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium Italy and Netherlands workers are in the same boat as us they are protesting all throughout November for the same reasons we are in Ireland which is to fight back against an anti-worker government.

Either union officials step up or step aside and put workers in the driving seat, grassroots workers that will hold the government accountable for their mismanagement of the public sector pay deals.

Let’s get ready for the strike on November 12th. The best steps to take are the following ahead of strike.

Keep up the pressure on your union reps to make sure their doing everything in their power to achieve the best deal for workers. Email HQ, get onto your reps, let them hear us loud and clear.

Stay informed, opt in to receive all union information via emails, Whatsapp group chats, email newsletters, as well as following all union based social media outlets.

Stay mobilised in your workplaces, elect a strike committee, discuss the deal, stick together as there is always strength in numbers.

Make sure your adhering to your work to rule protocols as they can be upgraded at any time.

We all collectively need to learn from past mistakes do better in the present in order to have the future we all need and deserve not only for ourselves but for future generations to come. See you on the picket lines!

⏩Andrew Quinn is a public sector worker and Red Network activist.

How Do We Get Consistently Fighting Unions?

Heartlands Tribune ☭  Written by Paul Knaggs

“Expand or Die”: Biden’s 1997 Plan to Save NATO And The Consequences

The Soviet Union collapsed, and NATO’s job was done. Instead, the alliance went looking for customers, and Joe Biden read out the prospectus in 1997.

I served in the British Army during the Cold War, in a regiment whose entire purpose rested on the darkest calculation of that age: that the final line against nuclear escalation was the absolute certainty of what would follow it. Mutually assured destruction. MAD. A terrible doctrine, but one designed to prevent an even more terrible reality. Our purpose was never to win a nuclear war. It was to ensure nobody dared start one.

We trained for a war that must never happen. And it didn’t.

The Warsaw Pact dissolved. The Soviet Union ceased to exist. The Third Shock Army, which we had spent our working lives preparing to confront, folded up and went home. And when the Cold War was over, our regiment was disbanded. Its job was done.

There is something in that transition which our political and military institutions seem to have forgotten: when the threat that justifies an institution’s existence disappears, its continued existence ought to be questioned.

Continue @ Heartlands.

We Won The Cold War 🪶 We Were Never Allowed To Win The Peace

Louth For Ever ★ writing in Medium on  226-November-2026.

“Sinn Féin’s bottom line is that it has no bottom line.” – Tommy McKearney

Photo by Lukas Souza on Unsplash

The Position

Let’s start with the history, because it’s so often recounted in reverse. Sinn Féin is not a petitioner at a gate that two older parties have long barred to it. Rather, Sinn Féin is the house those parties departed. Arthur Griffith established the movement in 1905, absorbing into it the National Council he had headed since 1903, and in time both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil would break away from Sinn Féin, not the other way around. Fine Gael did not come into being until 1933, when it was created from the fusion of three bodies: Cumann na nGaedheal, the party pro-Treaty members organised in April 1923, as the civil war that the Treaty had opened in January 1922 was ending; the Centre Party; and the Blueshirts. Fianna Fáil was not founded until 1926, when Éamon de Valera, having been defeated at the Sinn Féin ard fheis on whether to enter the Dáil, stepped down as president of the movement and took most of its membership with him. If you put aside the century of civil war mythology so carefully maintained, until recent years, by both successor parties, what is left is not an old regime confronted by a new challenger. It is one movement, and two exits from it, exits that have shaped this nation of ours for over a hundred years even as each, in turn, claims to embody the tradition and casts the movement it abandoned as the deviation.

The family tree is not tidy. The remnant that retained the Sinn Féin name after 1926 divided again in 1970, and today’s party descends from that second division rather than from an unbroken line back to Griffith. Yet the actual movement of events runs opposite to the usual assumption. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil departed from Sinn Féin in order to construct an order, and since then they have ruled, one after the other and together, on the basis of having been the ones to leave. I make no apology for wanting this pattern to be over. I’m fucking sick of it. Sin é.

This piece is about how poorly Sinn Féin, in its present guise, is prepared to bring that order to an end. It is written by someone who still wants them to do exactly that.

What Meta Admitted

Begin with São Paulo, and with a detail that should shame a trillion dollar firm far more than it apparently does. On 16th October, Reuters said that Meta’s own employees, in internal messages examined by Folha de S.Paulo, admitted President Lula’s Instagram accounts were being blocked by campaign time restrictions even as the platform was surfacing his rival’s profile. Then, on 15th October, a Brazilian electoral court justice had to order Meta to cease the unjustified suppression of either candidate’s reach. A separate later ruling reinforces the point: after Lula’s campaign showed the company had “doctored algorithms to favor Bolsonaro in search results,” the same court issued an injunction against Meta. Meta rejected both accusations, though it conceded unspecified “technical issues.”

Nor did the problem end after Lula’s side pushed back. According to TikTok’s own published recommendation data, during the runoff it gave Flávio, Bolsonaro’s son and opponent, five recommendations to Lula’s two, by which time Lula’s digital operation was already at full speed. That skew was never fixed. He still prevailed with it in place.

Keep that in mind before reading any version of this as Lula “beat the algorithm,” remember this: he did not. No one has. He won despite it. Serbia offers the same lesson from the same week. Aleksandar Vučić stepped down as president specifically so he could run for prime minister, a workaround for the term limits that had finally caught up with him after more than ten years in power; even so, a student led list defeated his party for the parliament he needed. Within 48 hours, two entrenched political machines were beaten, not because the platforms favoured them, but for reasons entirely apart from that.

The Levee

The mobilisation did not begin with a deputy’s mobile phone. On the night Lula slipped behind in the opening round, students in Niterói were already out on the streets, drawing on their own tradition of marching against Bolsonaro’s university cuts in 2019. Only later did the machinery arrive. It amplified something that was already there.

Five days afterwards, Congressman André Janones opened a WhatsApp channel called Lula’s Army. By election day, it had 10.8 million followers and was delivering daily, unusually precise tasks: push a video hard, drive a hashtag into circulation, “no food before the mission.” Rather than distancing himself from the metaphor, Lula embraced it, naming Janones in his victory speech as the operation’s commander, a group that built its image on real soldiers, yet was outdone in the language of soldiering by a WhatsApp channel. The day before Flávio’s Avenida Paulista rally, that same effort had backers wearing the national jersey, taking back a shirt the far right had claimed as its own.

Bruno Dias, a commentator who observed from within São Paulo, captured the logic in a line worth retaining: “to be everywhere, to act redundantly, to be unbannable.” WhatsApp is, awkwardly enough, also a Meta product. No one appeared bothered by the contradiction. The aim was never to please Meta. It was to create something that would not require it.

Two scholars examining the outcome caution against treating it as simply a platform tale. Denilde Holzhacker does credit the shift, but says the key change was tying the digital effort to on-the-ground organisation. For Mayra Goulart, it was the material world, not the phone, that reduced abstention and persuaded the undecided. Lula’s vote climbed from sixty million in 2022 to sixty four million this year, first a turnout story, and only then a persuasion one. Both are also clear that no one can say how many votes, if any, the WhatsApp operation actually shifted. That is worth holding onto before turning this into a recipe instead of one specific three weeks that happened to succeed.

The Reframe

Here is the lesson, and here is what it is not.

It is not a matter of “out amplify the right online.” The second section above, “What Meta Admitted”, makes clear that the contest is fixed at the infrastructure level, not merely at the level of content, and no one can win a match when the referee is on the other team’s payroll. Lula constructed a second pitch alongside the first, then carried out the slower task of linking it to people.

The part that can be carried over is more limited: create distribution that does not need any platform’s approval to operate. Duplicate. Peer-to-peer. Built to be impossible to ban, because it was never asking for permission in the first place, functioning as a supplement to organising, not a replacement for it. That is an organisational issue rather than a matter of message discipline, and by itself it falls far short.

Nor is this confined to one place; it is being sought elsewhere by people who have even stronger grounds for confidence. In Spain, Pedro Sánchez has asked for Janones’ help directly in his own re-election campaign. In France, opponents of Marine Le Pen are copying what is already being referred to as “Janonisme.” No one spreading this is treating it as an oddity. They are treating it as a technique.

The Coalition Problem Comes First

Here I have to be precise about which Sinn Féin I mean, because the lesson doesn’t apply evenly.

26 county Sinn Féin runs as a coalition-management operation. It holds together voters who want opposite things on housing and migration by never quite specifying what it collectively believes, because any specific answer costs something with one half or the other. Simon McGarr named the condition precisely: an “impossible coalition,” split close to evenly on whether the state’s institutions are worth preserving or burning down.

This week supplied the clearest instance yet, and it isn’t new, it’s a pattern repeating. Justice spokesperson Matt Carthy TD from Cavan & Monaghan launched Valuing Irish Citizenship, raising the residency requirement from five to eight years and adding civics and language tests, substantially matching the government’s own reform and converging with the direction Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Aontú and Independent Ireland already hold, along with other right-wingers across Europe. Asked if fewer people would be granted citizenship, Carthy said it wasn’t about “crude numbers”, an evasion almost beside the point next to what he’d already said at the National Ploughing Championships: Sinn Féin “probably wasn’t vocal enough” about the asylum system, and the party’s position should sit “where the majority of Irish people are.” That is a party locating the loudest signal and moving to stand beside it, as strategy, in his own words, and it is the same admission, in substance, that other voices on the left have been making about the party for months, Paul Murphy TD of People Before Profit said in May that Sinn Féin had “drifted to the right,” and Social Democrats TDs said they’d been “taken aback” by the party’s abstention on a reproductive rights bill the same month. This is not a single bad week. It’s a pattern other people on the left have already named.

The same week, asked why he’d deleted an earlier post attacking the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, Carthy confirmed he’d pulled it “fairly quickly” because of the “pile on” the centre was getting, while keeping his call for a funding review of organisations like it. The post goes. The position stays. The explanation offered is the backlash, not the argument.

6 county Sinn Féin is not running that problem. Three weeks before any of this, O’Neill and McDonald stood together at Garvaghy Road and held a line that cost them something real: both were later called in for PSNI interviews under caution, alongside other party figures including PBP’s Gerry Carroll MLA for west Belfast. That isn’t a movement incapable of a bottom line. The honest contrast isn’t that the north has principle and the south doesn’t, it’s that in the north, on an anti-sectarian question, the loudest signal and the party’s century old position point the same way, so holding the line costs something without forcing a choice between two things its own base wants. In the south, on migration, there is no settled position for the signal to answer to. Carthy isn’t failing to hold a line Sinn Féin has. He’s following a signal toward a line it never drew.

Even that contrast isn’t as clean as it looks. What bends, even at Garvaghy Road, isn’t whether O’Neill names something as wrong, it’s who she’s willing to name for it, the same naming capacity gradient that softens into agentless sentences the higher the cost of the name. The bottom line holds on position and loosens on attribution, north. South, it doesn’t hold on position at all.

Build a Janones style machine for 26 county Sinn Féin as it stands, and you aren’t amplifying a position. You’re amplifying whichever position tested best that week.

What’s Actually Being Asked

There are two questions here, and history answers only one of them unequivocally. The lineage is not pristine, I acknowledged that at the outset: because of the 1970 split, the current party comes from one faction within a faction, not from an unbroken chain reaching back to Griffith. Still, that is very different from what Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael did. Each of those parties departed and then created something else under a fresh label. In the end, the Officials, the wing of the 1970 split that did not become today’s Sinn Féin, did the same: they dropped the lineage entirely by changing their name and became the Workers’ Party. Today’s Sinn Féin never took that route. It retained the name and continued to stand as Sinn Féin through every split dating back to Griffith. That is the real point, and it is narrower than words like “unbroken” or “settled” may imply: not the sole successor, but the one that never walked away and never rebranded itself. Whatever the party does this week does not alter that.

The second issue is about conduct, and on that score the answer has just emerged in the least encouraging way. Choose a line. Not the one a pollster would call safest. Work out what the party believes a renter is entitled to in relation to a homeowner, what it thinks of a system that is failing people on all sides of the migration debate, and then accept that taking such a stance will cost something with someone. Carthy made that clear this week. He directed it at Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Aontú and Independent Ireland, and described it as the majority view rather than his own.

I should add the detail I am not going to omit, because it is the most important part. In a Sunday Independent/Ireland Thinks poll of 1,181 voters carried out the day after the launch (30th October), Sinn Féin was up two points to 21, putting it ahead of the rest of the field. Aontú climbed to 9, which is its highest figure in this series. Independent Ireland moved up two to 7. Fianna Fáil alone took the hit, falling two to 16. Even allowing for the 2.9 margin of error, the trend is plain and real: that entire bloc shifting right on migration advanced in the same week Sinn Féin aligned itself with it.

I want to be explicit about what that means for me, because I am not prepared to let a poll decide the matter. Sinn Féin has once again been nudged rightward on immigration, this time by a cue it treated as if it were a mandate, and I cannot endorse that, whatever the numbers say this week or next. If a party rises in the polls by doing the wrong thing, that does not justify the thing itself. It explains why the thing continues. McKearney’s point was never simply that failure had been identified. It was that a strategy can work on its own terms, and precisely for that reason it endures; that is why it has to be named plainly, not excused because of the outcome.

Brazil did not show that making a position explicit is the key. What it showed is that being explicit in opposition to the noisiest signal, even when it carries a cost, and having something to organise around, does work, and that the approach is portable enough that Madrid and Paris are already requesting it by name. Garvaghy Road showed that Sinn Féin can do exactly that when the signal and the principle point in the same direction. This week, however, the signal was different, there was no principle beneath it, and the poll told the party that none of that mattered.

The embryo is real. It was there in 1905, and its claim on the tradition is the stronger one. But an embryo is not a guarantee. A movement can have the better claim on its own history, proof it can hold a line, a method already carrying its name abroad, and still spend a week discovering none of it costs the party anything, and take the easy road of least resistance regardless.

⏩Louth For Ever writes on Irish politics and constitutional change. Follow for analysis of Ireland’s democratic future as it’s constructed by those actually engaged in the work.

Unbannable 🪶 What Lula’s Levee En Masse Can, And Cannot, Teach Sinn Féin

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Two Thousand One Hundred And Forty Three

 

Pastords @ 69

 

A Morning Thought @ 3314

Gary Robertson ⚽ Sunday evening, as I do each and every night, I video called my son and his mother to have a little chat and wish them both a good night.
 
During our conversation my son pipped up “Da are you ok? You look pissed off” I told him I was fine and not to worry about me. It was at this moment his mother hit the nail right
on the head. “Celtic got beat again didn’t they?” I nodded and the veil was lifted, all was clear and in unison they said “sorry”.
 
I told them it was fine. I lied, it’s Monday morning and I feel like faeces.
 
I rather hoped the “who blinked first” battle in Scottish League one would take centre stage in this column however the footballing Gods had ideas of their own. Before I spiral further into the pit of despair that is Martin O’Neill's Celtic let’s have a quick reminder of what’s happened this weekend in Scottish football.
 
For the four remaining teams in the league cup this was semi finals time.
 
First up at 5-30 on Saturday night Rangers faced Aberdeen in their tie. There was, as always some controversy, some controversial decisions, a tackle that on any other night would have almost certainly resulted in a red card somehow seen differently by Ref Ryan Lee and his VAR team.
 
I’d love to hear the audio of that conversation, if there even was one and how they concluded that studs in the loin wasn’t worthy of even a yellow. This wasn’t a game of quality. I think even the most ardent of Rangers fans (Steve R I’m looking at you) would admit this was far from a classic. Ultimately though a winner had to be found and that winner came from the boot of the ever reliable Naderi for Rangers in the 83rd minute. Not a game for the purist but well done Rangers for grinding out a result in this one and securing your place in the final.
 
Aberdeen did all they could, they battled but came up short. However this performance was one of their best this season and here’s hoping they can use this as a springboard and give them confidence to go onward and upward throughout the rest of the season.
 
So to League One. Hamilton and Raith Rovers met during the week and rather predictably the match finished a 1-1 draw. Neither team willing to give an inch in this title race so Saturday's fixtures for both indicated a victory apiece. Hamilton's opponents Montrose had other ideas.
 
While title rivals Ross County took care of East Kilbride away, Hamilton faced Montrose at home.
Bookmakers' odds suggested this would be a formality and when Hamilton finally took the lead in the second minute of stoppage time in the first half it looked like the floodgates would open and a plethora of goals in the second half looked likely.
 
This is football, soccer, though and nothing is guaranteed.
 
Hamilton pushed for a second, Montrose drove forward seeking an equaliser and their prayers were answered as the clock ticked past the 80th minute and with eitght left Freeman fired home to send the Montrose support into ecstasy. A celebration reminiscent of a victory and rightly so. New Douglas Park is not an easy place from which to take points and the long trip home would be all the more enjoyable.
 
Other results of note: East Fife recorded only their second victory of the season with a comfortable 2-0 victory over Queen of the South.
 
An away victory for bottom side Cove Rangers over Airdrie by a single goal to nil also giving them their second win of the season. With a game in hand and a minus three goal difference to make up it’s getting tight at the bottom too.
 
League Two and high flying Stranraer were held to a 0-0 draw by second placed Clyde. Only goal difference separates the two and like League One it’s a fascinating game of cat and mouse developing this season.
 
Where there is pleasure there is often pain and South West Scotland side Annan are now 3 points adrift at the bottom of the table having lost out in a thrilling 5 goal match at Spartans. The final score of 3-2 somewhat sums up the luck they're having right now and there’s still a long way to go. Whilst it’s not a comfortable position for the Annandale men to be in I’m sticking my neck out here and going to state confidently they’ll remain in League Two next season. They aren’t a bad side and I’m sure they’ll drag themselves up the league and while not champions I’m sure they’ll find their happy place in mid table come May.
 
Sunday
 
The Edinburgh Derby and the tie of the round in the League Cup.
 
Hearts must have felt confident walking into this one after having pummelled city rivals Hibs by 3 goals to 1 back in September at Easter Road and when Braga scored in the fourth minute the script looked already written. Derek McInnes' Rangers to face Derek McInnes' old team Hearts in the final.
As the old saying goes games aren’t won on paper and when Boyle equalised in the 19th minute the pedestal Hearts had made for themselves began to wobble. Nothing to choose between the two belied Hibs recent league form, which sees them rooted firmly at the bottom of the SPL. Then when you need a hero a hero appears this time however in green and white, step forward Jamie McGrath who fired Hibs into the lead to score what was to be the deciding goal of the game.
 
Hibs meet Rangers in the final to be played on Sunday December 13th.
 
I’ll keep readers posted and give viewing info when I have it.
 
While we’re on the subject of watching TV anyone looking for free legal streaming apps for movies and TV shows, 100% legal and legit feel free to DM me on Bluesky. I would never however advise anyone to use the illegal apps in these stores to watch sports. Piracy is an awful crime that costs companies like multi multi billionaire Sky thousands if not millions every year. I’d absolutely never ever tell you there’s apps in these stores that allow you to watch free sports. If I did I’d be promoting something you’d absolutely never catch me doing. No!! Pay the hundreds of euros or pounds monthly to Sky, be a good citizen and never ever pirate anything.
 
Talking of crime, another took place at Falkirk. Where Celtic turned up to collect their wages, gift the home side three points and leave the fans who’d made the trip up the M9 wishing they’d stayed in bed.
It was awful, I know I’m beginning to sound repetitive at this point but Celtic were just very very poor. Granted Falkirk's Ex Celtic keeper Bain had the game of his life and pulled off some magnificent saves but then you’re a professional football player, you have a God given talent and that’s what you’re paid to do and do it he did.
 
Celtic's only threat was once again Duran and it was a somewhat baffling decision by O’Neill to take him off on the 64th minute when Celtic needed two goals. Was I happy to see Høgh take the field? Of course but are we truly incapable of playing two up front? Is a 4-4-2 beyond the thinking of the Celtic management team?
 
We got what we deserved though. I’ve said it for weeks - we’re riding our luck and midweek it took a goal from Ireland's very own Liam Scales to grab an unjustified point against Dundee Utd. Sunday, well Sunday was coming. This looks like a team devoid of answers, a team lacking in direction. A team desperately in need of change.
 
I’m a great admirer of Martin O’Neill and what he’s done for Celtic over the years has been wonderful but I, like many others, now think it’s time to go.
 
Plenty yell that you can’t sack Martin just look at his history, but let me take you back first to 1967 and Celtic Captain Billy McNeill lifting the trophy that was the greatest achievement in Celtic history and a trophy countless others wish they could display in their trophy rooms. Fast forward to 1991 Billy McNeill and after having two spells and 9 years as Celtic manager McNeill is Sacked by Celtic as the on-field performances simply weren’t good enough.
 
No one is bigger than the club and if Billy McNeill can be fired so can anyone.
 
I don’t want to see Martin fired, I’d prefer him to walk away but whatever happens I for one believe his tenure as manager is over.
 
Celtic face Besiktas this Thursday in the Europa League. I’ve booked Thursday for a cut shampoo and blow dry.
 
Right now watching Celtic should come with a little red triangle warning in the corner of the screen.🔺Celtic can ruin your week/weekend approach with care.

So that’s it another week, another Celtic loss, another Rangers win, and assuming Rangers win their game in hand the lead at top of the table will become a mere point.
 
Right now though all I can think of is “goodbye and thanks for all the fish Martin”

Have a great week and whatever you’re doing do it well, stay safe and have fun

Til next time …… 🐼

🐼 Gary Robertson is the TPQ Scottish football correspondent.

A Tale Of Two Crimes

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