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Anthony McIntyre ☠  Yesterday the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to South African jurist, Navi Pillay.

The reason for the choice of Pillay came in the words of Jorgen Watne Frydnes, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee:

This year's laureate has been instrumental in ensuring that war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide are prosecuted . . . The system of international law is under tremendous pressure and its institutions are under attack . . . towards power politics at the expense of legal frameworks and global respect for law and justice.

Little is left to the imagination as to who is the first among equals in this rogues gallery. Ms Pillay pointedly referred to her role heading the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry (COI) into Israel's behaviour in Gaza, stating: 'The last thing I did is the delivery of the report on Gaza, naming what's happening there as genocide."

Within hours Donald Trump, furious at not getting a peace prize for waging wars, ordered sanctions against the International Criminal Court. Trump might feel he has a point. In 1973 the prize was awarded to another US war criminal, Henry Kissinger. Horrible Henry was responsible for more war crimes than any other Western leader in the post World War 2 era. Think Vietnam, Cambodia, Cyprus, Argentina, Indonesia, Chile, Laos, Bangladesh, East Timor. He has been at the scene of every crime against humanity, his finger prints on every napalm bomb, torture chamber or assassination. Two members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee resigned in protest at the decision to bestow the peace prize on the US War criminal. Kissinger himself declined to turn up to receive his prize for fear of anti-war protests.

One writer at the time said that "political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize". And when an international criminal clown sanctions the International Criminal Court as punishment for not awarding him the prize the same type of sentiment is easily echoed.


Consider for a moment who nominated Trump for the prize - the most bellicose state in the Middle East, a country that has bombed as many nations as Kissinger did. Netanyahu nominating Trump for a peace prize has the same moral worth as the paedophile priest Brendan Smyth nominating Jimmy Saville for a child protection award.

While Trump gave off a hissy fit, a deeper reason comes to the fore and which was articulated by US Secretary of State, the Zionist Marco Rubio:

President Trump will never allow the International Criminal Court to prosecute Americans . . .That is ‌why, today, the United States is sanctioning the International Criminal Court.. . . We ⁠will ban transactions with this rogue court, cutting off their resources and crippling its ability to operate.

The Trump regime intends to punish companies that provide services to the ICC.

US sanctions typically bar all US-based companies from any work with a sanctioned organization, forcing banks to shut accounts, ⁠insurers to end ​coverage and software companies to halt cooperation.
 
The Court which has a membership of 125 nation states has described the Trump administration action as an 'assault on the rule of law and on the very foundations of the international legal order' and called on its 125 member states to take action to defend it:

The court cannot stand alone. Its fate now rests also in the hands of the states that created it . . . This is not just about defending a single institution, but about safeguarding the international order grounded upon the rule of law . . . History will judge this moment.

The Nobel Prize Committee has referred to the huge contribution to peace made by the work of the ICC.

An international legal system in which war criminals are held to account and the victims of abuse see justice served is a precondition for a peaceful world.

Contrast this with the bellicose perspective of a genocide enabling state like the US, of which it has been said: "We inhabit a world where The fastest way to get on the president’s sanctions list is to put a war criminal on yours."

As we gather on West Street today as members of Drogheda Stands With Palestine, on the third anniversary of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, we are under no illusion as to what this is about: the unconstrained, unchallenged power to perpetrate crimes against humanity and avoid being held to account. We stand with the 85-year-old South African judge and against the 80-year-old US war criminal. 
 
⏩Follow on Bluesky.

International Criminal Clown Sanctions International Criminal Court

Louth For Ever ★ writing in Medium on  2-October-2026.

Our Own Ground • No. 5

Photo by Natalia Gusakova on Unsplash

At 3pm tomorrow, thousands are due to gather on the Garvaghy Road. Many were there last Sunday as well, and on the Sunday mornings of 1996 and 1997 before that; a few will even be standing on the exact place where police removed them from the road 30 years ago.

No one should deny them even a minute of it.

Yet since yesterday one question has remained unresolved, and it is more important than the number of people on any road.

The Orange Order has put forward an offer. Should the Court of Appeal affirm Monday’s determination, the residents say they will accept the law and step aside. If the court rules in the opposite direction, the Order says it will accept that outcome and do likewise. In either case, both sides will be governed by the ruling, no matter how it turns out.

The residents have still not replied.

It is worth grasping what that proposal amounts to, because it is no minor matter. For 28 years the Orange has insisted that it either follows that path or does nothing, and the week opened with a rally in Portadown being told that no other course will be accepted. Yet within a day they said they would place the entire matter before three judges and accept the outcome.

Perhaps it is a snare. Perhaps it is a calculation based on believing Monday favours them. Perhaps it is the first candid step anyone has taken since Friday week.

Whatever it is, it is not something to set aside while several thousand people assemble on a road.

And here lies the difficult point. The residents’ own position, the one their lawyers will advance on Monday, is that the Parades Commission misread the police assessment (itself demonstrably inaccurate) and should be answerable for that before a court. That is a claim that the institutions should function and that the law should be properly applied. It is the strongest case they possess, and it is the correct one.

You cannot press that claim on Monday and then refuse to accept its verdict.

I can see why no one wants to agree. To say yes is to imagine a morning when 35 Orange men walk down that road with the court’s approval and the community has pledged not to block them. For anyone who remembers 1997, that is not an abstraction; it is the concrete memory of being hauled away from their own street.

Still, once a case is taken to court, it is placed in the court’s hands. The residents did that first, and they did it twice. They were right to do so.

So tomorrow’s issue is not the size of the crowd, nor is it what is shouted from the back of a lorry. The issue is whether the response to that offer will be yes.

If the answer is yes, the residents finish the week as the side that trusted the process while the other side had to be brought to it, and that will matter far more in every decision over the next decade than any crowd will.

If the answer is no, then we will have spent a week insisting the law was misapplied, while keeping the option open to disregard it if it turns against us.

Stand on the road tomorrow. Then give the answer.

⏩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.

The Question Nobody Is Asking Tomorrow

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

Gary Robertson ⚽ It’s been some time since I’ve written a column and felt this happy.
 
Don’t get me wrong - I love putting virtual pen to virtual paper but it’s been a rough few weeks in Robertson Towers.
 
Defeats in Europe hurt but defeats at the hands of the enemy in Glasgow derbies cut deeper and it takes some time to shake off that injury and feel good about football again.
 
So with the SPL returning at the weekend there was some trepidation regarding an upcoming fixture at Motherwell.
 
Particularly as this was the Sunday lunchtime match on Sky.
 
With Rangers and Hearts both playing Saturday it meant that come kick off Celtic could have found themselves deposed at the top of the league, and the Jambos closing the gap.
 
A thoroughly professional performance in the first half against Kilmarnock at Ibrox gave McInnes’ men a comfortable and ultimately unassailable 3-0 lead against beleaguered Kilmarnock who find themselves rooted to the foot of the table and struggling for any sort of consistent form. Whilst the boys in blue seemed to take their foot off the gas in the second half and Kilmarnock did manage to find the back of the net a comeback never looked likely, and so it proved. 

By 5pm on Saturday Rangers were top of the league and in impartial honesty quite rightly so. They look like a team that have gotten their act together after an inauspicious start to the season, and look a formidable force. Young German Striker Naderi scoring twice more for the light blues he seems to have hit a rich vein of form.
 
Hearts were similarly impressive with a 5-0 thrashing of St Mirren. In front of a crowd of almost 19000 and two penalties expertly slotted away by Scottish winger Calvin Miller, who also assisted in Braga's goal in the 54th minute, Hearts are starting to show some badly needed form after a defeat to Falkirk and a draw with Kilmarnock. Is this the turning point for the men from Tynecastle? We can watch with interest, particularly given, Europe aside, Hearts are Celtic's next opponents (Sunday Oct 18th 3pm kick off) and given the events of last season I suspect this will have given Vrancken's boys a much needed lift ahead of what will be for some a grudge match. No titles on the line, three points only, but revenge is sweet whenever gained.
 
Hibs under new manager Reedijik travelled to Tannadice in Dundee to face United. Both sides finding form difficult to come by, a solitary goal from Dundee United's Bennie in the 35th minute kept the three points at home and sent Hibs back down the A90/M90 to Edinburgh empty handed and languishing in 10th in the league. It’s not spectacular but it’s functional football and kudos to United who find themselves - granted it’s early days - in the top 6.
 
Falkirk managed to lose a 1-0 lead over Dundee and a fightback from the visitors sealed with a 91st minute winner from Dundee's Hay, a bad day at the office for Falkirk and a further three points for the men from Dens who now find themselves in fourth.
 
So to Sunday. The wait was over and to be honest I just wanted it over with.
 
Granted Motherwell aren’t the team of last season but Celtic have been far from convincing and after two defeats at the hands of Rangers confidence wasn’t high.
 
Once again though Celtic proved why I write about football rather than manage a team.
 
I don’t want to go overboard but it was hard not to be impressed with the performance the Bhoys showed on the Fir Park turf. From Sinisalo (the birthday boy) in goal to Høgh up front everyone played their part in this victory. Even the often hung out to dry Tounekti had a game to remember for the right reasons.
 
Celtic never in the 90+ mins looked threatened, unbalanced or scared. There was a grit that has been woefully missing, a determination to get on the ball, the passing was lovely to watch and the finishing exquisite.
 
I am once again in love with football.
 
Sure we will suffer defeats, all fans do, but it’s days like Sunday that make it all worthwhile.
 
Granted Høgh appears to be laden with the £11m price tag and is struggling to score goals however he played his part in setting up Nygren for the second in 58 mins. I’m sure the rewards will come for the Dane and we need to be patient. Remember this is a man who’s scored against some of the best in the Champions League. You don’t suddenly become a bad player overnight. It rather goes without saying but with the right service he could easily be a 20 plus a season player.
 
Sundays highlight wasn’t so much the result though but the return of Portuguese winger Jota. Having spent 18 months with injury and recovery, some of us wondering if he’d ever play in the hoops again, he made his seasonal debut coming on in the 74th minute to rapturous applause and cheering from the Celtic fans in attendance a smile across the faces of all Celtic fans around the world. The biggest smile however was on the face of the player himself and who can blame him? It truly made for a beautiful Sunday.
 
The Celtic fans of course were in good voice showing their solidarity with those on the Garvaghy Road along with a tifo in support of legendary Celtic captain (and only player I can tenuously claim to be related to through my son (look it’s distant ok but I’ll take it)) Danny McGrain in his battle against Alzheimer’s disease. We of course, I’m sure, send our best wishes to him and his wife Laraine along with his three daughters, Vicki, Dawn and Carly.
 
The protest against Celtic owner Dermot Desmond continues unabated and the fans at Fir Park continued to show their ire toward the board and the man himself.
 
The other game of the weekend featured Aberdeen at home to Premiership new boys St Johnstone.
This was one I truly didn’t expect. Not the fixture but the result. A 1-0 victory to the visitors from Perth again, a single goal being all the difference between the two, a penalty scored by Saints' Fowler in the 14th minute enough for three points. Aberdeen find themselves in 8th while St Johnstone are riding high in 5th. For the Dons the 15th of September when they put four past Motherwell must seem a very distant memory.
 
So that’s pretty much it really, no drama beyond the obvious and some wonderful highlights.
This week European football returns so I may not be as cheery in next week’s column but right now I’m smiling and I hope you are too.
 
Have a great week and whatever you do be safe be happy and do it well.

Til next time …… 🐼 

🐼 Gary Robertson is the TPQ Scottish football correspondent.

Oh Happy Day

Barry Gilheany ✍ Where alternative medicine and proponents of cuddly “disciplines” such as naturopathy nutrition make their presence felt; dollar, pound and euro signs are never far away . . . 
. . .  flashing as they do in front of those desperate for a cure or explanation of chronic health issues or those gullible enough or so set in their distrust and hostility to the medical “establishment” and supposed cronies in the “mainstream media” that they become willing victims to the 21st century reincarnation of that most ancient of archetypal figures – the confidence trickster. 

In this vein, I give you Barbara O’Neill, a self-styled naturopath and nutritionist who lectures internationally on “natural self-healing” but who has been banned from providing any health services in her native Australia. However this prohibition is not preventing her from embarking along with her husband[1] Michael on a series of events in the UK and Ireland despite criticism from scientists, health charities and academic bodies.[2]

Ms O’ Neill has previously claimed that cancer is a fungus that can be treated with bicarbonate of soda, that vaccines have caused an epidemic of conditions including autism and cot death, and that pregnant women with group B streptococcus do not have to take antibiotics. For these and other such pearls of wisdom, in 2019, our Babs earned a permanent ban from the New South Wales Health Care Complaints Commission (HCCC), enforceable across all of Australia,  from providing any health services either voluntarily or in a paid capacity after it concluded an investigation into her.[3]

Among the HCCC findings were that she:

does not recognise that she is misleading vulnerable people … by providing very selective information. The misinformation has real potential to have a detrimental effect on the health of individuals because Mrs O’Neill also discourages mainstream treatment for cancer, antibiotics and vaccinations.[4]

Barbara O’Neill has promoted herself as a naturopath, nutritionist and health educator since at least 2004, despite having no relevant qualifications or training. She presents her claims at alternative medicine conferences, wellness retreats and Seventh Day Adventist Churches. She is married to Michael O’Neill, the founder of the Informed Medical Optics Party, now the Health, Environment, Accountability, Rights, Transparency (HEART) Party - an anti-vaccine and anti-fluoridisation political group. [5] His reaction to the HCCC investigation against his wife is classic persecution complex of conspiracists and quack medics alike, asserting that the HCCC has "serious legal flaws” that are under investigation, and that “there are political moves to place the HCCC organisation under investigation for their bias against natural wellness practitioners”.[6] Regulation by recognised professional bodies with the appropriate codes of ethics (such as the British Council for Counselling and Psychotherapy [BACP] might help such practitioners prove such discrimination.

But where there is a market for wellness woo, do follow the lucre. As of 2019, she ran the Misty Mountain Health Retreat near Kemply, NSW with her husband charging clients as much as AS$2,450 for a one-week stay for one person; and AS$8,800 for two people for two weeks. According to O’Neill’s website, she provided detox services claiming to aid recovery from heart disease, hormonal imbalance and chronic fatigue.[7]

After her ban from working in health services in Australia, Barbara O’Neill continued to dispense her alternative health wares internationally including in the USA, New Zealand and Fiji. She continues to deliver programmes aimed at cancer patients in the US as of July 2023 as at a cost of almost US$ 6,000. In October 2025, O’Neill was awarded the satirical Bent Spoon Award by the Australian Skeptics for her unfounded medical claims such as her promotion of cayenne pepper for curing ulcers; placing sliced garlic on a baby’s front was stronger than any antibiotic and using chopped onions to cure pneumonia. She has recommended that parents unable to breastfeed their infant use substitute formula including unpasteurised goat milk and a mix of almond milk and dates or bananas. When provided with National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) infant feeding guidelines for health practitioners, O’Neill said that she had never read then and that she would refuse to read them. In August 2026, the online newspaper Egypt Independent reported that Egypt’s Council for Media Regulation (SCMR) prohibited her from appearing across Egyptian media outlets.[8]

Another one of her egregiously false claims was made in Part One of her lectures on TikTok when in attempting to dissuade women from having Pap Smear tests and mammograms she said that they cause cancer; contrary to all expert advice on cervical cancer detection.[9]

Never shy of protesting faith in the power of a deity and of victimhood at the hands of perpetual evil, our Babs in her online petition calling for the HCCC to reverse its 2019 decision proclaimed:

It looks a bit dark but the Great God of the Universe will not let this wonderful health truth to be eliminated regardless of how men and women may try. 

 She also claimed to the press that she was a victim of a Nazi style propaganda campaign.[10]

And now the O’Neill roadshow has come to the British Isles. Among the venues that the pair have given seminars in are Donald Trump’s luxury Turnberry golf course. A five-day retreat, a Taste of Mist Mountain, is scheduled for the De Vere Cranage Estate in Cheshire with tickets priced at £700. The programme includes lectures by Barbara O’Neill: “What Really Causes Disease”, “The Science of Breath” and “The Immune System” plus a session by Michael on “Barbara’s Under Attack”. The couple are also scheduled to appear at the Founders and Future at Glasgow University Union (GUU). According to the Union President, events held in the building by external organisations in no way reflected affiliation to or endorsement by the GUU Board of Management. Likewise, the Cranage Estate take no responsibility for “content or opinions expressed at privately organised events.”[11]

Across the Irish Sea, the Christian health group Balm of Gilead (with all the creepy connotations associated with the totalitarian, misogynist theocracy of that name described by Margaret Attwood in her classic works The Handmaids Tale and The Testaments) has organised from 13th to 15th October a multi-day event at the City North Hotel and Conference Centre in Gormanston, County Meath in which the O’Neills have starring roles. Later this week, she is hosted by the “holistic”, “spiritual” and “inspirational” organisation Positive Life at a sold out one-day event in Jackson’s Hotel, Ballybofey, County Donegal with Front Row tickets retailing at €85 and General Admission at
€75; not quite the outrageous outlay in terms of client fees cited earlier.[12]

Predicably so and justifiably so, medical and scientific experts have sounded the alarm about somebody in the words of Dr Robert Grimes, a biomedical science expert and author of a book on medical misinformation, who is “a leading vector of medical misinformation”. A letter organised by Dr Grimes asserts that:

her repeated misguided medical assertions, unqualified advice, and abject demonisation of conventional medical treatment have directly led to harm.

The letter addresses the venues staging O’Neill’s events in these admonitory terms:

she will spread dangerous health fictions to a susceptible audience, leeching off an illusion of legitimacy afforded to her by the surrounds of your respectable establishment.[13]

Among the signatories to the letter are Orla Dolan, Chief Executive of Breakthrough Cancer Research; Prof Colin Doherty, Head of Trinity College Dublin School of Medicine; David Colquhoun, fellow of the Royal Society, University College London, and a science communicator; and Sander van der Linden, professor of psychology at the University of Cambridge. [14]

The warnings in and the tenor of the letter just cited raise crucial issues around how to safeguard vulnerable people from the spread of dangerous health fictions vis-a-viz free inquiry concerns that potentially arise from the regulation or even civil or criminal sanctioning of such misinformation. 

How is health security imperatives, particularly in the post- Covid era and the possibility of future pandemics, to be balanced against the liberty of the citizen in a liberal democracy to make their own healthcare choices despite their possible adverse consequences for the individual concerned? Is there a right to be wrong and who decides what is right and wrong? To what extent can Isaac Berlin’s concept of negative liberty, of freedom from external interference (usually from the state) _be asserted and validated in the domain of health freedom? Staying within a liberal philosophical frameworks but eschewing ultra libertarian versions of them; I would argue that Berlin’s concept of positive liberty in which human flourishing is enabled though a right to truth and access to the most up-to-date information and knowledge is a better ideological framework to resolve such trade-offs. Healthcare is a fundamental human right and it is incumbent of health providers to be as abreast of changing epistemology as is humanely possible. It is the right of and also the responsibility of human beings with agency and autonomy to acquaint themselves with the most accurate health information available which is not always available through consultations with Dr Google and certainly not with fraudulent alt-health false gurus like Barbara O’Neill.

I have previously argued that since consumer law penalises companies and private service providers from making untruthful or exaggerated claims about the efficacy of their products; this principle should be extended to politicians and other powerful interest groups. In other words, it should be a criminal offence to lie. Nutritionists, counsellors, aromatherapists, and other complementary health professionals should be protected terms which would provide a legal framework to put charlatans like Barbara O’Neill out of business and practice bans imposed in one democratic jurisdiction should apply to all other democracies. Truth must never become a casualty in any information war.

References

[1] Nicola Davis. Lecturer is “spreading health fictions” The Guardian. 2 October 2026

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid

[4] Ibid

[5] Wikipedia

[6] The Guardian, op cit

[7] Wikipedia

[8] Ibid

[9] Ibid

[10] Ibid

[11] The Guardian, op cit.

[12] Wikipedia

[13] The Guardian, op. cit

[14] Ibid

⏩Barry Gilheany is a freelance writer, qualified counsellor and aspirant artist resident in Colchester where he took his PhD at the University of Essex. He is also a lifelong Leeds United supporter.

Wellness Woorier 🪶 Barbara O’Neill And Her Caravan Of Health Misinformation Coming To A Place Near You

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

 

A Morning Thought @ 3292

Andrew Quinn ☭ Writing in Red Network.

The late great actor Robin Williams said it best: “Politicians should wear sponsor jackets like Nascar drivers so the public can see who is funding and owning them!”

That quote shines through for me now more then ever as governments worldwide are bought, paid for and controlled by Big Pharma, the tech companies, multinational corporations as well as the billionaire class.

Ireland is no different unfortunately, as we’ve seen in this week’s budget. When inflation is taken into account workers like myself are worse off after this budget.

Yet another Budget delivered to serve the people that the Irish government truly answer to. If they wore sponsor jackets you’d see the names of vulture funds, bond holders, landlords, data centre companies, and a few would be wearing shirts with billionaire Denis O Brien’s name across them!

The Irish government don’t have working class people’s interests at heart hence this is why we are facing into the biggest people power action since the water charges movement and the biggest strike action since the 2009 public sector strike!

People power beat the water charges then, and it can win again as long as the working class stick together and deliver a clear message to the government and that is: “We Deserve Better”.

We are the people who keep this country running. This Budget was delivered by establishment politicians whose income is six figures and yet their message is always the same, that the money isn’t their to pay us workers a better wage?

Working class people can see through these governments' lies and we are sick and tired of their hypocritical statements. Enough is enough, so many budgets delivered by this government and the working class are still struggling to get by and not being able to afford the everyday necessities of life.

Who could blame people for leaving the country to find a better life? But people should have the opportunity to make a good living in Ireland and the only way to do that is to take this government to the cleaners and shut our workplaces down, in turn shut the streets down and ultimately shut the country down.

This has been recently demonstrated by the French and Dutch as well as by the Spanish people so the same must be done here in Ireland!

We need to get a better deal for public sector workers. This is the only way to get this Government to listen to the needs of working class people and their families. Our pay must keep up with the rate of inflation as TDs pay does, why shouldn’t public workers’ pay be the same?

Ahead of the October 14th strike here are some tips in order for other workers to be prepared as best they can:

  • First of all, get unionised! You can’t join the pickets if you’re not in a union. Talk to your workmates and get signed up before Wednesday.
  • Secondly, follow The news and follow all union based social media accounts to stay on top of all the latest developments. That’s how we keep the pressure on our union heads to keep up the fight. We have to be in the loop on every bit of news.
  • Thirdly, email your union representative outlining your thoughts and what you want to see happen in negotiations between unions and government officials. Let them know we want a determined fight that carries through to the end.
  • Most importantly, call meetings in your workplace, elect a strike committee and hold talks with your work colleagues so you all stand united, as there is always strength in numbers. Make your workplace stronger after this strike.

As the old saying goes “the more things change the more they stay the same.”

That’s certainly true with this government, it’s the same old story not meeting the needs of working class people. That must change and it will as long as the working class stick together, strike together and fight together.

Unionise, mobilise, win! I’ll see you on the picket lines!

⏩Andrew Quinn is a public sector worker. 

Council Worker Explains Why He’s Striking On Oct 14th

Dixie Elliot ✊On Sunday Politics the vilest of Unionists, Jim Allister, revealed the reason why the people of Garvaghy Road were so determined not to let the Orange Order walk down that road.

Allister said that the Chief Constable could have sanitised the Garvaghy Road and escorted the thirty-five Orange Men down it.

This morning, two weeks ago, before the mob were organised he (the Chief Constable) could have sanitised the Garvaghy Road and escorted those thirty-five men, who were a threat to no one, down that road . . .  - Jim Allister.
 
What he meant was that the Chief Constable should have ordered the removal of those people from their own streets as though they were dirt or vermin that needed cleaned up.
 
Well there you go, Jim Allister just reminded all right-minded people why the Orange Order insists on marching through areas where the people don't want them.
 
They see the people in those Nationalist areas as dirt and vermin who need to be cleaned off their own streets so that they can show those people up close that they can parade their culture of hate wherever and whenever they want.
 
Don't forget that this same cretin Allister described the rapist Davy Tweed as being "larger than life" after he died.

This is why the Orange Order should not be allowed to parade through any Nationalist area ever again and the finger should be pointed at Jim Allister for stopping them.

Thomas Dixie Elliot is a Derry artist and a former H Block Blanketman.
Follow Dixie Elliot on Twitter @IsMise_Dixie

Allister For Sanitising Garvaghy Road

Dr John Coulter ✍ The shock cancelling of hit BBC NI TV series The Blame Game, Give My Head Peace, and The Long and the Short Of It has brought back memories of 28 years ago when my own book, The Orange Card, was cancelled a matter of days before publication by The Ulster Society. 

Indeed, it was on Monday 12th October 1998 - exactly 28 years ago today - that the then Ulster Society chairman, the recently deceased Gordon Lucy, informed me that following a complaint from the Independent Orange Order’s Grand Master George Dawson - now also dead - that The Orange Card was being pulled.

The full title of the book was The Orange Card: Orangeism’s links with Unionism and Loyalism 1968-1998. It was to be my first solo book as I’d previously co-authored a book on the media with publisher Longman in 1996.

The project was based on my Master of Philosophy (MPhil) thesis by research on Orangeism, which I had completed a few months earlier at Queen’s University’s School of Politics. My internal examiner for the thesis, Professor Paul Bew, now Lord Bew, had agreed to write the foreword for the book.

In 1998, I was living in Maghaberry village, so I simply approached the nearest geographical publisher at that time, The Ulster Society, which was then based in Lurgan’s Brownlow House.

My thesis, running to some 50,000 words, was to be the basis of the book so much of it would have to be rewritten as a commercial book, not an academic thesis.

Naturally, any book on Orangeism would not only look at the main Orange Order, but also consider the role of the much smaller Independent Orange Order, which in 1998 at the time of writing ‘The Orange Card’ had a membership of around 1,000 with about two dozen lodges.

I decided to interview Dawson about the role of the Independent Institution, which he kindly did. However, my journalistic sources within the Independents told me the real ‘mover and shaker’ of influence within that Order was a Pentecostal cleric, David McConaghie, then Pastor of Maghaberry Elim Tabernacle in my then home village!

I faced a dilemma. Should I approach McConaghie for a face to face interview for my book given that he was to the fore in opposing the Evangelical Prayer Breakfast Movement, of which my late dad, Rev Dr Robert Coulter MBE, was co-chairman?

To my surprise, McConaghie gave me an interview. Such was the quality and quantity of the information he provided, I was able to write a separate chapter on the Independents rather than simply ‘tag on’ references to the Order at the end of a chapter on Rev Ian Paisley’s influence on Orangeism.

During that summer of 1998, Dawson and McConaghie made mention of a new pressure group which was being formed, to be known as The Caleb Foundation, and to be formally launched that October.

Dawson specifically outlined the role of the Independent Institution in the background to bring together a number of Protestant denominations and organisations to campaign for the historic evangelical Protestant faith.

As far as I was concerned, it was my conclusion that The Caleb Foundation - named after the Biblical Old Testament spy - was simply a recruiting agent for the Independent Institution.

Initially, I could not have asked for better support and professionalism from the Ulster Society and especially from Gordon Lucy and Dr Steven King, the latter later becoming one of UUP First Minister David Trimble’s speech writers.

The attitude of the Ulster Society as an organisation towards me cooled following the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in April 1998 when it emerged I would be supporting the Yes campaign and that editorially, The Orange Card, would be very positive in favour of the Belfast Agreement.

The book was scheduled to be launched in early October. The first of the pre-launch publicity was published in the Sunday World on October 11th 1998 by my journalistic colleague, the late Martin O’Hagan, who was murdered in 2001 by a loyalist terror group.

Martin focused on the establishment of The Caleb Foundation under the headline: ‘Hardline Anti-Catholic Pressure Group Set Up.’ His article mentioned that I had interviewed both Dawson and McConaghie for The Orange Card.

Within hours of the article appearing, a very angry Dawson was on the phone to me. He was furious that the article - and hence my book - was drawing a link between the soon to be formally unveiled Caleb Foundation and the Independent Institution. He also took exception to the phrase ‘Anti-Catholic’ in the headline.

That formal launch of the Caleb Foundation was scheduled for Friday 16th October in Belfast’s Park Avenue Hotel. Was Dawson really angry that my book would upstage the launch of Caleb? An advert highlighting the Caleb launch named the members of the Foundation’s ruling Council of Reference - all were Protestants! Not a Catholic cleric in sight!

During the tetchy phone call with Dawson, I said he could have access to the manuscript before it was published and he could read my evaluation of the link between Caleb and the Independent Institution in full. His response was to put the phone down on me. I was never to speak to Dawson again before he died in 2007.

Within hours, Dawson had contacted the Ulster Society, and Lucy then informed me that as a result of Dawson’s complaint, the entire book was being cancelled. I offered to rewrite the sections relating at Caleb, even give more space in the book to Dawson’s views, but the decision was final - The Orange Card was dead in the water!

But was there a political motivation behind the cancelling of The Orange Card? Why axe an entire 18-chapter book over references to one fringe fundamentalist pressure group?

Yes, The Orange Card was broadly pro-Agreement in direction, but it did contain interviews with anti-Agreement Unionists and Loyalists, such as Dawson, McConaghie, Jeffrey Donaldson, Bob McCartney and Joel Patton of Spirit of Drumcree.

Getting The Orange Card cancelled provided Dawson with some kudos within the Unionist No camp. Claims that the book was cancelled for political reasons were investigated by the late journalist and author Henry McDonald, prompting Lucy to issue a letter to the Belfast News Letter denying that the Ulster Society had a political stance on the Agreement.

My dad had got elected as a UUP MLA for North Antrim in 1998. I asked him if he could set up a meeting with Dawson to see if there could be a way forward for The Orange Card.

What I assumed was Dawson’s response came in July 2000 when in his role as Independent Grand Master, he named dad in a press release along with seven other UUP MLAs stating:

These men should be hounded and harried out of the ranks on parade next Wednesday 12th July. They should be removed from platforms and consigned to the wilderness of infamy.

I just had to face the bitter medicine as an author that The Orange Card project was a no-go. So I simply co-wrote another book with another publisher and The Orange Card manuscript sat in a box for decades.

But this October 2026 is a different scenario. Dawson and Lucy are dead. McConaghie, who for a time was the very public media face of The Caleb Foundation, was convicted by a court of filming a colleague for sexual gratification and jailed in 2015.

The Ulster Society no longer exists and The Caleb Foundation has a much lower profile since the McConaghie conviction. And after 28 years, Drumcree is back on the news agenda in a very significant manner.

Whilst the manuscript is a snap shot of Orangeism, Unionism and Loyalism during a 30-year period from 1968 to 1998, perhaps the time is now right for me to play The Orange Card once again?

 
Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter
Dr Coulter has been a journalist since 1978 and is currently a political commentator with GB News.

How Did Caleb Get Coulter’s Orange Card Cancelled?

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

 

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