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Pádraig Drummond ✊ There is something magnificently Irish about the National Party’s latest internal apocalypse.


According to Cllr. Patrick Quinlan, who had resigned as leader, was asked to reconsider and was voted back in. He tried to run the organisation, but eventually got voted off the very body that had voted him back in.

All perfectly normal, apparently!

This is not a political party so much as a particularly aggressive WhatsApp group with delusions of government.

One can almost picture the scene when Quinlan, having apparently made the outrageous mistake of believing he was running an actual political organisation, asked for access to the registered membership database.
 
There must have been a moment of terrible silence. Someone probably opened the spreadsheet. Another person checked the filing cabinet. A third man stared nervously at his phone. Then came the terrible discovery: there was no membership database. The membership, it seems, was simply there in the WhatsApp group.

The entire glorious nationalist vanguard of Ireland, gathered together beneath the familiar green “online” dots, waiting patiently for the next poll.

No membership records. No proper meetings. No minutes. No accessible accounts. Just a phone screen glowing in the darkness like the control panel of a badly managed submarine.

And this is the organisation that apparently intends to challenge the establishment and govern the country.

Imagine the future, Ireland, 2032.

A national emergency breaks out. The Taoiseach calls an emergency Cabinet meeting. The President addresses the nation. The National Party responds with a WhatsApp poll:
“Should we invade the Occupied Six Counties?

 Yes
 No
 Maybe after lunch.”

The whole thing would be hilarious if it weren't so painfully revealing.

Quinlan says he wanted access to the membership, party emails, finances, proper accounts, editing tools and the basic resources required to organise political activity.

In other words, he apparently walked into the National Party asking for the outrageous luxuries of administration, accountability and functioning infrastructure.

You can almost hear the screams. “Jesus Christ, Patrick, next you'll be asking where the minutes are.”

And then comes the magnificent revelation that decisions of the Ard Chomhairle are apparently made by poll in a messaging group.

No meeting. No minutes. No proper record. Just a digital thumbs-up from whoever happens to be holding the phone.

This is not how you run a political party. This is how teenagers decide where to go drinking.

And somewhere in this strange little nationalist bureaucracy, there must be a poor bastard desperately trying to explain that democracy requires more than asking fourteen people on WhatsApp whether they fancy something.

The great irony is that Quinlan says he wanted to build a serious, disciplined nationalist movement.
Fine.

But before you can build the Fourth Reich, the Fourth Republic, or even a moderately competent residents’ association, you generally need to know who the bloody members are.

You need names. You need records. You need accounts. You need meetings. You need minutes. You need some mechanism by which a person can establish what the hell was actually decided.

Instead, we apparently have a political movement where the membership database may effectively be a WhatsApp group and the supreme constitutional instrument is the poll function.

This is not the storming of the Bastille. It is the storming of the group chat.

And then there is the international conference business. Apparently, while the great nationalist machine was struggling to establish who its own members were, somebody had the brilliant idea of looking abroad.

Because nothing says “grassroots Irish political movement” quite like flying people into a hotel ballroom to discuss nationalism while the actual political organisation back home is apparently being held together with free software and mobile data.

Forget knocking doors in Blanchardstown. Forget leaflets. Forget talking to voters. Get the PowerPoint projector. Book the conference room. Find somebody from another country.

And for God's sake, make sure the Wi-Fi password is written down, because otherwise the Ard Chomhairle may be unable to conduct its next leadership election.

The whole spectacle has the surreal quality of a revolutionary movement accidentally being run by the people who organise the office Christmas party.

And then, after all this chaos, Quinlan says he was sent a statement approved by the very people who had voted him off the Ard Chomhairle, a statement thanking those same people for supporting his decision.

That is not merely political spin. That is performance art. It is the kind of thing that makes you wonder whether somewhere in the National Party headquarters there is a secret committee whose sole purpose is to make reality increasingly difficult to distinguish from parody.

You could not write this stuff. Well, apparently you could.

They did.

The National Party now appears to have achieved the impossible: a political organisation simultaneously obsessed with nationalism and apparently incapable of maintaining a functioning domestic administration.

A movement that dreams of national sovereignty but conducts its internal affairs through a group chat.

A party that wants to challenge the establishment but apparently cannot establish where its own membership records are.

A leadership structure apparently capable of removing people without minutes, records or even the courtesy of having them present.

It is magnificent. It is almost beautiful.

Somewhere in Ireland, a man is sitting alone with his phone, staring at a WhatsApp poll and wondering whether this is how National Party icon, Michael Collins would have done it.

And the answer, tragically, is no.

Collins had couriers.

These lads have typing indicators.

Collins had an underground network.

These lads have read receipts.

Collins had intelligence operations.

These lads are still trying to locate the membership database.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the great nationalist revolution of the twenty-first century: The Republic will be reborn, immediately after someone finds the fucking spreadsheet.

⏩Pádraig Drummond is an anti-racism activist.

The National Party 🪶 The Revolution Will Be Group-Chatted

Geordie Morrow 🖌 with a sketch from his collection of art work. 


⏩Geordie Morrow is a Belfast artist.

Days Like This

Anthony McIntyre ☠ Seyyid Ahmed Nahi and Ibrahim Souna are the type of names racists would scowl at on a good day.

On a bad day people bearing those names might find themselves subject to violent attack, even having their homes torched by some thug in Ku Klux Klan drag on their way back from sating their hatred beating up drag queens - a case of dregs assaulting drags - for entertaining families. 

Earlier this month while out trying to purchase a scooter in Galway, both Algerian nationals noticed smoke coming from a property a few metres away from the home of the scooter seller. On rushing to the scene they were confronted by smoke and screaming teenagers trapped in a third floor bathroom.

Neighbours were running out, and the fire alarm is on and we tried to get in from the front door, but there was plenty of smoke. You could see nothing, and we breathed in some smoke.

Unable to get into the house because of the suffocating smoke, they shouted to see if there was anyone inside before rushing to help the girls. One of the men tried to climb up to the bathroom but the drainpipe would not support his weight. While trying to keep the girls calm they once again tried to enter the house from the rear only to be repelled by the smoke billowing from the structure. 

At this point a quick thinking Polish national had arrived and he started to push a trampoline towards the house. They assisted him, desperately clearing any obstacles preventing them getting the trampoline tight to the wall. Then all three men encouraged the girls. by this stage gasping for air, to leap for life. The older of the siblings jumped first but damaged her legs in the process, explaining that she had lost sensation. The men then had to keep her in position until the emergency services arrived and could move her in a medically safe manner, while at the same time encouraging the the younger sister to jump from the blazing building which she did. She too was injured but not as bad as her older sister. Both survived the ordeal. 

Seyyid Ahmed Nahi explained:

There was no time for thinking, I see them the same way I see my three children. Like that Polish guy, he didn’t think, he just went and we ran, I think it’s about having humanity, if you see someone, try to help, it’s not nice to take the phone out. For me, we are human beings, if somebody can help save someone, that is the most important thing and in that moment, you don’t think because if you think too much, maybe you will back away, just try to help as much as you can and that is it.

This is what many immigrants bring to this country - a quality and integrity that prompts them to take risks to help save the lives of Irish children. When the thought get them out entered the heads of the three men it was to get the children of a different nationality out of the flames in contrast to the racist hate goondas for whom get them out means getting people of a different nationality out of Ireland. The three foreign nationals involved in the Galway rescue mission had one objective to save people from flames and not, like the racists, engulf them in flames. 

Having foreign guys like these three living next door is much more preferable than having an Irish racist as a neighbour. 

⏩Follow on Bluesky.

Get Them Out

The Fenian Way ✍ Muiris Ó Súilleabháin's insightful article,The Provo Paradox, opens up an accessible path of clarity that can rely on straightforward observations to assess events both pre and post ceasefires in the mid-nineties and beyond. 

In the midst of a revisionist onslaught such a path is an indispensable guide to pragmatic engagement.

Analysis at this remove, if to be valid, must first recognise that its primary function is to educate, and not form some semblance of identity comfort to anyone attempting to recreate the past in the here and now.

Nor should it be guided to a given end point, vindicating or repudiating any stances taken within republicanism at the time because to the British, ostensibly, all republican points of view are now dead. What’s done is done, which is all the more remarkable given the loud logic of history imploring us that it should have been done a different way.

The two principle points I would like to address in the article concerns the circumstances surrounding the ceasefires and the politics it conferred on the Six Counties and Provisional Sinn Féin, however strenuously denied or parried by that grouping.

I completely agree with Muiris that anybody who joined the Republican Movement did so with a basic understanding that their involvement was to secure fundamental change to the status quo and that that change had to surpass any previous arrangements put forward as settlements.

There were/are many different view points as to what a ‘United Ireland’ should look like; a Marxist classless society, comely maidens at the crossroads, broad indifference once the Irish people were free to choose. The common denominator however was, and remains, sovereignty, the securing of which was a prerequisite to allow any of the above, or other, to be pursued.

When the first ceasefire was called the joyous cavalcade which streamed down the Falls Road was a clear expression of an expectation that the ceasefire secured terms that were worthy of the struggle which preceded it. Forearmed with the historical experiences of Collins and Sunningdale, and emboldened with the sacrifices of struggle, that expectation was wholly justified.

Muiris argues that the ceasefires were necessary, that the abandonment of armed struggle was right. The true paradox however is that the terms upon which the former was called guaranteed the defeat, not the abandonment, of the latter because the ceasefire was called on British terms.

Robert Barton, one of the plenipotentiaries during the Treaty Negotiations in 1922 observed on the outcome; ‘Once we conceded we were not representatives of the Irish Republic we were on the road to disaster.’ In other words, once they allowed the British to determine their status within the negotiations they did, by default, allow them to determine the parameters of any settlement reached.

And this is precisely what the Provisional leadership allowed to happen in the negotiations which led to Good Friday. Gone was the position of the IRA representing the defence and demand for national sovereignty, replaced by Provisional Sinn Féin demands based on their electoral mandate in the Six Counties.

In other words, the British were dealing with a regional political party who had political gripes within part of the United Kingdom and that’s precisely how they were dealt with. Thus were the parameters of the Good Friday Agreement secured.

And because the issue of sovereignty was not a term for securing the ceasefire it could never be broken on that issue either. The PIRA, now reduced to the role of a militia, truly became what the British, unionists, constitutional nationalists and Irish governments always referred to them as, the armed wing of Provisional Sinn Féin.

The irony of the politics which Provisional Sinn Féin subsequently adopted for electoral gain is cogently mapped out in the article. Muiris makes the following (and widely accepted) observation:

The Provisionals did not defeat constitutional nationalism by demonstrating that it was wrong. They replaced constitutional nationalism and then, gradually, became it.

But they didn’t, they became something much worse. To its credit constitutional nationalism recognised that the issue of sovereignty had to be addressed in any credible settlement with the British. In the New Ireland Forum Report in 1984 three proposals were put forward; a Unitary State, a Confederation/Federal State or Joint Authority.

These were dismissed by Margaret Thatcher in her infamous Out, Out, Out declaration because each option represented a derogation of British sovereignty over the Six Counties. For Thatcher sovereignty was non-negotiable. For their part Provisional Sinn Féin equally rejected the reports proposals because they fell short of a clear call for a complete British withdrawal from Ireland.

The grievous irony is that Provisional Sinn Féin adopted Thatcher’s position in subsequent negotiations because the entry fee into those negotiations was not simply the calling of a ceasefire but a ceasefire on terms that accepted that the issue of sovereignty continued to be non-negotiable.

The obvious follow on question is: where did this place the issue of sovereignty within the so called pan nationalist front, the new alternative strategy? Having rejected the findings of the New Ireland Forum how could Provisional Sinn Féin, credibly, return to constitutional nationalism on the sovereignty question?

The equally obvious answer is in the observable facts of the agreement reached. Articles 2 & 3 gone. Stand Alone All Ireland Bodies rejected. A Triple Lock guaranteeing a Unionist Veto agreed to. British Sovereign Authority explicitly recognised in the Good Friday Agreement.

Here now we see the correlation between the terms upon which the IRA ceasefire was based and the counter republican politics which it inevitably spawned. Constitutional nationalism was now off the sovereignty hook. Constitutional imperatives were replaced with fuzzy aspirations. And as our host observed in a commentary on the original article politics was now centred on the manner of British occupation and not the fact of it.

The only obligation on any party to the talks initiated by the ceasefire was to ensure that a prolonged ceasefire would have a withering effect on any leverage that resumption of armed struggle could yield (by anyone). And the net effect of that strategy, once armed struggle as a tactic was neutralised, was the retrospective criminalisation of armed struggle itself. The differences between Sunningdale and Good Friday did not necessitate the taking of one human life to resolve. Paradox and irony combined as one.

Which leads us to addressing the shameful but predictable revisionism from Declan Kearney. Muiris correctly identifies the glaring contradiction in Kearney’s call for a second pan nationalist front as a tacit admission that the first such entity failed to remotely deliver what republicans were promised it would achieve.

But the key point that he observes is that the pan nationalist front did not fail constitutional nationalism nor British strategic interests in Ireland (all of it). Not one single republican demand was secured. Howling in an echo chamber for a border poll only serves to distract internal chin stroking as to the precise nature of the current strategy to move Provisional Sinn Féin forward: Stormont working? Stormont not working? Stormont not existing? Are they flying or falling with style?

Oddly I think this current revisionist thrust is best addressed by the revisionism of Martin McGuinness; “I would gladly give my life for peace.” The paradigm shift.

Gerry Adams once told us that the Good Friday Agreement was not a republican document, the obvious observable conclusion to be drawn is: that’s because republicans didn’t negotiate it! Revisionists abhor simplicity and clarity.

I agree with the conclusion that Muiris reaches:

The less speculative reality may simply be that, after nearly three decades with their snouts in the Stormont trough, the patronage, salaries, status and political infrastructure that come with government have become indispensable to the party itself!

Probably their only remaining All Ireland conviction!

⏩ The Fenian Way was a full time activist during the IRA's war against the British. 

Pernicious Paradox & Perfidious Irony

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Two Thousand And Seventy Six

 

A Morning Thought @ 3248

Gearóid Ó Loingsigh ☭ writing in Substack on 26-July-2026.


The history of societies is the history of their ruling classes. So it comes as no surprise that we are told that Lord X built a palace, Lady Y built a garden and so forth. The history of society is the history of great men (and the occasional woman, when she’s allowed) with those who actually do anything written out of history. Take a tour of any stately home and you will be told that the Earl built the west wing in a given year, an incredible chippie, brickie and plumber all in one with some artistic flair to boot. The workers who actually carried out the work are not mentioned and if it was slave labour, well let’s not go there at all.

It is the type of situation that led the great German poet and dramatist Bertolt Brecht to ask the question

Who built Thebes of the 7 gates?
In the books you will read the names of kings.
Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock ?

And Babylon, many times demolished,
Who raised it up so many times ?

In what houses of gold glittering Lima did its builders live ?
Where, the evening that the Great Wall of China was finished, did the masons go?

Great Rome is full of triumphal arches.
Who erected them ?

Over whom did the Caesars triumph ?
Had Byzantium, much praised in song, only palaces for its inhabitants ?

Of course it is not just the obvious contribution of workers to the construction of buildings no fat cat could ever build, their contribution to the world of literature and art is also deliberately ignored. The aforementioned poem of Brecht is titled Questions From a Worker Who reads. Brecht was well aware that in order to overthrow capitalism you have to be able to question it and reading is part of the process. His famous quote from his poem In Praise of Learning is “Hungry man reach for the book, it is a weapon”. It is indeed and the weapon is mightier if you think that people like you wrote it. It is partly why the history of literature is a bit like the history of stately homes, the Lords and the Ladies did everything. No workers, no peasants, no one putting down the hammer for a minute wrote a poem or pausing the plough either. Literature belongs to the rich, so working class writers or even just opposition writers are routinely written out of history and their literature is reserved for small literary circles and revolutionaries who have retired to the café. Under no circumstances should it ever be read by other workers, lest the reader get the idea that they too can produce it. 

Of course there are lots of writers from a working class background, but they are a minority in comparison to the middle and upper classes. Or least they are in terms of contracts with commercial publishers and libraries tend not to organise catalogues of their works, as they are not worthy of merit in the eyes of the middle class pedants who populate literary studies. The working class writer Kit de Vaal asked where were all the working class authors and published an anthology of such authors.[1] There is no anthology of middle class or rich authors, as they are the norm, they are everywhere, ubiquitous, ever present. Pick a book at random on a library shelf or in a book shop and you will invariably pick one written by someone who is not working class, even with non-fiction.

One thing is writing about the working class, which can be financially rewarding and lead to career advancement especially if you are already not of the working class. But there have been many writers, written out of literary history, or relegated to specialist circles in some academic institute where increasingly the working class can be studied, but not study.

There is one Japanese author, Tajiki Kobayashi who had been on my must read list for a long time before I eventually got around to him. His most famous novel is The Crab Cannery Ship (also translated as The Factory Ship) which is based on a real incident in Japan in the 1920s where workers revolted on the ships where they were kept in almost slave like conditions harvesting crabs and then canning them on the ships themselves (hence the title). The novel is a searing indictment of Japanese capitalism, nationalism and the emperor, who was in Japanese law a divinity. We often think, in fact we are told, that Japan is a land of hard working obedient workers who never question authority and this is the key to its success. Nothing could be further from the truth. Japan experienced waves of social unrest as it industrialised along with brutal repression from the state and following the end of WWII trade union membership boomed, reaching 5 million by 1947. This movement was repressed with the US military occupation playing a key role in the Red Purge with thousands of workers hounded out of their jobs, the Communist Party was effectively banned and freedom of speech was suppressed. The Japanese consensus is the result of oppression, not of some quaint cultural quirk.[2] But if you are to buy into this consensus myth then not only has history to be ignored, but so too must the literature that talks of it.

Kobayashi didn’t just write about the working class, he wrote for them as part of his political militancy. He paid dearly for his commitment. In 1933, at the age of thirty, the Japanese police tortured him to death, leaving two of his novels incomplete. The Crab Cannery Ship had been serialised in a magazine, Senki, and was not available as a novel in Japan until 1948, though its English translation was available in the year of his murder. It is a strange consensus that requires torturing poets and writers to death, but not so strange that we would be asked to forget them.

Not that Takiji’s novel had ever been entirely forgotten. It occupied a secure position in Japan’s modern history as the best-known literary product of the proletarian movement, a major cultural and political current of the 1920s and early 1930s—a time when labor activism, socialism, feminism, and antimilitarism were briefly in the ascendant, while paintings, posters, prose narratives, poetry, and plays depicting the lives and struggles of the dispossessed enjoyed a considerable degree of popular interest and critical esteem. By the mid-thirties, however, as the country’s elites led the nation ever closer to an all-out war on the Asian continent, this progressive groundswell had been largely obliterated through a combination of internal dissension, government propaganda, and intensified repression: arrests, beatings, imprisonment, and censorship.[3]

He was part of a movement of proletarian literature and president of the Proletarian Writer’s Guild of Japan. Proletarian literature was not just written by working class authors (and also middle class authors who had turned their backs on their own class), nor was it just stories about the working class for middle class audiences, it was for the working class with no middle class filters applied to make it suitable for chats over coffee, and it talked of socialism. His novels are political, in an overtly Marxist sense, class struggle is a key part of the plot. The clandestine nature of political work in Japan is dealt with in the unfinished novel Life of a Party Member, and would be familiar to anyone who has lived under repressive regimes. Kobayashi himself engaged in clandestine work and was arrested numerous times and tortured.

The use of the term Proletarian rather than working class tells you all you need to know. He was a fighter, he may well have liked coffee but his life was not that of the quaint coffee shop, arcane academic discussions where the middle class engage in their favourite past time - talking and writing about the working class, earning royalties and accolades in the process. His most famous novel The Crab Cannery Ship went through a huge revival in 2008, following the financial crash, selling hundreds of thousands of copies.

In 2008—the year Takiji’s novel skyrocketed to fame—over thirty thousand Japanese people killed themselves, tens of thousands were homeless, some three million were unemployed, twenty million were living in poverty, and more than a third of the active labor force comprised irregular workers who were poorly paid and could easily be fired.[4]

Reading it, it is easy to see why. I am neither Japanese nor a fisherman, yet much of what happens on the ship speaks to me, it speaks to everyone, abusive bosses, people trapped in low income, insecure work with little security, poor safety. What Kobayashi describes is something that never went away in the Third World and has made a comeback now everywhere due to the defeat of the trade union movement and, let’s be honest, the constant sell outs by the bureaucracy. 

But that novel and his other writings are not about the plight of the working class or the proletariat to use the more accurate term that the middle class so loathe and despise. It is about the fight of the working class against those conditions. He argues through his characters for a struggle for socialism, against the Japanese ruling class, nationalism, empire and also for the liberation of women. In his novel Yasuko, two of the main protagonists are women who as the plot develops become independent forceful characters, through their participation in the class struggle and their fight against the repression of the state. One of them Yasuko lends her name to the title. It is obvious why the Japanese literati would not have promoted him so much. There are equivalents all around the world of proletarian writers or other oppositionists who have been relegated to a dusty corner. The proletarian wave did not just happen in Japan, but throughout the East, Russia and also the United States.

There of course exceptions who became worldwide phenomena within their own lifetime. One such author is Bertold Brecht who coincides in time with various proletarian literature movements around the world and then there is also the Italian artist Dario Fo, the author of many works such as Accidental Death of an Anarchist and Can’t Pay! Won’t Pay! The title of this particular play became a catchphrase and slogan in the English speaking world. Both were products of their time and achieved international fame, making them hard to relegate to dusty corners and though there are always attempts to relativise writers, soften the sharp edges of their plume it is not easy with either. Brecht was unrepentant till his death, and Dario Fo and his wife Franca Rame were lifelong activists and enemies of the Italian state, so much so that fascists under orders from the Italian police kidnapped tortured and raped her in an unsuccessful attempt to silence her. There was more at stake for her and her husband than artistic awards. Their work was political in all senses of the word and they were participants in the class struggle.[5]

In oppressed countries around the world various writers such as the El Salvadoran Roque Dalton, or the Palestinian Ghassan Kanafani are still remembered and celebrated amongst their people. But they fought against foreign empires, Kobayashi was from the empire he fought against. It is harder to reinterpret him as anything other than what he was  - a proletarian writer who gave his life not so much for a literature that was forgotten but for a revolution that never came.

What literature is remembered and celebrated is a question of power and politics. There is literature that must be remembered and there is that which must be forgotten or in rare exceptions begrudgingly acknowledged. Kobayashi, however, is now acknowledged so much so that there are now Kobayashi tours, which is itself worrying. But there is no escaping who or what he was, though Sabu, the director of a remake of the film version did make an attempt at this depoliticising the novel. There is also no escaping that the current Japanese inbred royal family murdered him. All of the post war institutions are the direct heirs of those who murdered him. That his novel could speak to the Japanese working class 79 years after it was written, is testament to the lasting value of his writing. Darkness never lasts and despite the best efforts of the media, the cultural gatekeepers in publishing, academia and galleries, it is as Brecht remarked in his poem Literature will be scrutinised.

But at that time will be praised

Those who sat on the bare ground to write

Those who sat among the lowly

Those who reported the deeds of the fighters

With art. In the noble words

Formerly reserved

For the adulation of kings…

Yes, a time will come when

These clever and friendly men

These angry and hopeful men

Who sat on the bare ground to write

Who were surrounded by the lowly and the fighters

Will be publicly praised.

And so literature once forgotten or relegated to a lowly category comes forth in all its glory and as Rosa Luxemburg put it, when talking about revolution, proclaims, I was, I am, I shall be.

References

[1] The Guardian (10/02/2018) Kit de Waal: ‘Make room for working class writers’. Kit de Waal. 

[2] For an overview of class struggle in Japan in the post war period see Ichiyo, M (1987) Class Struggle and Technological Innovation in Japan since 1945. IIRE. Amsterdam. 

[3] Translator’s Preface to Kobayashi, T. (2013) The Crab Cannery Ship and other novels of struggle. University of Hawai’i Press. Pp ix & x.

[4] Ibíd., p.x

[5] The Guardian (29/05/2013) Franca Rame obituary. John Francis Lane. 

⏩ Gearóid Ó Loingsigh is a political and human rights activist with extensive experience in Latin America.

Literature That Must Not Be Forgotten

Cam Ogie ✍ The black and white photographs are historical records of Nazi brutality and savagery, and the other coloured photographs are the historical records of the Nazi victims descendants.

Which of them is the more depraved cunt?

An SS officer standing in front of a newly constructed gallows in the forest near
Buchenwald concentration camp, Buchenwald, Germany, April 1942


 

 

⏩ Cam Ogie is a Gaelic games enthusiast.


I Have A Question

Anthony McIntyre ⚽Be thankful for small mercies was my sole thought at the end of this one.


Jay did not turn out for the clash with Pat's, and it was merciful that he missed it. No aspiring young player would leave the stadium uplifted by the performance of Drogheda. They might even consider switching to GAA or rugby.

Myself and Paddy arrived having stopped for a quick one in the Windmill. One of us was driving so only one of us had a drink. I no longer remember what forecast Paddy made in the absence of Jay. I just felt the Drogs would lose. The last time both sides clashed at Sullivan and Lambe, the visitors left three points to the good. 

This was our first game in over a month. I had been in Majorca while Paddy had other business to attend to, leaving us both unable to make the last home fixture. At least as we approach autumn the sun did the honourable thing and stayed out of our eyes for the duration of the game. Although, had it blinded us we would have been spared the unsightly spectacle that was about to unfold. 

The demeanour of both coaches as they patrolled their respective technical areas told the story of both this game and the prospective futures of either club. Stephen Kenny was calm. He barked out instructions when needed, always in control of his temper. Kevin Doherty by contrast was excitable, bursting a gut to scream louder with each passing loss of momentum or blunder. At one point during a water break occasioned by an injury, his behaviour was so errant that it was uncomfortable for the supporters in the stand behind him to witness. He screamed and gesticulated. The fans behind me were unimpressed stating that if the players deserve a dressing down then it should not happen in full public view. 

Having done more than enough representation work in both the Workplace Relations Commission and the Labour Court, it was clear to me that in a normal workplace environment - maybe there are exceptions made for the player-manager relationship - Doherty's behaviour would amount to bullying. At the end of the game a fan started to roar his disapproval at the Drogheda coach, telling him to pack his bags. Doherty paused, about to respond before thinking better of it and heading towards the middle of the park. Perhaps he recalled an episode in Cork last season, where it seemed at one point Turners Cross was on the cusp of transforming from football stadium to boxing ring as tempers flared so much after Drogheda squandered their lead in the last minute of time added on. 

Doherty in his post-match commentary bemoaned an absence of quality in the squad. Listening to the fans behind me it would seem that is a standard that can be applied to both playing and coaching.

The first half was a dismal affair in terms of the Drogs' input. They seemed to lack energy and enthusiasm, were disjointed and rudderless. The real surprise at half time lay in the fact that Pat's did not walk off the field three goals in front as they did on their previous outing at Sullivan and Lambe. That their dominance did not turn into a cricket score was not down to Drogheda outfield stubbornness but in their own inability to both make and take chances.

It is never a good omen when the best player on the team is the goalkeeper. Luke Dennison was the sole shining star in a side where the rest behaved like cosmic black holes, emitting no light. If the coach said 'let there be light' he got it from the fans with flares not from his players.


Dennison made a mistake in the dying minutes of the game - exercising a manoeuvre that Kevin Doherty described as ridiculous -  that led to a goal but by then the game was as good as over. Dennison was guilty only of rushing his fences in a bid to distribute a ball that might just be the catalyst for a Drogheda equaliser. Doherty was booked for his incandescence.

While the second half - and Doherty did impose order on his players during the half time break, substituting where necessary - saw much more determination from the Drogs, the damage had been done and there was no way back. 

Drogheda have lost twelve games this season, three more than last year. With twenty eight games played they lie second from bottom, five clear of Sligo and a point off Waterford in eighth. This is relegation play off territory. I met a fan in the street yesterday who simply said 'we are going down.' The only silver lining on that cloud for her was in her comment, 'well, they will have to reduce the cost of tickets.' I wouldn't be so sure that is something Trivela will agree to.


In less than two hours time we will take our seats to watch the Louth derby. Dundalk will be hoping to help send Drogheda spiralling downwards. After last week's poor showing it promises to be a white knuckle ride, with no arms on the seating to grip if we are put through the mangler. 

⏩Follow on Bluesky.

Drogs ⚽ Pat's ⚽ Relegation Zone Redux

Christopher Owens 🎵 with the 66th in his Predominance series.

"I seek the buildings blazing with moonlight/In Channing Way/Their very eyes seem to suck you in with their laughter/They seem to say/"You're all right now So stop a while behind our smile

In Channing Way." - Scott Walker


Horns up 

New Horizons



Icons of Filth – Time of the Signs

Often regarded as one of the most ferocious anarcho bands to have emerged in the wake of Crass, Cardiff legends Icons of Filth return for their first new album since 2002 (and the first without frontman Stig). As you’d expect, anger and ferocity are very much the keywords here with the band railing against everything from capitalism (‘Payday Loans’), war (‘Bombing for Democracy’) and zealots (‘Arseholier’). Musically, they’re as intense as they were in 1982.

The album can be streamed and purchased here.

Emma Ruth Rundle - These Killing Times

For her first solo LP since 2021’s ‘Engine of Hell’, Emma Ruth Rundle has returned to a band setting. This is a Very Good thing as the songs are ten times as powerful and feel fleshed out. ‘Catherine Weel’ has an “end of summer” vibe as well as referencing Charles Manson and the Weather Underground and ‘Human Kindness’ is a sinister and intimate number.

The album can be streamed and purchased here,

Vitamin X – Ride the Apocalypse

Running at under 30 minutes, the 17-track album from the Dutch legends is a short, sharp kick in the balls that’s needed in times like this. Nothing fancy, not reinventing anything. Just life affirming hardcore mixed with Stooges style solos and thrash riffing that gives you that extra stir to do that extra shift in the office for more flexitime no problem.

The album can be streamed and purchased here.


Golden Oldies



The Special AKA – In the Studio

Three years from the epochal single ‘Ghost Town’, Jerry Dammers returned with a stripped-down band and an even bleaker vibe (one that had been evident on the harrowing 1982 single ‘The Boiler’). Although songs like ‘Free Nelson Mandela’, ‘What I Like Most About You is Your Girlfriend’ and ‘Racist Friend’ became staples, don’t expect upbeat ska numbers.



MDC – Millions of Dead Cops

If you were to boil 80’s US hardcore down to a single album, it would be this masterpiece. Choc-a-bloc with ferocious riffing, seditious lyrics delivered by a rabble-rousing firebrand and an aesthetic owing much to the anarcho world, it remains utterly essential. ‘I Remember’ is the obvious standout but ‘Dead Cops"/"America's So Straight’ isn’t that far behind.



Easterhouse – Contenders

Mainly remembered for their support for the Provisionals as well as the Revolutionary Communist Party, Manchester based Easterhouse made two excellent albums that sat somewhere between post-punk and the jangle pop of The Smiths, best exemplified by ‘Nineteen Sixty-Nine' with its lyrics attack those who hide behind a Union Jack in Ireland.



The Sensational Alex Harvey Band – Next

Despite influencing a litany of post-punk, goth and metal bands, Scottish glam rockers SAHB aren’t discussed as much as they should. Yet, their version of Jacques Brel’s ‘Next’ terrified a generation of children when performed on the Old Grey Whistle Test and the astonishing ‘Faith Healer’ radiates such power; it’s no wonder it has been widely covered.


⏩ Christopher Owens was a reviewer for Metal Ireland and finds time to study the history and inherent contradictions of Ireland. He is currently the TPQ Friday columnist and is the author of A Vortex of Securocrats and “dethrone god”.

Predominance 66

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Two Thousand And Seventy Five

 

Religious Derangement Syndrome @ 13

 

A Morning Thought @ 3247

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