Some scéal from back home

The February edition of the Irish Voice (IV) is now available from the usual outlets in the Dear Green Place.

This is the 10^th year the publication has existed, and the good folk behind it are trying to move it onto a new level.

It is no idle boast to say that the readers of this site have been pivotal in assisting the funding effort over the past few months.

Every time this GoFundMe link is posted here, it gets another bump.

As Mary Lou would have it, they’re now in touching distance of meeting their objective.

I know how grateful the editorial team are for the help this site’s readers have generated.

So, to all of ye maith thú agus míle buíochas!

This edition of the IV has something new: a column by your humble correspondent.

The plan is for it to be a regular feature, and I’m proud to be associated with the publication that serves Scotland’s Irish community.

We were kicking around ideas for a title for the column going forward, and “Back Home” seemed appropriate both for the paper and the columnist.

This site started in 2008 when I reported on the Famine Song controversy.

I noted at the time that when I heard the genocide choir at Ibrox, it made me glad that my young family of Gaeilgeoirí had no notion that such hatred of them existed.

That was my first observation on this replacement anthem for the banned Billy Boys song.

When I considered the mindset that had created the Famine Song, I was glad that I had returned home to rear my young family.

That very observation seemed to send the Ibrox illiterati into meltdown.

It was a clear objective of the defenders of the racist ditty, which made light of An Gorta Mór, that if they could silence this journalist, then their problems would go away.

I think it’s fair to say they failed on both counts.

The concept of “anti-Irish racism” is now part of the Scottish political lexicon, which was not the case in 2008.

There is still much to do before Scotland’s bad attitude towards her own Irish is a matter for historians and not journalists, a thing of the past to be examined and not a contemporary problem to be tackled.

That’s why the Irish community in Scotland needs its own space, and especially in the digital age, the survival of a traditional newspaper is something to be celebrated.

In my column, I stated that “there is a place for such a print publication to be read and passed around at community gatherings and family events.”

The subject of the piece itself is the uncomfortable fact for nice, fluffy, multicultural Scotland that her greatest city, which has a huge Irish descent population, doesn’t have a Saint Patrick’s Day parade.

Not a good look Glasgow.

Now, I have some ideas for my March column…