Phil Mac Giolla Bháin

As the world celebrates the birth of a baby boy born in abject poverty. There is another infant that I haven’t been able to get out of my head all week. Baby P looks up at me in the picture everyone has seen and asks questions that no one in polite society seems to want to seriously answer. It has often been mentioned that there isn’t a resigning culture in Irish politics, that, unlike in the UK, people here cling onto their government positions as if their lives depended on it. In Britain, on the other hand, a chap falls …

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Words are important; well you would expect a journalist and author to believe that. Words condition the response. Words have baggage. Words are never ever neutral. Never. I have been thinking about this increasingly since writing the last blog about Eoin Ryan’s visit to Scotland. The visit had been arranged after Alyn Smith MEP had heard Eoin Ryan raise the issue of the Famine Song controversy in the European parliament. Ryan had been very precise in the use of this language when raising TFS issue. This was a problem of racism and, to further press home that point, Ryan had …

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  Sociologists have a term for what an outsider does to a society just by being there. The stranger conducts a “commonsense inventory”. This is not a conscious act, but just because the outside has not been socialised into that system they have an effect of making everyone there consider what is the accepted wisdom. Eoin Ryan the Fianna Fail MEP from Dublin caused official Scotland to carry out a common sense inventory last Thursday in Scotland. I was there to witness the event. Eoin Ryan had raised the anti-Irish racism in Scotland as manifested by the singing of the …

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From my vantage point here in the west of Ireland my connection to what happens in Britain is simultaneously both distant and intimate. It is impossible to watch any British TV programme at this time of year without noticing the ubiquity of the Poppy. Perhaps I am mistaken, but the wearing of the Poppy by people on British TV seems to be happening earlier and earlier. Why this is I can only conjecture. What is it that is being remembered? Is it the appalling death toll of war? Or is it also something else? In psychotherapy there is a well-known …

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The supporters of Rangers Football club had a special message from their club last night as they took their seats to watch the match against Hamilton Academicals. If they sang “The Famine Song” they were liable to be arrested. This statement had been written after consultation with the police. Strathclyde police later reported that there was only one arrest at Ibrox Park and that was for drunkenness. James McCarthy, the young Irish midfielder for Hamilton who had received sustained racist abuse from Rangers fans on Saturday in the SPL at New Douglas Park, was allowed to go about his job …

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Phil phoned George Galloway’s radio programme to inform him of the awful racist abuse that young James McCarthy had received from Rangers fans that day at New Douglas Park. Phil also told George that James had been racially abused the previous week by a section of the visiting St.Mirren fans. Phil was emailed to say that there had been a caller to George’s show claiming to be a St.Mirren fan in Bolton who claimed that James McCarthy had NOT been racially abused by St.MIrren fans at New Douglas Park. Moreover that postings to this site putting the St.Mirren side of …

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As a journalist you usually know you’re doing your job when people aren’t pleased to see you. My family are pleased to see me, and my friends welcome me into their homes, so I don’t take it personally when people don’t want to see me and my press card. Its only business it isn’t personal. Billy Singh of “Show Racism The Red Card” (SRTRC) wasn’t pleased to see me at Tynecastle last Friday. It is ok Billy this is business, nothing personal. I had, since, mid September been trying to get an interview, a comment even, from Billy Singh of …

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 In a parallel universe there is an ice hockey match in Canada.   One club draws its’ support and its’ narrative from the thousands of Scots who left Scotland during the “Highland Clearances”.    The other club are their bitter rivals and their support is largely drawn from the English ascendancy in Canada.   The Toronto Royals are Canada’s establishment club.  The religious ethos of the club has always been Anglican. Their ex-players and managers populate the upper echelons of Canadian ice Hockey. Until 1989 they did not hire any player who had a Scottish background, especially of the player …

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  I had studiously avoided watching the Olympics, much less write anything about it when they were on.  I had caught a section of the opening ceremony on the news and it was a stunning spectacle.   In that I was drawn to the closing ceremony as I expected the same eye-popping, jaw dripping display. I was not disappointed.  For all the majesty, energy and synchronisation of motion I was unsettled by the similarity to the Nazi Olympics.   This was all too much like “Triumph of the will” for the digital age.   This is an empire on the …

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By Phil Mac Giolla Bhain Last week Alan Shatter TD submitted a Dail question to Foreign Minister Micheal Martin about the Famine Song controversy in Scotland. The Minister stated, ” in common with the vast majority of people in Britain and Ireland, I condemn the singing of songs or other actions which promote or encourage racism, sectarianism or xenophobia of any kind. “. I spoke with Deputy Shatter last week and he confirmed to me that he had also written directly to Rangers Football club to express his concern for this “anti-Irish chanting” indulged in by thousands of Rangers’ fans …

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