Our Friend Hevesi

ALAN Hevesi has been the most thorough, most proficient and most efficient comptroller that New York City has had the advantage of and that the state has had.

Many of the people who are now baying for his scalp were silent and nowhere to be found when Hevesi was promoting the MacBride Principles for the benefit of the beleaguered Catholic minority in Northern Ireland. We should not forget his contribution to the Good Friday Agreement and the present relatively peaceful state of affairs in that province.

It’s said that “eaten bread” is soon forgotten. Let it not be said that the Irish American community has abandoned its champion in his hour of travail.

Frank Durkan
New York, New York

Our Friend Menendez

AS Irish Americans we appreciate a person who backs up fine words with good deeds. Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey is such a person.

Before it was fashionable, Bob was there for Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and the Irish people in their struggle for self-determination and freedom from British occupation of the North. In the early 1990s, he traveled to Belfast to support the release of the Ballymurphy 7 and the Beechmount 5, Irish teenagers held in a maximum security British prison on false charges. All were later released.

Bob was instrumental in persuading President Bill Clinton to grant a visa to Gerry Adams. He supported the courageous solicitor Rosemary Nelson in her campaign for human rights for the Garvaghy Road residents and hosted her on her visit to testify before Congress.

Whenever called upon, Bob Menendez has been there for the Irish. Now it is time for the Irish to be there for Bob Menendez.

We, the undersigned, support Bob Menendez for U.S. senator from New Jersey. We want him to continue his work for peace and justice in Ireland and the best interests of the American people here at home.

Jean Forest, Hoboken; Bob Linnon, professor (ret). Seton Hall University; Greg Sean Canning, Sparta; Charlie Clinton, Oradell; Edmund and Aud Lynch, Denville; Jerry Lally, Spring Lake; Robert Lynch, New York/Brehon Law Society; George Boyle, Jersey City/Columbia, Missouri; Mike Breen, Upper Saddle River; Patrick Whalen, Millstone; Peter Quinn, Tenafly; Margaret and Warren Townsend, Ridgewood; Jim Dorrian, Wyckoff; Elizabeth Logue, Midland Park; Patrick Donovan, Dumont; William Canty, Bergenfield; Ken Tierney, Riverdale, New York; Eamon Dornan, New York/Brehon Law Society; Bob and Kathy Lynch, Summit; James Mullin, Moorestown.

DUP Criminals

I WOULD like to take issue with John Spain’s rant in last week’s issue titled “Northern Frost Is Melting.” He again accepts the excuses by the DUP for not moving forward as if all of this was true.

What Spain doesn’t tell the readers is that the DUP have their own problems with criminality, which is a new word in the dictionary reserved only for Irish Republicans. A former member of the DUP has been convicted of electoral fraud, and attempted to assault a cameraman outside the court. Therefore, John, people in glass houses should not be throwing stones .

All this nonsense about Irish Republicans being involved in crime – well, why are they not in court like your DUP cousins, John?

Sure, your buddies in the discredited Police Service of Northern Ireland will surely invent something to derail the process before the deadline on the 24th of November. Then you can say I told you so.

Brendan Soraghan
Danbury, Connecticut

A Real Republican

ON Saturday October 21, I attended a book launch sponsored by Indiana University Press at O’Lunney’s restaurant in Manhattan. The book, called Ruairi O’Bradaigh, The Life and Politics of an Irish Revolutionary, was the product of 20 years research by author Robert W. White, dean of the School of Liberal Arts and professor of sociology.

Dr. White’s comments at the event drew a clear distinction between Mr. O’Bradaigh’s position as the leader of the Irish Republican movement for the last 36 years, and Gerry Adams’ position as leader of a political party whose main agenda is sharing power in a British sectarian statelet demanding equal rights.

Mr. O’Bradaigh came to public notice at the1970 Sinn Fein Ard Fheis (convention) when he and fellow Republicans walked out after irreconcilable differences over the 1918 Republican principle of abstention and separation from British partitioned administrations. They took with them the Sinn Fein constitution intact and its defense of the 32 county Irish Republic established in 1919 by the sovereign will of the Irish electorate.

The organization was renamed Provisional Sinn Fein and Mr. O’Bradaigh was elected its first president and held that position until succeeded by Adams in 1983. The anti-abstentionist faction became known as Official Sinn Fein.

Little did O’Bradaigh know at the time that he and fellow Republicans would be forced to do a repeat performance at the 1986 Provisional Sinn Fein Ard Fheis over the same issue of abstention. Again they walked out with the Sinn Fein constitution intact and reconvened as Republican Sinn Fein. He was again elected president and still holds that position today.

Not only did the Provisionals join Leinster House in Dublin, but also Stormont and Westminster in 1998. According to Provisional Sinn Fein Councilor Francie Molloy, they are now “prepared to administer British rule in Ireland for the foreseeable future. The very principle of partition is accepted.”

Journalist Ed Moloney, who wrote the forward to the book, also provides another detailed account of the Provisionals’ gradual departure from Republicanism into six county community egalitarianism in his recent book A Secret History of the IRA.

The Provisionals’ political rivals north and south still refer to them as Republicans, but that self-serving misnomer aids the rivals in gloating over the apparent defeat of Irish Republicanism and Sinn Fein’s absorption into a partitionist Assembly rather than remaining opposed to its existence.

The two partitioned states in Ireland were created by the British in order to suppress the infant 32 county Irish Republic. By definition, Irish Republicanism and British imperialism are diametrically opposed.

For over two centuries Irish Republicans have resisted the illegal and illegitimate British occupation, and since 1918 Republican Sinn Fein has guarded its Republican principles in support of the sovereign and free 32 county Ireland.

Vic Sackett
Glenwood Landing, New York

Homecoming Bore

AFTER reading Georgina Brennan’s lengthy account of her “Big Homecoming” in last week’s issue, the adage that paper never refuses ink seems true.

Previous columns by the former Irish Voice reporter about her mundane affairs had already validated this proverb. Granted, Frank McCourt and the late John McGahern parlayed their memoirs into works of critical acclaim; however, Georgina’s maudlin musings belong in her diary and not in the pages of a newspaper.

While the events of which she writes may be highly significant for Georgina and her family, they are not newsworthy events to be foisted on the general readership. Judging from the nature of her column, it seems that Miss Brennan may be afflicted with an inflated sense of self-importance.

Now I fear with the wedding imminent, we will be subjected to more doses of this drivel. However, by Georgina’s own public admission of being together with “Himself” for nine years, and also having had the marriage course waived by the adorable priest, maybe a cohabitation anniversary might be more appropriate than a wedding at this stage.

Georgina, enjoy your repatriation but eschew the reporting. As regards to a future career, may I suggest marriage counseling since you claim to be well qualified judging by your remark, “What can they teach us”?

Ah yes, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing is another proverb worth keeping in mind, Georgina.

Frank Brady
Yonkers, New York