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Alliance 13 March 2010
What
a nice thing to wake up one day and find you are not dead! Well, it seemed like
that when my old friend Betty Mulholland from Belfast phoned to say how much she
liked my Letter in the 'Irish News'. Then another old friend, Jim Hendron, former
Alliance Party Executive colleague from 40 years ago called to say how
members appreciated my letter in the 'Belfast Telegraph', and I discovered
the letter also appeared in our local 'Down Recorder' - and God knows how many
other papers nationwide. It's easy to sit at my computer and hammer out the odd
letter - about the extent of my energies these days.
Suddenly
it appeared to me that I was alive once more in the political sense, going back
to 1974 when I contested a seat in the Northern Ireland Assembly election.* That
was a dead end for me in political terms! As I was not elected I had to get on with
making a mess of my life in other, more personal ways! I'll not bore you with
details, but I can feel the bubble of another book beginning to
rise!*
Oh, if I had the energy! But be warned!
In the meantime I celebrate my temporary lease of political life by
reproducing the text of the Irish News & Down Recorder letters,
marking my elation at the election of the first Alliance party member to the
Westminster Parliament. Jim has kindly informed me that Alliance is holding its 40th Birthday Celebration in the Stormont Hotel, Belfast, next month. That
will be a great social occasion, and I would love to go if old age does not
dampen my ardour. We'll see!
Here's
the text of the letter. Down Recorder version first, as it is exactly what I
wrote. The Irish News edited out a simple expression of the joy that I felt on
the occasion. What's wrong with some sub-editors? Don't they like natural human
emotion?
* see Brother Barney
THE 40TH BIRTHDAY PARTY - 6TH JUNE
I went - attired in a new linen suit and a wine bow tie, and met a few people that I worked with 40 years ago.
There was Oliver Napier - now Sir Oliver, because he led the Party for 13 years - a much deserved tribute, along with the late Bob Cooper (also Knighetd).
Oliver has not been well recently, but he was able to make it to the 'do', sharing a table with his wife, the Lady Briege, Naomi Long MP and her husband Michael, David Ford, Party Leader and NI Justice Minister, John, Lord Alderdice, former Party Leader and Speaker of the NI Assembly, and a few other notable people.
Oliover made a stirring speech, sitting down at his table because of his health problems. Alliance, he said, was not just a political party, it was a crusade - against sectarfianism. Wonderful stuff. He had all 300 guests roaring approval as he described how the Alliance party evolved. Oliver is a real thinking man, a really nice person, a man of integrity: a really great fellow; and his wife echos these qualities. She very kindly led me to where Lady Cooper, Bob's widow, was sitting. It was the first time I had met her, and was able to tell her that shortly after Bob and she got engaged he used to to twit me, saying, "O'Shea! Are yiou not able to ghet a woman?" Cheeky bugger! He had to go to St. Roses's Scondary School on the Falls Road to get a wife; a Catholic teacher in a Catholic school. Not bad for an ouil' Presbyterian. It was a pleasure to meet her after so many years, but sad that her husband was not present, except in the spirit. He was an excellent man. A really good friend. Lovely fella.
Briege aslso introduced me to their eight children. A grand collection of young people, whose names I will not remember, unfortuinately. She also pointed to where IO might find my old friend from West Belfast, Dan Magennis. Dan was a L:aw student at QWueens when the Party was formed, still lives in Moorland Park. WEe share memories of machinegun fire outside the hall during the foundation meeting of the West Belfast Alliance Party Association. Probably it's only when you are in danger of death that you become fully alive. This was cvertainlyu the case during the four years that lead up to the first NI Assembly election, in 1974. Intense political canvassing and public speaking on behalf of a newly established Party devoted to uniting the people of Norther Ireland, cutting across the stupid sectarian divide, was the one thing that kept me alive and hopeful. Without this I would have relapsed into despond as peolle killedand maimed each other: 3,500 dead, 150,000 maimed and injured. A dreadful indictment of Ulster society and the forcves that crerated such a sectarian State. It makes me almost weep as i type. Sad.
However, the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Party was a joyful event, a celebration of what we achieved. We were and are ordinary people who got together to express our common humanty, our desire for peace and good government. It will come, in due course, as people emerge fro their sectarian dugouts, and Alliance will have shown the way: people such as those who shared our btable: Grace Wilson, first general Secretary of the Party, sujch a live force in those early days, now age 91 and suffering from Parkinson's and Altziner's, so her son told me, but still able to enjoy a wee drop of whiskey now and again, he said - well, more thhan a drop, he said! A remarkable, independent lady - a great lady. Also acroos the table I spotted the rotund figure of David Cook, first Alliance Party Lord mayer of belfast, and Fionnuala, his wife, with whom I spioke to the students of St. Joseph's College of Education, in those distant days, proposing the Motion that Alliance is the answer. Such a funny, hilarious meeting, well attended too. Student humour can be sol inspired and pointed at times.
Also at the table were two people who I did not remember at that monent
