THE SITUATION in the North is now more grave than it has ever been before. When trouble broke out in earlier decades it cost many lives but rapidly dwindled in intensity. For months now, despite a massive deployment of troops, trouble has continued and even spread. In August trouble was mainly confined to two areas of Belfast; the Falls Road area and the Ardoyne area. Since then the Antrim Road and the Ballymacarrett areas have become increasingly involved.
THE TUMULTUOUS EVENTS in Northern Ireland caused the most serious crisis in the Government since Jack Lynch became Taoiseach. Indeed on at least two occasions the Government was in danger of breaking up and that it did not do so was due more to the fortuitous turn of events than anYthing else.
LAST APRIL a public opinion poll was carried out in this country, surveying political attitudes on the eve of the election. The poll was undertaken by Social Surveys (Gallup Poll), based on a sample of over 2,000 respondents throughout the country. Within the usual limits of sampling error this poll gives a reliable and unique insight into Irish political attitudes. The range of information provided is immense and in this article only some aspects of the results can be considered.
WE IRISH frequcntly strike our visitors as an introspective lot, highly sensitive as to what others think of us, especially when we are on exhibition, as at the Theatre Festival. Towards the end of the Festival's first week NUSIGHT had the chance to discuss it with three eminent visiting critics,'
Eric Shorter of the Daily Telegraph, Wolf Kauffman, who writes a column syndicated in about a dozen major American papers, and B. A. Young from the Financial Times.
DETECTIVE SERGEANT" Lugs " Brannigan is probably the most famous policeman in Ireland today. He is admired by most young Gardai as an example of what they, minus his features, would want to be. I remember a young Guard telling me that he had , just heard that Brannigan had put six people in St. Vincent's Hospital an hour earlier. The young garda seemed to think this an exemplary achievement. The force admires him for his fearsome reputation in Dublin and his image as a good, fearless cop.
On September 4 the death of Ho Chi Minh, President of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, was announced in Hanoi. Cu Bac (the revered Uncle) Ho was one of the elder statesmen of the twentieth century, a man who contributed significantly to the course of modern history and, by his actions more than his words, to the development of revolutionary socialist ideology.
A DICTIONARY definition of the noun" project" tells us it is a " scheme" or a "design." Spelt with a capital' P,' it becomes the name adopted by a group of young Dubliners to describe what is certainly a comprehensive scheme and one of ambitious and praiseworthy design. Project has had its ups and downs, its successes and disappointments, but now, three years after its inception, it remains one of the most stimulating and dynamic artistic forces in Irish life today.
WHILE THE Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association has constituted one of the main factors in the civil rights movement it would be inaccurate to say it is synonymous with it, The movement begins in effect in October of last year with the famous Derry march. At this point the civil rights ideal reached a sufficient number of people and moved them sufficiently towards direct action to earn the title of movement. The Association, however, has a much longer and lesser known history. The idea of an association of civil rights for Northern Ireland was first considered as far back as 1962.
Peadar O'Donnell was born in Donegal, in 1893, and was educated locally and at St. Patrick's College, Dublin. He became a school teacher in Donegal but in 1918 gave up teaching to become organiser of the I.T. and G.W.U. He joined the I.R.A. and at the Truce was Ole. 1st Northern Division. He took the Republican side in the crisis of the Treaty and was elected to the Executive of the I.R.A. He was in the Four Courts when it was attacked on 28th June, 1922.
WHEN CAPT. O'NEILL called the General Election for February 24th it was not to trounce the parliamentary opposition, but rather to assert the dominance of himself and his class within the Unionist party. The previous election had taken place in 1965 and another was not legally due until 1970. The Unionist party held 37 of the 52 seats on the dissolution, the remainder was divided as follows: 9 Nationalists, 2 Northern Ireland Labour, 2 Republican Labour, 1 Liberal and One National Democrat.