1920

Railway paralysis

Is there no group of men of good-will in Ireland who can prepare a way to bridge the present apparently irreconcilable differences between the railway men and the British Government? From small beginnings, the trouble has daily widened.

To-day passenger service is paralysed over three-fourths of the railway system of Ireland. A state of unrest and uncertainty prevails. Our commercial interests are being ruined. Tourist traffic is largely held up, and many districts are suffering severely.

Those who speak glibly about paralysing the entire railway system of the country can scarcely realise the significance of their words, or the dire results that such a state of things would bring about for the country.

It is better to examine calmly the source and extension of the trouble, and to see if a way out cannot be found.

The doctrine of refusing to handle munitions of war was first propounded by the Labour Party in England, who placed a ban on the sending of munitions by Britain to Poland to enable the Polish Government to make war on the Russians.

English Labour, whose views find no representation in the present coalition Cabinet, resorted to “direct action” to enforce its will. Just as the National Volunteers in Ireland first intimated the policy practised so successfully by Sir Edward Carson, so Irish Labour quickly took the hint from the heads of the principal transport organisations across the Channel.

In the result, the dockers at North Wall, with the tentative support of British Labour, refused to handle munitions that were being conveyed to Ireland by the British Government for the suppression of the Irish people, notwithstanding the fact that these munitions were loaded by fellow-workers on the other side from whose leaders the doctrine had originated.

Water power

An interesting sidelight on the manner in which the English Government in Ireland has allowed Irish resources to remain undeveloped in order that English trade may flourish, is found in the Government’s treatment of Ireland’s water power.

Not one of the 237 rivers of Ireland has been used for industrial purposes, although in these rivers there is immense industrial power. It is estimated that the rivers Shannon, Corrib, Erne and Bann could produce 100,000 horse-power which would mean a saving of 700,000 tons of coal every year.

The main rivers in Ireland could in many cases be used to work the mineral deposits which lie close to them. The total horse-power which the Irish watercourses are capable of producing is variously estimated but it is established that at least 250,000 horse-power could be developed.

This would mean that Ireland would save 1,750,000 tons of coal every year. But as England supplies the greater quantity of coal burned in this country and exploits it commercially, nothing has ever been done to harness the white coal of Ireland’s rivers. And nothing will ever be done until Ireland can take her own destiny into her own hands.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

Get the Connacht Tribune Live app

The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.

Country Living with Francis Farragher

A bit like moving house, an impending change in workplace location seems to bring its own pressures, mostly emotional.  I never realised that poring through old files, pictures, letters, CDs and books could transport the mind and spirit into a place that only seems to have been a day away . . . and yet in cases it’s been 30 years ago.

Most of us probably harbour some degree of a hoarding instinct. Little did I realise that I had stored up documentation about a new tractor model, the layers of the atmosphere, a trip to Italia ’90 or a printed weather forecast from a week in May, 2004.

Here and there on random TV viewing treks, I’ve come across programmes about ‘professional hoarders’ – the people who just cannot rid of anything in their houses.

The result of the fanatical hoarders tends to be pretty catastrophic with barely enough route space to access the rooms in the house. Junk takes up space – an awful lot of space.

And yet, I don’t how many times maybe around the garden shed or the farmyard when I’ve made a decision that a plant, piece of iron or rusty tool is of no use any more, only to curse aloud a few days later when the discarded item is just what I needed to plug some gap or hole.

I’ll invent a word for the practice – ‘hoardaphilia’ – and it’s not the easiest of conditions to shake off, even if strongly armed with a determined initial resolve to end up with a clean sheet in terms of both materials and emotion.

Going through old stuff for the purpose of discarding is in a way a bit like looking back on your life with all its little ups-and-downs . . . the parties, the retirements, the work colleagues we knew for years who are no longer with us.

It works in much the same way as a song or piece of music from the past that transports your mind back into a time and place now long gone from your life.

Years back, I had an old uncle blessed with a photographic memory but as the years rolled by and he slipped into his 80s, we would find it hilarious how he sometimes would miss out completely on a generation. Instead of the son or daughter, he’d actually be meaning the grandfather or grandmother. Over the past week, I kind of tuned into what was happening with him.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

Get the Connacht Tribune Live app

The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.

1920

Deserted courts

Practically all the courthouses in North Galway are deserted on court days (writes our representative).

No persons appeared at the last Mountbellew, Ardrahan, Kinvara and Athenry petty sessions, and no court has been held in Kilkerrin or Williamstown for the past two months. Dunmore is also standing aloof.

The fact gives occasion for interesting reflections. British law, it seems, was not a preventive of wrong-doing. Its administration became conventional, and although nominal fines were imposed, no efforts were made to check repeated acts of misdemeanours.

There were litigants who went to those courts solely to “beset” one another in the fine points of the law. They brought the most trivial differences into court, and never cultivated the high moral principle of overlooking the little troubles that crossed their path.

The Sinn Féin spirit claims a high moral influence, and its advocates believe that in its operation a good deal of the troubles heard heretofore in British courts will disappear. Sinn Féin court sentences are severe and stringently carried out with a view to putting a stop once and for all to foolish squabbles between our own people.

Musical culture

Seldom in the history of our country has there been such a passionate and widely-expressed desire for a distinctive Celtic culture.

Whilst politicians and armed men may struggle for the mastery, the musician, the poet, the artist and the litterateur are taking a new pride in their work, and inspiring with a distinctive national expression.

“The Irish Statesman,” which unhappily has been compelled to cease publication, afforded most encouraging evidence of a new spirit and culture in current Irish literature.

In the realm of music the Irish Society of Composers promises to achieve what has never hitherto been possible by collecting all that is best in our traditional melodies and bringing them to classical fame in our own country under the aegis and patronage of our most distinguished musicians.

The Society is formed for the purpose of forwarding the interests of composers resident in Ireland or of Irish descent, and the term “composer” is not to be confined merely to composers of orchestral, instrumental or choral works, but is to be applied to the writers of dance music, ballads and light music of every sort.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

Get the Connacht Tribune Live app

The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.