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Showing posts with label Drogheda. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Drogheda. Show all posts

Carrie Twomey 🎤 speaking on LMFM.

“Racism is not the answer” says Drogheda resident Carrie Twomey McIntyre.

She joined Michael Reade to discuss the D Hotel being turned into accommodation for International Protection Applicants.


Racism Is Not The Answer


⏩Carrie Twomey hates Illinois Nazis (just like the Blues Brothers)

Racism Is Not The Answer

Anthony McIntyre ✒ This evening In Drogheda's West Street residents of the town turned out for a vigil in honour of the two men murdered earlier this week in Sligo.


It was a scene replicated across the country as people of various hues gathered in grim determination to stand firm against the hate reaper stalking the streets.

It has been strongly suggested that both men were prey for a predatory hate killer, each viciously slain for being gay. I went in solidarity after my daughter had contacted me from Lyon to say the event was taking place. While standing talking to a local politician my teenage son and his friend turned up. I don't think they went to it specifically but it was good that they did and observed the minute's silence for both murdered men.


Much less joyous than seeing my son and his friend turn up was not seeing the town photographer there. Unfortunately, Jimmy Weldon died yesterday morning in the local Lourdes Hospital, whose name he had campaigned to prevent being dropped. Whether he was a Catholic traditionalist or simply someone who felt that for the Lourdes to no longer be the Lourdes, the town would lose something of its discursive character and cultural significance, I don't know. Forty years of pounding the streets in all types of weather in search of that moment in time to be captured forever, brought to Jimmy a town celebrity status. Whatever snaps were taken this evening, few will attain the level of quality we have come to associate with Jimmy Weldon.

If there was a wedding, 21st, communion, first day of school; it just wasn’t the same without Jimmy capturing those precious moments forever.

If, as seems certain, the Sligo murders were hate crimes, then it marks an upturn in violence against our fellow citizens within Ireland's gay community. There have been other reports of attacks on gay people although fortunately nothing as serious as what took place in Sligo.

A gay activist spoke at tonight's rally and told his listeners that it is disheartening to see young people turn up at his office on a daily basis frightened because of the hostility their sexuality can attract, like a poultice drawing bilious hatred. Also speaking were local TDs Ged Nash and Imelda Munster, both of whom reaffirmed their solidarity with our fellow citizens under attack.


What the exact thinking behind the killings was, we will most likely find out in time. Often this type of hatred has a religious dimension to it. Hate Theology labels gay people sinners and abominations, while rejoicing in the threat to them that they will spend an eternity burning in Hell. Its adherents feel God is on their side because he hates the same people they do, rather than admitting that they weaponise their own god against the lifestyles they hate. Until the S word is treated like the N word, religious hatred will erupt from its sewer. 

An additional worrying dimension of the highest profile murder cases this year is the fact that those in custody accused of killing Aidan Moffitt, Michael Snee and Ashling Murphy seem to be foreign nationals. This will be jumped on by the far right to stir up hatred towards people because, to borrow the words of Philip Guerovitch, they were born a this rather than a that. Vigils suggest the need for vigilance not vigilantism. Our gay friends might not be the only people in need of solidarity in the days ahead.

⏩ Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Drogheda Vigil For Aidan Moffitt and Michael Snee

Christopher Owens ðŸŽµ was @ Droichead Arts Centre, Drogheda last weekend for a gig. 


For the uninitiated, Drogheda can be deceptive.

A small, sleepy Irish town with an ever-diversifying population, some have deemed it a mini-Dublin due to the mix of the historical and the modern (no greater example than how the Scotch Hall Shopping Centre sits closely to the Boyne). And in recent years, it’s seen a greater influx of tourists attempting to tap into this vibe.

But Drogheda has a much darker and (dare I say) macabre side to it.

Aside from the obvious (displaying Oliver Plunkett’s head in St Peter’s Church on the main street), it’s worth bearing in mind Cromwell’s massacre in 1649 and the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. While the former has lingered in the popular nationalist psyche as an example of the brutality inflicted upon them by the British, the latter is regularly commemorated in triumphant fashion, with these being one of the many foundations that the recent conflict was founded upon. The spectres of the Rosnaree Hotel shooting and the killing of Dominic McGlinchey still remain for those who know and arguably feeds into the sound of the town’s drill scene.

So, Drogheda is the perfect setting for Norman Westberg. Like the town, his music embodies dark pasts and new beginnings. Renowned for his tenure in Swans (after Killing Joke, The greatest band to have walked the Earth), the last ten years have seen a steady number of solo releases from the Detroit legend, going for a mix of ambience and drone.

Located on Stockwell Street, the Droichead Arts Centre is a fitting place for the evening’s show owing to a small auditorium which provides a reverential atmosphere, something that Westberg himself acknowledges at the start of the set.

Beginning with a gentle but persistent loop, Westberg proceeds to play his guitar but, instead of the traditional sound of the instrument, it is fed back into the array of pedals on the table in front of him and comes out around a second later as a counterpart to the loop.

The direct consequence of this is that the hour-long show can be divided into three measures: the first twenty minutes sees Westberg produce sounds that lean towards the ambient/chillout side of his work, then the second segment becomes darker and heavier (thanks to the use of muted palming) and the closing part sounds much more pastoral, signifying birth and new beginnings.

It’s quite the journey, but one that is exciting, sensuous and evocative.

All the while Westberg is playing, a film plays behind him. Beginning in darkness, before taking on the form of lighting seen out of a rain-streaked car at 3 in the morning and growing to encompass the screen, it manages to be sinister, comforting and psychedelic at the same time. Perfect match for the music.

All in all, a highly successful evening proving that Norman Westberg is much, much more than Michael Gira’s right hand man.



⏩ Christopher Owens was a reviewer for Metal Ireland and finds time to study the history and inherent contradictions of Ireland. He is currently the TPQ Friday columnist. 

Norman Westberg ➖ Live Review

I don’t pretend to know much or even care about religious life in Drogheda. I know none of the local clergy, having barely spoken to any of them. My encounters with religious types in the town usually amount to getting offside whenever they try to hand me one of their leaflets in a bid to disrupt a leisurely saunter along West Street. People can love Jesus if they want, or Elvis for that matter. They just don’t need to share it with me. A religious paper gets posted through the door on what seems to be a monthly basis but goes unread. My favourite local read on matters religious with a Drogheda flavour has been Hollow be Thy Name by Marian Park atheist Tom Reilly, regarded as a heretic by some because of his admittedly strange views on Oliver Cromwell.  So when it happens that priests find themselves being transferred I am hardly one to notice given that it has absolutely no impact on life in this home.

However, a piece in the Irish Times about a Drogheda priest caught my eye. Iggy Donovan, or Father Iggy as he is known with quite some affection, seems to have the respect of many in the town, people of faith and none. Occasionally he can be seen going about his business much like everybody else. While out walking the mutts one day with a friend we bumped into him on one of the more scenic routes and briefly exchanged pleasantries. My friend, not a believer either, had a good word for him.

Father Iggy is being moved out of his Drogheda ministry. In the view of the town’s mayor, Richie Culhane, the people behind the push are working to an “ultra-conservative” agenda. There is reason for a concern that should stretch beyond Church members. In his last homily in the Augustinian Chapel Iggy fired a broadside at ‘right-wing Catholics and career-oriented clergy in persecuting Irish priests recently silenced by the Vatican.’

Part of the purpose of the homily was to express solidarity with Tony Flannery of the Association of Catholic Priests(ACP)

I cannot leave here today without making some reference to a distinguished colleague of mine in the priesthood. I speak of Fr Tony Flannery. If I had not been made aware first hand of the details of this case I could not have given it credence ... Even hardened veterans are shaken by the murkiness of the devious world of ecclesiastical politics. How has it come to this, that a great and good priest like Tony, who has dedicated his life to the preaching of the Gospel, is persecuted with a zeal that is as pathological as the paranoia that feeds it?

... how has it come to this, that intolerant and extreme right wingers, encouraged apparently by certain authorities and career-orientated priests, can meet in solemn conclave to determine who is guilty of what these people label heresy?

... how has it come to this that sincere thinking Catholics are walking away from our Church believing that the battle for sane Catholicism is lost?

To insist that Catholicism never seems sane at the best of times would be to miss the point which is that in a scoiety where voices of dissent are being suffocated there is a detrimental knock-on effect in terms of public understanding.

It was reported in June that Iggy's friend and colleague, Tony Flannery, ‘has not been allowed to practise as a priest or to take part in the work of the Association of Catholic Priests.’ It is clear that Flannery was the target of Vatican censorship. The Irish Catholic reported in 2012 that the founder of ACP:

has ceased writing his regularly monthly column in the Redemptorist Reality magazine. The Irish Catholic understands that this is as a direct consequence of the Vatican’s intervention. It is the first time in 14 years that Fr Flannery’s regular column has not appeared.

Whatever the theological aspect of these disputes - I doubt there is any, merely a will to stifle independent thought confronted by a will to reflect and question - it does not interest me. With Tony Flannery censored and Iggy Donovan being exiled to some gulag ecclesiastico in Limerick, there is a glaring need for people outside the Church to back those within it who are standing up to reactionary clerics who wish to pollute society with their toxic influence. Wherever censorship exists it should be confronted by a rising crescendo of the very noise it wishes to have hushed up through an imposed vow of silence.

Vow not to be Silent

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