WE look at the stories that were making the headlines in the Andersonstown News this week in 1985...
Irish language will be restored
IN a lecture in the Twinbrook Community Flat last week, local language enthusiast, Pádraig Ó Maolchraoibhe said the loss of any language is to be regretted "for with it a unique culture is lost and the totality of human culture is impoverished."
The lecture was one of a series of discussions organised by the Twinbrook Community Education Project.
Mr Ó Maolchraoibhe said: "Apart from Greek, Irish has the oldest literature of any living European language. In what is referred to by historians as 'Ireland's Golden Age' (the 7th and 8th Centuries especially), it is a fact that you could scarcely set up a monastery (they were the universities of the Age) anywhere in Europe without an Irish scholar to head it and other Irish monks as part of the teaching staff."
Speaking about the present day revival, Mr Ó Maolchraoibjne said there were vital reasons why Irish must be promoted.
"The Irish language holds the history, the feelings, the thought, the culture of our people for the past 2,000 years", he said. "It is the continuing – but weakening influence of that culture which the Irish language represents, that still gives us something of a national personality. But this will not last long should the language be completely lost. We are too close to England, and the Anglo-American language and culture is too all-pervasive for us to preserve a separate identity without the Irish language. Concluding on an optimistic note, Mr Ó Maolchraoibhe said children in the North's Irish schools were being given a direct link with "the culture of their ancestors".
He added: "They will grow up to lead a lot of their lives through Irish and they will not feel the alienation of Irish people with only the language imposed on them by imperialism in their mouths. In the 21st Century they, their children and their children’s children will decide what they mean by culture and the fact that their language will be Irish, should ensure that this is not predetermined for them, from outside. It is my hope that when from the end of the 21st Century, the Irish people, free, equal, united and at peace, look back at their history, they will note with satisfaction, that only in two of the last twenty-two centuries did a language and culture other than their own predominate in the island of Ireland."
Editorial: Unionists in Derry want a cabbage patch of their own
WHILE interest in the local elections (such as it is) in these areas, is directed at Belfast City Council, don't let us forget Derry and what's going on there.
Derry Official Unionists, it seems, aren't happy with "the conduct of city's affairs" by Derry City Council, and so, they want a separate council set up to administer the East Bank of the Foyle, the Waterside. According to a Unionist spokesman, former mayor of Derry, Jack Allen, the people of the East Bank, almost to a man, have opted for a separate council.
This is odd considering that 40 per cent of the people in the area in question are Catholics.
But the idea of unionists wanting to cut themselves off from the world, along with those unfortunate enough to be tied to them, isn't so unusual. They've done it before. The Six Counties 'state' for example. Forty per cent of people in this political entity don't want any part of it and never did. Still, to satisfy unionists' desire for isolation we had to like it or lump it. And if Unionists have their way in Derry the Waterside Catholics will have to like it or lump it.
The majority in Derry is nationalist – so unionists want their own little cabbage patch. The majority in Ireland is nationalist – so the Six County unionist cabbage patch was established and to hell with the 40 per cent who happen to be there.
Whether or not district councils, or elections to them, have much relevance to our situation, there is more to the Derry business than the light relief it offers. It is an indication that some things never change. That after more than 60 years of partition and seventeen years of war, Unionists still see themselves as God's own people.
Whether they say their own council is Derry or not is beside the point. They want it and that means their interest is co-operation, co-existence, hand across the divide, etc, is absolutely minimal.
THE WAY WE WERE: St Joseph’s Training College Awards this week in 1985
Twinbrook remembers its dead
SHORTLY after midday on Sunday May 5th, Lagan Valley Comhairle Ceanntair held their annual commemoration in Milltown Cemetery for the Republican volunteers from Twinbrook who during this phase of the struggle have lost their lives.
Damien Gibney welcomed the people taking part and after wreaths were laid on the Republican plot Pat Rice, a local Sinn Féin candidate in the forthcoming elections, gave a short and moving oration in the course of which he said: "We come in grief and pride to honour the memory of Gerry Fennell and John Rooney, volunteers in the Irish Republican Army, and on the 5th May we honour in a special way the memory of Bobby Sands who on this day four years ago died after 66 days on hunger strike and passed into a very special chapter of the struggle for Irish freedom.
"The memory of all our patriot dead, but especially of those from our own area, causes us today to renew our determination to continue the struggle and not to rest until we achieve our goal – a 32 county socialist republic.
"Then to paraphrase Robert Emmett can we write the epitaph of all those who gave their lives for Irish freedom."
