AS I write this column the future of Keir Starmer as British Prime Minister is a topic of conversation because of his mishandling of the Peter Mandelson affair. I know nothing about the ongoing scandal around Jeffrey Epstein other than what I read or see in the media. But the evidence of his serial abuse of young women going back many years is plain to see. My heart goes out to the victims and survivors of this despicable cabal.

However, I was surprised by Starmer’s appointment last year of Mandelson to the job of British Ambassador to the USA. He had already resigned twice from a Labour government. Once in December 1998 over the securing of a loan that he had not declared in the Register of Members’ Interests and a second time in January 2001 over allegations of impropriety in a passport scandal.

His track record as Secretary of State for the North was equally unimpressive. Less than a year after his first resignation, in October 1998, he was appointed by Tony Blair as Secretary of State for the North. He replaced Mo Mowlam. Mandelson lasted just 15 months in the job before his resignation from Blair’s Cabinet in January 2001, one of the shortest stints by any of the 25 largely mediocre British politicians who have occupied Hillsborough Castle since 1972.

During his time in the North he refused to intervene when David Trimble blocked Sinn Féin’s two Ministers, Martin McGuinness and Bairbre de Brún, from attending the North-South Ministerial Council. And when Trimble threatened to resign and collapse the institutions Mandelson unilaterally and illegally did the job for him by suspending the institutions. Later he ordered the union flag flown on designated days in breach of the Good Friday Agreement.

When he left, Danny Devlin, our master muralist and all-round good guy and artist, produced a very fitting cartoon based on Pinocchio. I sent Mr Mandelson a copy as a ‘Slán Abhaile’ gift.

Mandelson’s focus, as has been the case for most of those who occupy Hillsborough, was to pander to unionism. This approach by successive British governments, including Mr Starmer’s, ignores this elephant in the room.

In the decades after partition political unionism dominated the political landscape. Both in votes and through gerrymandering of electoral boundaries and restrictions on the franchise, they held an unassailable position. But that has now changed.

Consequently, ten years ago in the 2015 and 2016 elections the overall pro-unionist majority came in at around 20,000 votes. But in the seven elections since then the non-unionist vote has emerged well ahead. In the last three elections the gap has been on over 100,000 votes each time.

The DUP are determined to replace Michelle O’Neill as First Minister in next year’s Assembly elections but to do that unionist must agree an electoral pact or unionist voters must move in huge numbers to one of the unionist parties. The DUP want them to vote DUP. Jim Allister, the new leader of the Ulster Unionist Party is making a pitch for them to vote UUP. But his message is no different from the DUP and TUV. The unionist parties seem intent on fighting for votes in a diminishing pool of unionist voters.

Whatever decisions are taken by political unionism over the next year the strain on the political institutions is set to grow. Our task is to hold on to the position of First Minister. In the meantime, we all watch the political machinations playing out in Westminster.

As we were taught in Religious Education at school: It’s only a sin if you take pleasure from it.

Two books tell different stories of resistance and suffering


This week sees the republication of Jim McVeigh’s excellent book Goodbye Dearest Heart – on the life of Joe McKelvey who was executed by the Free State in 1922 aged 24. It tells not just the personal story of Joe McKelvey but also the remarkable times in which he lived.

Joe McKelvey was born in Stewartstown in County Tyrone but moved to the Falls area of West Belfast as a teenager. He was a committed Gael who in 1916 was a founder member of the O’Donovan Rossa CLG in Beechmount.

Jim McVeigh tells how McKelvey joined the Irish Republican Army in Belfast and quickly rose through its ranks to become O.C. (Officer Commanding) of the Third Northern Division which had responsibility for Belfast. McKelvey’s time as O.C. coincided with the partition of Ireland.

In April 1922 he was one of the anti-Treaty IRA leaders who occupied the Four Courts in Dublin. The pro-Treaty forces attacked and after three days of shelling, using artillery pieces provided by the British government, the IRA garrison surrendered. They were imprisoned in Mountjoy Prison where McKelvey was appointed as O.C. of the republican prisoners.

On December 6, 1922, Sean Hales, a Free State TD, was shot dead in Dublin. The Free State cabinet determined on an act of reprisal. Four IRA prisoners – Joe McKelvey, Rory O’Connor, Liam Mellows and Richard Barrett – were told they were to be executed. On the morning of December 8 the four were taken to the prison yard. Joe McKelvey and Richard Barrett were still alive after the volley. A Free State officer shot them as they lay wounded.

The Civil War was part of the counter revolution which witnessed the abandonment of nationalists in the North and the establishment of two deeply conservative states on the island of Ireland.

Speaking earlier in the Treaty debates, Joe McKelvey’s comrade Liam Mellows had warned of the danger of accepting The Treaty. He said: “Men will get into positions, men will hold power, and men who get into positions and hold power will desire to remain and will not want to be removed, or will not take a step that will mean removal in case of failure.”

His remarks were prophetically accurate.

Goodbye Dearest Heart by Jim McVeigh is available now online at An Fhuiseog, in An Fhuiseog 55 Bothar na bFál, Beal Feirste, BT12 4PD: https://sinnfeinbookshop.com.

Late last year I came across a book written by young people living in or exiled from the Gaza Strip: We Are Not Numbers: The Voices of Gaza’s Youth. Through their words it gives testimony to the horror that the Palestinian people faced daily in Gaza under Israeli occupation and blockade. The book spans ten years. It tells of the experience of young people and their community trying to survive against a relentless enemy that does not see them as human beings. The organisation We Are Not Numbers (WANN) was founded in 2015.

In their introduction Ahmed Alnaouq and Pam Bailey explain: “Our members write about everything from death, homelessness and the search for scarce electricity.”

In her 2023 poem ‘My Home’ Eman Alhaj Ali writes:

What is home?
The place where a wall can explode,
A table fly and spin,
Glass shatter faster than a flinch.
In ‘I Miss You, My Brother’ Mahmoud Alyazji writes:

“Before I sleep, I see your body under the rubble. It flashes into my mind and makes my heart sink. Then I pick up my phone and look at your photos. I look at you carrying a watermelon on the beach and smiling, in the hope that it will wipe out the image of your body buried under the rubble. But my chest is tight. I am angry. I want to scream loudly – loud enough for the whole world to hear me. I want to pierce their ears …”

We Are Not Numbers is edited by Ahmed Alnaouq and Pam Bailey and is available online through Penguin Random House.

You can get more information at wearenotnumbers.org.