‘A wound which will never heal’
Paul Ainsworth, Irish News, April 19th, 2025
SON OF LOYALIST MURDER VICTIM AFREDO FUSCO OPENS UP ABOUT FAMILY’S TRAUMA
THE son of a Catholic cafe owner murdered in a loyalist gun attack has described receiving the “worst news that we could ever imagine” following the sectarian killing.
Mario Fusco has written a book about his family’s Italian roots and their settling in Belfast, that also covers the horrific shooting of his father Alfredo Fusco in February 1973.
The 53-year-old father of four, a son of Italian immigrants, was targeted at his cafe on north Belfast’s York Road. It happened while his wife Antonietta was in the premises and she found her husband’s lifeless body behind the door of a storeroom where he had been chased.
It took until 2011 before loyalist Robert James Clarke from the Crumlin area was convicted of the murder. The prosecution went ahead following the re-examination of handprint and fingerprint evidence found at the scene.
The loyalist, now 72, served only two years in prison, as he was released under the Good Friday Agreement. The sentencing judge said Alfredo had been “singled out for assassination in a brutal and terrifying manner”.
Previous killing
Clarke had previously served 14 years in prison after being convicted in 1976 of the 1973 murder of Catholic woman Margaret O’Neill in north Belfast’s New Lodge area.
In 2017 Clarke was sentenced to a year in prison after being convicted for his role in a huge fuel-laundering operation.
The Fusco family’s heartache and quest for justice are outlined in the book by Mario, who was 14 when his father was murdered. He is now 67 and the book, titled A Tale of Love and Two Wars and set for release in June through Blackstaff Press, tells the family story, including his grandfather’s arrival in Belfast from Italy in the early 20th century, and the later arrival of Antonietta after the Second World War and her meeting his father.
The book details the trauma he and his loved ones faced in the aftermath of the murder. It covers the trial and eventually the death of Mario’s mother in 2014.
“For years it had been in my head to tell the family story, as the grandchildren had been asking me about my past,” Mario told The Irish News.
“There was a story to be told, and I thought if something happened to me, a lot of this history might be lost, so a few years ago on Father’s Day I was gifted a laptop, and decided to begin writing.”
Son of murder victim writes book telling of family trauma
The book also details life for immigrants in Belfast’s former ‘Little Italy’ area, which was located in the city’s docklands.
“My dad was born and raised in Little Italy, but my grandfather eventually moved the family to York Road,” Mario said.
Speaking of writing about his father’s murder at the height of the Troubles, Mario said it was “very difficult” to revisit that time.
‘A wound that will never heal’
“Even sometimes now, I can still break down if I think about it – this is a wound that will never heal,” he said.
“However, I think writing about it in this way has been somewhat therapeutic too, despite the difficulties.”
In the chapter on his father’s murder, Mario details the horror of learning what had happened.
Main picture, Mario Fusco holds a copy of his new book A Tale of Love and Two Wars. Above, Alfredo Fusco was murdered in a loyalist gun attack in 1973
“It is difficult to describe just how hard this hit us. It was the worst news that we could ever imagine,” he writes. “Physically, I went into complete shock whilst mentally I was trying to make sense of what I had just been told.”
“My poor mother Antonietta had already gone through so much turmoil during the war in Italy, and now she had to witness the horror of that night, and live with it for the rest of her life. It is unimaginable to think how much she had suffered. It is beyond what any one person should have to bear.”
Mario continues in the book: “At night, I often think of my father. I go back in my head to that terrible night and imagine how my father felt when he saw the gunmen coming through the café door, what was going through his head as he struggled to survive against a cold-blooded killer.
Two year sentence ‘hard to take’
“He must have suffered great anguish in those moments before the fatal shots were fired. It should have been so different. In hindsight we should have realised the danger of living on York Road, but now it’s too late and we must forever live with the guilt.”
Mario said he was even reluctant to mention the name of his father’s killer in the book, but relented and included one reference to Clarke’s name in the chapter detailing the loyalist’s trial 38 years after the murder.
“Knowing he only served two years for killing my father is hard to take, especially when you see other people serving longer sentences for much less severe crimes,” he said.
“This book is a chance to tell the story of my family in my own way, on my own terms, while also exploring an important part of Belfast’s history.”
Bikers protest at treatment of British Army veterans in Legacy Act
Harry Stedman, Belfast Telegraph, Belfast News Letter and Irish News, April 19th, 2025
Veterans who served in the Army during the Troubles face “absolutely disgusting” treatment, protesters have said as they called for the retention of the Legacy Act.
More than 1,000 people gathered in Whitehall, central London, yesterday to protest against the Labour Government repealing key elements of The Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023.
The Act, introduced by the former Conservative government, halted scores of civil cases and inquests linked to the conflict and offered conditional immunity for perpetrators of Troubles crimes in exchange for their co-operation with a new truth recovery body.
It was strongly opposed by all parties in Northern Ireland, victims' groups, and the Irish government. In December, Secretary of State Hilary Benn began the process to formally repeal the Act.
Removal of conditional immunity
The move will see the removal of conditional immunity, the reinstatement of legacy inquests and restoration of civil cases. But Labour now plans to axe the immunity provision and other key elements of the Act that would see the legacy inquests and civil cases return.
Many of the protesters, belonging to the Rolling Thunder group, drove black motorbikes through Westminster carrying military flags before gathering for speeches in Parliament Square.
Jack (63), a flight sergeant from Lincolnshire who served in the military for 34 years, said veterans were “cast aside” with no provisions once their service ends.
Speaking at the protest, he told the PA news agency: “As a young man, when we signed off and pledged our allegiance to the military, we didn't expect to be sold down the river by our government. It's absolutely disgusting.
“Our message is stop trying to bring claims against soldiers that were merely doing their jobs. It's outrageous.”
Jack added: “As young men, we were trained to follow orders, we were trained to be aggressive, and now we're being prosecuted for it. It's out of order.”
Ian Brown (59), from Hertfordshire, said he wanted to prevent any future veterans from other war zones from being prosecuted by joining the protest.
He said: “We're here to try and stop the Government, which is allowing the Northern Irish government to prosecute Northern Ireland veterans from when we went over there to do our job, which this government sent us over there (to do).”
Lenadoon Report says investment in community should be priotised over Legacy issues
Mark Robinson, Irish News, April 19th, 2015
A COMMUNITY led plan is aiming to improve life in an area of west Belfast which has historically been impacted by conflict and deprivation.
The Making Life Better in Lenadoon report sets out to tackle key issues impacting lives in the area between now until 2030.
Led by the Lenadoon Community Forum (LCF) alongside 11 local experts, a 15-month long consultation period identified three key priority areas of health and wellbeing, education and employability, and housing and green spaces.
Sinn Féin MLA Órlaithí Flynn and SDLP councillor Paul Doherty were among those who attended the plan’s launch on Thursday at the Glen Community Complex, which included an exhibition reflecting on the area’s past and future.
LCF chair Michael Doherty told The Irish News that it was “the most extensive community consultation ever carried out” in the area and the first since 2010.
The consultation period began in December 2023 before a questionnaire was sent to 3,000 homes in the free community magazine.
“We see things like tackling paramilitarism, the tens of millions going into that and we’re going – why can’t you invest that in family support? Why can’t you invest it in counselling? The word paramilitaries, it’s hard to believe, not one person mentioned it as an issue in this area
“By March, we had got a lot of responses back to that, but we still felt that we wanted to give everybody in the area an opportunity,” he said.
“In the next three to four months we actually knocked every house in the area.”
Addiction, mental health and cost of living are the big issues
He added that new issues which emerged in the latest consultation were addiction, drug abuse, mental health problems and cost of living.
Mr Doherty highlighted the need for more funding in communities and criticised spending on issues such as the controversial anti-paramilitary billboards on nearby Andersonstown Road.
“We see things like tackling paramilitarism, the tens of millions going into that and we’re going – why can’t you invest that in family support? Why can’t you invest it in counselling?” he said.
“The word paramilitaries, it’s hard to believe, not one person mentioned it as an issue in this area.
“And yet we’re seeing billboards in west Belfast costing thousands and thousands of pounds. It’s not an issue here; it’s not an issue certainly in this community.”
The Department of Justice has previously defended the billboards and said they were “actively changing perceptions”.
The Lenadoon community plan aims to establish a wellbeing hub for all ages, increase family support and explore the development of a ‘Lenadoon Greenway’ for greater access to green space.
Did Osama Bin Laden save the Belfast Good Friday Agreement?
Sam McBride, Belfast Telegraph, April 19th, 2025
UK GOVERNMENT WAS TOLD ULSTER UNIONIST LEADER HAD CONCEDED HE'D LOST HIS PARTY - BUT JUST DAYS LATER THE WORLD WOULD BE CHANGED FOREVER
Twenty-seven years ago the Good Friday Agreement was born. It has become the most significant constitutional development in the history of Northern Ireland.
Yet just three years after that era-defining deal, the man without whom it could never have survived was far closer to being overthrown than was publicly known.
Government files declassified at The National Archives in Kew show that by the late summer of 2001 David Trimble's leadership seemed doomed.
That wasn't just the view of the British Government, but the view of the man himself as key allies deserted him.
The Ulster Unionist leader needed a miracle to survive. Incongruously, what saved the man key to Northern Ireland's peace agreement was a barbaric terrorist tragedy.
The Agreement's longevity and legal ingenuity are immensely significant and will shape Northern Ireland for as far into the future as can now be foreseen.
Even if there was a united Ireland, aspects of the Agreement would endure.
A constitution by default
Political scientist Prof Brendan O'Leary has described the Agreement as “the functional equivalent of Northern Ireland's constitution”, while it has been argued in Belfast High Court — including by a lawyer who is now a senior judge — that the Agreement is Northern Ireland's constitution, codified unlike that of the UK as a whole.
The Agreement's arch-opponents, the DUP, now rely on its provisions. Even those who would overturn what was agreed 27 years ago mostly recognise that there's little chance of that happening in the medium term.
And yet the enduring power of this document was not destined to be thus; it rested on thousands of decisions by politicians and civil servants, and by circumstances, some of them beyond the influence of anyone in Britain or Ireland.
Initially, Sinn Féin didn't endorse the Agreement. Gerry Adams — in words few people now remember — denounced the very portion of the Agreement which his party now presents as the justification for the IRA laying down arms.
A month after the deal Adams said the principle of consent — the idea that the people of Northern Ireland must agree to leaving the Union — “upholds the unionist veto over the constitutional status of the north”.
Now, Sinn Féin presents that principle as a central gain of the Agreement, enabling the possibility of Irish unity if sufficient numbers could be persuaded of its merits.
But the greatest threat to the Agreement was from within unionism.
Whereas Sinn Féin and the SDLP quickly united behind the deal, unionism was always bitterly divided. Newly-released files chart key elements of Trimble's compellingly complex career from the point when he was elected UUP leader in September 1995.
He'd replaced Jim Molyneaux, a man who preserved party unity through inaction. The writer Tom Paulin described him caustically as “the elderly, gloomy and ineffective leader of unionism”.
‘Reasonable, if hardline’
Trimble was very different, even if few people thought him a moderate. By October, after Trimble had met the Taoiseach in Dublin, senior Irish official Paddy Teahon said they found him “reasonable, if hardline”.
Two months later Irish diplomat David Cooney told the British Embassy the Irish Government feared Trimble didn't appear to “have had any experience of or respect for Catholics in Northern Ireland”, unlike his predecessor who'd attended a Catholic school and served in the RAF.
Cooney expressed concern at Trimble's “growing ability to express very hard-line messages in moderate and reasonable terms”, which would make him “a much more formidable adversary than they and nationalists had been used to”.
British officials immediately saw Trimble was a far more consequential figure than his predecessor, even if he was also more combustible. Less than a fortnight after becoming leader, Trimble met John Major in Downing Street and senior officials observed the shift.
The Prime Minister's private secretary wrote that they were “dealing with a unionist leader who would be much more proactive than Molyneaux. Trimble had been very much the lawyer, and had put his case in an intelligent, coherent and reasoned way”.
From that very first meeting Trimble had emphasised “the need for decommissioning” by the IRA. Years later that would prove almost impossible to secure — but Trimble's dogged perseverance partly explains why guns were ultimately destroyed.
Could never be decommissioning
In 1995 journalist Nell McCafferty, a Derry-born republican who retained links with senior IRA figures including Martin McGuinness, bluntly told John Dew in the British Embassy in Dublin that there could never be decommissioning.
Dew wrote: “She insisted that the Sinn Féin leadership were in no position to deliver any weapons. We must [underlined] know this, so why make the issue into such a crunch — unless we were seeking to exploit it?
“Handing over weapons to anybody, or even proving that they had been destroyed, would be seen as a humiliating surrender. The IRA had not [underlined] been defeated; the violence had [underlined] been justified.”
Her view of unionists was that they “simply had to be 'fixed' by HMG [the Government]”.
By July 2000 the Agreement had been in place for two years but not a single gun had been destroyed, and some were being used to murder, despite Sinn Féin ministers serving in the Executive.
In a fractious meeting in Hillsborough Castle Trimble exploded, accusing Secretary of State Peter Mandelson of having “double-crossed” him. After a shouting match developed the Secretary of State asked Trimble to leave, which he did.
Despite repeated scares, the UUP leader kept surviving. But this couldn't go on forever.
DUP ‘cocksure’ they could smash Trimble
Tony Blair candidly told the Irish Government in January 2001 that “he had never witnessed the DUP so cocksure that they would smash Trimble at the forthcoming elections”.
“He regretted that he had not previously understood the depth of the problem within the unionist community — partly because Trimble, including at yesterday's meeting, had not been ringing the alarm bells sufficiently. The reality was that the whole peace process was heading for a smash after the election unless its mood could be turned round.”
Gloom was enveloping from all sides. Trimble's relationship with his SDLP partners at the top of the Executive was imploding.
The following month Trimble complained to the Prime Minister that “when the UUP had agreed to support the GFA they had made the fundamental assumption that any devolved administration would be based on a partnership between the UUP and the SDLP. But, in practice, the SDLP had moved closer to Sinn Féin than the UUP”.
“Seamus Mallon tended to regard every issue as a contest with the UUP. His whole approach was a type of guerrilla warfare with the UUP. It was now obvious to the media and the public that his relationship with Seamus Mallon was poor.”
A few weeks later senior NIO official William Fittall surveyed Trimble's gloomy prospects in the looming General Election.
Anticipating a bad result, Fittall said “the fall of Trimble would be world news. The interpretation would be that the Agreement was in terminal trouble”.
Direct Rule imminent
Fittall, an experienced and sober-minded official not given to hyperbole, said “if the political crisis generated a dramatic increase in violence and public disorder, ministers might have little option but to suspend the institutions and reimpose direct rule at very short notice”.
He went on: “Lurking behind all this is the key questions whether... the process itself is running on empty because the constructive ambiguity over the Provisionals' acceptance of democracy has just about run its course. Potentially it faces HMG with an unpalatable choice: either to get off the decommissioning hook altogether or be prepared to hang tough in the knowledge that may well send PIRA back to war.”
The June election saw the UUP lose four seats as the DUP and Sinn Féin kept growing, but Trimble clung on.
On the Twelfth of July he came to Downing Street. Although an Orangeman, Trimble wryly told Blair's chief of staff Jonathan Powell there wouldn't be many parades in Northern Ireland at which he would be a welcome participant.
Trimble said things were so bad for him that even if decommissioning happened, it wouldn't be enough to save him unless he got concessions in other areas such as policing.
He showed Powell a personal letter from East Antrim MP Roy Beggs which urged him to pull out of the ongoing talks.
That same day PUP leader David Ervine told the PM by phone: “There was nothing wrong with the Good Friday Agreement: it was the Northern Ireland politicians who had failed to rise to the challenge.”
Yet just hours earlier Ervine had prevaricated in a radio interview when asked to condemn a UVF display in which there had been paramilitary chanting and gunfire.
He played it down as “a traditional thing, almost” and when pressed if he would condemn it, he said “yes and no”.
Columbia Three
Within weeks three IRA men would be caught in Colombia, piling further pressure on Trimble to walk away.
In an August 15, 2001 discussion Taoiseach Bertie Ahern told Blair those arrested in Colombia “were heavy, well-known guys. There was no doubt about where they were coming from”. He said it was “very worrying” and republicans were “mixing with a shower of thugs” on the other side of the world.
On September 6 North Down MP Lady Hermon phoned NIO official Peter Waterworth to say that Trimble had told her he'd lost his party.
Hermon, a Trimble loyalist, privately warned a crisis was unfolding.
Waterworth's note of their conversation said: “She had gone to the 16.30 meeting on Monday with Trimble and others in a pretty foul mood.
“For the first time in the 22 years she had known him Hermon had laid it on the line, no holds barred, about the disappointment with his handling of the UUP Executive on Saturday.
“He had taken everything she had said quietly and simply asked if she would still accompany him to No 10.”
The previous day she'd had a few minutes alone with the UUP leader.
“She did not want to be disloyal but we needed to know how down he was. Trimble had told her he had lost the party. Initially she could not fathom why he was so desperate, but he went on to say he had lost not just Jim Nicholson MEP at the officers' meeting on Friday, but also Lord Rogan.
“She said that James Cooper, Trimble's key admirer/supporter, had been neutralised by his appointment as chairman, while Martin Smyth was rampant and Rogan was looking after himself. If Trimble could not control the officers, he lost control of the debate — as had happened on Saturday.”
Yet days later the situation — and the world — would be irrevocably altered. Osama bin Laden's murderous attacks transformed American tolerance for terrorism.
September 11th - ‘not a good time to be a terrorist chief’
Writing to Blair three days after September 11, Powell recounted meeting Adams that day. He said: “The combination of New York and Colombia give us an opportunity. This is not a good time to be a terrorist chief.
“You need to tell Gerry Adams that they need to put the modalities back on the table and [underlined] undertake an act of decommissioning by the end of next week if they are to have any chance of staying in the game… if Adams and McGuinness want to save the GFA they are going to have to deliver their colleagues on decommissioning... Adams is very worried about his relationship with you, because of what I said to him before the summer and because we have unusually been playing hard to get.
“You need to tell him that you cannot invest more time in this process with all that is going on in the world. This is their last chance.”
The IRA didn't decommission within days, and initially it appeared September 11 had made an already grim situation for Trimble even worse by increasing unionist pressure on him to cut off republicans in the absence of decommissioning.
But just weeks later, on October 23, 2001, the IRA confirmed it had destroyed part of its arsenal. And Trimble would survive for another four years, clinging to the UUP leadership until 2005.
By then the Agreement was so embedded that even the DUP's emergence as the biggest party couldn't reverse it.
‘I’d love to see united Ireland’
Former Fermanagh and South Tyrone MP Frank McManus talks to Denzil McDaniel about taking on the Stormont and British governments, surviving a loyalist shooting, and his hopes for Irish reunification
Irish News, April 19th, 2025
APPROACHING his 83rd birthday, the former Fermanagh and South Tyrone MP Frank McManus jokes that he’s now in the “departure lounge”.
But age hasn’t dimmed his desire to witness two major life ambitions before he passes through.
One is to see his beloved Kinawley win the Fermanagh senior football championship for the first time.
“The other is that I’d love to see a united Ireland,” he says.
“At my age, I don’t think I’ll see it. “But you will,” he confidently assures me during an interview at his Enniskillen home.
Despite his advancing years, Frank’s health is excellent, and his mind is as sharp and analytical as ever, as one of nationalism’s elder statesmen reflects on a life of political and social activism in which he contributed massively to change in the north.
“There’s a vast difference now, there’s no comparison. Things are much better,” he says.
And if the book of Ecclesiastes says “there is nothing new under the sun”, Frank McManus is well placed to compare past and present, having been one of the central figures in Northern Ireland’s 20th century evolution.
Pan-nationalist movement broke ‘big house unionism’s grip on constituency
He broke big house unionism’s grip on the Fermanagh and South Tyrone Westminster seat by uniting a disillusioned and divided nationalist electorate in the constituency to win the 1970 general election.
He believed, and still believes, that the major issue is whether “you’re for the union or ‘agin’ the union”.
In a life which saw him shot by loyalists and jailed for defying a marching ban, Frank took his challenge to discrimination to the heart of Westminster power by eyeballing the Home Secretary, Reginald Maud-ling, in a private meeting to lobby him to abolish the “totally corrupt” Fermanagh County Council.
There are many changes now, but one of the continuing issues is the Irish language because it “goes right to the centre of identity”.
“That’s the real reason why it’s such a bugbear,” he says.
Met IRA leaders in 1972
He also met with IRA leaders as early as 1972, urging them to give up the gun and pursue electoral politics, but was rebuffed even though time has vindicated him.
The morning I spent with him was educational in itself as he compared present circumstances with the turmoil of the past.
He’s engaging company with his gentle, mischievous humour.
His wife, Carmel, brings us tea in her best china because I’m a “very important man” apparently.
When I ask if he’s had any regrets about his long involvement in politics, the question is met with a firm no.
But he concedes that it was always difficult for Carmel, who was, and is, “less than political”.
When he entered politics, he consulted his then fiancée and Carmel has remained loyal and supportive throughout difficult times, including when he was shot and had a four-month spell in Crumlin Road jail.
Shot in backside
Frank points out of the window to the front of their home where he was returning one evening in 1973 and a loyalist gunman opened fire.
“I was hit on the backside,” he laughs.
“I always say if they’re handing out medals I’ll have to drop the trousers to prove it.”
Frank and Carmel remain devoted to their family, a daughter, and two sons who run the family law firm, established when Frank retrained as a solicitor in the late 1970s.
He’d been a teacher during the previous decade, but after serving as MP from 1970, he lost the seat in 1974 to the unionist Harry West.
“I believed I should not ask somebody to do something I’m not prepared to do myself and I was never prepared to consider taking up a gun or a bomb. I couldn’t in all conscience ask others to do that”
The Catholic Bishop of Clogher, Patrick Mulligan, made it clear there would be no way back into teaching.
Family and career sacrifices were made.
Frank and Carmel are both “news addicts” and not only is Frank a fount of knowledge as a student of Irish history, his lived experience is that of a veteran admired by all sections of nationalism.
Steeped in Republican tradition
One of 12 children born in the Fermanagh village of Kinawley in 1942 to a “very political” mother, Frank went to Queen’s University in the 1960s, when he initially enjoyed “a wonderful time” embracing the student life and was reluctant to become too involved in the burgeoning political scene.
His brother, Patrick, had been in the IRA during the 1950s ‘border campaign’ and was killed while handling a bomb in 1958.
“So, when I went to Queen’s I was being careful. I didn’t want them saying ‘That’s McManus, he’s from that mad republican family’,” he says.
But in the circumstances of the time and with his background, he now reflects that “you couldn’t help being political”.
The McManus name did carry some weight when Frank attended a meeting of Republican Clubs and challenged the idea of a sparsely attended gathering electing an executive to represent all of Northern Ireland.
“Who is this?” boomed the chairman, Kevin Agnew, in a rather menacing tone.
“My name is Frank McManus and I’m from Kinawley in Co Fermanagh,” came the reply, and that was the end of all the objections. McManus from Fermanagh would become a voice going forward.
The minister of home affairs, William Craig, banned the Republican Clubs but there was no stopping the momentum for change and McManus played his part in being a thorn in the side of the unionist establishment.
The infamous scenes in Derry in October 1968, when civil rights marchers were batoned, were a rude awakening for many.
Frank recalls: “Like many others I watched the scenes at Duke Street and thought Christ almighty, it’s time somebody did something in this part of the world. So, I contacted a whole lot of people.”
Fermanagh Civil Rights Association was born and there were hugely-attended protest marches.
Frank recalls one confrontation at Arney over the denial of a house to a family called Maguire “in dire need”.
A book was recently published, written by Dermot Maguire, detailing the association’s history.
Downing Street protest
Frank McManus, second from right, at Downing Street during a hunger strike protest over internment and the mistreatment of detainees, alongside fellow Northern Ireland MPs John Hume, Bernadette Devlin and Austin Currie
Devlin and McManus outside 10 Downing Street in October 1971
Fermanagh and South Tyrone MP McManus, with Mid Ulster MP Devlin, speaks at an Anti-Internment League meeting at Hammersmith Town Hall, London, in 1972
Frank says: “One of the most useful things we did was to produce the booklet Fermanagh Facts. It was of great benefit. Fermanagh County Council controlled everything and we were able to show huge discrepancies in housing, employment and so on.
“It was atrocious.”
The 35-page booklet produced in the late 1960s forensically examined how a county with a 52 per cent Catholic majority was gerrymandered to return two unionist MPs and one nationalist to the old Stormont parliament.
The county council, with wide-ranging powers in allocating housing and jobs, also had a unionist majority.
“When I went to Westminster, my principle objective was to get rid of Fermanagh County Council because it was rotten to the core. I went to see Maudling but he said he wasn’t going to abolish it,” says Frank.
“He said, young man, you must understand that the government is an elected dictatorship – in other words for as long as they have the confidence of the House of Commons, we can do more or less what we like.”
Despite this, Frank continued to attend Westminster.
“The advantage was it got me a platform to make speeches about what was going on.
I thought Sinn Féin were foolish not to go, but it doesn’t matter now because they’ve got over that a long time ago.”
Frank was prepared to take his case anywhere, and facts and force of arguments were his weapons of choice.
Why he never joined Sinn Fein
He explains why he has never joined Sinn Féin, and refers to the one Ard Fheis he attended. It was clear, he says, that the Sinn Féin members were the “ordinary foot soldiers” while “another organisation was in control”.
“Firstly, I didn’t fancy belonging to an organisation that was controlled by another organisation. I don’t know if that’s still true or not.
“And secondly, I believed I should not ask somebody to do something I’m not prepared to do myself and I was never prepared to consider taking up a gun or a bomb. I couldn’t in all conscience ask others to do that.”
After Stormont was abolished in 1972, Frank McManus as an MP sought out a meeting with the IRA, including chief of staff Seamus Twomey.
“My pitch to them was that now is the time to get involved in politics. You can claim your victory. But in a very curt manner I was told, no, we’re in this long war and we’re going to win it.
“Even then it was clear to me from an early stage that the IRA would never be beaten. But they would never win what they said they wanted to win either.”
The debate now over a united Ireland is being fought politically, and Frank McManus observes the activities of the Ireland’s Future organisation.
He believes they can learn lessons from the civil rights movement to avoid running out of steam.
“There were only so many times that we could protest but we made our point and won the argument and change came.
“In the present situation, lots of people are talking about a new Ireland. But there’s no commonly accepted version of what this new Ireland would look like. There should be conversations about that.”
‘Not fussed about the form a united Ireland would take’
Frank once wrote a book promoting the idea of a federal Ireland, but now says he’s “not fussed about the form a united Ireland would take”.
“Simplistically, some people might say just take over the north and teach them a lesson. I wouldn’t blame a unionist for not wanting to get mixed up in that. But those who say that are in a minority and I think we should be having conversations about it.
“Wouldn’t it be great if, after 800 years, we could put this thing to bed?”
Frank McManus has contributed massively to change over many decades. It would seem that he still has plenty to contribute to the conversation about the future too.
McManus family tradition - Stuck between priests and patriots
FRANK McManus’s grandfather was alive at the time of the Famine, he tells me.
Sensing my quizzical look as I struggle with the mental arithmetic, he laughs and reassures me that it is remarkable, but true.
“My father was born in 1877,” he explains, which is less than 30 years after the end of the Famine, which Frank’s grandfather survived.
Frank’s father was 49 when he married his mother, who was 23, and for a time Frank suspected it was an old-style arranged marriage. But he discovered it definitely wasn’t and was, instead, a real love match.
The couple had 12 children, although two tragically died young through accident and illness.
Of the 10 surviving, three were in the public eye including Frank, born when his father was 65.
Frank’s younger brother by 18 months is Fr Sean McManus, who emigrated to the United States in 1974 and as a young priest founded the Irish National Caucus.
Their older brother, Patrick, was killed in 1958 while he was in the IRA.
“It was the day my sister Celia got married and Patrick was to join us at the reception in Bundoran and didn’t turn up,” recalls Frank.
The family knew there could have been many reasons, but the next morning they discovered he had died when handling a bomb.
“It was very, very sad and my poor sister and her new husband had to come back from Salthill where they had gone to start their honeymoon. For years afterwards, my sister was terrified that some of her children would join the IRA, but they never did.”
A legacy of Wars
Other stories of Frank’s relatives encapsulate how one family unit can reflect the complexities of Irish history.
“My brother, Fr Jim, is four years older than me and Fr Sean is 18 months younger
Two of his mother’s brothers fought in the War of Independence and ended up on opposite sides in the Civil War.
His uncle James was an anti-Treaty republican, while Uncle Felix took Collins’s side and became a captain in the army.
Ironically, though, it was Felix who fell foul of the law when he was involved in a bank robbery in which a young guard was shot dead, resulting in him being executed.
“I never knew about this until I got into a fight with another boy when I was 10, who retaliated by saying ‘Your oul uncle was hung in Dublin’. So, I bate him again,” laughs Frank.
“But I went home to my mother and demanded to know what he was talking about.”
The McManus family was reared in Kinawley, a small village off the beaten track on the Fermanagh-Cavan border with a tremendous community spirit.
In many ways, it’s still home for the McManus clan and Frank’s heart is still there.
“There’s only three of us left,” he says.
“My brother, Fr Jim, is four years older than me and Fr Sean is 18 months younger. I’m stuck between two priests!”
'Dolours wasn't in IRA when I married her... the things she was accused of weren't on my watch'
Kurtis Reid, Belfast Telegraph, April 19th, 2025
ACTOR STEPHEN REA SPEAKS OF MARRIAGE TO BOMBER IN NEW BBC DOCUMENTARY
It takes a while for Oscar-nominated actor Stephen Rea to discuss his marriage to convicted IRA bomber Dolours Price in his new ground-breaking BBC Northern Ireland documentary The Fire In Me Now — but when viewers sit down to watch it next week, they'll recognise references to her, scattered like ashes across the film's quieter moments.
Rea's former wife, who he divorced in 2003 and who died a decade later, is not a large presence in the documentary, which is dedicated to the north Belfast man's first love — acting. And yet her absence, like much of Rea's life, hums just beneath the surface.
The film arrives on the heels of Say Nothing, the FX and Disney+ adaptation of Patrick Radden Keefe's bestselling book, which dramatizes Price's life and part of her relationship with Rea.
The documentary was filmed in October, one month before the series' release.
But The Fire In Me Now is not a rebuttal — it is, instead, a reclamation.
We find Rea — now in his seventies, softly-spoken but razor-sharp in rehearsals for Krapp's Last Tape, by Samuel Beckett, in Dublin.
It's a production, he admits, more than a decade in the making.
Beckett's lonely old man, sorting through the remnants of a life on spools of tape, seems a perfect mirror for Rea: retrospective, melancholic and shy.
“I grew up in the Catholic church,” Rea says in the documentary, pausing, “I am not your typical Prod, you know” as he reflects on his upbringing while walking through notable locations in the Antrim Road's Waterworks.
A self-confessed ‘messer’
It's one of several wry, identity-defying lines scattered throughout the film. Raised in north Belfast, he describes himself as a 'messer' — never quite Irish or British enough — a man shaped by contradiction, but never defined by it.
Archive footage shows a young Rea in a 1966 student sketch at Queen's University Belfast — his comedy already laced with the observational sharpness that would become his calling card.
“I scraped a degree,” he admits with a shrug, before recalling his early move to the Abbey Theatre, and his first job in London, where he shared stages and whisky with the likes of Samuel Beckett and Jack MacGowran.
In one of the most powerful segments of the film, Rea reflects on the start of the Troubles.
“When I came to England, I don't think I met an English person for about a year,” he laughs. “I just drank in Irish pubs.” But the laughter fades as he and filmmaker Thaddeus O'Sullivan recall the barbed questions such as “You haven't got a bomb in your bag, have you?” once the Troubles began.
His voice is steady as he speaks of standing on the Falls Road, hearing Ian Paisley call on loyalists “to burn Catholics out of their homes”.
Keeping faith with theatre
“People started to arm themselves. People I knew joined the IRA.” He pauses. “But I went back to do my cultural thing.”
That 'thing' would become a career marked by integrity and intensity — from founding the Field Day Theatre Company with Brian Friel, to performances in Translations and The Freedom of the City, where Rea based his character on the journalist Eamonn McCann.
Even as his film career took off, Rea remained, he says, wary of how easily Irish actors could be boxed in.
“After The Crying Game, I was offered role after role as a bomber,” he says. “And I kept saying no, I'm not doing it.”
His collaborations with director Neil Jordan, who features in the documentary, and who calls him “a conduit for empathy” gave Rea space to portray complex, conflicted men — shaped by the Troubles but never reduced to them.
Speaking of Price, Rea is clear: “All of the things she was accused of were not on my watch. She wasn't in the IRA when I married her.”
‘A very troubled person’
He describes her as “a very, very troubled person”, and admits he didn't fully understand that when they met.
“But she wanted to be a good mother. It was very hard for her, because of all the things that had happened to her.”
His voice falters slightly only when speaking about their sons.
“I'm sorry she couldn't stay alive to see their growth. It's sad for them.”
That sadness is not the story's final note. The Fire In Me Now is, above all, a film about persistence — of the artist, of the father, of the man who always chose words and performance over violence.
“I always wanted to work in cinema,” Rea says. “I got lucky.”
Luck may have played its part, but so too did a relentless curiosity and a refusal to be easily defined. In Krapp's Last Tape, Beckett wrote: “Perhaps my best years are gone. But I wouldn't want them back. Not with the fire in me now.” Rea, it turns out, wouldn't either.
Stephen Rea: The Fire In Me Now will air on BBC Northern Ireland on Thursday, April 24
What is the point in reading out the 1916 Proclamation?
Patrick Murphy, Irish News, April 19th, 2025
WHAT is the point in reading out the 1916 Proclamation at Easter Rising commemorations?
It will be read aloud across Ireland this weekend at ceremonies organised by the Irish state, political parties, paramilitaries, former paramilitaries, those who would have been in the GPO if only they had been old enough, hangers-on, and that self-identifying group of people who come under the all-encompassing title of “republicans”.
Almost all the commemorations will include reading the Proclamation, a sort of semi-religious Easter duty which cleanses the political souls of those present and elevates them above those who are absent.
If the purpose of reading the document aloud is to re-enact Pearse’s delivery of it outside the GPO, then they are engaged in a harmless piece of historical pageantry.
If, however, it is read to claim that those present support all its aims and ideals (a more likely explanation given the political nature of commemorations), most ceremonies are somewhere between dishonesty and delusion.
The right to use violence
The Proclamation begins by asserting the right to use violence. It does so by declaring that Ireland “summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom”.
Since the Irish state, its government parties and Sinn Féin are opposed to political violence, they are presumably at odds with the 1916 signatories.
To accommodate the gulf between the Proclamation and the present, it would appear both reasonable and mannerly to redact (meaning black out) its first two paragraphs.
Oh, and the third paragraph will have to be redacted too. It not only supports the use of arms, it declares the Republic as a “sovereign independent state”.
That contrasts with Irish membership of the EU, which allows Ireland neither sovereignty nor independence, much to the apparent delight of most Irish people.
Advocating Irish sovereignty (meaning the authority of the state to govern itself) is not just unpopular in modern Ireland, it has become downright unpatriotic.
Indeed so fervent is Irish support for the EU that many here continually criticise the democratic decision of the British people to leave – presumably on the basis that Ireland has the right to interfere in the internal affairs of another country.
The third paragraph also rejects the right of a “foreign government and people” to have any involvement in Ireland. So there goes the Good Friday Agreement, which recognises Britain’s right to govern the north.
‘Between dishonesty and delusion’
“ If the Proclamation is read aloud to claim that those present support all its aims and ideals, most ceremonies are somewhere between dishonesty and delusion
Interestingly, those who claim to be the true inheritors of the Rising are those who administer the foreign government’s remaining power in Ireland. (Maybe they’ll skip that bit at Sinn Féin’s commemorations.)
The fourth paragraph cherishes “all the children of the nation equally”, which is rather unfortunate, since 25% of children in the north (over 100,000) and 15% in the south (190,000) live in poverty.
In the north, those claiming to be the true inheritors of the Proclamation administer an education system in which children are segregated at the age of 11, thereby cherishing some more equally than others.
That same administration is based on rewarding, rather than overcoming, sectarian differences. This directly contradicts the Proclamation’s aspiration to render such differences oblivious. It might be as well to redact that bit too.
The second last paragraph again supports armed action to establish a national government, so it has to go.
Finally, the last paragraph asks God to bless the arms of those in the Rising. So that would also be inappropriate for the major parties north and south. Perhaps only what might be termed fringe republican groups can claim affinity with that phrase?
Of course you can argue that the Proclamation is now outdated in a changed world. That’s a valid point. So why read it out?
Irreconcilable or irrelevant?
Indeed, why claim to uphold its aims and ideals when the major political parties north and south clearly oppose them?
If we ditch the Proclamation as outdated, should we also, for example, ditch Wolfe Tone’s argument for Irish neutrality in The Spanish War (1790), John Mitchel’s The Last Conquest of Ireland (Perhaps) (1876), and James Connolly’s Labour in Irish History (1910)? All three influenced the Proclamation.
So where does history stop as an academic subject and become the basis for modern political beliefs?
It is a question which might reasonably be asked of those reading the Proclamation this weekend – not that they should have much to read, because the redacted Proclamation would only contain “Irishmen and Irish women…er, that’s it.”
It would hardly be as inspiring as the original document’s romantic resonance, but it would be more politically honest.
Benn questions ‘fuss’ over Irish signs at Grand Central Station
Mark Robinson, Irish News, April 19th, 2025
Hilary Benn says there are so many more important things “than having an argument about signs”
SECRETARY of State Hilary Benn yesterday questioned the “fuss” around Irish language signage at Belfast Grand Central Station.
It comes as the issue of dual language signage at the £340m transport hub has been at the centre of political discussion over the past few weeks.
In March, Infrastructure Minister Liz Kimmins announced that Irish would feature on signs in the station at an estimated cost of around £150,000.
The lack of dual language signage at the integrated transport hub, which is the largest in Ireland, had been criticised by Irish language activists since it opened last autumn.
A political rift emerged as the DUP criticised the Sinn Féin minister for “bad process” and not having brought the “significant or controversial” issue before the executive table, however Ms Kimmins said she “stands firm” on her decision.
Speaking to the BBC, Mr Benn said that didn’t “understand what the fuss is about, because this is about respecting and celebrating all of the traditions”.
‘More Important things’
“I just think there are so many more important things than having an argument about signs,” he said.
“I mean, come on.” A legal challenge over the addition of the signs was launched two weeks ago by loyalist activist Jamie Bryson, stating that the decision was taken “without executive approval”.
I just think there are so many more important things than having an argument about signs. I mean, come on
As a result, Translink has announced that work on adding the signs to the station has been paused.
Stormont rules state that issues which are deemed ‘significant or controversial’ should be considered by the executive and not by a sole minister, however it is for the first and deputy first ministers to jointly decide when an issue requires a wider vote.
On Monday, protestors from Sandy Row gathered in the station to voice opposition to Irish signs.
Mike Nesbitt is right to slam Hilary Benn's views on the Belfast Agreement and Irish language
News Letter editorial on Saturday April 19 2025:
The late North Antrim MP was a remarkable leader of unionist politics, a massively energetic evangelical preacher who founded his own church, a dedicated representative of his constituents and so dedicated to public service that he was the first minister of Northern Ireland late in his long life.
But it is quite absurd to make gushing reference to Rev Paisley in connection to a Belfast Agreement about which he was so scathing and which he tried to destroy.
Mr Nesbitt is therefore justified in his reaction to the Northern Ireland secretary’s comments that any praise in relation to unionists and the 1998 deal should go to the late David Trimble.
The current Ulster Unionist Party leader was also right to be critical of Mr Benn’s strikingly naive remarks about the Irish language, in which he has seemingly delighted the BBC by criticising unionist concerns about the use of Gaelic. In other words, Mr Benn has identified unionists as to blame for the Irish language row over the new transport hub in Belfast, not provocative republicans.
As Mr Nesbitt puts it so well: "[re Hilary Benn’s] totally imbalanced assessment of the issue of Irish language signage at Grand Central Station. Mr Benn says he wants us all to celebrate all traditions. Does that include the tradition of some republicans to believe every word spoken in Irish is another bullet fired in the battle for Irish freedom? That tradition needs to be addressed if we are to achieve cross-community support for the language my party would like to see.
"I’m disappointed he does not realise progress requires compromise, not fully throated support for one side or the other."
No fuss on Irish signs? Out of touch Benn needs reality says TUV
By Iain Gray, Belfast News Letter, April 19th, 2025
Hilary Benn should get a reality check from the people of Sandy Row if he really thinks there’s no fuss over Irish signs, the TUV have said.
Speaking in the wake of the Secretary of State dismissing an ongoing row over a Sinn Fein minister’s decision to spend £145,000 of public money replacing existing signs and ticket machines in Belfast’s newly-opened Grand Central Station with dual language versions, the TUV argued Mr Benn "badly needs to educate himself”.
Stated Belfast councillor Ron McDowell, the party’s deputy leader: “If the Secretary of State wants to understand the issues involved he should come to Sandy Row and talk to local people. At the moment, he sounds like many other politicians on this matter – ignorant because he hasn’t engaged with the people concerned.”
The move by Infrastructure Minister Liz Kimmins to build new signs in both English and Irish in the Translink-owned station sparked a huge political row, partially because it wasn’t run by the Executive, and partially as her department has spent years pleading poverty, claiming it doesn’t have cash to fix dilapidated roads all over the province.
Political rivals hit the roof when she allocated a six-figure sum to replace signs in a station that has only been open for a few months, with other parties labelling the move a “solo run” and accusing her of using taxpayer’s money to indulge in pet projects. Her decision is to be probed by a Stormont committee and is the subject on ongoing legal action – but today (18th), Mr Benn dismissed the row.
Speaking on BBC Radio Ulster's Good Morning Ulster programme, the Secretary of State stated the dual language signs are “about respecting and celebrating all of the traditions” and said he didn’t “understand what the fuss is about”.
“I just think there are so many more important things than having an argument about signs,” he said. “I mean, come on.”
But the TUV point to Sandy Row’s struggles connected to Grand Central Station as proof there is a real and active problem.
Beloved land mark demolished
The community saw a beloved landmark and piece of its heritage, the Boyne Bridge, knocked down to make way for an open plaza at the station despite huge local objections.
Work connected to Grand Central has shut down a major route into and out of the area for several months, and the closure’s set to last for much of the rest of this year. It’s decimated trade, with many businesses saying the situation is worse than during Covid and fearing they won’t see 2026.
Earlier this week, 40 to 50 residents protested inside the station, arguing that building dual language signs there is “hijacking the Irish language” in a bid to “mark territory” and “force it upon” the area.
Said Mr McDowell: “One cannot ignore the abominable way the community in Sandy Row have been and are being treated by Translink and the Department of Infrastructure.
"The Boyne Bridge, an important part of local heritage and tradition, has been demolished in the teeth of local opposition. The views of residents have been ignored when it comes to the proposed changes to signage.
"And, most significantly, the road remains blocked because of work on Grand Central with massive falls in footfall and trade.”
Rev Paisley says father would have been open to Gaeilge church talk
Paul Ainsworth, Irish News, April 19th, 2025
THE son of the late DUP leader Ian Paisley has said his father would have been “deeply interested” in an Irish language event he took part in at a Free Presbyterian church.
The Rev Kyle Paisley, a minister in the church his father founded in 1951, spoke at an event in Antrim to showcase the history of Presbyterianism in Ireland and its links with Gaelic.
Preispitéirigh agus an Ghaeilge, organised by the pastor of Antrim Free Presbyterian Church, Rev Paul Thompson, was also attended by DUP founding member Wallace Thompson and Sinn Féin South Antrim MLA Declan Kearney, among others.
Rev Paisley, who ministers in England, said the gathering was a “time of learning” and told the BBC: “I have a lot to learn about it.
“You don’t get anywhere by ignoring history and you don’t get anywhere certainly by ignoring religious history.
“That’s the purpose of tonight’s meeting, to highlight something that is often forgotten in the midst of arguments over other things.”
Paisley senior criticised Gregory Campbell for mocking Irish language
In 2014 Rev Paisley criticised his late father’s DUP colleague Gregory Campbell after the MP and then-MLA mocked the Irish language while speaking in the assembly.
Rev Paisley accused Mr Campbell of “shaming unionism” with his “curry my yoghurt” remark, which he made as an imitation of “go raibh maith agat” – Irish for “thank you” – used by Sinn Féin MLAs.
Rev Paisley added: “People may tend to think that the Irish language belonged to one section of a community at a time, as opposed to another section, but there was an interest in it in Presbyterian and in Protestant circles, certainly way back then. We lose nothing by acknowledging that and we may learn some practical lessons for today.”
Thursday’s event in Antrim followed DUP opposition to the planned installation of bilingual signage with English and Irish at Belfast Grand Central Station.
In an email to colleagues, leader Gavin Robinson said Irish appearing on signs at the new station was a “controversial matter”, and that the party would “put a marker down” in the executive on the issue.
Rory's glory is all his own but we should revel in what he does and an Augusta trip by our leaders might have been shrewd
Gail Walker, Belfast Telegraph, April 19th, 2025
The catharsis for Rory McIlroy as he fell to the green seconds after holing that birdie at the 18th, his body shaking with pent-up emotion and pressure, was so elemental it was almost impossible to watch, but watch we must because we helped to do this to him.
True, no-one needed this Masters victory more than the Co Down man, finally purging himself of all the dread and despair and anger at another missed chance over those long 11 years since his last major triumph in 2014, finally freeing himself from another raft of 'bottling it' headlines.
But we needed it too. We sit here, a ragbag of sectarian neuroses and cheap toxicity and social media slanging matches. If McIlroy wrestled with his sporting demons for a decade, we have scrapped the bit out with our political demons for more than a quarter of a century now, still demanding our heroes do the heavy lifting PR-wise to take the bad look of our own unfulfilled promise.
The weight of our expectations sits heavily on a champion's shoulders, but we have form for this of course. Those old enough remember dark nights long ago, huddled around the TV set, willing on an epic victory in Spain or glimpsing in McIlroy's tears as he hugged daughter Poppy in Augusta the half-memory of a weeping Alex Higgins, calling out for his baby in the Crucible. Other triumphs, coming and going, lifting the communal mood, bringing us together in shared celebration, briefly that a sense of ourselves as a bigger, better people, beyond the squabbling.
Dennis Taylor's improbable glasses ready to sink that black at that same venue a few years later. Barry McGuigan and Eusebio Pedroza, toiling away in the centre circle at Loftus Road before McGuigan emerged victorious as world champion. Lady Mary Peters' Olympic glory.
All-Ireland victories for Northern Counties
Graeme McDowell at the US Open. Darren Clarke at the Open. Multiple (happily) All-Ireland victories for northern counties. The list is brilliantly endless — everybody called Dunlop, especially those called Joey; AP McCoy; Carl Frampton; Paddy Barnes; Ciara Mageean; Bethany Firth, Daniel Wiffen and our recent Olympians and many others.
But out of all the massive successes these people have racked up personally and in ways representative of where they come from, the McIlroy achievement is really something to do with the gods.
To be in the Grand Slam company of Gary Player, Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods and Gene Sarazen is truly a standing which is recognised by all sports throughout the world instantly. This is a category of achievement which is truly exceptional.
Partly that's because of what we saw on Sunday which was the heart-busting tension of “the next move you make may be your last”. It's not just — if you can use the word 'just' — the Masters. It's what that represented in terms of a career and those years of burden and hostility and, sometimes too, sneering.
Many people watching won't have been dedicated golf fans but will have tuned in to see 'Wee Rory', the youngster who first captured hearts and headlines. They will have been surprised to see instead a middle-aged man weeping and walking through the crowds, the lines on his face, the flecks of grey in his hair, evidence of the years that have piled on, just as they have for the rest of us.
The fresh-faced boy is gone. This was more like Ulysses returning after decades on the waves away from home. It was as epic as that, make no mistake. Look at him. This was a guy whose every emotion has been publicly scrutinised for years.
The triumph is one that we do share in. But the strain, the pressure, the commitment, the suffering and the self-belief belonged to one person alone, against the odds, and that's what came home on Sunday night.
It is exactly the type of struggle that great narratives are made of. This one is a triumph. Sometimes they are tragedies. Sometimes people don't make it over the line. Sometimes heroes fail. But here the champion came home and that's to be celebrated.
Nobody in the TEO at Stormont thought it was worth a trip to Augusta
Now, that's all very well. What I cannot believe is that nobody from the Northern Ireland Executive thought it worthwhile to fly to Augusta. They should have been there to greet the hero coming ashore. They knew he was going to be in contention on the last day and win, lose or draw they should have been waiting to welcome him home. Sure, it could have gone wrong for Rory, but that's all the more reason to be there, in good times and bad, to salute the effort.
There always will be naysayers who will accuse ministers of trying to steal the limelight, but, after all, so much of NI's golfing economy, including the Open at Portrush, depends on the heroic stature of McIlroy himself.
And look at Prince William and George in the stands at Aston Villa or England matches or attending rugby games. No-one thinks the royals are there as a self-serving PR stunt, they are clearly turning up to lend their support.
The Masters was a perfect platform to remind a global audience that Northern Ireland is a golfing mecca.
Since 2007 while 40 men's majors have been won by the US, the second largest number — 11 — have been won by golfers from the island of Ireland. That's the number won by England, Australia, Spain and Germany combined.
Imagine the image of that broadcast globally. Imagine even if Micheal Martin, representing the country that McIlroy golfs for in the Olympics, might have shown up at this extraordinary event.
You can only imagine how other countries would have seized on this as a way of promoting their image, boosting sports tourism in particular.
The point of that isn't about piggybacking on McIlroy, though his shoulders have proven themselves big enough to carry a lot of people over the last 20 years, it's actually about coming to his support.
This is all the more needed because Northern Ireland has been a prickly customer for McIlroy. What side is he on? What sort of character is he? What sort of Ulsterman is he? What sort of Irishman is he? Why is he playing for Ireland not the UK? Why is he taking honours from Buckingham Palace?
Award of the Albatross
These are the albatrosses we tie round people's necks even as we laud them: “Yes, you can have this medal, but not that one.”
An abiding memory is a boyish McIlroy, just 22 and back from winning the US Open, meeting then First Ministers Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness, chipping balls on the lawns at Stormont Castle. 'Even Rory can't get McGuinness into the swing of things' ribbed the headlines as the politician narrowly missed hitting a private secretary. We all knew who stood to benefit more from the optics then. McIlroy was already labelled the poster boy for the new Northern Ireland.
The golfer is one of the very few people who bring good news virtually every time their name is mentioned, whether its sporting prowess or charitable endeavours. That's a rare commodity for NI.
Listening to him being interviewed shortly after putting on the famous green jacket for the first time, McIlroy was still very much 'one of us'. Our distinctive honking tones still there in his accent; the talk soon turning to back home and his parents watching on TV. His caddie, Harry Diamond, is the pal he first met aged seven on the putting green at Holywood Golf Club. Despite the glories, the wealth, the fame, McIlroy has kept faith with Northern Ireland, even when it didn't always keep faith with him.
A hero deserves our support right back. The country, if you like, needs to demonstrate that it backs its champion. Salutes from the state, applause from the Assembly, civic acclaim, are a way of paying back, of saying thanks and saying “Do you know what? You are an important, indispensable part of our story and everything you achieve reflects only positive things about the rest of us and we are in dire need of that. Thank you for doing it.”
That's why it would have been nice if even one of the image-conscious gurus at Stormont had had the idea to ship our leaders out to help welcome the hero home off the 18th green.
It was an occasion when, even in a small way, we might have been seen to cherish our heroes who always give more to us than we give to them.
