Ireland's political and cultural magazine
Forty years ago this month Margaret Thatcher sent Sir Maurice Oldfield, the former Chief of MI6, to Belfast to co-ordinate the activities of the various branches of British Intelligence in Ireland. Within a few weeks MI5 was reporting to Downing Street that he was a homosexual and an inquiry was launched to see if he […]
By Caroline Hurley. An anti-war conference called ‘NoWar2019 Pathways to Peace’ took place last weekend at Limerick’s South Court Hotel, organised by WorldBeyondWar.Irish and international concerned parties met to consider the extent of militarism in Ireland and elsewhere, and to work towards preventing the war response everywhere with all its inhumane impacts. Speakers included seasoned Irish […]
On 16 September last Paul Graham told RTE’s ‘Liveline’ that he had been sexually abused by a senior figure in the Orange Order. Although not named, the abuser was Thomas Passmore, the County Grand Master of Belfast Loyal Orange Lodge. That Passmore was a paedophile will not come as news to the Northern Ireland Office, […]
In 2007, in the run up to a crucial general election, I was involved in setting up a campaigning group of environmental activists which we called HEAT to campaign on climate change. We believed that a reduction in carbon emissions of 90% by 2030 was necessary to avoid the tipping point for global warming catastrophe […]
WHAT HAVE the Romans ever done for us? There’s a clear echo of that question in the essay collection of UK Labour-leaning economists edited by Labour’s deputy leader John McDonnell and published last year under the title ‘Economics for the Many’. For them the question is now “What has capital ever done for us?”. The […]
IN A development that shocked very few people Ian Bailey was found guilty of the murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier in a French court in May. After a four-day trial and deliberating for five hours a panel of three judges sentenced Bailey to 25 years in prison. He was also ordered to pay a […]
THE DECISION by the Government to extend the remit of the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) has clearly delighted its chairman and chief executive but it makes little or no sense to those who have followed its fortunes closely since its inception ten years ago. It may also have come as some surprise to the […]
By Greta Zarro In Ireland the total defence sector allocation, including Army pensions, will be €994 million in 2019 (around 0.291% of GDP), an increase of €47.5 million over 2018. Target strength for the Permanent Defence Force is 9,500. Total world military expenditure rose to $1822 billion in 2018, representing an increase of 2.6 per cent […]
“Racist: A person who shows or feels discrimination or prejudice against people of other races, or who believes that a particular race is superior to another” – Oxford English Dictionary GEMMA O’DOHERTY has become the it girl for Irish extremism: racism, anti-Islamism, homophobia and transphobia. Village published an article in our last edition, by the […]
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Paddy Goodwin and the Holy Ghosts have just released the most compelling home-produced music video of the decade, Break for the Border. It’s an addictive and incendiary denunciation of the insanity that has precipitated and possessed Brexit, the hate-filled lunacy of Donald Trump’s anti-immigration platform and the bovine intransigence of the DUP, all intertwined by […]
It was early November 1993. A senior RUC officer surveyed the docking area of a container ship in Teesport, Cleveland. ‘The Inowroclaw’ was sailing from Gdynia in Poland to Teesport and from there to its declared final destination of Belfast Port and into the hands of the UVF. It was jammed with armaments. However, another […]
This story was updated on 6 September 2019. The original content is reproduced underneath this update. UPDATE The imminent revelation by BBC NI’s Spotlight programme that Ian Paisley financed the infamous UVF Silent Valley bombing of 1969 will come as no surprise to Village readers. While the BBC disclosure provides another piece of the jigsaw […]
It’s perhaps something of an understatement to say Eoghan Murphy is not exactly flavour of the month these days. Not only is he facing public ire over the homeless crisis, but some political pundits are even going as far as to claim he has been the worst Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government in […]
VILLAGE IS about nothing if it isn’t giving space to whistleblowers. Reflecting this, the magazine has several times illustrated articles with a cartoon whistleblower, cheeks inflated to bursting, typically to no political avail. It’s a good image for the magazine in general, Village’s frustrated sympathy is nearly always with those prepared to blow and it […]
GEORGE MCLOUGHLIN made a Protected Disclosure in 2015 – when he was employed as a labour inspector with the Department of Jobs (DJEI) – concerning what he perceived to be a culture of deference to non-compliant employers in the management of the National Employment Rights Authority (NERA) (subsequently the inspection services of the Workplace Relations […]
This article was updated on 20 December 2019 with additional information about the ongoing refusal of the Gardai to release the log of a visit by the Warden of Kincora Boys’ Home to Mountbatten’s home in the Republic of Ireland (See section 2) and further evidence of a link between Mountbatten and the abuse of […]
The more excitable elements of the British media are in something of a frenzy after the conviction by a Newcastle jury of Carl Beech, 51, a former NHS manager, for perverting the course of justice, i.e. telling the police a pack of lies. He has been sentenced to 18 years imprisonment. Beech’s deceit relates to […]
The death has occurred of Sir Anthony Hart, the retired judge who oversaw the Hart Inquiry into child sex abuse in NI. Village has written extensively about the findings of the Hart Inquiry since it was published in 2017. In the main we were critical of Hart’s findings, especially in so far as they related […]
POLITICS MATTERS. It has the potential to iron out the unfairnesses of nature and luck. We talk a lot about it. We’ve achieved a lot with it. There is an undercurrent of politics that moves irrepressibly towards respect for all – sex, sexuality, race are no longer the barriers they were recently to equal treatment. […]
Larry Wren has become front-page news again as the Garda Commissioner responsible for driving Majella Moynihan to despair such that she attempted suicide five times, and once ended up in St John of Gods after the witch-hunt to which he and the Garda top brass subjected her in the 1980s when she became pregnant out […]
