Archive News
Can Fine Gael wipe smirk from FF faces over the final week?
Date Published: {J}
Michael D. Higgins is no stranger to waiting about at election time and hoping that the transfers come through from other candidates as an election count drags on.
He has been in contests now since the early ‘eighties so that, when some pollster comes along and says he is in with a chance of election, he calls on all those years of experiences varying from good, to bad, to indifferent.
Mostly, because he is a popular choice for transfers from voters, the experience has been good …. though there was an election some years ago where the patience of even Higgins was tried as Higgins in West Galway came up with just over seven per cent of the first preferences and many instantly wrote him off as a spent force and someone would could not climb back from such a low starting base.
But behind him in the first preference totals were people representing ratepayers, the PAYE sector, Travellers and any other combination of beliefs and persuasions. Would the votes come out eventually for Michael D. was the question …… and within hours, it began to be answered in the affirmative, a few hundred here, a few hundred there, and, all the time, Higgins surviving, dragging himself up the totals. It worked magnificently – if memory serves, Higgins got the second seat in five-seater West Galway.
But there are considerations – for instance, should Sean Gallagher go ten or twelve per cent ahead of Higgins in the first preferences, then, though Higgins continues to attract transfers, you can be darn sure that Gallagher will also be getting his share. That big gap in first preferences, if it occurs, could prove fatal to Higgins’ chances.
It’s against this background that the Fine Gael vote of Gay Mitchell could come into play – already there are people at the top prepared to concede that Mitchell is no longer a contender ….. but could the old Fine Gael-Labour inter-party vote be brought into play by pretty much a direct transfer deal across to Higgins in the later counts?
The ordinary rank-and-file Fine Gael TDs were sickened last week to see those Fianna Fail smirks around Leinster House at the thought of a man like Gallagher, with all of his background FF connections, possibly slipping into the Presidency.
From talking to the likes of West Galway Fine Gael TD Brian Walsh there is an accurate awareness on the FG backbenches of just how those smirks will grow on the FF benches if Gallagher becomes the unofficial FF candidate after the election. Can’t you just hear the lines ….. ‘Jaysuz, our fellow did okay after all.’ That would be a red rag to a Fine Gael bull.
It would be quite a feather in the cap of FF Leader Micheal Martin TD, though he utterly mishandled the whole issue of the nomination with that ludicrous move to recruit Gay Byrne, and without consulting his Parliamentary Party, not least people like Eamon O Cuiv and Brian Crowley, both of whom had at least a passing interest in standing. Certainly, O Cuiv and Crowley would have a bone to pick with him and there are still rumblings in the background that they still intend to ‘pick that bone’ with him yet.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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