Archive News
Galwayman the driving force behind bill
Date Published: 10-Sep-2009
A new bill is currently being debated in the United States that will, if passed, legalise twelve million undocumented immigrants and a Galwayman is one of its promoters.
Billy Lawless, who emigrated twelve years ago to Chicago, where he now runs a successful restaurant business, got involved through the Chicago Celts for Immigration Reform and this week he is in Galway and the West to spread message of the importance of petitioning the US Government.
“I’m here this week to tell the mammys and the daddys of those living ‘illegally’ in the US to ensure that their loved ones to get their paperwork in order and there are plenty of support groups to help do that, including a coalition of Irish immigrant groups from all the major cities around the States.”
In fact, three years ago Mr Lawless was made chairman of the Comprehensive Immigration Reform group, thanks to his voluntary work with Irish immigrants through his private bar and restaurant business.
Almost since he landed in Chicago, anyone travelling from Galway and indeed, later spreading geographically to the West and further afield, went to his bar, The Irish Oak in North Clark Street, not only to look for a job but with a number of problems.
He soon became an unofficial ‘ambassador’ of the undocumented Irish and in the past year was in a position to assist two Galway families whose sons tragically died while on J1 visas in Chicago.
His work hasn’t gone unnoticed as he was voted Irish Person of the Year last year and got the first ever Fr Flanagan Boys Town Award (an award that gives a nod to the priest whose work was honoured in the Bing Crosby film, Boys Town).
But Mr Lawless is not in town to blow his own trumpet but for a series of media interviews as part of a campaign to ensure as much support for the bill as possible – President Barack Obama is strongly in favour of having it passed as soon as possible, realistically this could be next Spring.
It was heavily defeated last time out by a strong anti-reform campaign, which is why Mr Lawless and his group have decided to come to Ireland to canvass families of the undocumented.
“No matter how much posturing or internet campaign we do, I know that often the message doesn’t get through to the very people we are targeting. That’s why we thought we would target the parents because often it is them anyway who do the paperwork for their loved ones abroad.
“But what I do want to get across too is for people not to be afraid to contact the authorities. People should keep paying their taxes if they have a tax ID number and they should contact their congressman or woman or get in touch online with either of the organisations actively working on getting this bill passed (www.ciic-usa.org or www.justiceforimmigrants.org).”
About 70% of the undocumented are Mexicans, the rest are made up of the Irish, Poles, Africans, Asians and the rest of the world.
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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