Political World
Globalisation brings world of hard drugs to sheltered towns
World of Politics with Harry McGee – harrymcgee@gmail.com
Sometime during the confusion of my teenage years when I was going through a slightly rebellious streak I arrived back home hours after my stay-out time to be met by my father standing on the landing as I came up the stairs.
A heated interrogation followed during which he asked me was I smoking “reefers”. There was a pause. I didn’t know what the word meant.
Later on, I looked it up in the dictionary to find it was a rather quaint expression for a cannabis joint, or a spliff.
I put it all down at the time to how square and old-fashioned he was. But, truth be told, when it came to recreational drugs, I probably knew even less than my father.
Sure there were some soft drugs around and I’m sure I had been offered some by that stage. In reality, the only drugs my friends and I had regular recourse to were the old reliables, alcohol and tobacco.
Actually, I knew more about heroin than I knew about hash at the time. At that stage I was an obsessive reader of Magill magazine and no publication investigated the heroin epidemic in Dublin better.
There were amazing articles about drug marches to force out pushers, the criminals (the Dunne family) who controlled the market in Dublin, and the way in which communities had been ravaged by the drug.
I can still remember the headline on one major piece that was done. They used the title of the Neil Young song: “The Needle and the Damage Done”.
But in Galway in the 1980s that was as remote as the far side of Jupiter. If there were heroin users in Galway, they were few and far between.
Even when I began working as a reporter in The Connacht Tribune, the street drugs remained marijuana and Class As like amphetamines and Ecstasy. There might well have been a handful of heroin users but, if there were, their existence was not really known.
Now, hard drugs are as pervasive and available, if you really want them, as any other consumer product, like a smart phone or, indeed, Smarties.
Last month, I read with some alarm a report about the death of a young heroin addict. He came from Clonmel and lived there. He was found in an abandoned hotel where other addicts flopped out.
In the same week, I listened to a radio report where another bunch of homeless people – some of them addicts – were camping in an old warehouse on the outskirts of Limerick.
The point is it’s everywhere now. A cursory look at the Connacht Tribune’s archives brings up dozens of cases in recent years, involving supply, possession and hopeless addiction.
Anyone who knows anything about heroin will be aware of its ripple effects. There are the dealers and the debt enforcers and the violence.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
World of Politics with Harry McGee
Academically, politics is described as a science. But in the real world, it’s more of an art – and one of the big decisions a Government has to make is to decide when to call an election.
Will they see out the full term, or will they go early – either to mitigate the damage they will ship, or to secure a victory before things go awry, or the economy takes a dip, or some kind of controversy erupts?
Timing is everything.
And there’s a bit of art to that – not to mention a lot of luck. If you call it early and win big, you’re a genius. If you call it early and lose, you are the political version of the village fool.
Charlie Haughey was a poor judge of the public mood. Twice he called snap elections and on both occasions they backfired. Haughey succeeded Jack Lynch as Taoiseach in late 1979 and did not – technically – have his own mandate. He tried to remedy that by calling an election in 1981. But it recoiled. Ray MacSharry warned him not to hold it during the H Block hunger strikes when republican prisoners were dying each day. He did not listen to the advice and found himself out of office.
After his return to power in 1987, Haughey tired of presiding over a minority government that kept on losing votes in the Oireachtas (the opposition won nine private members motions).
So he called a snap general election and it backfired. Fianna Fáil lost seats and had to broker a coalition deal with the Progressive Democrats and his long-standing political adversary Dessie O’Malley.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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World of Politics with Harry McGee
I was cycling down Mount Street in Dublin on Tuesday. It’s a wide esplanade that links the Grand Canal with Merrion Square. The street is a mixture of fine Georgian buildings and modern office blocks.
About half-way down is the office of the International Protection Office, which deals with asylum seekers who have arrived in the country.
Needless to say, the office has been overwhelmed in the past year. Besides an estimated 80,000 refugees who have arrived from Ukraine, there have been about 20,000 people from other parts of the world who have arrived into Dublin (mostly) claiming asylum.
The numbers peaked around Christmas, but they have been falling a little. In January, more than 1,300 people arrived seeking asylum but the numbers fell back to 831 and 858, in February and March respectively.
They are still huge numbers in a historical context.
So back to my cycle on Tuesday. I knew that some asylum seekers were camping outside the International Protection Office, but I was taken aback by how many. There were six tents lined up on the pavement directly outside. Then on the ramp that led down to the basement carpark on the side of the building, there were about another 20 tents.
It looked like what it was, a refugee camp in the middle of Dublin’s business district. If you pan out from Mount Street, you will find tents here and there in nearby streets and alleys. There were a good few tents in an alleyway off Sandwith Street about 500 metres away.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
World of Politics with Harry McGee
God that was a dramatic and historic weekend in England, wasn’t it? So much excitement, so much change, so much hype, so much out with the old and in with the new, and what looks like the coronation of a new leader. Yes, the local elections in Britain were something else weren’t they!
Apologies for not going on about King Charles III but the contract I signed when I became a lifelong republican forbids me to discuss the topic!
I know the British local elections sound a bit boring by comparison, but the results were stunning.
The Conservatives lost nearly 1,000 seats, the British Labour Party gained almost 500 and both the Lib Dems (with 350 gains) and the Greens (gaining over 200) also had amazing days at the polls.
It was Labour’s best day since 2002 but its victory was only partial. The Greens and the Lib Dems actually made gains at the expense of Labour in more affluent areas, and in parts of Britain where there were high numbers of graduates.
It was in the Red Wall constituencies in the North of England where the Labour recovery was strongest. These are working class constituencies with pockets of deprivation where people voted for the Labour Party forever. But all of those constituencies voted for Brexit and then voted for the Tories in the next general election. Labour is now winning back some of those votes.
Local elections are classified as second-tier elections which essentially means – from a national perspective – they are not life-or-death affairs, and not everything turns on them. Of course, it’s really important to have good local representation. But they are not an amazing weather vane for who rules the country.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
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