Archive News
Our common humanity is reason we should help Pakistanis
Date Published: {J}
Some weeks are harder than others. I want to write about Pakistan because this is rapidly turning into the worst human catastrophe for decades. There is no possible way to repeat that too often – but what else is there to say? I have over five hundred words to fill here, I can’t just write it out like lines.
I suppose I do want to distance myself from the ranks of those pointing out how helping Pakistan is in the West’s own interests. Would we not try to help if it wasn’t? There has never been any suggestion of that. People all over the world gave generously to the victims of disaster in Indonesia, Haiti or Ethiopia often without knowing or asking the religion or politics of the victims. I won’t say I hope that people won’t give more because they want to outdo the Islamists, because in a situation like this the aid getting there at all is what matters and how or why it got there is immaterial right now. But it would be sad if some saw humanitarian aid as a bribe, or as public relations spending.
I would certainly hope that the opposite doesn’t occur though – holding back on aid to the people of Pakistan because of their government’s various questionable policies. Now is not the time to ask why a country like Pakistan has nuclear weapons. (Though I suppose it wouldn’t be a bad time to ask why a country like India has them.) Pakistan has problems which we do not normally take time to consider, so we’re not going to turn into experts on them overnight. But we may have some inkling that drawing a line on a map to divide two conflicting ethnicities is not always the fast track to effective government.
And frankly, the best government in the world would be struggling in the teeth of a disaster like this. Whose fault is it that a fifth of the country is under water? Perhaps it is us in the rich countries, with our cars and air conditioning and our electric kettles, destabilising the climate. Perhaps it is an angry God – though it is funny how God always seems to be angry about the same thing some man is angry about. We really cannot know for sure, and anyone who says they know is lying either to you or to themselves. Allotting blame is a simple human desire, but the real causes of
things are multiple and ferociously complex. As humans, no matter what precautions we take or who we pray to, we will always be victims of the unforeseen, of disaster, of the vast and unstoppable forces of the natural world. As humans, we recognise that we have this in common. We may come from countries and cultures and families that do things in different ways, that are richer or poorer, that have more or less power, but when you put things in their true perspective we are all very small and very vulnerable and we have to look out for each other.
We help people not to influence them, but because they need help. That’s not Christianity any more than it’s Communism. It’s just humanity. A person is drowning, you pull them out.
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
images/files/images/x3_Courthouse.jpg
Families queue up for school’s offer of free house
West has lower cancer survival rates than rest
Galway minors continue to lay waste to all opponents
Gardaí and IFA issue a joint appeal on summer road safety
Marathon Man plans to call a halt – but not before he hits 160 races
