Mixing sport and geography

Omagh schoolchildren greet the Olympic flame on its passage through Ireland.

It was probably no more than a slip of the tongue but it spoiled my breakfast… and it has been niggling since. The fact that it was a ‘good news story’ on RTÉ Radio One’s Morning Ireland hardly alleviated the inexplicable feeling of being slighted once more.

Brother boxers keep her lit on the Border.

I didn’t even catch the name of the reporter who informed listeners that the Olympic flame was ‘now in Ireland, if only for a few hours’ after the symbolic handover between fellow Irish Olympians Wayne McCollough and Michael Carruth at the Border on the Newry to Dundalk road.

It jarred because, by no coincidence, I was actually in Ireland yesterday morning to witness the same Olympic flame making its passage through Omagh, having come from Derry City via Strabane before heading off out the Dromore Road towards Enniskillen and a string of other Irish towns and villages.

The feeling of euphoria I had felt since about the passage of the Olympic flame on a symbolic course that included both parts of Ireland was dissipated by the carelessness of yet another ‘professional’ news reporter who can’t even be bothered to look at a map and know the difference between a country and a state.

Jack Kennedy, 15, carries the flame through Omagh.

‘A few hours’ indeed, I thought, my mind tracing the earlier path of the flame from Belfast through Antrim, along the north coast and through each of these six Irish counties in Northern Ireland before its brief interlude in the Republic of Ireland.

Yet such geographical dismissal should be like water off a duck’s back by now, one would think.

For all of my life, I have listened to unionist politicians talk of ‘Ulster’ and the ‘Ulster people’ in a way that pointedly excluded me and all those in Northern Ireland who espoused Irish reunification, not to mention one-third of the actual province of Ulster. Such geographical and social selectivity was always deliberate, however, a contrived formula to bestow historical pedigree and political legitimacy on the partition of Ireland.

It was anathema to news reporting in most of Ireland, of course. Reporters were reminded forcibly by editors, who were sticklers for ‘House Style’ back then, that there were very precise rules on these matters.

Standards appear have slipped since the Good Friday Agreement (or ‘Belfast Agreement’ in Irish Times house style). And I blame soccer for that.

For just as we prepare to root for the Irish Olympians at the London games, the hype is reaching a crescendo for the European Football Championships. Notwithstanding that the Irish team taking part includes (controversially for some) players from throughout the island, it travels to Poland under the auspices of the breakaway Football Association of Ireland, one of the two bodies that persisted in fielding teams under the name ‘Ireland’ until the 1950s.

Representing Ireland against Brazil at Landesdowne Road in July 1973 were the Shamrock Rovers XI (from back left) Miah Dennehy, Tommy Criag, Paddy Mulligan, Martin O'Neill, Derek Dougan, Alan Hunter, Liam O'Kane and (front from left) Bryan Hamilton, Pat Jennings, Tommy Carroll, Johnny Giles, Don Givens, Terry Conroy and Mick Martin.

Fab Four – Don Givens. Johnny Giles,
Martin O'Neill and Pat Jennings .

It hardly mattered so much at a time when there was little prospect of playing on the world stage, but then the 1970s came along with the Troubles and possibly the best crop of home-grown soccer talent we ever produced. From this, a team was put together in 1973 by the two serving captains of Northern Ireland and the Republic – Derek Dougan and Johnny Giles. With no official backing from the ‘representative’ bodies, they engineered a match with the mighty Brazil in Dublin and, with no official sanction, they had to field as the Shamrock Rovers XI. That didn’t stop them racking up three goals against the world champions’ four.

Despite the continuous efforts of the great Dougan to unite the Irish soccer teams, the divide continues, bolstered by marginal success for Northern Ireland in 1982 and for the Republic on occasions since then. It has become firmly institutionalised with many professional reporters persisting in the belief that rugby’s adherence to an all-Ireland selection is the exception, rather than the rule. Indeed, soccer is the exception.

So as the FAI side heads off for the European finals with a team of varied pedigree, the Irish Football Association and its supporters resort to irony and self-derision. Their favourite chant in recent years is the refrain, ‘We’re not Brazil, we’re Norn Iron’.

As if we need to be reminded.

So as credit union accounts are raided for the road to Poznan, I’ll be looking forward to the Olympics and lamenting that the last outing for the Ireland soccer team was in July 1973 – a glorious sporting occasion ‘if only for a few hours’.

What a Hooley in the Ulster Hall

A group of film Hooley-gans gathers around Terri on the Good Vibrations film set

At the world premiere of Good Vibrations in the Ulster Hall, Belfast, last night, the closing scenes of a fast and furious rock concert in the same venue 30 years ago was an exuberant triumph of local film-making.

The movie (directed by Lisa Barros d’Sa and Glenn Leyburn) topped the bill for last night's opening of the Belfast Film Festival and goes on general release by summer’s end. Make sure you see it.

It is a bio-pic of the legendary Terri Hooley, music shop owner, record label founder and concert impresario, but mostly rock and roll rebel of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Hooley, who was still loitering in the vicinity last night, channelled the mayhem of 1970s Belfast into an improvised, explosive mixture of punk rock, detonated it at the very heart of a divided society and left thousands alive for the very first time in their young lives.

Few of his bands – apart from those ‘Legenderry’ teenage kickers, The Undertones – made any impression outside their hometown, but as the Terri Hooley character observed, that wasn’t really the point. 

His character (played by local actor Richard Dormer) told the heaving audience why punk/new wave music was particularly suited their city: ‘New York has the haircuts; London has the trousers; but Belfast has the reason.’

The bearded Richard Dormer, as Terri Hooley, discovers punk in The Pound.

So more than 20 years after The Commitments revealed that Dubliners are the ‘blacks of Europe’ when it comes to Soul, Good Vibrations underscores the even more relevant truth that Belfast was the spiritual home of Punk – a raucous roar of defiance against the ghastly reality of life in a society being torn apart. 

In the Ulster Hall last night, we watched the mayhem unfold with the music and rejoiced in the knowledge that the appropriately named Victims, along with Rudi, The Outcasts and all the others thundered onto the stage and never sold out anything apart from grubby venues such as The Pound, The Harp and even the venerable Ulster Hall itself.

In the Good Vibrations screenplay by Glenn Patterson and Colin Carberry, we could even see in retrospect how fitting it was that the rage and pace of punk rock was snuffed out in Belfast by the dawn of the Eighties.

Last night’s film premiere ended to a standing ovation, cheers and loud guffaws from many who probably recognised their young selves in the heaving mass of youth on screen. Then we poured out through the foyer of the refurbished 150-year-old Ulster Hall realising that it is such a long, long way from there to here.

Grim reality of 'night' life after The Pound in 1970s Belfast

I was back with myself in 1970s Belfast during one of many working/social visits to the city. We were spilling out of The Pound, ears ringing, hearts pounding from several hours of exhilarating and thunderous music that included one of the regular tribute anthem-like covers of Van Morrison's Gloria. 

The contrast outside is eerie, the dark, damp silent world of Belfast at the height of the Troubles – streets deserted, distant sounds of buses finishing final runs, security gates clamped shut, streetscapes of dereliction and desertion.

We scamper along seeking a safe haven as the shutters come down on Belfast and only the strict Sabbatarian silence of Sunday beckons.

Yet it is still only 6pm on Saturday with the day done and almost dusted in a city of fear where even young renegades and urban outcasts know they have to be back on home ground by teatime. 
No wonder the music was fucking angry!

Trapped by the Border: Ulster Protestants in the Free State

In December 1921, Major Somerset Saunderson declared, ‘Now I have no country.’ He echoed the sentiment of many others after the Anglo-Irish Treaty sealed the deal on partition. Like other Ulster Protestants who found themselves marooned on the wrong side, Saunderson was bereft of hope… and he was bitter.

Castle Saunderson now a shell at convergence of Cavan, Fermanagh and Monaghan

He never returned from England after writing that epitaph to Hugh Montgomery of Fivemiletown. Today, Castle Saunderson in Cavan, near its convergence with Fermanagh and Monaghan, is a shell overlooking the River Finn where it flows into the Erne.

Somerset Saunderson’s reaction is particularly noteworthy because his father, Colonel Edward Saunderson, was the first leader of Irish Unionism in the House of Commons. In his 2005 biography of Edward Carson, Geoffrey Lewis calls Saunderson the ‘authentic voice of Ulster Presbyterianism’ (he was Church of Ireland). Elected as a Liberal MP first for Cavan and later as a Conservative for North Armagh, he was ‘an Orangeman, pugilist and boat-builder and a man of narrow piety’. 

Col. Saunderson: Carson's mentor

He was also the mentor and inspiration for Carson and, like his parliamentary protégé, his roots were outside the six counties that would become Northern Ireland, but he was decidedly of Ulster.

The Saundersons were by no means unique in their fervour for Ulster and Unionism. I was struck by this recently at the start of our decade of centenaries amidst all the promised hoopla to mark the momentous year of 1912 when Ulster Unionism struck out on its own. I noted the unmarked passing of the 100th anniversary of Ulster Unionism’s first major rally. It took place in Omagh right at the start of January, long before April’s big gathering at the King’s Hall and Carson’s Trail to the Covenant.

It could be said that Omagh set the scene for 1912 when it drew a remarkable crowd of 30,000. They came from west, mid and south Ulster and many of them came by rail. I had a look at Omagh train arrivals for that day before the rally commenced at 11.35am.

There was the usual scheduled service from Belfast through Portadown and the other from Derry via Strabane. But there were also 18 special trains bringing passengers from Cavan, Bailieboro, Belturbet, Cootehill, Bundoran, Clones, Castleblayney, Smithboro, Monaghan and Glaslough.

Among Omagh’s platform speakers – with Carson and the Marquis of Hamilton –was Lord Dartrey whose ancestor, incidentally, had introduced the Act of Union at Westminster in 1801. The Dartreys or Dawsons from Monaghan, are now gone, like the Saundersons and Farnhams of Cavan; commemorated only in local street names.

Carson inspects UVF bicyle detachment at Raphoe, Co. Donegal

Yet though the big families would fade from view, there was no doubting the continuing commitment of ordinary unionists on the periphery of Ulster. Monaghan, Cavan and Donegal blood flowed among the signatures on that Solemn League and Covenant. Two full battalions of Ulster Volunteers were raised in County Monaghan alone and with others from Cavan and Donegal many of them marched off to fight for King and Country in the 36^th Ulster Division.

Over the top at the Battle of the Somme

Yet despite obvious enthusiasm for the cause, they endured a decade of trauma and political uncertainty before they were told in no uncertain terms at the Ulster Unionist convention on 10 March 1920 that they were ‘surplus to requirements’.

In the immediate aftermath of the Ulster Hall shunning, Lord Farnham wrote to Montgomery,  'Apart from breaking the Covenant, what we feel more than anything is that we can no longer call ourselves Ulstermen. We in Cavan were prouder of being Ulstermen than anyone in the whole Province.' Montgomery replied, 'There is no use arguing about the meaning of the word "Ulster". Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan are part of Ulster, but they are not part of the Northern Ireland segregated in the Bill.'

Creating a combined Ulster Protestant identity.

And therein lies the nub. For a decade before partition, Ulster Protestantism had forged its new identity as being different from the rest of Ireland and of being united in Covenant. When the covenant was broken, the Ulster Unionists of Cavan, Monaghan and Donegal were not only denied political redemption; they were robbed of their identity.

Although Monaghan Unionist leaders such as Colonel J. C.W. Madden dismissed this new ‘Belfast-made covenant’ of 1920 and Monaghan County Grand Chaplain remarked that in Belfast they are ‘all Home Rulers now’, that was face-saving rhetoric.

The grave prospect facing the Protestants of Monaghan, Cavan and Donegal was summed up by Monaghan’s Orange Grand Master and erstwhile Ulster Unionist Council member Michael Knight who said they must “no matter what eventually takes place, rely upon ourselves and upon ourselves alone”.

Trinity's R.B. McDowell

So as leaders of the new Northern Ireland administration set about forging a new political identity and styling themselves as ‘Ulster,’ what befell their former fellows in the ‘lost counties’? If we read the late Trinity historian R.B. McDowell’s history of southern unionism, Crisis and Decline, they just ceased to be Ulster unionists and joined the exodus. But while many did migrate across the new frontier, aided in some cases by those intent on shoring up vulnerable Unionist numbers in Fermanagh and Tyrone, many others didn’t give up quite that easily.

Just like nationalists marooned in the six counties, many southern Protestants in the border counties placed their faith in Article 12 of the new treaty – the boundary clause. When the Commission was eventually convened, it received representations from those pockets of Ulster Protestants left behind by the tide. As with most representations, they did not want to remain cut off from co-religionists by the new frontier.

So numbers were bandied back and forth, largely based on electoral registers and the most recent census of 1911. From these, we reckon that a total of 70,000 Protestants were living in the three Ulster counties of Cavan, Monaghan and Donegal at the time of partition. The pattern of population and the ratio differed widely between the counties and, of course, within the counties themselves. So while Donegal’s 35,000 Protestants represented about 18% of that county’s population; Monaghan’s 19,000 notched up at almost 30%. East Donegal’s Laggan Valley was an Ulster Presbyterian stronghold, but north Monaghan’s population was remarkably similar to contiguous districts of Fermanagh, Tyrone and Armagh.

It is worth noting in passing that J.R. Fisher, former editor of the Northern Whig appointed by Westminster as Northern Ireland’s Boundary commissioner, had noted that dispersal of population. He had urged Sir William Craig to consider a new boundary to include all Donegal and North Monaghan with a frontier line from the southern tip of Upper Lough Erne to Bessbrook. This would shorten the border by almost two-thirds and leave out most of South Armagh. That would avoid, said Fisher, 'an Afghanistan on our north-west frontier, while including most of those we want and leaving out those we don’t.'

Boundary Commisioner Eoin MacNeill, left, on the frontier

In the event, the Boundary Commission recommended few changes from the county lines of partition. East Donegal was to transfer to Northern Ireland, part of east Fermanagh around Clones was to go to the Free State and the small district of Mullyash, between Castleblayney and Darkley, was to go north in exchange for Crossmaglen and Forkhill.

Not that any of that mattered because another deal was done and the line stayed where it was. The Protestant minority in Free State southern border counties were, as Michael Knight warned in 1920, on their own. Yet in many respects, they remained different from the Protestant pockets elsewhere in the Free State. Protestant celebrations continued through the 1920s, but ended when a parade of Black men from Monaghan and Cavan was attacked in Cootehill. Henceforth, lodges paraded locally without fanfare and then went north for the big events.

Of course they migrated steadily down the years, drawn to Northern Ireland by family ties, marriage and employment prospects as much as by the desire to recover their Ulster Protestant credentials. The imposition of Irish language requirements for public service jobs in the south alienated many. The overtly Roman Catholic veneer of public life proclaimed in the mammoth Eucharistic Congress of 1932 set the tone, and the 1937 Constitution accorded a ‘special position’ to the Catholic Church only removed in 1972.

A current map illusrates migration patterns along the Border

Protestant sons went north for jobs in the public sector and police, daughters went for nursing, teaching and other careers, as well as for marriage. Yet as late as 1934, East Donegal’s Protestants drew up a petition for transfer north with 7,000 signatures.

Yet it wasn’t all lost. In the years immediately following partition, Monaghan’s Protestant leaders devised a political strategy. While denied their Ulster Unionist credentials, they organised as the Protestant Association and forged an organisation that would maintain their presence, even during the darkest times. For years, they more than held their own in the affairs of Monaghan county council and urban district councils in Monaghan town and Clones. As late as the 1960s, the Clones council chairman Bobby Molloy declared openly that he was 'still an Ulster Unionist'.  A decade later, an elderly neighbour from across The Diamond in Clones, told RTE’s Tommy Gorman that when she died, they could turn her upside down and they would see ‘Ulster Protestant’ stamped on her… well, she did get carried away and I’m sure nobody looked!

In national terms, a pattern was established of electing a Protestant to Dáil Éireann, first for Monaghan alone and latterly in the combined Cavan-Monaghan constituency where Heather Humphreys recently took over from Seymour Crawford. Protestant politics in the three counties now leans towards Fine Gael but for a period Erskine Childers managed to wrest Monaghan’s Protestant vote away to Fianna Fáil.

But there was sea change with the onset of the Troubles. Already inclined to the reputed posture of Larne Catholics, Protestants in the southern border counties retreated from view. Clones High School, where many pupils came from adjacent areas of Fermanagh, closed some years after the GNR rail connections with Enniskillen and Belfast. So having grown up in a town with a strong Ulster Protestant demeanour in the 1950s and 1960s, I watched from afar as Clones changed, particularly after Bloody Sunday when huge numbers of Protestants left for Canada, Britain and even Bangor.

The grave of Bill Fox

Local Protestant politician Senator Bill Fox was killed in a botched IRA raid, the first member of the Oireachtas shot by the IRA since Kevin O’Higgins in 1927 and now all but forgotten in the fray. Interestingly, Fox had lost his Dáil seat when some Protestant electors became uneasy over his campaigning about border road cratering, which also imposed a huge impediment on Protestant farmers and church congregations.

A fictional voice

Meanwhile, I was researching my Masters thesis on the Boundary Commission, slowly realising that a huge voice from our shared past had gone silent. I later wrote a fictional voice for them, The Sons of Levi. That was after the peace process began and I remember at that time, having many encounters with people who had kept nervously to the shadows. One young man was about the same age as my older son Ross and had grown up in a strong Protestant community near Doohat Orange Hall. He described his schooling and social life, not much different to my son’s. I asked him if he ever went into Clones, a ten-minute car journey. He looked at me in horror: ‘No way, that’s a rebel town!’

Huge efforts by the Clones Community Forum and other peace-funded bodies has restored a more balanced view among all sides since then, not least the trapped minority of Ulster Protestants. The wonderful work of President Mary McAleese in building bridges has restored their place and their pride in who and what they are. The Ulster-Scots Agency, the Border Minorities group and other initiatives have begun to give them back a voice of their own.

Border Counties Band Forum lists traditional Ulster Protestant marching bands

Slowly, the trapped minority of the ‘Lost Counties’ of Ulster is emerging from the shadows. Rossnowlagh’s pre-Twelfth in Donegal and the quaintly named Drum Picnic – a traditional parade of Ulster marching bands in Monaghan – are providing public showcases for their culture.

On both sides of the Border, more and more people are realising that there never was a ‘clean cut’ as Britain’s Prime Minister Lloyd George promised in 1921. So the learning process goes on as we lick at old wounds and expose them to fresh air. We sense now that there was hurt and a deep sense of betrayal on both sides and that this persisted for the past century. With acceptance of our different stories, healing can take place along with the learning. For as I have discovered, we are reflections of each other, no matter on which side of the mirror or the Border we find ourselves by accident of birth.

© Darach MacDonald

My great-grandad missed the Titanic

Columbia, left, fends off a challenge from the Shamrock in 1899, first of many successive Irish bids for the America's Cup

My great-grandfather was a newsman from the tips of his toes to the brim of the felt hat on which he practised his shorthand during the sermon while in church. One hundred years ago today, 10 April 1912, he had to make a choice between two stories.

One was a chance to go on board the Shamrock III, a racing yacht that was then the latest in a series of five challenging for the most prestigious prize of all, the America’s Cup.

The alternative story was to go out on a tender to the latest in a series of ocean liners plying the north Atlantic route. That seemed a mundane assignment compared to the chance of skimming the waters of Cork Harbour in a sleek vessel owned by the tea millionaire, Sir Thomas Lipton.

My great-grandfather Michael Bowen made his choice. Sure he could always go on board the Titanic when it called back on its return voyage!

A century later, it seems like the greatest mistake one could possibly make in a journalistic career. Yet by contemporary standards, he made the correct choice. Any seasoned reporter covering maritime affairs for the Cork Examiner, as well as the Daily Mail and its sister newspapers in London, would have had little hesitation in going for the chance to sail in the Shamrock III.

Sir Thomas Lipton (1848-1931, had been born in Glasgow to parents who had emigrated from the Clones area of County Fermanagh. From exceptionally humble beginnings, he went to sea as a cabin boy and embarked on a remarkable business career, soon becoming a self-made millionaire.

Yet Lipton was also renowned as ‘the most persistent challenger in the history of the America’s Cup’ and his yachts flew the flag for Ireland with the Royal Ulster Yacht Club in every successive challenge for the prize between 1899 and 1930. This was the only time in history that Ireland was the exclusive challenger for the ornate silver jug trophy.

Self-made millionaire Sir Thomas Lipton.

In 1899, Lipton provided the finance for the William Fife-designed yacht, Shamrock. While it failed against Columbia, owned by the Pierpont-Morgan syndicate from the United States, Lipton was a mastermind of publicity. He raised the America’s Cup event to rapturous international appeal. This also boosted Lipton’s tea on a market surge that was considerably more successful than the ocean race bids.

Lipton was back in 1901 with Shamrock II, again pipped by the Columbia. Undaunted, he and the Royal Ulster Yacht Club challenged the Reliance, owned by the Vanderbilts, in 1903. This time it was the Shamrock III that carried the flag and the hope.

It was that sleek vessel that my great-grandfather boarded a hundred years ago today at Queenstown for a once-in-a-lifetime story. One suspects that as they plied the waves, he just gave passing attention to the big ship lying off the mouth of the harbour beyond. It was no more than a date for his dairy if it did not have that fateful rendezvous with an iceberg in its own race for glory through treacherous ocean waters.

The Titanic was lost, of course, and Sir Thomas Lipton failed in his further challenges for the America’s Cup with Shamrock IV and Shamrock V in 1920 and 1930.   

Yet the publicity of his challenges propelled his tea brand to the premier spot in the American market.

As for my great grandfather, three years after the Titanic, a chance remark that the tenders had gone out from one of my grand-aunts returning from school alerted him to a possible story. Michael Bowen rushed down to the harbour office and managed to get on board another boat setting out for the Old Head of Kinsale. 

When he returned with survivors a few hours later, he immediately filed a story to London.

The Lusitania was torpedoed off the Old Head of Kinsale.

The Evening Standard ran a special late edition on 5 May 1915 announcing the ‘Sinking of the Lusitania’scooping every other news organisation by a full day on the biggest story of the era in terms of its consequences.

Of the 1,959 on board, 1,198 perished when a German U-boat torpedoed the Lusitania as it approached the mouth of Cork Harbour. The huge loss of lives, including many Americans on board, caused outrage and convinced the United States to enter the First World War and help defeat Germany.

And my great-grandfather? He got a bonus and a handshake from Lord Northcliffe and spent the closing years of his journalism career plying between his home in Queenstown (soon to be renamed Cobh) and Southampton and Cherbourg while filing stories of the great ocean liners and the VIPs on board.

Yet I bet Michael Bowen would have traded all that to see Thomas Lipton lift the America’s Cup for the Royal Ulster Yacht Club with an Irish victory for one of the Shamrocks.

Map-reading errors persist on Border

Geographic confusion continues along the border with news organisations filling in blanks of knowledge on a ‘best guess’ stab at what might be almost right.

Tonight, the Frontier Post antennae went up when we saw a news item on BBC about an explosive device that ‘could have killed’ at a roundabout on the AI Dublin to Belfast road.

The report said that this was at ‘Newry, County Down’. However, the actual location was at the Cloghogue roundabout.

Now those of us who were held up – both delayed and detained – many times in the course of our duties during the recent conflict are familiar with the location of Cloghogue. A huge British Army checkpoint grew up there over the course of those years, eventually surmounted by one of those big observation towers festooned with surveillance equipment for watching and listening.

It was not something you could have missed noticing either even driving by on the AI.

Today, it seems, Cloghogue is just a roundabout, so anonymous in peacetime reporting that it has shifted counties. For if somebody had done their homework before placing it so definitively, they would find out that Cloghogue is in County Armagh.

The confusion is hardly surprising, since everywhere prefaced by the name of Newry is now assumed to be in County Down, although about half of the town/city remains in Armagh where it has always been. Yet that is not the greatest infringement of geographic confusion along the Border.

South Armagh is included in the Newry and Mourne district for administrative purposes and also for modern postal addresses that operate on a postcode numbers rather than actual places on the traditional map which in rural areas was composed of townlands.

So Crossmaglen, served from Newry, is transferred to Down, along with Forkhill, Camlough, Newtownhamilton and other communities. No wonder there were frequent reports of map-reading errors down the years from squaddies who could not hope to rely on places staying in the one spot!

The late Paddy Short, a south Armagh man who never lost his way.

The civil rights activist, guide, publican and wonderful raconteur Paddy Short of Crossmaglen used to marvel about the geographic displacement caused by substituting townland names with postal codes and signs for arbitrary road names. 

One such wonder was in his native townland of Lurgancullenboy, which had been designated as ‘Lurgan Road, Crossmaglen, County Down’ in the official housekeeping. 

Paddy laughed heartily at that, pointing out that Lurgancullenboy was still in County Armagh and anybody taking that road would be going off in the opposite direction of Lurgan which, for those who do not have a good map handy, is in the north of County Armagh and quite near both County Down and County Antrim.

Built in Belfast, County Down. Sunk in Atlantic Ocean.

In fairness, the geographic confusion it’s not just a Border problem. Anywhere north of Drogheda seems to be a grey unknown area for many in the Dublin media, just as Belfast media can barely see beyond Dromore – that is the one in County Down for our Tyrone followers. 

Maybe the ultimate justice in this is that current events in the Titanic Quarter are assumed to be happening in Belfast, County Antrim, while they are actually happening in County Down.

Such careless navigation might even explain how somebody could have missed a big iceberg! Surely if so many can misplace a roundabout, and an entire city or two, what chance is there of pinpointing a big lump of frozen water on a vast and dark Atlantic Ocean?

Back on the Border, but in the north-west this time, Traditional Unionist Voice leader Jim Allister was in Newtownstewart last week sounding off to his vast coterie of West Tyrone followers (well, almost a dozen). His clarion cry was that any improvements of the A5 road, which runs from Derry city to the border at Aughnacloy, ‘will create a united Ireland by road’. Mind you, this is after the Dublin government has withdrawn funding from the project, notwithstanding that it would vastly improve access to and from Donegal. Now it’s just Jim Allister ranting about a major road project for the use of people west of the Bann. Somebody must have misplaced his map too.

There are persistent culprits when it comes to this ‘pin in a map’ guesswork. They needn’t think we don’t notice at the Frontier Post.

On the road to god knows where

The border, hard to spot on the ground, is clearly visible from space, as satellite photos show.

Spare a thought during this fine spell of early summer promise for the poor tourist circling forever on an M1 roundabout at Faughart. Or the other perhaps languishing and lost in the wilds of north Leitrim’s glens, both wandering and wondering how to get to this place called Belfast that their Satellite Navigation systems insist does not even exist.

It is surely a wonder of the modern world that our fickle frontier, unseen by the human eye, is so readily visible to electronic systems, including Google Earth. I have long marvelled that the border appears as a vivid white or yellow line on Google's satellite photos, surely rivalling the Great Wall of China as a man-made structure that is clearly visible from space.  

Even SatNav guide Hugo Duncan gets lost.

Back on planet Earth, meanwhile, we simply follow the roads across the Border with an occasional nod to the change from kilometres per hour to MPH. 

Yet many strangers on our shores do not even realise we are divided between political jurisdictions with their own jealously guarded geographies. They often have to rely on SatNav systems ranging from the dulcet British tones of Tom-Tom to our unique variations with ‘celebrity’ voiceovers featuring among others, Hugo 'the Wee Man from Strabane' Duncan.

Arlene Foster – not for turning.

These tourists are bemused at best by our presumption that if they managed to get here, then they should know how to get about. So we leave them to their devices on our labyrinth of highways and byways and expect them to pick up on our nuances of political positioning along the way.

A senior American travel advisor brought this to the notice of the Stormont Executive’s Tourism Minister Arlene Foster this month at a conference organised by the Northern Ireland Tourist Board (NITB).

The maid from Magheraveely – about one Irish mile from the Border as the tourist crow flies – wasn’t for turning. She insisted there would be no relinquishing on the ‘unique identity of Northern Ireland’ in the stakes to become 'a global holiday destination' this year.

The problem, as outlined by Roger Brooks, president of Destination Development International, is that we do not appreciate how visitors perceive our island. Add to this our failure to even agree on naming terminology for north and south – or even east and west and all places in between – only adds to the confusion.

A few years ago, there was widespread outrage when a young Canadian visitor was told at the Belfast bus ticket office that she could not board for Derry because no such place existed. The ticket-seller was making a political point, it seems, about our legendary Maiden City and took the consequences, although the problem persists. Our failure to tackle our multiple identity disorder has merely exacerbated the problem and now, it seems, Belfast has disappeared too.

Just don't key in 'Belfast' and 'Ireland'.

Roger Brooks, whose Seattle-based company advises countries on how to maximise their tourism potential, told the NITB conference that a funny thing happened to him on his way to the theatre.

He was setting off from Dublin to drive to Belfast using his rented car’s SatNav system: ‘I had to type in the city so I typed in Belfast and then I put in the address of the Merchant Hotel and then do you know what it said? It said there is no Belfast in Ireland.’

The story gets even better, or worse, depending on your vantage: ‘So then I went, let me type in Belfast, United Kingdom, and it said there is no Belfast in the United Kingdom, but we found one in Ohio. So I had to type in Northern Ireland and then it came up.

‘If I put in Ireland, it doesn’t find you,’ Roger Brooks told the conference and the Tourism Minister.

Giant's Causeway goes missing.

So in an age of Google holiday planning, the Seattle advisor advised, this probably means that even prime destinations north of the border do not figure under a search for the keyword ‘Ireland’. The Internet itinerary manages to gobble up the Giant’s Causeway, the Mourne Mountains and more and wash them away with Lough Neagh and the Erne, not to mention entire towns and cities.

He advised tourism operators in the north to buy keywords, including ‘Ireland’ so they get a look in.

‘You have to do that because we see Ireland as this great island and we don’t see it as countries,’ Roger Brooks said, ‘so we have a hard time finding your cities using search engines.’

One would expect that should practical advice would be widely noticed and acted upon. Yet the Belfast NewsLetter carried the only report I could find and it even sought a reaction from Minister Foster on what she had heard from Seattle's SatNav explorer. 

She could see only one road ahead for her jurisdiction, the NI2012 marketing programme of Tourism Ireland, the joint promotion body set up after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

This, she said, ‘offers a unique opportunity to change perceptions and confidently put Northern Ireland on the global tourism map – and the signs are already encouraging.’

The Creighton corner in Clones.

I am reminded, however, of an anecdote from my native town of Clones – about two Irish miles from Arlene Foster's Magheraveely as the tourist crow flies. A local ‘character’ was loitering about the Creighton corner at the foot of Fermanagh Street when a large car pulled up from the Newtownbutler Road. The driver rolled down the window and called out, ‘Could you tell me how to get on the road to Dublin?’ The local guide was dismissive: ‘I wouldn’t bother my arse if I were you,’ says he. ‘Sure if you’ve got yourself lost in Clones, you’ll not have a hope down in Dublin!’ 

Seeking truth from Border 'blind spot' and a screen of senationalism

Even while police held security primacy elsewhere, the British army controlled south Armagh from Bessbrook Mill HQ

Here at the Frontier Post, we have been following with considerable interest the tribunal investigating the background to the bloody ambush of two senior Northern Ireland police officers on the Border in 1989. Today, in a dramatic turn on the 23^rd anniversary of the IRA assassinations, the hearings in Dublin were adjourned by Judge Peter Smithwick.

No resumption date has been set and it is expected it won’t be until the tribunal receives British intelligence information which Judge Smithwick described in his recent interim report as ‘highly relevant and potentially significant’.

Before adjourning the public hearings, which began on 7 June last, Judge Smithwick said he is now ‘totally dependent’ on that information. This suggests that the British intelligence report can determine between the counter-claims on whether former Garda Detective Sergeant Owen Corrigan provided information needed by the IRA to kill Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and Superintendent Bob Buchanan on the afternoon of 20 March 1989.

Chief Superintendent Breen and Superintendent Buchanan

The Smithwick tribunal inquiry is taking place on foot of this allegation raised in the British House of Commons, following ‘disclosures’ by a journalist/author and a preliminary report on collusion on both sides by Canadian Judge Peter Cory. It has also been taken up by a ‘colourful’ former British agent in the IRA.

Even as the plot thickens, however, there has been some light shed on a dark period of our recent past along a Border that seems even more intricate than the rival plots.  Solicitor John McBurney for Chief Superintendent Breen’s family, says a much fuller picture of what ‘was known and seemingly ignored or withheld with regard to this tragedy’ was now emerging and the detail was ‘almost impossible to comprehend’.

But let us consider some of the evidence. Just before today’s adjournment, a retired British major, Witness 79, testified from behind a screen. He commanded British troops in the district on the day the two senior RUC officers were killed outside Jonesborough at 3.40pm as they returned from a meeting in Dundalk garda station. The former c/o says he was not aware of the police travel plans and these would have been strictly on a ‘need to know’ basis.

Witness 79 confirmed there were a number of army patrols operating in south Armagh, where the Army retained prime control long after the police had been pushed into security frontline in other parts of Northern Ireland. As well, there was contstant helicopter surveillance and the watchtowers on Jonesborough and Forkhill Mountains monitoring cross-border traffic. The attack took place in a ‘blind spot’, however, and Witness 79 suggests local people might not have known this.

On that basis he seemed to support the Garda mole theory that it would have required the risky deployment of too many IRA personnel to monitor all the local roads for the RUC officers’ unmarked car. A British army Brigadier had already gauged that this might have involved 70 IRA lookouts.

Toby Harnden wrote Bandit Country

Now I’m not a trained intelligence officer, nor am I even Toby Harnden, fugitive author of Bandit Country (1999), allegedly based on an awful lot of innuendo, tittle-tattle and information acquired in dubious circumstances through a personal relationship. The Garda ‘mole’ is central to Bandit Country, but Harnden – a former Royal Navy officer who has since written a book about Britain’s war in Afghanistan – last month declined to help the Smithwick inquiry.

Yet I’ve also written a book about the locality. The Chosen Fews: Exploding Myths in South Armagh (2000) was based on my experience of reporting on south Armagh since the mid-1970s backed up by diligent research. This involved frequent and repeated journeys in the district while the elaborate network of British army watchtowers was still in place. I often used Edenappa Road and other known blind spots, precisely because they offered a brief respite from constant monitoring.

So it strikes me that the collusion theory in these killings is based on lack of local knowledge and the pre-supposition of an intricate web of alternative routes that would be almost impossible to monitor.

So let’s consider other facts presented at the tribunal.

The IRA was in ‘communications overdrive’ from 11.30am that day, roughly the time Chief Superintendent Buchanan arranged the meeting on an ‘open and unsecured’ phone call to Dundalk garda station. The two RUC officers used Buchanan’s personal red Cavalier car, registration KIB 1204, which he had previously used for every one of 24 previous cross-border rendezvous with gardaí. They stayed in Dundalk for roughly one hour – meeting Garda Superintendent John Nolan – before setting off back to the border.

Based on that information, a single look-out in Dundalk could tell what road the red Cavalier was taking. That is even discounting that the policemen were tailed by a cream-coloured van from which the four gunmen leapt at the bogus British checkpoint at the Border blind-spot on the Edenappa Road.

Edenappa road runs parallel  to former main road (NI) with new Mi motorway between

Yet we now await the British intelligence report which, one presumes, pre-dates the ‘exposure’ of collusion in Toby Harnden’s book, then backed up by another journalist of rather intemperate views on such matters and a British agent who has long exhausted the sell-by date on his franchise.

Of course, this is not to preclude the existence of an IRA mole in Dundalk Garda station, nor does it discount the elaborate preparations of the IRA in south Armagh whose enemies point out was ‘risk averse’ and very deadly. Conspiracies and collusion are always plausible in a dirty war.

Yet what happened in the deadly war along the Border does not need to be dressed up any more. So we can only hope that this hugely expensive tribunal might yet provide a clear picture from behind the screen of sensationalism that always seems to sell better than the bare truth.