The Heelers Diaries

the fantasy world of ireland's greatest living poet

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Location: Kilcullen (Phone 087 7790766), County Kildare, Ireland

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

you the jury

Something called Martina Devlin wrote a passionate opinion piece feature article this week in something styling itself the Irish Independent newspaper.
Her subject was the Dublin Lockout.
The Dublin Lockout was a workers' strike which bouleversed Ireland a century ago this month in the year of our lord 1913.
During the strike, a coterie of Ireland's employers appear to have banded together in an attempt to starve out the workers.
Martina Devlin's column blazed with righteous indignation.
But the targets of her magnificent tirade were not the neo feudalist bosses nor yet the firebrand trade unionists who between them brought a city and a country to its knees.
Her targets were elsewhere.
Martina Devlin, writing of the Dublin Lockout, reserved her sneering disdain for what she claimed was the behaviour of Catholic Bishops during the strike. She asserted that the Bishops had sought to prevent the children of Dublin being evacuated to Britain for fear that the children would be exposed to Protestant versions of Christianity.
Hmmm.
I'm gonna have to ask for a Judges ruling on this one.
Martina Devlin writes for the Irish Independent.
I won't say "Martina Devlin works for the Irish Independent," because the Irish Independent is bankrupt and its staff are effectively glorified social welfare recipients, ie social welfare recipients without the integrity to admit they are social welfare recipients like the rest of us. No work is done in this newspaper. People whose writings are of no journalistic merit are paid astronomical salaries through the largesse of the State in order to pretend to be journalists. Interestingly enough, the staff at Independent Newspapers are much agitated about what they believe are overly generous social welfare payments to those of us who honestly and honourably admit to being without paid work. But I digress.
Martina Devlin writes for the Irish Independent.
She does no work.
And in 1913 the Irish Independent's then owner William Martin Murphy was the kingpin behind the bosses' cabal which sought to starve out the workers of Dublin.
And Martina Devlin is telling us now how disgusted she is with the behaviour she attributes to Catholic Bishops of that era.
I find the whole thing quite quaint.

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