[Majorityrights News] Trump will ‘arm Ukraine to the teeth’ if Putin won’t negotiate ceasefire Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 12 November 2024 16:20. [Majorityrights News] Olukemi Olufunto Adegoke Badenoch wins Tory leadership election Posted by Guessedworker on Saturday, 02 November 2024 22:56. [Majorityrights News] What can the Ukrainian ammo storage hits achieve? Posted by Guessedworker on Saturday, 21 September 2024 22:55. [Majorityrights Central] An Ancient Race In The Myths Of Time Posted by James Bowery on Wednesday, 21 August 2024 15:26. [Majorityrights Central] Slaying The Dragon Posted by James Bowery on Monday, 05 August 2024 15:32. [Majorityrights Central] The legacy of Southport Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, 02 August 2024 07:34. [Majorityrights News] Farage only goes down on one knee. Posted by Guessedworker on Saturday, 29 June 2024 06:55. [Majorityrights News] An educated Russian man in the street says his piece Posted by Guessedworker on Wednesday, 19 June 2024 17:27. [Majorityrights Central] Freedom’s actualisation and a debased coin: Part 1 Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, 07 June 2024 10:53. [Majorityrights News] Computer say no Posted by Guessedworker on Thursday, 09 May 2024 15:17. [Majorityrights News] Be it enacted by the people of the state of Oklahoma Posted by Guessedworker on Saturday, 27 April 2024 09:35. [Majorityrights Central] Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan … defend or desert Posted by Guessedworker on Sunday, 14 April 2024 10:34. [Majorityrights News] Moscow’s Bataclan Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, 22 March 2024 22:22. [Majorityrights News] Soren Renner Is Dead Posted by James Bowery on Thursday, 21 March 2024 13:50. [Majorityrights News] Collett sets the record straight Posted by Guessedworker on Thursday, 14 March 2024 17:41. [Majorityrights Central] Patriotic Alternative given the black spot Posted by Guessedworker on Thursday, 14 March 2024 17:14. [Majorityrights Central] On Spengler and the inevitable Posted by Guessedworker on Wednesday, 21 February 2024 17:33. [Majorityrights News] Alex Navalny, born 4th June, 1976; died at Yamalo-Nenets penitentiary 16th February, 2024 Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, 16 February 2024 23:43. [Majorityrights News] A Polish analysis of Moscow’s real geopolitical interests and intent Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 06 February 2024 16:36. [Majorityrights Central] Things reactionaries get wrong about geopolitics and globalism Posted by Guessedworker on Wednesday, 24 January 2024 10:49. [Majorityrights News] Savage Sage, a corrective to Moscow’s flood of lies Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, 12 January 2024 14:44. [Majorityrights Central] Twilight for the gods of complacency? Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 02 January 2024 10:22. [Majorityrights Central] Milleniyule 2023 Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, 22 December 2023 13:11. [Majorityrights Central] A Russian Passion Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, 22 December 2023 01:11. [Majorityrights Central] Out of foundation and into the mind-body problem, part four Posted by Guessedworker on Saturday, 02 December 2023 00:39. [Majorityrights News] The legacy of Richard Lynn Posted by Guessedworker on Thursday, 31 August 2023 22:18. [Majorityrights Central] Out of foundation and into the mind-body problem, part three Posted by Guessedworker on Sunday, 27 August 2023 00:25. [Majorityrights Central] A couple of exchanges on the nature and meaning of Christianity’s origin Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 25 July 2023 22:19. [Majorityrights Central] The True Meaning of The Fourth of July Posted by James Bowery on Sunday, 02 July 2023 14:39. [Majorityrights News] Is the Ukrainian counter-offensive for Bakhmut the counter-offensive for Ukraine? Posted by Guessedworker on Thursday, 18 May 2023 18:55. [Majorityrights News] Charles crowned king of anywhere Posted by Guessedworker on Sunday, 07 May 2023 00:05. [Majorityrights News] Lavrov: today the Kinburn Spit, tomorrow the (New) World (Order) Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, 07 April 2023 11:04. [Majorityrights Central] On an image now lost: Part One Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, 07 April 2023 00:33. [Majorityrights News] The Dutch voter giveth, the Dutch voter taketh away Posted by Guessedworker on Saturday, 18 March 2023 11:30. Majorityrights Central > Category: ObituariesHis contemporaries in Northern Ireland politics have praised him. The obit writers are now posting their copy. David Ervine, leader of the PUP, “passed away quietly with peace and dignity” according to a statement issued by his family today (Monday). Unionism in Northern Ireland will feel his loss. Ervine was one of the many UVF prisoners whom, during the 1970s, Gusty Spence turned from violence to politics. He started appearing on our television screens as, essentially, the political voice of the UVF in the latter half of the 1980s, if my memory serves me correctly. Even then, and notwithstanding the difficulties of speaking for an appallingly violent organisation only nominally engaged in terrorist counter-activity against the Provisional IRA and quite prepared to murder Catholics at large, Ervine struck me as a highly articulate and sympathetic character. That he developed as he did in the period running up to and after the Good Friday Agreement into a passionate spokeman for peace was really rather remarkable. He was a man of genuine vision, and his vision was that of a progressive Unionism as the only practical guarantor of Ulster Protestants’ interests. He did not carry his own organisation with him on his political and spiritual journey. The UVF remains armed and, in part or whole, criminally active. He endeavoured to merge his PUP party with the Ulster Unionists and failed. The times had not travelled so far or so fast as David Ervine. Now the man is gone, and his too brief life stands as an example for those that might yet follow.
Today’s papers will be peppered with writings on the life and times of Edward Heath, British Prime Minister from 1970-74, who sailed Morning Cloud over the horizon yesterday, aged 89. I am no obituarist, nor a historian. So I won’t attempt to compete with those who are but, instead, mark the man’s passing with one or two of my memories from those four tumultuous years. At the time I wasn’t long out of school. I drove a delivery van, worked as a filing clerk and in a hospital laundry before getting a job as a trainee machine engineer and then moving into the company’s London offices as a lowly gofer. That brought me to Bush House in the Aldwych. One of my less tender memories of that time is of the student marches, a “megaphone obligatory” danced in moronic, slouching style by Socialist Workers – who, of course, were not workers at all - on their way, yet again, to turf the Chancellor of the LSE out of his office.
It was a long time ago. If I had to rely purely on memory I couldn’t even be sure of the year now. But, you know, I was young and didn’t worry for the world as I do today. I didn’t understand the need to hold fast to the remembrance of such dispiriting realities. I didn’t understand why it would matter if, so many years later, they should slip out of the public mind, and mine. So it was rather easy to forget. Perhaps, too, forgetting went with the grain of the wood. Seventies Britain was a different place with quite different expectations. Life seemed more providential, and perhaps was. We raced between the lights. We were freer and more risk-taking or, perhaps, just more subject to the cheapening, egalitarian law of accident. Now we are all wrapped up in cotton wool. Death seems an intolerable affront. But I don’t know that it was then in quite the same way. I should also say that we were also immeasurably more naïve then than now. For one thing, the foul-minded, shit-hearted non-soldiers of the Provisional IRA had not begun leaving their murderous gifts in mainland pubs. We saw terrorism on the nightly news. But it was mostly on the island of Ireland, as the shit-hearts liked to put it. Or it was even further away and involved Middle Easterners and Israelis. This type of terrorism came to us through the most basic moral filter. It was a filter through which only one side of the story ever got told. We didn’t question it then. We hadn’t learned to question everything. But anyway it was a true filter.
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Of Note MR Central & News— CENTRAL— An Ancient Race In The Myths Of Time by James Bowery on Wednesday, 21 August 2024 15:26. (View) Slaying The Dragon by James Bowery on Monday, 05 August 2024 15:32. (View) The legacy of Southport by Guessedworker on Friday, 02 August 2024 07:34. (View) Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan … defend or desert by Guessedworker on Sunday, 14 April 2024 10:34. (View) — NEWS — Farage only goes down on one knee. by Guessedworker on Saturday, 29 June 2024 06:55. (View) |