Unionism and the Future | Stop the Game | Róis-Máire Donnelly - A Ballymurphy Woman

Unionism and the Future

Last week, at a meeting of the Executive the DUP chose to block the Good Jobs Bill. Why did they do this? The Bill will be good for all workers. It makes no distinction based on religion, politics, ethnicity or gender. Workers who vote unionist would benefit as much from this Bill as would workers who vote nationalist or for neither of these.

The legislation, being proposed by Caoimhe Archibald, the Minister for the Economy, contains common sense measures making it easier for Trade Unions to represent workers; replace zero hour contracts; protect employees tips and gratuities; strengthen neonatal leave and pay; and improve paternity entitlements and redundancy protections for workers who are pregnant.

The DUP claim they need more time to scrutinise the legislation but the place for that is on the floor of the Assembly where it can be debated and amended.

The truth is that the DUP is opposed to equality 

Stop the Game

In his most recent comments on the two Ireland-Israel soccer internationals due to be played in September/October An Taoiseach Micheál Martin chooses to waffle and pass the buck to UEFA rather than take a principled stand and oppose the game. He says, ‘Ireland’ does not want to be "self-defeating" – whatever than means - in its approach to the games.

Martin claims, that while everyone knows the governments opposition to the actions of Israel – he avoids mentioning its disgraceful response to the Occupied Territories Bill – he says that “everything shouldn’t be reduced to just one match.” Why not? Russia was banned by EUFA following its invasion of Ukraine. Israel has killed close to 100,000 people in Gaza and the west Bank; stolen Palestinian land and invaded its sovereign neighbour Lebanon. Why should it be treated differently? 

Róis-Máire Donnelly - A Ballymurphy Woman 

There was a time when younger people I used to bump into would say to me by way of introduction ‘You used to know my Mammy.’ ‘Or my Daddy’. Nowadays they say to me; “You used to know my Granny.”

That would have been over fifty years ago when Grannies and Granda’s were young and well before the Grandparent stage.  That’s when  I first met the late Mrs Donnelly, the Granny of our Ard Mheara Róis-Máire. It was in 1969/70. She was living in Westrock Drive off the Whiterock Road and then in Springhill Drive. Mrs Donnelly was a lovely woman. She was originally from McDonnell St. in the Falls area and lived for a time in Ballymacarrett in East Belfast before returning to the west of the city.

As a young girl May had been one of hundreds of women who prayed outside Crumlin Road prison during the night and into the morning Tom Williams was hanged in September 1942. In the decades that followed, especially during the conflict following the pogroms of 1969, May was one of those Indomitable women in the greater Ballymurphy area who stood against the brutality, harassment and raids of the British Army. May was a kind; compassionate woman whose door was always open to republicans.