MONDAY 3 July 1995

U2 WORLD EXCLUSIVE
Back issues of The XPress on Sunday featuring Liam Mackey's exclusive interview with U2 are still available from: Room 103, Liberty Hall, Dublin 1.

WHAT THE CARDINAL SAID TO THE BISHOP
Con Houlihan: LONDON CALLING
SEVENTIES MANIA ...

Published by The Irish Press NUJ, Liberty Hall. Origination by Malcolm Kindness, Telephone 4962551.

WHAT THE CARDINAL SAID TO THE BISHOP
Michael O' TOOLE on Monday

Like the poet he loves to quote, the Lord Bishop of Ferns (the Roman one) is come of "the stony grey soil of Monaghan."
That generally makes for a certain gritiness - a willingness to row against the tide, to put the head above the parapet and to risk saying unconventional earthy things that may shock and even enrage the establishment.
In 1942, Patrick Kavanagh wrote "The Great Hunger" - a poem concerned with the famine of loneliness. To the shock-horror of Church and State, the poem briefly alluded to a foreign practice called masturbation.
I say "foreign" because as we all know - Mr. Oliver J. Flanagan T.D. put it on the official record of Dail Eireann - there was no sex in Ireland until the coming of television in 1961. So Kavanagh's assertion that lonely old batchelors were, as they used to say, interfering with themselves, was a natural (or is it unnatural?) concern of the vice squad.
Years later, he wrote: "Shortly after it was published, a couple of hefty lads came to my lonely shieling on Pembroke Road. One of them had the poem behind his back. He brought it to the front and asked me: ÔDid you write that?'."
Kavanagh was angered and upset because, as he wrote "...a poet in his true detachment is impervious to policemen."
I wonder if the same applies to bishops? Was the Bishop of Ferns angered and upset by Cardinal Daly's direful visitation on him for saying something truthful, logical and sincere?
Maybe he doesn't give an ecclesiastical damn. It may well be that a bishop in his true detachment is impervious to policemen - even when they wear cute little red hats.
I hope this is the case. What Brendan Comiskey said needed to be said. He is a courageous man and he has done not only the Church but the entire country some service.

Kathleen Lynch of Democratic Left was on the radio the other evening promoting the implementation of the crazy recommendation by the Law Reform Commission that the already draconian libel laws be extended to include the dead.
The Fr. Cleary revelations were the basis for the latest airing of this appaling notion. If Ms. Lynch and her so-called democratic colleagues had their way, Phyllis Hamilton and everyone in a like position would be denied the right to speak publicly on a matter that is of the deepest concern to them.
I'm against this extension of the defamation laws not because I have scant regard for the rights of the dead (I wrote against the Fr. Cleary revelations when they first started to appear) but I believe they will seriously impede historical research.
I doubt very much if if Messrs Hutchinson of London would have risked publishing Tim Pat Coogan's biography of Eamon De Valera if such laws were in place. Now it happens that I disagree profoundly with Tim Pat's book. But I will never stop defending his right to publish it.
The dead, after all, "care no more to clothe and eat." Mr. Lynch would be better employed if she turned her attentions to the half dead - the many thousands of Irish men and women who are impoverished, exploited and excluded and who feel betrayed by her parliamentary colleagues who meekly and slavishly prop up a government that allows such injustice to flourish.
Why doesn't she concentrate on fighting the Thatcherite exploitation of thousands upon thousands of young people by Dunnes Stores, the banks, the fast-food chains and many other commercial institutions? What about legislating for those unfortunates who, unlike the dead,have a need for food, drink and shelter?
Or is that she and her colleagues are now so intoxicated by the trappings of power and privilege that they have ceased to be the Democratic Left and turned themselves into the Democratic Daft.

LONDON CALLING

Con Houlihan on a long night's journey into day

The story so far: we last met Con Houlihan, connoisseur of brown stout and black puddings, as he was on his way to London on board the good ship Inisfallen - now read on...
The voyage from Cork to Fishguard used to take about nine hours; about one o' clock on that morning long ago I spied a very faint glimmer of light from the east.
It grew almost imperceptibly as we sailed on towards Wales; it was the flash from the lighthouse on Strumble Head.
When I spied that first glimmer, it pierced me with loneliness - when eventually I identified it, I felt relieved.
As we were about a mile from the harbour, we met the Rosslare ferry, the Saint David, on the way out.
All her lights were ablaze; I had never seen a lovelier sight.
When we made our landfall, I heard a soft, lilting voice on the dock saying, "Take her to Goodwick, Dai."
Dai was the driver of a locomotive; Goodwick is a village on the western shore of Fishguard Bay.
Soon we were on the way to London, travelling in the soft darkness in what Thomas Hardy called "the non-human hours."
The line to London goes south for a little while and then curves eastwards to run close to The Bristol Channel.
For the first hour or so we were passing through farming country; there wasn't a sign of life.
This is the heartland of the old language: Welsh is spoken vigorously there - and the wonders of modern communication cannot prevail against it.
We passed close to Lougharne and its "heron-priested shore." But Dylan Thomas and Under Milk Wood hadn't yet come into my ken.
It was still dark when we reached the industrial heart of South Wales - but it was a kind of darkness strange to me.
Back at home at this time you would see lights, but they would be few and scattered.
Someone might be up catching rabbits or stealing on pheasants or winkling fish out of their water beds.
When first I experienced South Wales, coal and iron were still kings.
And the symphony of light was marvellous to behold on that September morning long ago.
You could see the moving lights of vehicles coming down from the valleys and the flames from the steel mills and the glow from the blast furnaces.
For a lad fresh from the country it was an enthralling experience - it gave out a wonderful sense of energy.
Soon we were into that world where, as the anonymous man said, Wales hasn't quite ended and England hasn't yet begun.
At Newport, a big man carrying a tool box got up and said: "I suppose you are all going to London - but Newport isn't a bad place either."
My nourishment since setting out from home had been totally liquid - and so somewhere in Wiltshire I adjourned for a bite and a sup - on the train, that is.
And I found myself sitting near two dear old ladies - as distinct from cheap young ladies - who were complaining about almost everything.
The service was bad, so they said, and worst of all was the decline of English marmalade.
Little did the old dears know: Stafford Cripps and The Labour Party were still to come - marmalade would never taste the same again.
And on that train to London I completed the reading of The Great Gatsby.
I will tell the truth - I read the last few pages in the bar in Paddington Station.
And then I set out on foot - on two feet, in fact - for the mysterious world of East London; I couldn't go astray - I took Father Thames as my guide.
I was to meet a few lads from home in a pub, The Sugar Loaf, on Ludgate Hill.
And in that same pub, a kick of a ball from St. Paul's, I had a pleasant little experience.
I had a cough, tabloid version - and therein hung the tale.
An old man, probably about the same age that I am now, was sitting next to me up at the bar - now read on...
He wore a cloth cap and a woollen muffler (I hasten to add that these weren't his only items of apparel) and his hands hinted that he wasn't a stranger to heavy toil.
And he said: "Son, you've a bad cold" - and he handed me a cough lozenge that had seen better days.
I can never forget that little act of kindness; this was what George Orwell had in mind when he spoke about "the essential decency of the English."
And in that pub on Ludgate Hill, blessed by the proximity of Christopher Wren's symphony in stone, I read again the coda to The Great Gatsby.
I memorised it - nay, I learned it by heart.
"Gatsby believed in...the orgastic future that year by year receded before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter - tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further...And one fine morning -
And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
(To be continued).

SEVENTIES MANIA

The 70s revival starts here!
"70s Mania" is the theme for a fantabulous night of comedy, live music and a dance party to end all dance parties at Faces in Churchtown next Thursday July 6th from 9pm until late in aid of the Press Journalists Fund.
The evening will feature stand-up comedy from Declan O'Brien (World Cup Me Arse), music from the Quarrymen and hot hot hot sounds from 2FM DJ's Gareth O'Callaghan, Ian Dempsey and Simon Young.
More special guests can be expected on the night, so watch this space for more details.
Admission is £10 and tickets are available in HMV.
If you missed the Freedom of Speech gig in Mother Redcaps earlier this month, now's your chance to help the 200 out-of- work Press journalists and have a hip-shaking, monster fun night out.
Be there!

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