Page 8 - Bernadette Devlin News Today

Civil Rights campaigner Devlin recalls McManus’ ‘good punch’ in Commons Posted: 7:31 pm April 7, 2021 By Zoe Tunney BERNADETTE Devlin McAliskey, the firebrand anti-establishment politician and Civil Rights campaigner, has spoken of how Lisnaskea solicitor and former Westminster MP, Frank McManus, “bounded” down from the back benches to defend her during an altercation in the British Houses of Parliament. Ms Devlin McAliskey was in interview with UTV’s Eamonn Mallie for his ...

“I knew when I was doing it, I don’t care about your Queen.” The Coalisland woman was later shot and wounded along with her husband Michael in a UDA murder bid at their home on the shores of Lough Neagh in 1981. Speaking about their survival, Mrs McAliskey said: “They left us for dead. I should have died. They left our house without a shot unfired.” But away from the cameras a remarkable bond developed between herself and the former DUP leader and First Minister. When the then Miss De...

Stanley Newens at the Labour Party conference in Brighton in 1991 Credit: David Fowler/Alamy Stanley Newens, who has died aged 91, was a standard-bearer for Labour’s old Left during 15 years in the Commons, and as long in the European Parliament. An East Ender whose route to Westminster took in working down the pit and teaching history, he stuck with the same constituency despite losing it twice. Yet an uninterrupted tenure might not have brought him office, given his record of rebellion agai...

Warm tributes have been paid to veteran civil rights leader Eamonn McCann, who is resigning as a Derry City and Strabane councillor on health grounds.

Black clouds have beset thy birth, And your people die like morning stars, That your light may grace the earth. – “Stars of Freedom,” 1981 H-Block, Long Kesh Prison Camp ℘℘℘ Watching Bobby Sands die in 1981, much of the world realized, finally, that the young IRA soldier and hunger striker was a freedom fighter, and the view of the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland forever changed. It was no longer seen as two Irish factions fighting over who had the better Jesus, but rather a ...

Renowned journalist Eamonn Mallie is back with another series of intriguing interviews in Face to Face. He talks to Claire O’Boyle For years he was on the frontline of the hardest-hitting sort of journalism. Grilling politicians and public figures through the course of the Troubles, broadcaster Eamonn Mallie — like the very best of his peers — could nail the lines he needed in a matter seconds. Now aged 70 the legendary reporter, whose latest series of Eamonn Mallie: Face to Face hits ou...

Professor Paul Salveson is a historian and writer and lives in Bolton. He is visiting professor in Worktown Studies at the University of Bolton and author of several books on Lancashire history Bolton is a multi-cultural town and has been for centuries, going back to the Flemish weavers who arrived in the 1300s. By far the largest wave of immigration in the 19th century came from Ireland and this was explored in a previous Looking Back feature. Those first Irish immigrants were fleeing di...

Film Maker Bob Quinn & the Atlantean Docu, Part of Galway Film Fleadh’s Solstice Festival 24th December 2020 Filmmaker and Aosdána member Bob Quinn Credit: Kieran Slyne Atlantean conjures up images of sea serpents, mythical peoples living under the sea and it is also the title of a fascinating project which Aosdána member and filmmaker Bob Quinn embarked on in the early 1980s. The outcome was three documentaries, entitled Atlantean, which are now being screened as part of Galway Film Fle...