Latest news with #JoeCahill
Times
3 hours ago
- Politics
- Times
Naming sporting event after IRA leader is obscene
Imagine the outcry if a youth football tournament in England were named after one of the London Bridge terrorists. Or if a community sports facility in Manchester bore the name of the Arena bomber. It would rightly be condemned as grotesque, inflammatory and utterly incompatible with the values of a decent society. And yet in Northern Ireland, we are expected once again to swallow the farce of honouring IRA terrorists under the guise of 'commemoration'. The latest insult comes in the form of a Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) youth tournament named after Joe Cahill, one of the founding figures of the Provisional IRA, whose record includes gun-running from Libya and lifelong justification of armed violence. Cahill was a convicted terrorist whose career spanned decades of bloodshed. He was unapologetic about the IRA's campaign of bombings and killings, which left thousands dead and many more lives shattered. Naming a 'Joe Cahill Gaelic Competition' for under 12s is obscene. Worse still, this act of glorification is happening at a time when the UK government is preparing to pour £50 million of taxpayers' money into the redevelopment of Casement Park, the GAA's flagship stadium in Belfast. Public money should never be used to prop up organisations that celebrate terrorism. It sends a damaging signal to victims, to wider society and to young people learning history through the prism of sport. How can we say we are building a shared future when one section of that future is lionising men who tried to destroy the very notion of peaceful democracy? This is not about cultural expression or historical memory, it is about rewriting the past to sanctify those who waged war against the people of Northern Ireland, both Catholic and Protestant. It is about embedding the message that political violence is not only excusable but honourable. For years now, Sinn Féin has walked this morally repugnant line, from honouring hunger strikers to naming playgrounds and GAA events after known terrorists. It is part of a calculated political strategy: to cloak murder in martyrdom and to push their narrative unchallenged into the mainstream. If the GAA wants to be a truly inclusive sporting body, it must reject the impulse to lionise gunmen, no matter how prominent they were within republican folklore, and stand with the victims of terror. And the UK government must stop pretending that these issues are separate from its financial support. You cannot fund an organisation with one hand and ignore its moral failures with the other. £50 million buys responsibility, not silence. Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee is a non-affiliated peer
BBC News
21-07-2025
- Politics
- BBC News
Féile an Phobail: Arts Council logo to be removed from west Belfast festival sports events
The Arts Council of Northern Ireland has asked Féile an Phobail to remove its logo from the festival's sports is one of the principal funders of the west Belfast move comes as the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) questioned the use of Belfast City Council funding for the festival because of a sports event named after a former IRA chief of Cahill, who died in 2004, was a key figure in founding the Provisional IRA and was Belfast commander before becoming chief of MLA David Brooks said it was "not appropriate to have an event named after an IRA terrorist". In August, two County Antrim GAA (Gaelic Athletic Association) clubs will host the Joe Cahill Gaelic Competition, an event for children aged under a statement to BBC Radio Ulster's Talkback programme the Arts Council said it does not provide funding for sports events and has alerted the festival to the "incorrect use" of the Arts Council said the festival said the logo was "used in error and will be removed".Féile an Phobail is an annual event that runs across two weeks in west principal funders are Belfast City Council, The Arts Council of Northern Ireland and Tourism Northern Ireland. Brooks told Talkback that there should be "proper scrutiny in how council funding is used in relation to Féile".Belfast City Council said that Féile an Phobail had received multi-year funding which equated to £244,000 a year for four years. "The event organiser would be responsible for funding distribution towards the festival programme," the statement week a cross community sports camp in Comber, County Down, was cancelled as residents and an Orange Lodge raised concerns over the "perceived move of the GAA into the local community" and their unease at how it "celebrated or commemorated individuals associated with paramilitary activity".
