Thanks to the New Worker newspaper for the following, headlined
``Jobless scroungers'':
Sixteen months after the last general election, over 40 former
Tory MPs are still unemployed. They are complaining that in the
old days their party helped former MPs who fell on hard times.
``The modern party is a heartless brute,'' one former grandee said.
``It's done nothing at all. It seems we have no time for losers
nowadays.''
These are strange times in the political world. And so we weren't
too panicked when our friends in The Irish People newspaper in
the US wrote to say they are very concerned about the recent
defection of Martin McGuinness to the Ulster Unionist Party.
Their worries arose last Thursday when a caption on CNN's
Headline News described the Mid-Ulster MP as a member of David
Trimble's party. That's cool, as long as we don't have to put up
with his namesake, Major Ken...
You may have read that Assembly members this week were issued
with a list of ``key parliamentary phrases'' in the Ulster-Scots
dialect. This dialect - not language - obviously tries hard to be
alive to new developments. So the Chief Presiding Officer is
Heich Convenor, the First Minister is Heich Minnyster and Fellow
Members are Billie Forgaitherers. Sinn Féin is Oorsels Worlane
(which sounds suspiciously like the mistranslation to English,
Ourselves Alone), the Women's Coalition is tha Weeminfowk's
Cleek, the Alliance Party is tha Complutherit Pairtie and, my
favourite, the SDLP is tha Middlin Fowk an Dargers Pairtie.
Can't see it catching on.
Strange how history repeats itself. In this commemorative year
many gems of information have sprung up regarding 1798. One
account, `Madden's Antrim and Down in `98', relates how Henry Joy
McCracken, the leader of the 1798 Rising in Ulster, along with
James Coigley, Charles Teeling and Samuel Neilson, made strenuous
efforts in the 1790s to seek compensation for the Catholics of Co
Armagh who had suffered at the hands of mobs from the Orange
Order's forerunner, the Peep O' Day Boys.
This gang of sectarian supremacists would raid the homes of
Catholics, beat its occupants, torch the house, destroy the
crops, stampede farm animals and wreck any industrial implements
or machinery. Their aim was, as it remains today, to make the
croppies lie down, ensure that they could pose no economic,
social or cultural threat to their lifestyles.
Among those targeted by these bigots in November 1795 were five
Co Armagh families and Henry Joy and Joseph Cuthbert agreed to
pay their legal expenses in their efforts to seek recompence
through the courts ``against the Armagh wreckers and a magistrate
of the name Grier''.
Those who instituted the proceedings against Grier for his
failure to protect them were Patrick Hamill, Sicilly Hamill,
Barnard Coil, Paul Hannon and Michael McCloskey.
All of which goes to show that it was not today or yesterday that
the sectarian bigots of Armagh began targetting the Hamills.
![[An Phoblacht]](http://republican-news.org/graphics/title_gifs/aprn.gif)