"Satanic Quarter" to get £10,000,000 ?

The Satanic, alias Titanic Quarter speculators are hoping for a massive handout from Belfast City Council. Many nationalist/Catholic people will know the area does nothing to recall their culture and perhaps only brings back tragic and hurtful memories of sectarian discrimination in employment at the former shipyard. Let's hope Sinn Fein and the SDLP, refuse to support the brushing under the carpet of this aspect of Belfast history. And while they are at it, can they explain why so much of the potential employment is being brought into  the 'over the bridge' area, while little 'real jobs' comes into West or North Belfast. 

CITY HALL TO HAVE A BLUE St. PATRICK'S DAY.

All over the world on the 17th of March, people will be celebrating St. Patricks Day, in the USA and around the world they will be drinking Green Beer, dying rivers Green, Marching with Green faces, painting their faces Green, etc, etc, but here in the Coconut Colony of the Six Counties, Belfast Council is organising free BLUE flags and attempting to erase the colour Green from our heritage, they might even throw in a Chinese Dragon Dance too. They never seem to realise you can't mongrelise peoples traditions, it is like demanding the Chinese immigrants here to only wear blue in their costumes or come dressed as Irish Leprachuans, you must admit if they done that they were be accussed of racialism... but it seems it is okay to deny Irish people their culture and heritage. 2nd Class Citizens ??? 

The House That Cries“Murder” by Joe Graham

On driving up the upper Crumlin Road the other day I could not but help see the Union Jack flying on the derelict house (above) which was once the home of a prominent Consultant, at the Mater Hospital, Dr. Patrick Lane and his family. The house sits today with pigeons the only occupants, the cold winter winds roaring through holes that once were windows. Ironically it sits like a trophy to sectarian hate and murder while people merrily ride the Big Wheel in the grounds of the City Hall and while millions are being made in the greedy race by carpetbaggers and “Feel Good” Guru’s of spin to grab share in the loot in portraying Belfast as ‘a changed city’.. but the monuments to hate, murder and broken hearts, like the Lane family home stand al over Belfast as witness’s to their greedy indifference.

Around 9pm on the 29^th of September 1972 Young Francis Lane, a 23 year old Catholic medical student at Queen’s University and son of Dr. Lane, left his family home on the Upper Crumlin Road for a night out. At 3 am the next morning his shot body was found in a derelict farmhouse near Glencairn Estate, he had been picked up by a UDA murder squad. The RUC rushed to deny that he had not been tortured before he died but a later inquest revealed that the victim had been repeatedly beaten around the head with possible the butt of a gun before being shot.

Francis’s father, Patrick Lane. had been born in Cork and was a former member of the Royal Army Medical Corps, serving in France and the Middle East during the Second World War. He was also in the British Colonial Service for 14 years. He said his son had no interest in politics and was not a member of any illegal organisation.

Waddell Cunningham, The Belfast Trader In Human Flesh is Honoured .. But Fr. Hugh O'Donnell is Forgotten.! 

Anyhow to get back to Waddell Cunningham, he was no doubt an amazing man his rise to wealth in fact is startling, had he been around today I think some would look at him and say “ he must be a drug dealer”, and they wouldn’t be far wrong for Cunningham, like a modern day drug dealer, was a dealer in heartache and misery and amassed a fortune from it. Born in 1729 the youngest son of a Co. Antrim farmer he set off for America when he was only 21. After working with his relatives there who were in the flax seed business he moved to New York city to enter into the shipping business. Within two years he opened his own store and became part owner of a small cargo ship that sailed back and forth to Ireland, two years later became involved with the Irish New York - Belfast, Newry shipping lines.

Thirteen years later, 1754, he became the biggest ship owner in New York, having got very rich through the illegal movement of Dutch Contraband. His dealings in the Caribbean seemed to be which made him his biggest fortune although it was no secret that he didn’t merely deal in sugar, he was very involved in the black slavery trade. His business partner a Thomas Greg lived in Belfast whilst Cunningham travelled between New York and Dominica where he had acquired a huge estate, which he named “Belfast” where slaves attended to the sugar plantation.

Cunningham returned to Belfast sometime in the early 1760’s and threw himself into the local business scene. Whilst Thomas Greg and Waddell Cunningham were partners in shipping and the West Indian trade Greg’s Brother John was situated in North Carolina where the colony was requiring workers and servants and so the unholy trinity entered into another chapter in Human Flesh dealing. Besides charging the exiles passage fare for travelling on their ships to the new world they also received a bonus for every immigrant they delivered. It was in the early years of the 1700’s that Cunningham and Greg entered into confrontation with the small farmers of the Parish of Templepatrick. Upton the local landlord had increased the rent of his tenants, small farmers, and as the farmers could not pay the increases Waddell and Greg began to buy up their tenancy’s. This brought a violent protest from some tenants who formed themselves into the “Hearts Of Steel” and so they began ‘houghing’ (maiming) Waddell’s cattle which he was grazing on their former lands. A man called Douglas was arrested and charged with the maiming of Douglas and Greg’s cattle and brought to the Belfast military barracks ib Belfast.

Angered by this over 1000 tenants met at the Templepatrick Meeting house on armed everything from, firelock’s to cudgels and set off to free their neighbour, their numbers swelling by the time they got to Barrack Street.

They gathered round the Barracks doors and demanded the release of Douglas only to be answered by the mass firing of muskets killing five of their number and wounding another nine. Some of the crowd broke away and made their way to the ‘back of the water’, roughly where Bank Street is today and set fire and burned Waddell Cunningham‘s mansion to the ground, they also attacked the home of Greg.

Back at the Barrack the town Sovereign had been shot dead as he attempted to read the ‘Riot Act’ to the crowd who by now were asserting that if Douglas was not freed they would burn the town to the ground. Eventually Douglas was freed and the crowd marched back home in triumph, but the evil Cunningham was to have the last laugh.

With the higher rents hundreds of families had no other choice but to immigrate to America hoping to find a better way of life and here they were found themselves paying Cunningham and Greg for passage on one of their ships, and Cunningham not only receiving that payment, he received a bonus of £10 per person he landed on the shores of America. Some years later there was a meeting held in Belfast to which the merchants were called to set up a “West Indian Trading Company”, slave shipping company. There had always been trading by individual ship owners in Belfast, this was just Waddell Cunningham’s attempt to compete with the likes of Liverpool who had a slave dealing company with up to sixty ships. It is said that as Cunningham sat, quill in hand, ready to sign the document, Thomas McCabe, a Quaker United Irishman, thundered,;

Cunningham was so terrified he dropped the quill and the others present sheepishly abandoned the meeting. This Cunningham is the man that Belfast Council chose to promote to visitors at that visitors guide poster in Chapel Lane, outside St. Mary’s Chapel ..over Fr. Hugh O’Donnell, is it any wonder they are losing millions of pounds to Tom, Dick and Harry Companies and ventures whilst attempting to ‘promote’ Belfast. I have to ask.. is there an agenda, are they re-writing local history or could possibly they be that ignorant of it ?

Meanwhile, at Newtownbreda Cemetery £100,000’s is to be spent on the renovation of Waddell Cunningham’s Tomb,(left) yet no monument to Fr. O’Donnell stands either at Hannahstown, where he founded the first Catholic Chapel in the area since the Penal Laws or Belfast City Centre where he founded St Mary’s Chapel and St. Patrick’s Chapel, which brings me to ask what are those Nationalist representatives in the City Hall doing to protect the nationalist heritage, what ever happened to “parity of esteem”. After all brutality our fore fathers went through to maintain and practise their religion, surely it is not being sectarian or bigoted to insist that the Champion of their cause, Fr. Hugh O’Donnell be honoured. And perhaps even a memorial be erected to the earlier Champion, Fr, Phelomy O’Hamill, who died in the then Belfast prison, which was close to the City Hall, nationalist representatives, SDLP and Sinn Fein, pass it every day on their way to the City Hall, yet they overly generously suggest that we “must respect other peoples culture and heritage”, what part of “parity of esteem” don’t they understand, don‘t they realise that the struggle for Civil Rights was not merely about Job Opportunity and getting a vote.. It was a whole parcel.. It was EQUALITY, TOTAL EQUALITY , we have not got it and with out FULL parity of esteem then we have not progressed one iota.(This Article has been e-mailed to Sinn Fein & SDLP MLA's. for a response)

Note; Sinn Fein Councillor Paul Maskey is the only one to reply as of yet but sadly he could offer no immediate solution to sorting the insulting signage.

The Key Money Scandal At Belfast City Hall. 1950's.

Back in the 1950's houses were very hard to come by for working people, more so for Catholics but there were still many desperate Protestants waiting for a coulcil house, or Corporation house as they were then called. At the same time there was an independent socialist councillor, Tim O'Sullivan, serving at the City Hall, who lived in a 200 year old run down two up and two down at Milltown Row, where St. Gall's GAC is today. All hell broke loose in  the City Hall when Tim accused the then Lord Mayor Cecil McKee in the second year of his Mayoralty, and his secretary, of being involved in a Key Money scam. For you younger readers I will explain what that meant, people would illegally give back hand payments to jump the housing queue to obtain the tenancy a corporation house. The allegation was kicked around till it got lost but not before the dogs in the streets were barking disapproval of Cecil McKee .. but what did the Unionists at City Hall do ?.. they voted Cecil McKee in for his THIRD term of office, thereby automatically obtaining for him a Knighthood, becoming Sir Cecil McKee. The potato was too hot to handle  and was allowed to soon die down. Tim  O'Sullivan ended up moving back to his native Cork City in disgust. The obscene Money for Keys scam was also practised in the private sector as well, if a landlord had one of his small two up and two down houses become available, people knew without a wink or a nod, he would be 'open to offers', that is , they could quietly offer him a sum of money 'on the side' for favourite attention regarding the rented house.