Maypole centenary

The Maypole centenary

County View
John Healy

ON A  Tuesday evening in August, 100 years ago, there occurred the worst tragedy in Britain’s mining history. An explosion ripped through the heart of the Maypole colliery, just outside Wigan, killing 76 men and boys.
Many of them were Irish emigrants, mainly from the east Mayo towns of Charlestown, Kilkelly and Kiltimagh. And they will be remembered in ceremonies to mark the centenary of that disaster in two months’ time across the mining towns and villages of Lancashire.
The Maypole tragedy is still spoken of with awe in Wigan,  the facts as familiar to the local people as if it happened not a hundred but one year ago. Of the explosion at five o’clock in the evening which shook the ground for miles, and which would leave few to tell the tale. Two hours earlier 500 men had climbed out of the mine, their shift completed. Seventy-nine others went down for the afternoon shift little realising this would be their last.
Seventy-six died, leaving 44 widows and 102 children. Three escaped, by reason of the fact that they were working in a junction colliery, and were able to be rescued through the adjoining pithead. Fire and fumes ripped through the underground inferno, rescue attempts were rendered impossible. As the fire raged on, it was reluctantly decided that the only option was to flood the mine. Later, perhaps, the bodies would be recovered.
In the end, only a few bodies were identified and buried in private graves. The fire made it impossible to recognise the others, so a common grave was prepared in the nearest cemetery, at Abram, a few hundred yards from the colliery. A high stone cross, carrying poignant pictures of the dead men, their names inscribed on the base panel, was erected, by public subscription, in their memory.
The west of Ireland connection with Wigan resonates in the list of the dead – Thomas and John Donlan of Cuiltibo, Claremorris; Patrick Duffy and Austin Devaney, Knock; the brothers Tom and Hugh Killoran of Tubbercurry; from Charlestown, Pat Mulligan, Pat McGowan, John McGrath, Thomas Groarke; the Claremorris brothers, Michael and Edward Cafferty; and Anthony McDonagh of Kiltimagh whose widowed wife was the last surviving beneficiary of the memorial fund set up to help the dependants.
Five years ago, the Mayor of Wigan,  Alderman Wilf Brogan, visited Mayo at the invitation of Rehab. He planted a commemorative tree in the grounds of Charlestown church as a reminder of that terrible tragedy. One of his great hopes was that a closer bond might develop between his town and the communities of the west of Ireland.
Sadly, Mayor Brogan did not live to see this wish became a reality. However, he would be glad to know that plans are in hand for a fitting remembrance for the lost miners of the Maypole disaster in this centenary year. So great has been the interest that the organisers hope the descendants of the lost miners will gather from around the world to remember their loved ones.
The remembrance will be centred on the former mining village’s church where so many grieving relatives crowded in the aftermath. Parishioners in their hundreds will take part in a solemn march from the pithead to the historic church yard of St John the Evangelist where the dead rest to this day.
A special ceremony will be held to rededicate the Disaster Memorial when the names of the 76 dead will be read aloud. A week-long exhibition will then follow inside the church, detailing the disaster and the effect it has had on Wigan and Abram  over the past hundred years.
Co-ordinated by the volunteer-run Abram Community Link. all descendants of the victims of that awful August day are being invited to attend the ceremonies and be part of a moving tribute to a community which lost its heart on  the day the Maypole exploded.

SHAME OF THE AMERICAM TORTURE REGIME
In 2004, CBS carried a series of reports from Abu Ghraib prison which shocked the American public. Millions of viewers watched in disbelief at how naked, humiliated Iraqi prisoners were led around the prison on leashes. It was an orgy of cruelty which stunned the broad sweep of American public opinion creating a massive outcry of protest.
The handwashing started quickly. The brutalities were the work of a few ill-educated soldiers, red neck reservists of limited intellect; mavericks whose behaviour was totally at odds with standard American military practice. Or so the story went. They were the bad apples to be found in any barrel, unrepresentative  of the moral standards upheld and rigorously observed in Washington. Private Lyndie England, the woman with the prisoners on a leash, would be made answer for this sullying of American principles.
Now, in a new book by British lawyer Phillip Sands, the truth has been painstakingly revealed of how George Bush, egged on by Donald Rumsfeld, broke every rule in the book in order to subject Iraqi prisoners to the most demeaning and inhumane of punishments. Up to this, the limits of the Geneva Convention had been observed by the US military authorities in dealing with prisoners. President Bush had assured the nation that America would prosecute the war on terror in ‘the finest tradition of valour’.
He set out to do quite the opposite. Instead of upholding the tradition of respect for law and human rights, he proceeded to dismantle every restraint on the abuse of power by prison warders at Abu Ghraib. He authorised a memo drawn up by Rumsfeld, allowing US officials to choose from a range of 18 techniques of physical and mental pressure in order to extract intelligence relevant to the war on terror. In other words, military officers were told to do whatever was required to make prisoners talk.
They didn’t have to be told twice, and it was not until two years later, when someone leaked the pictures  to CBS, that Americans were alerted to what the uniformed guards were doing in their name.
The official disavowals came thick and fast. This was the work of a small knot of bad soldiers, who would be rooted out and punished for their behaviour. This was a case of soldiers taking power into their own hands and abusing their position.
But as  the book, ‘Rumsfeld’s Memo and the Betrayal of American Values’, shows, the real culprits were in the Pentagon and the White House, not in army uniforms.
Nonetheless, Private Lynndie England was sent to jail for three years. Rumsfeld and Bush will enjoy the wealth and honours and pensions which their decisions have won them.

TIGHTER THAN WE THINK?
Any government representations driving through Roscommon these days will surely have food for thought with the emergence of all those roadside hoardings with the message ‘Save Roscommon Hospital; Vote No to Lisbon’.
The fact that the link between Roscommon Hospital and the Lisbon Treaty is so tenuous as to be invisible is neither here nor there. The big worry for Mr Cowen’s  party is that thousands of voters, annoyed with the Government over this, that and the other, will use the referendum as a stick to beat Fianna Fáil with.
The list of potential sticky points is endless – the farmers, the WTO talks, the cancer services, the drink-driving laws, the demise of the Irish pub, the cost of living – none of which is remotely linked to Lisbon, but all suited to the Irish propensity to vote against anything ‘just for the hell of it’.
Add in that swathe of Fine Gael supporters who, regardless of what Enda Kenny might be saying, would find it hard to do something which might just be to the benefit of Fianna Fáil. The odds are shortening on a tight vote on June 12. Fianna Fáil will need to mobilise every unit of its widespread army if Mr Cowen is not to wind up with a bloody nose after his first taste of a political battle.

WILL LIGHTNING STRIKE TWICE FOR MULRANY PLAYWRIGHT?
After a lapse of many years, a comedy written by Mulrany playwright, Michael J Ginnelly, came back to the stage in Balla for three nights last week.
‘Pretend Sick’, staged by Balla Dramatic Society, was full of laughter and humour, but whether it will emulate the extraordinary success of the same author’s ‘A Wake in the West’ remains to be seen.
Both plays were products of the seventies, when Michael J had more time for writing, and before the demands of the Tiger economy left nobody with spare time for such reflective pursuits. Always keen on drama, MJ turned out a succession of comedies which were performed by his own local drama group in small halls across west Mayo. By his own admission, they had never made a huge splash outside his own locality.
All that changed when Westport Drama Group rediscovered ‘A Wake in the West’, decided that it had readymade audience appeal and, as the saying goes, went with it. The rest is a bit of theatre history.
In the past four years, ‘A Wake in the West’ has played to sell-out audiences in Westport, Castlebar, London and Boston, and all points between. It has been translated into Irish (by the Huddersfield-born son of Connemara parents) and staged at the Taidhbhearc in Galway. It plays to capacity audiences in Derry, Belfast and Tyrone.
Its appeal spans all geographical boundaries and all generations – this year it was staged by the Transition Year students of the Community School in New Ross. And the Wexford audiences loved every line!
It is a bestseller on video, with a constant stream of enquiries from emigrant groups as to where they might be able to source copies, or when the play might just be coming to their part of the world.
An overnight success after 20 years,  ‘A Wake in the West’ both delights and baffles Michael J Ginnelly as to how a play set so firmly in the rural Ireland of a past generation has proved such a success with audiences everywhere.
Whether ‘Pretend Sick’ will hit the same magic button remains to be seen. But perhaps Balla Drama Group can make lightning strike twice for Michael J Ginnelly.

MARKING FORTY YEARS OF DEDICATION
The presentation to Johnny Mee of the Vodafone Passion for the World Award in recognition of his contribution to Western Care turns the clock back over 40 years.
It was in 1966 that Johnny, together with Tom Fallon and the late Michael J Egan, called the first ever public meeting to organise support for those, and their families, affected by disability. From that meeting was established the Mayo Association of Parents and Friends of Mentally Handicapped Children, later to transform into Western Care.
It is hard to imagine, at this remove, the obstacles and difficulties which faced the fledgling group in their efforts to better the lot of the handicapped. Up to then, mental handicap was a taboo subject – not discussed, not referred to, its existence not even acknowledged. Families struggled, in the dark and on their own, to bring some sort of shape to the lives of the handicapped. And what the founding trio were to discover was that powerful figures in Church and State would prefer to leave things that way.
The great achievement of Johnny Mee and his co-founders was that they brought mental handicap out of the shadows and won the battle for acceptance. Western Care and its services are today almost taken for granted. Johnny Mee can remember a time, and not all that long ago, when very few doors were opened on their own for those who had no voice, and whose very existence had been denied for so long.