Seamus Heaney

[ONeill]

I think he's a great fella.

[Main Street]

So he's an alive great fella and this isn't an obituary?

[ONeill]

He says what all South Derry wans think.


Let the Union Flag fly, says Seamus Heaney

"There will never be a United Ireland"

Seamus Heaney has questioned the wisdom of removing the Union Flag from Belfast City Hall.


The Ulster-born poet, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995, also dismissed the idea of a united Ireland in a candid newspaper interview.

In yesterday's edition of The Times, Mr Heaney said he thought there was "no hurry on flags" and that Sinn Fein "could have taken it easy" in addressing any issues with emblems.

"It's very dangerous indeed," he said. "Somebody made this remark, and it made me alert to a new possibility – they said if this goes on until the marching season, everything is, in a sense, lost."

There have been eight weeks of street protests – with sporadic outbreaks of violence – since Belfast City Council voted on December 3 to fly the Union Flag at City Hall on designated days only.

Heaney added: "There's never going to be a united Ireland, you know. So why don't you let them fly the flag?"

Having spent his childhood in Castledawson and Bellaghy, one of nine children in a nationalist family, Heaney has lived in Dublin for many years.

He caused controversy in 1982 when he objected to being included in an anthology of British poets. At the time he wrote: "My passport's green/No glass of ours was ever raised/to toast the Queen."

He also turned down the opportunity to become the United Kingdom's Poet Laureate, later saying: "I've nothing against the Queen personally: I had lunch at the Palace once upon a time."

In The Times interview, Heaney said loyalists "perceive themselves as almost deserted. And right enough. I think Sinn Fein could have taken it easy. No hurry on flags. What does it matter?"

He went on to say: "But – it matters utterly to them. And now there's no way they're going to go back on it, of course. As someone who knows something of prejudice, from early on, I can understand the loyalists."

Although Heaney has been occasionally criticised for not always engaging directly with the troubles of his home country, to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the 1916 Easter uprising he wrote a poem commemorating the rebels of 1798.

He later clarified that the romanticised portrait of the United Irishmen in Requiem for the Croppies wasn't a way of saying "up the IRA or anything".

In Monday's interview he also said: "Loyalism, or unionism, or Protestantism, or whatever you want to call it, in Northern Ireland it operates not as a class system, but a caste system. And they [the loyalists] have an entitlement factor running: the flag is part of it."

As the flag row continues towards a ninth week of protest, Castlereagh Street in east Belfast was blocked for around one hour on Monday night during a flag protest but there were no reports of any disorder

[Ulick]

The actual quote is:

"Loyalism, Unionism or Protestantism, whatever you want to call it, in Northern Ireland it operates not as a class system, but a caste system.  And they have an entitlement factor running: the flag is part of it.  There's never going to be a united Ireland, you know, so why don't you let them fly the flag."

For me it could be read a number of ways. The first sentence is clearly accusing "Loyalists, Unionists or Protestants" of being racist (or as close to it as you can get) and the flag is a perceived entitlement of that racist supremacy. Read like that the final sentence looks like sarcasm.

On the other hand it could be just the confused logic of the older generation of northern Irish. "Yes we know they are racist cnuts but keep your head low (as low as a Larne Catholic) if you want an easy life".

Either way if he hadn't followed up the first sentence with the bit about the flag, today he'd have been hounded as much as McAleese that time with the Nazis.

[AQMP]

It's interesting that Heaney broadly takes the "it was the wrong time to address the flags issue" line.  However like all others who espouse this view he doesn't appear to suggest when may have been the right time.

[theticklemister]

Does it surprise ye?

He sat at the front table for dinner when the queen came a visiting. For a man who wrote such rousing poems about 1798 it makes ye wonder.  I didnt know now about the facts in above post in this thread; he obviously has become more conservative in his old age.

[sheamy]

He says what all South Derry wans think.

He does boy. He says 'that other crowd is mad, you know', 'jesus, free staters are simply no use' and 'the whole carry on is the fault of the Tyronies and Hugh O'Neill'.

Well seen Heaney is from the Broagh. No right thinking Bellaghy man would come out with stuff like that to the papers.

"...the shower gathering in your heelmark was the black O in Broagh"

[Hardy]

I love it when the pigeons refuse to inhabit their designated holes.

[Ulick]

Odd since you always return faithfully to your own.

[ONeill]

Bit harsh on South Derry there Hardy.

[Hardy]

Odd since you always return faithfully to your own.

It's probably unwitting on your part, but you have just perfectly illustrated the phenomenon.

[Applesisapples]

Seamus Heaney is a fine poet and Requiem for The Croppies stands beside Yeats' Stolen Child as my two favourite pieces of poetry. I don't think you can read anymore into his comments than a certain resignation that has seeped into older catholic nationalists that things up here aren't for changing in there lifetime. We have settled for the GFA and the longer it goes on the more comfortable catholics will become within the UK and as nationalist parties out poll unionists there will probably be no real push for unity. The next generation will become accepting of their Irishness within the union much the same as the Welsh.

[glens abu]

A fine poet but like Bono his opinion will on the National question will not be of any great interest to the majority of the electorate. 

[Hardy]

A fine poet but like Bono his opinion will on the National question will not be of any great interest to the majority of the electorate. 

Translation: His opinion on the national question is different to mine, therefore he is both wrong and unworthy of attention.

[Nally Stand]

A fine poet but like Bono his opinion will on the National question will not be of any great interest to the majority of the electorate. 

Translation: His opinion on the national question is different to mine, therefore he is both wrong and unworthy of attention.

He never said the opinions were wrong, he said his opinions will not be of great interest to people. I know you're busting a gut trying to maintain a superiority complex about you on this thread, but you're just getting carried away. Bring it back a notch.