Wormley

Killing Skies : (Excerpts from a student submission)

How could McGuiness have killed so many men, more importantly, men living very far away from each other in too narrow a time frame for a single man to have been the cause? This poem gives the clue. These are not the thoughts that ought to come from McGuiness. He is clearly giving life to someone else's thoughts. The notes which accompanied the American manuscript (see Appendix D in workbook 'a') confirm a long-standing rumor. Katherine's twin brother, Ian, formed the group called Brithim. Although only Protestants in Ulster had the privileges of the Ulster apartheid, not all Protestants were included. Many were deemed part of the general riff raff.* Ian wasted himself in "four brutal and hopeless years" of appealing to authorities, letter writing, petitioning, and even attempting to get a law suit active in the perverted but official legal system in order to free his sister. Much later, totally disillusioned, he was quoted, "If anybody asks you to hold on in faith, just kill them." and also " Faith demands a proper deity, not devils." This poem is McGuiness giving vent to the psyche of his spiritual brother-in-law. * In October of 1968, for example, a small group of students, Catholic and Protestant, joined in an attempted civil rights march. It was modeled on the Selma Alabama concept with marchers singing "We shall overcome." What happened was that the RUC, the official police force, first blocked the marchers' route then charged them and beat them with batons - men women and children lying on the streets bloodied. In the dry tinder of so many similar atrocities, the Bogside riots followed immediately on the news of this event. Violence spread rapidly all over Ulster. But there were no concessions. The Ulster apartheid would not have any of this equality nonsense. The students' request for 'one man one vote' was an attack on 'Loyalism' and a call to war as far as the establishment was concerned. By August the streets of Dungannon were jammed with civil rights activists pushing for voting parity, also singing American civil rights songs. Guns, gas, gas bombs - whatever - the police turned a blind eye as these and subsequent protesters were savaged.