There was a time when the only cameras you could see in Derry were in shop windows.
Most people never came into contact with one unless it was for taking family snaps on special occasions and trips to Budgin (sunny Buncrana). A camera conjured up only the best of images and no one guessed &endash; unless they thought George Orwell wrote non-fiction &endash; that their beloved Brownie's descendants would have an electronic eye on almost every inhabitant of this town on a daily basis. All that changed of course when Unionist sectarian hegemony and British colonialism were challenged by armed nationalists and responded with an array of tyrannical impositions they labelled 'security measures'. Slowly Derry became a city festooned with cameras belonging to police and army which monitored the population (chiefly the working class Catholic population), 24 hours a day and 365 days of the year. The Bishop himself couldn't even take a shit on a Sunday afternoon while flicking through the pages of Altar Boy Monthly without both towers in Rosemount and on the walls watching with bated breath. And the plague of cameras infected even those paragons of the liberation struggle, the Provos, who not for the first or indeed the last time, felt it incumbent upon them to imitate the British and get their own 'security cameras'. People were watched not only within or close to the old citadel itself but even in their own communities. Plans are, of course, afoot at present courtesy of Clíodhna Mulhern and the Town Centre Management gang (a notorious band of retail brigands who have preyed on the people of the north-west, as 'customers' and 'employees' for years without being caught), to install a CCTV system in the city centre. This system will, it is hoped, protect their premises from an occasionally angry population unperturbed by the thought of destroying the property of their class enemies, and also prevent frustrated, alcohol-induced youths from attacking innocent bystanders. If it works, riots will be contained in the 'ghettoes' and random violence against strangers will be caught on camera which the victim may view from their hospital bed at a later date happy in the knowledge that conviction awaits a drunken 16 year old, even if it did not prevent him in the first instance from dislodging a vertebrae with his foot and biting off an earlobe. Still, you can't have everything.
If the Channel 4 series 'Big Brother' has done anything, it has made a fundamental assault on human liberty the domain of public entertainment. Threat is not equal to titillation and the series has imbibed a generation with a hunger for electronic invasiveness. People are spellbound with ripping the garment of privacy away and joining the peeping tom club of alienated and facile voyeurs. The consequence being that CCTV becomes an eagerly awaited intrusion with people queuing to man the cameras like middle-aged perverts while being oblivious to the fact that they are eroding their own and everyone else's liberty while servicing the self-seeking and neurotic criminalisation mindset of Derry's business community. We should be watching them, not vice versa &endash; the banks and shops in this town are the real criminal element &endash; let us suggest a camera stuck in the Chamber of Commerce and see what the bastards have to say about that, after all, we know more about what takes place in the street than we do about what goes on in the Chamber of Commerce.
Real security for everyone cannot be purchased and screwed into a wall. Real security comes from freedom. To have freedom from poverty, freedom from oppression, freedom from government, freedom from law and order, freedom from religion and freedom from fear is the only real guarantee of security for everyone. We must struggle for our own security, not rely upon businessmen, politicians and policemen to give us their version of it.
Chucky-Stooper I'm a chucky-stooper I've always known the way From guns and sit-down protest To be a Stormont MLA I'm a chucky-stooper It's what I've always been I stand by Hume and Adams Off to Stormont in the green With the north-south body And ministerial power We'll fire like an RPG White Papers until freedom's hour And with the fisheries board That controls the Foyle We'll soon convert And convene the Third Dail Sure, Durkan will be uachtarán And Gerry Kelly Chief of Staff With Garda Commissioner Noel McCartney We're guaranteed a laugh For Bríd Rodgers and Bairbre de Brún We'll find a post that suits For it's great to see the SDLP And the Shinners in cahoots So join the chucky-stoopers And find a home today And with one voice we'll shout aloud 'Up the EU and the IRA !'
If you haven't heard, McDonalds are opening a drive-through restaurant on the Strand Road soon, supplementing their existing eatery in Foyleside. If you value your health, and especially that of your children, and/or if you are concerned at all about how McDonalds exploits people, animals and the environment for booming profits on a world scale &endash; STAY AWAY. McDonalds food is under-cooked, high in fats and salt and quite literally costs the earth &endash; DON'T EAT IT.
A recent piece in the Derry Journal celebrating 30 years of the SDLP (Stoop Down Low Party, as their new comrades, the Provos, used to call them), quoted St. Johnnie Hume as saying he was 'very proud to lead a party which hasÉresolutely stood for equality'. Is that the same kind of equality, we must ask, as that displayed between Derry's business community and the residents of the Bogside and Brandywell, or between, say, the pay-scales of nurses and MLAs at Stormont ? Is it the kind of equality which forces young women into the trauma of exile because they are denied their right to abortion ? Is it the kind of equality that maintains oppression and discrimination against travellers and the gay, lesbian and bisexual communities ? Is it the kind of equality which insists upon the tyranny of religious 'education' ? These opportunistic parasites even claim the discredited mantle of 'social democracy' while happily dining (together with the Provos) alongside a veritable rogue's gallery of dodgy American politicians and businessmen &endash;are there any other kind ? &endash; and then invite the exploitative bastards over here like a latter-day Dermot McMurrough. Well, guess what, Stoopers ? This is not 1169 and we don't want to be used as cheap labour with no union rights and shite conditions for a gang of industrial fascists such as Raytheon or Seagate. We want real jobs with decent pay and security, full union recognition and proper working conditions. That should not be a lot to ask considering how much money youse wankers are getting paid to ensure it.
The new proposed Skeoge link road is the latest in a series of DOE-sponsored road-building plans aimed at facilitating increased and quicker haulage traffic, and further private housing development. In other words, yet more environmental destruction for the laying of a death-trap to service the needs of greedy businessmen and property developers. Derry's esteemed councillors, of all colours and none, have, of course, already given their seal of approval, and in some cases even called for more roads ! Once again, the right to an unspoilt ecosystem, freedom from pollution and safety for pedestrians and animals has been set aside by politicians and bureaucrats for the sake of all-conquering capital.