The greatest gift in the world (and happy new year)

I  am lucky to have some great friends. The lads with whom I will travel to the Somme in February are a true band of camaraderie. In the North one man has been with me through the ups and downs of life in the ‘other Ireland’. Peter Coll and I have a Christmas tradition. We gift each other drink, good drink. Good whiskey and good wine have been exchanged over a decade and more. Peter has also gifted me a good few books. Fair deal in my mind as he is a learned barrister of some standing and I am in need of intellectual nourishment and enrichment. This year was no different and a collection of great Irish Speeches appeared under the tree on Christmas. Compiled by Richard Aldous and with a foreword by the brilliant Colm Toibin it has been delighting me for three days now.

 The compendium spans Irish politics from the late eighteenth century to date. The first words go to Henry Grattan, addressing the soon to be abolished Irish Parliament on College Green in April 1782: ‘I am now to address a free people…..’the last to An Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, delivered to both houses of Parliament on the 15th of May this year:  ‘Ireland’s hour has come: a time for peace, of prosperity, of old values and new beginnings. This is the great lesson and the great gift of Irish history. This is what Ireland can give to the world.’

In between these words are the past twenty two decades of fractured politics and unfinished projects. Of blood and tears and the division of our people. Hume is there, as is Paisley (the man of peace). Adams, Carson, Yeats, deValera, Lemass, Browne, Davitt, Craig and Davis stand out. ‘I stand by the Republic’, Des O’Malley’s defining speech also catches the eye for its sheer quality as does David Trimble’s Nobel acceptance speech which so famously acknowledged that the North was for a long time ‘a cold house for Catholics’.

In 2008 many new speeches will be made. As a PR man they are the ultimate expression of ideas and for me the strongest. They may attempt to chart the next decade or simply deal with the issue of the day. All will be delivered with conviction but only one or two, if that, will become historic. 

I hope 2008 sees some historic speeches. I hope a major figure rises to challenge the elephant in the room on this island. Scanning through the two centuries in this book it is a constant theme. We achieve great things, we do great deeds but still we live with the bogeyman of sectarianism at the very table at which we dine.

It will be a brave leader that stand’s up and says it is time to stop the sectarian imperative. An even braver one that challenges the existence of the problem in the Republic as well as the North. But that politician, if it is a politician, will have done the island a great service and will have earned his or her right to sit between the covers of great books. The speech will be the start. Tackling the problem will be the revolution. Abraham Lincolon noted wisely in his Gettysburg address: ‘The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they have done here..’

That’s my big lesson from this wonderful gift. We have talked the talk. Wolftone and Hume have been vindicated in words, Paisley has found peace in his rhetoric and an Irish Prime Minister can address the mother of all Parliaments as an equal. Hope and history in the great poet’s words are beginning to rhyme on paper at least. But words without action are hollow. Great speeches are just inspirational collections of words. History remembers events. Let 2008 be the beginning of the era of fulfillment. An era which as well as witnessing great speeches sees real change. An era in which the challenges of a new Island are seen as opportunities not threats. In which the light is shone on the white elephant of sectarianism. In which our people are empowered and in which fear leaves our speeches, our politics and our lives. 

My pledge for the new year : to do my bit to point at the elephant and call it what it is, a cancer that needs treated aggressively and a cure found.

There is simply not greater gift than a book. Happy new year. 

Greetings from a small island

Greetings from O’Conall Street. Whether you believe or you don’t, thank you for coming to visit. Peace.  

Poerty is at the heart of our literary tradition on this small island and below is a great example of contemporary Irish writing from Patrick Kavanagh; 

 A Christmas Childhood

My father played the melodion
Outside at our gate;
There were stars in the morning east;
And they danced to his music.
Across the wild bogs his melodion called
To Lennons and Callans.
As I pulled on my trousers in a hurry
I knew some strange thing had happened.
Outside in the cow-house my mother
Made the music of milking;
The light of her stable-lamp was a star
And the frost of Bethlehem made it twinkle.
A water-hen screeched in the bog,
Mass-going feet
Crunched the wafer-ice on the pot-holes,
Somebody wistfully twisted the bellows wheel.
My child poet picked out the letters
On the grey stone,
In silver the wonder of a Christmas townland,
The winking glitter of a frosty dawn.
Cassiopeia was over
Cassidy’s hanging hill,
I looked and three whin bushes rode across
The horizon – the Three Wise Kings.
An old man passing said:
“Can’t he make it talk” -
The melodion, I hid in the doorway
And tightened the belt of my box-pleated coat.
I nicked six nicks on the door-post
With my penknife’s big blade -
There was a little one for cutting tobacco.
And I was six Christmases of age.
My father played the melodion,
My mother milked the cows,
And I had a prayer like a white rose pinned
On the Virgin Mary’s blouse.

The tragedy of Omagh

I remember the day of the Omagh bomb like it was yesterday. I was the SDLP’s Director of Communications and Seamus Mallon was Shadow Deputy First Minister for just over a month. It had been a long summer. Drumcree was bad and the 12th of July in Belfast had been tense.

We took a last minute opportunity to go on a bargain basement fortnight to Tenerife to escape Northern Politics. It was one of those get yourself to Manchester for a middle of the night flights out. Fine when you are leaving but pretty awful on the way home. We got back to Belfast at about 9.00am on Saturday 15th August 1998. I was still asleep when my wife answered the phone just after 3.00pm. It was a BBC journalist in London asking had I got someone to react to a bomb in Omagh. He was panicked and wanted to speak with me immediately. When he told her there were seven dead she shouted into the bedroom. A minute later it was a local journalist saying reports were of ten dead but nothing was confirmed because the lines were down in Omagh. I was practiced in this type of media relations. A couple of years as SDLP press officer had served up more than enough shootings and other incidents, but this was on an altogether different scale. This was back to the dark days. Days I had hoped I would never see. Hard to believe we were organising concerts for a YES vote in the Referendum for the Good Friday Agreement with U2 just three months earlier.

I phoned John Hume, Seamus Mallon and the local MLA at the time  – Joe Byrne. Mallon, now in an office of state, had already received a call from officials and was getting ready to travel. He would be in Omagh by 5.00pm. 

Seamus is one of the most literate men I know. He is a master of the English language and that afternoon, the sun beating down as he drove from Markethill, Co Armagh, he would have been preparing himself, choosing his words carefully, conscious that whatever he said would be broadcast far and wide as the words of the hopeful future for Northern Ireland delivered against the backdrop of a scene so reminiscent of its tragic past.

When Seamus emerged from the bomb site and stood to face the assembled media his first words were about a pram. He told the press he had seen a mangled pram in the wreckage of the road. He wondered about the little child being carried in it and the mother who was pushing it. To this day I don’t know the answer to his rhetorical question. Among the children that died that day were two little girls, Maura Monaghan (18 months) alongside her mum, Averil and her Mother, Mary and Brenda Devine (20 months). I must assume the pram belonged to one of them.

I have met the Omagh relatives on a number of occasions. They are a brave group. Despite the events of 1998 most remain deeply committed to the peace process and a new beginning for this island. Today they must feel betrayed and rejected by the hope of Good Friday 1998. They must also feel angry that a new beginning to policing has not brought justice to Omagh.

Sean Hoey is a free man. 59 charges were stuck out in a Belfast court this afternoon. The RUC case fell apart like a house of cards. Low copy DNA has been discredited and nine years after the largest single atrocity on this island we are further from justice than ever.

I am not going to turn this post into an analysis of the PR implications for the PSNI, serious and all that they are, albeit problems principally inherited from the old RUC. 

I just wanted to say how very sad I am that the State has failed the people of Omagh. And how angry I am that a solid case was not presented in court and that such monumental errors were identified by Mr Hoey’s lawyers. Nobody can bring back the dead but surely we owe it to all our children to ensure that someday, someone is held accountable for what happened on that day.

Varney wont go away you know

… not my words but those of the Big Man himself and First Minister of Northern Ireland, Ian Paisley.

Now that the dust is settling on this less then impressive report the consensus here (in Ireland) and amongst those following the issue in GB appears to be that in old footballing parlance Varney chose to play the man and not the ball.

In 130 pages Sir David concedes the only reason for not giving NI a differential rate is a political one. Gone are his old arguments about it being illegal or against fiscal policy.

The Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland has called for an inquiry by the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee at Westminster. Given this is a non devolved matter and given Varney has chosen to disregard the opinions of pretty  much everyone on the island of Ireland including two governments, one cannot see how the NIAC would not want to explore in public how Sir David was able to be so right and the rest of us so wrong.

Everyone will want to take a well earned Christmas break but O’Conall Street predicts this issue will run and run in 2008. In many ways the Varney report, through its weakness, has given fuel to a campaign which unites the Island of Ireland and leaves the Scots thinking this is one they might want in on too. 

Radio 1 back on track

I  really did think Radio 1 was loosing the plot with its threat to ‘ban’ Fairytale of New York’ from the airwaves this Christmas despite the brave protestations of the late great Kirsty McColl’s mum. The blogs went mad and advocates won the day when ordinary people stood up for the ordinary person’s Christmas anthem and while we are at it why not make it Number One this Xmas – it sure beats Mr Cowell’s latest pick for stardom. Heckler Spray started the debate and other influential blogs like p2pnet  in on the argument soon after. But the prize for advocate of the day goes to the Irish Times Present Tense.

I love the song. I love its grittiness, its honesty and its sheer emotion. It’s MacGowan and McColl at their best, an Irish ballad with bells on.

Hope nobody is offended but if you want to relive the moment complements of YouTube click here and just for the record here are the lyrics, in full. Deadly!

It was christmas eve babe
In the drunk tank
An old man said to me, wont see another one
And then he sang a song
The rare old mountain dew
I turned my face away
And dreamed about you

Got on a lucky one
Came in eighteen to one
Ive got a feeling
This years for me and you
So happy christmas
I love you baby
I can see a better time
When all our dreams come true

Theyve got cars big as bars
Theyve got rivers of gold
But the wind goes right through you
Its no place for the old
When you first took my hand
On a cold christmas eve
You promised me
Broadway was waiting for me

You were handsome
You were pretty
Queen of new york city
When the band finished playing
They howled out for more
Sinatra was swinging,
All the drunks they were singing
We kissed on a corner
Then danced through the night

The boys of the nypd choir
Were singing galway bay
And the bells were ringing out
For christmas day

Youre a bum
Youre a punk
Youre an old slut on junk
Lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed
You scumbag, you maggot
You cheap lousy faggot
Happy christmas your arse
I pray God its our last

I could have been someone
Well so could anyone
You took my dreams from me
When I first found you
I kept them with me babe
I put them with my own
Cant make it all alone
Ive built my dreams around you

Varney betrays Ireland

What a damp squib.

 After two month’s delay and 130 pages of unconvincing analysis. Sir David Varney (yes he of former Customs and Excise fame) concludes that all a reduced rate of corporation tax for Northern Ireland would do is cost the UK exchequer money.

The Institute of Chartered Accountants are spot on the money in my books when they say:

 The report seems to operate on the premise that there is no case for differential tax policies in Northern Ireland, and indeed concludes in this way.  Nevertheless, a second review is now promised which is to look at incentives for supporting the sustainable growth of businesses, investment and employment in Northern Ireland.

 The overwhelming focus of the report on rejecting arguments for a 12.5 rate of Corporation Tax for Northern Ireland is inconsistent with the reference framework for the report in the first instance, which was to examine how current and future tax policy, including the tax changes announced in the Budget 2007, can support the sustainable growth of businesses and long-term investment in Northern Ireland.

 What is really needed is a coherent policy to influence earning patterns – the generation of profits by businesses in Northern Ireland.  Surely this could have been achieved in Sir David’s initial review, without the requirement to promise a second study.

In Ireland we often hear of Perfidious Albion. Today its not just that you cannot trust our big neighbours but that they have lost the ability to see beyond their own noses and look at the experience of attractive corporation tax rates internationally. The report talks again and again about how a lower rate would affect the UK. He should be honest and say that what he means is that it might affect the South East of England. If I were in Liverpool or Newcastle, or even worse in Scotland or Wales I would be equally appalled at his shallow narrow mindedness.   

Sir David says a reduced rate would cost the UK £2.2bn (over a decade). This is true if you believe that a reduced rate would no have impact on the economy, that it would fail to attract Foreign Direct Investment and that it would not strengthen the business chain. All things it has been proven to do in the Republic of Ireland where rather the costing the exchequer it has raised the government an awful lot of money. 

I could go on but suffice to say that on page 11 he cites Seagate as a great example of investment here and says they continue to invest in the region. News of the redundancies must not have reached London yet!! I hope the Northern Ireland Affairs launch an urgent inquiry into all this.

By the way, it’s the best argument I have read all year for a United Ireland.

Derry does advocacy very well

I have been meaning to say well done to the maiden city for officially becoming ‘Santa City’ after more than 10,000 turned up dressed as the big man himself. The brainchild of local businessman and chief Santa, Martin Mullan, it could not have been a better PR coup for the capital of the North West.

 Apart from being great craic Derry is increasingly cornering the market on this part of the island for public celebration. The Halloween festival is serious business and now, as if it needed an excuse, stroke city dressed itself in red and white and santa’d around the walls to break the world record for most Santas in one place ever.

At the moment I’m reading a fascinating book by two Harvard academics that pull together from a number of different disciplines a theory of how human nature shapes our choices. The Book is called ‘Driven’ and its authors Paul Lawrence and Nitin Nohria describe in detail four human drives – the drive to acquire, the drive to learn, the drive to defend and the drive to bond. It begins to explain human behavior and helps us to understand why gathering together is so important. It made me think about the first  cities and the gathering of people together to communicate, trade and interact creating a whole that is bigger then the sum of its parts. Digital and social media has brought a new ease to this process. Having retired indoors in the 50’s to watch TV and be fed by the broadcaster’s taste our citizens are increasingly using new media to organise and have fun. I think there is a bit of society rediscovering community with a little help from technology. In that sense when as communications professionals we talk about Advocacy we are talking about conversation within a community, about interaction at a citizen to citizen level, about the thing societies are built on. Derry has always had a great sense of community although it was tested to breaking point during the troubles. In the last verse of his song, The Town I Love so Well, Phil Coulter sums it up:

Now the music’s gone but they carry on
For their spirit’s been bruised, never broken
They will not forget but their hearts are set
on tomorrow and peace once again
For what’s done is done and what’s won is won
and what’s lost is lost and gone forever
I can only pray for a bright, brand new day
in the town I loved so well

Last Halloween the media stood ready to report violence and civil unrest yet the people came onto the streets and gave them party. Yes there is the occasional eejit who is yet to get with the programme but the fact is that through their unique sense of community and clear pride in place the people of Derry are turning their city’s image around not through lofty articles in the press or big speeches in Guildhall Square but by smiling together and creating positive, fun  images that get beamed around the world. 

London and me

London is street for street my favourite city in the world.

Spent most of Thursday and Friday there meeting clients and attending Weber Shandwick’s quarterly UK and Ireland Leadership meeting. This eclectic group runs some of the most successful and interesting communications businesses on these islands. Everything thing from hard core Public Affairs, Corporate and Financial Communications to one of the biggest consumer teams around. And flanking the London battalions is the strongest regional network on these islands as well as a series of specialist practices which are right at the cutting edge. SLAM is already redefining youth marketing and our broadcast and social and emerging media teams are pushing the boundaries of what is better known and digital communications. We are also ahead of the curve on multicultural communications. I can see opportunities for this product here in Ireland soon given our fast growing and increasingly affluent immigrant population.

With carbon offsetting and sustainability increasingly on the business agenda Planet2050 has become well established in a very short space of time as the place to go if you need serious advice about corporate responsibility. And there are bloggers in our midst. Check out the following to get inside a group that lives 21st century communications. ByrneBabyByrne, JamesWarren, Prop-arazzi, MayDayMayDayMayDay or WordofMoss.

So a good meeting but the icing on the cake was playing Lastminute.com for all its worth. I’ve become quite adept at shopping for a hotel room using them. This week I took a punt on the ’secret deal’ and got myself into the Hilton Park Lane for the price of a modest three star room. Eighteen floors up and with views east to Westminster, the London Eye and the City….. Not the worst wake up vista in the world.

Obama and the chat show advocate

Colleagues of mine in the US last month launched an excellent corporate blog called All About Advocacy which offers an excellent view of the emerging trends in communications and how they are being applied by big brands, large corporations and even politicians.

Today’s post is by Weber Shandwick’s Chief Reputation Strategist, Leslie Gaines-Ross, who focuses on the ever-changing world of reputation, thought leadership and research insights. Leslie tells the following story:

“A colleague called me this morning from the airport to tell me that the ultimate Advocate endorsement just occurred — Oprah’s endorsement of presidential candidate Barak Obama. Oprah used Advocacy brilliantly. Each person who attended the rally received a list of four phone numbers and names along with a script to use in calls asking for support in the upcoming primary. And get this…everyone in the audience was asked to text Obama for President.  When election day comes around, the campaign can text message or call everyone and remind them to vote for Obama. The future is here. Advocacy starts now.”

Big week for a new Belfast

Closing of the Ring premiers at the Waterfront Hall tomorrow and the London Times acknowledge the changing city in its City Diary today. Colin Byrne, our eagle eyed CEO spotted the piece on his commute into the big smoke. He was here last week and was pretty impressed with this city on the march. More on Byrne Baby Byrne.

IKEA also opens tomorrow with its first flagship store on the island. Weber Shandwick has been busy ferrying press about the new Belfast for the mandatory preview tour. It’s hard to believe it was only January when the then Lord Mayor, Pat McCarthy, turned the sod at the Holywood Exchange site bringing to an end one of our most interesting and challenging public affairs projects in recent years. Northern Ireland planning gets a lot of stick and there were more then one or two bumps on the road for IKEA. Thankfully the then Secretary of State Peter Hain was on the ball, keeping the pressure on the system to ensure the iconic store could land ontime by George Best Belfast City Airport.

The Belfast store is huge. 29,000 sq metres of building accommodates a showroom, market hall, warehouse, as well as a 500 seat restaurant, crèche, staff facilities and customer service areas.

Good luck to the blogging Belfast Store Manager Paul Reid and his team. They are part of retail history on this island and I know they will rise to the occasion. O’Conall Street would also like to acknowledge the soft spoken Kerry woman who made it all happen. Theresa Daly was the project Manager who steered the project to permission. She had a hell of a job but as is always the case when you put an experienced woman on the job, got it done without complaining. Off now to measure up for my Billy Shelf.