@Tank so true…
There’s Scotstown men pushing each other under Scania lorries, trying to get the roads done.
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Headbuttin potholes just for a bit of hot mix.
Amazing that Hughie is still an elected official after the Prime Time exposè on him.
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I think you can see the care he gives to his constituents.
He has the Catholic Church on his side as well. And the property developers and anyone who ever paid him a bottle of whiskey for planning permission.
Sure isn’t it nearly exclusively Protestants that vote for FG in Monaghan?
No, there’s relics of the formative Blue Shirts as well. There’s loads of FG support around from mid to north Monaghan.
The prods help him too.
Don’t they always run Prods up there though.
Humphreys
Crawford
Fox
He was just pulling their rope sure. Knew well they were trying to catch him out and he played along for the sneer.
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Leitrim is great for getting roads done for weddings iirc.
There’s an unspoken understanding that there’ll always be at least 1 protestant seat in Monaghan. Historically this understanding wasn’t only made with FG but also with FF, so that from 1961 to 1973 for example you had Erskine Childers being elected in Monaghan as a FF candidate. He was put there just to give the local Protestants someone to vote for. In modern times the bargain is upheld by FG, not FF. In 2011 for example, FG put forward 3 candidates, all of whom got elected and only 1 of whom was a Protestant. That Protestant candidate, Heather Humphries, now holds their only surviving seat.
Monaghan and Cavan-Monaghan is a constituency with a proud and fascinating history. Its candidates were once heavy-hitters nationally and it didn’t always elect a shower of gobsheens like it does now. Before the constituency merged with Cavan-Monaghan in 1977 you can find names as diverse as James Dillon, Erskine Childers, Eoin O’Duffy and Ernest Blythe. If the county’s politicians were a football team they’d be … Cavan.
One notable name elected to Monaghan in 1969 was Billy Fox, a FG fenian who held the county’s unofficial “protestant” seat. Fox campaigned passionately against the British Army’s border campaign and attacks on roads and bridges across the border. He bitterly attacked the FF Taoiseach Jack Lynch’s handling of the situation in the north. He brought British Army CS gas cannisters and rubber bullets into the Dail. He was murdered while still a sitting TD by 5 masked men who came to his girlfriend’s house one night. The Provos intially denied responsibility and blamed the murder on loyalists but 5 provos were later convicted. It is now believed that the girlfriend’s family had been targeted by other locals who held a grudge and told the IRA that the family were storing loyalist weapons. This allegation was completely untrue and partially grounded in sectarianism, since Fox’s girlfriend was a protestant like him.
If anyone is ever telling you that only protestants in Monaghan vote FG or for the protestant candidates those people are full of shit. My mother is strongly FG (and Green Party) and wanted me to meet Heather Humphries when she ran the first time. My da is more FF but used to vote for Seymour Crawford. However FG always have a strong base for at least one seat in the constituency because no matter how bad things get for them nationally, in Monaghan the protestants will always give a seat to one of their own. Another big Monaghan thing is swing voters who swing from SF to FG and ignore FF completely.
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I know but Monaghan is where the big Protestant population is, has there ever been many Cavan Prod TDs elected. They nearly always come from Monaghan.
Would it be fair to say the Prod population in Monaghan would be about 15%?
I’d live quite close to the border with Monaghan, the border region there has always been hugely republican but also has a big Orange factor too. It was beautiful to see all those lovely Tyrone flags in Emyvale a few months back. Couldn’t imagine many of the prods there ever voting SF. Isn’t Humphreys in the OO? Hardly progressive.
Good question, the prod vote is mostly Monaghan now but it slips into Cavan AFAIK, around Cootehill I thought and I thought that Virginia was founded to be a protestant town but I don’t know how much of that is left. Cavan was planted though.
I don’t really give a fuck about Cavan but historically when it was a stand-alone constituency they had the likes of Orangeman John Joe Cole, and even Arthur Griffiths.
As regards Humphreys, her da was an Orangeman. Not very progressive for her personally but very progressive for Monaghan as a county. Her home village of Drum is properly black, right on the Cavan border. It’s nearly the only place in Monaghan that is properly black, although there are obviously plenty of Orange lodges around. My mate plays bowls, has played for Ireland believe it or not and wasn’t allowed play inside the hall in Drum because he’s a Catholic. That might be changed now, can’t remember.
I’ll tell you something seriously Fulvio, Heather Humphreys is very nice and her kids are very nice. Or at least they’re a lot fucking nicer than that Margaret Conlan one for FF who she replaced who was a complete stuck-up cunt and only in politics for one reason. I say that as a non-Humphreys voter.
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They support Tyrone in Emyvale/Scotstown and they support Armagh in Clontibret. The Emyvale fellas I know had Tyrone posters in their rooms during school. The Clontibret boys I know were painting their houses orange and white back in the glory days.
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You’d be very surprised. Absolutely loads of SF votes from Monaghan prods. FG is obviously by far the dominant party for them, especially the older ones.
I think it stems from the fact, you look at Monaghan and the North on the map, half of Monaghan basically looks like a jut of land that was taken out of the north. The most northerly part of Monagham doesn’t fall much shorter than the most northerly part of Fermanagh.
I’ve always felt Cavan is more like a Connacht or Leinster county, they’re a bit different to the rest of the Ulster counties. Louth feels like much more an Ulster county than Monaghan does IMO. They only share a border with Fermanagh up north, Donegal has Tyrone, Fermanagh and Derry. Monaghan has Tyrone, Armagh and Fermanagh. Donegal and Monaghan were only kept out of the north because they tilted the population sway to the fenians.
Generally the southern prods aren’t indoctrinated the same way I think, didn’t a whole raft of them basically fuck off anyway when partition happened? They like to keep to themselves though I think.
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Yes. Clontibret is further north than Newry, Emyvale is as far north as Armagh, the very top of the county is as far north as Portadown. It’s a political peninsula.
There’s a big difference in accent / character between the north Monaghan and south Monaghan people. In Clontibret people have northern accents nearly as strong as Armagh (different but equally strong) and the austere (dour) character. The northerners have the northern sense of humour. By the time you get down to Carrickmacross the character of the people has changed a lot and it can be nearly like talking to chirpy Meath men sometimes. But even in Carrick they’re still Ulster people, just another different type of Ulster person.
Cavan is in the midlands, Monaghan isn’t. Also Cavan is in the communter belt and Monaghan has been spared that, which makes a huge difference. That’s why Monaghan is still good basically.
I think you mean more than Cavan.
Dundalk was historically part of the Ulster kingdom of Oriel, which connected it politically right up to Derry. I think the Cooley peninsula was part of that also but not 100% sure. Until not that long ago that part of Louth spoke Oriel Irish (a variant of Ulster Irish that went extinct around the 1950s or a little later) and was considered a major centre of Oriel culture (ie songs, storytelling etc.). Drogheda wasn’t part of that and you can see the huge difference in the short journey between the two towns. Namely that Drogheda is a hellish shithole whereas Dundalk is quite a nice place, although being a Monaghan man I could never bring myself to support the Town.
Also close connections in Dundalk with Crossmaglen and far more Fenian activity and smuggling than Cavan.
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Yes, meant Cavan there.
“From Carrickmacross to Crossmaglen you’ll find more rogues than honest men”…
Does this need further explanation?
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Another little thing is that when you’re in Carlingford / Omeath in the Cooley peninsula, you can’t drive over the mountain in the middle, you can only go around the coast. So as the bird flies it’s not that far away but really it’s completely isolated from the rest of the Republic and the only towns nearby are Newry and Warrenpoint.