DREAM COME TRUE: “I was delighted to hold Sam aloft and dream for just one second that I was holding the cup having just led Dublin to an All-Ireland Football title.”
By Blair Dingwall
Scotland and Ireland’s historic connections have been celebrated with a week of St Patrick’s Day festivities.
The celebrations, encompassing Irish music, dance and discussions across the city, are the largest Glasgow has ever had for the internationally-renowned day.
Feargal Dalton, SNP councillor for Partick West was raised in Dublin. He said: “Depending on where you get your figures from, it is arguable that people of Irish descent in Glasgow make up a larger proportion of the city’s population than any other city in the world, including New York, Boston or London.
“Scotland and Ireland have a shared Celtic culture and an intertwined history. It is only fitting that everybody in Glasgow acknowledges and celebrates that strong link.”
On the brink of the Scottish Independence referendum, Irish and Scottish histories continue to intertwine.
Dalton said that an independent Scotland could be a “more socially democratic and just country”.
“I do always say that if you take an Irish history book and change any mention of Ireland or Irish for Scotland or Scottish and add a hundred years to any of the dates in the book, then you start to hear all the same arguments for and against independence,” he said.
“Unionists talked about being politically stronger together, shared values and being able to have greater influence in the world. Pro-independence advocates referred to being able to determine their own destiny, not being involved in overseas conflicts and having a fairer, more just society.”
Dalton fulfilled a boyhood dream when he held the Sam Maguire cup on Saturday night at a St Paddy’s dinner dance.
“Scotland and Ireland have a shared Celtic culture and an intertwined history. It is only fitting that everybody in Glasgow acknowledges and celebrates that strong link”
He said: “I was delighted to hold Sam aloft and dream for just one second that I was holding the cup having just led Dublin to an All-Ireland Football title.”
Highlights of the festival have so far included a musical, multicultural evening at The Glad Cafe, a lecture on The Ulster Crisis at Glasgow University and a discussion on Jim Larkin and the 1913 Dublin Lockout.
Dalton said: “There are several legacies of the 1913 lockout that we live with today both in Ireland and the UK. Ireland’s long term social direction was largely determined by the Lockout.
“Even with independence, Ireland followed a capitalist agenda becoming full adherents to the Anglo-American economic model of a largely free market economy.”
He added: “This national and social question is a clear link with Scotland’s current constitutional debate.
“Social justice has become inextricably linked to constitutional question. The national question and labour question is walking hand in hand again, a century later here in Scotland.”
Funds raised for the St Patrick’s Day events will go towards the building of a Glasgow Irish Centre in the city.
Dalton said that the festival can only grow in the city: “Owing to the large numbers of people of Irish ethnicity in Glasgow, it is fairly predictable that Glasgow’s St Patrick’s Festival will go from strength to strength each year.
“With the extremely welcome peace that was brokered and encapsulated in the Good Friday Agreement, we now live in a time when Irish people and non-Irish people can celebrate the contribution of the Irish diaspora and the Irish state to the world. In the long standing tradition of St Patrick’s celebrations all over the world, everybody is welcome and indeed invited to be Irish for the duration of the festivities.”
The Cardonald Courier 
Posted on March 21, 2013
0