SINÉAD O’Connor – those eyes, their fiery flame will never die; the voice that came from somewhere deep beyond the sea; that searching soul that swept up strays and lost causes – is no more.
Sinéad sang all the anthems of the dispossessed and took the weak, the wounded, the bruised and the broken and held them tight in her big heart. She was always true to herself and never afraid to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted and, for that, she paid – in spades.
She was so vulnerable and I remember Gay Byrne hugging her on the Late Late Show years ago – a child-like innocence with no filter that could spot bulls*** from a thousand miles.
Tiny and petite as Audrey Hepburn, Sinéad had Amazonian courage and character and is in the great line of strong Irish women going right back to the legendary Queen Maeve.
She battled many demons in her 56 years and now I hope she is at peace and singing in a place where there is no more pain – a place of mirth and music on angel’s wings.
Fly high Sinéad.
GERRY McLAUGHLIN
Co Fermanagh
Sinéad was a benevolent soul
There have been many tributes paid to the late Sinéad O’Connor, some from sources who made her publicly known mental health and addiction issues worse, as they are in the business of kicking people in the public eye when they’re down to sell newspapers.
In the many eulogies the term “great Irishwoman” was used, and Sinéad is one of the few in our music and media industry that deserves the description.
So many in that sphere during the conflict ignored the crimes of the British state as they sent in tens of thousands of troops, focusing most of them on the nationalist community, along with pointing their proxies in loyalist paramilitaries in their direction too. With all that, the likes of Bono and the RTÉ establishment only saw republican violence.
Who can forget Bono’s demented rant in San Francisco to someone holding a sign saying ‘SF’, which he interpreted as Sinn Féin. Dolores Riordan of the Cranberries wrote an anti-republican song Zombie in response to republican actions, but nothing of Britain’s colonisation and its violence to maintain the status quo.
Sinéad, of course, was more nuanced and fair in her analysis of the northern situation; unafraid that in those days to stick your head above the parapet in support of nationalists was not always a good career move. Around the time of the Drumcree issue, she wrote to the media for their pushing of the ‘northern majority’ narrative when Ulster was partitioned to gerrymander a majority. The north of Ireland was majority nationalist, she proclaimed, and the Drumcree stand-off had shown to the world the perpetrators of evil in Ireland were not the Irish themselves and it shows why the IRA were [re]formed in the first place.
She was a benevolent soul, who stood up for the little guy and was polemic in their defence – she was a feisty egalitarian until the end. The poor and downtrodden of this island has lost a true advocate for their cause.
PÁDRAIG DONOHOE
Greencastle, Co Tyrone
Rebel with a cause
SINÉAD O Connor was a rebel in every sense of the word, and her untimely death may not have come as a shock to many who have followed her musical career. Having come through a childhood that was difficult in an era where strict religious conservative rules were applied by a mother who suffered from mental health issues, and a father who was distanced from showing love and affection, Sinéad unfortunately inherited some of her mother’s physiological qualities which came through in some of her music, as a haunted soul in search of something that would prove to be out of reach. She was a woman who always stood up and protested for the rights of the vanquished and those without a voice. She was a republican who often spoke about British intrusion in Ireland through music and song. She would undoubtedly shy away and be frustrated by some of the plaudits to her memory being issued by a multitude of musicians and politicians in her birth country, whose pretentious political concerns are self-serving and barely skin deep.
Go bhfóire d’anam faoi shíocháin Sinéad.
JAMES WOODS
Dún na nGall
Putin’s evil war has to be opposed
The Irish News has been publishing some very strange letters of late from the historically illiterate. Anyone who supports the imperial powers of Russia and China against ‘the West’, for all its sins, needs a prolonged visit to a library. The Chinese communist party is the most murderous regime in history. The scale of mass murder in the Great Leap Forward alone is scarcely credible. The Russian communist murder regime is almost as bad. A recent correspondent wrote that Crimea is ethnically Russian. Yes, since Stalin expelled the indigenous Tatars and replaced them with Russians. It was the West who defeated Nazism. Yes, the same Nazism that was an ally of Russia when they divided Poland and committed mass murder between them. But why bother with facts when you have historical amnesia or illiteracy. Ireland disgraced itself in the Second World War. There can be no neutrality against evil. Putin’s evil war has to be opposed.
JOHN DEVLIN
Letterkenny, Co Donegal
Shame on Trevor Ringland
True to form, Trevor Ringland – ‘We should all make an effort to engage with legacy proposals’ (July 28) – has once again taken up his pen in support of the British government’s decision to put an end to inquests and to introduce an amnesty for British soldiers and RUC killers.
Shame on him.
FR JOE McVEIGH
Co Fermanagh
