Blazes Boylan

Twenty-two years in the music business, three previous songs in Ireland’s National Song Contest and suddenly it was all happening for Jimmy Walsh, who kept on plugging until he made it.

Walsh’s song “In Your Eyes” won the Eurovision Song Contest, the biggest competition of its kind in Europe which is broadcast live via satellite.

Over three hundred million people watched Niamh Kavanagh, the diminutive bank clerk with the big voice, sing “In Your Eyes. ” On why he chose Niamh Jimmy said, “I heard Niamh on the Commitments album. She has a great voice. I had a hard time persuading her to do it but she was fantastic.” Kavanagh has signed with Arista Records who are marketing the song in Europe. “In Your Eyes” shot straight to number one in Ireland and in its first week sold over 14,000 copies.

Walsh, an Irish immigrant to the United States, has lived in the Bronx for almost eleven years and loves the camaraderie of the Irish in the States. “I felt I wasn’t just representing Ireland but the thousands of Irish emigrants living in the States,” he said after his win. Walsh’s Eurovision success has given him the financial security to do what he likes best. He intends to spend more time in Ireland and concentrate on writing. But he will still play and sing. “I need to get out of here at least a couple of nights a week.” He wants to hear the crowd and have the craic.

By Una Campbell

In 1975, Carole Richardson, Paddy Armstrong, Paul Hill, and Gerard Conlon were sentenced to life imprisonment, for the bombing of a pub in Guildford, England. After serving 15 years in jail they were freed by the Court of Appeals when their convictions were quashed in 1989.

The police officers who were accused of conspiring to pervert the course of justice in this case, however, were recently acquitted in a London courtroom. Former Detective Sergeant John Donaldson, former Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Style, and former Detective Constable Vernon Attwell had been accused of manufacturing evidence when they lied about notes taken in an interview with Paddy Armstrong.

Upon hearing the verdict, Armstrong said, “All I want is for the evidence that we were innocent to be brought into the open. I accept the jury’s verdict, but now we’re in a Catch 22 situation, the police are innocent and we are innocent.”

The former officers in question were never called upon to give evidence, and twice during the course of the trial, the judge, a retired SAS colonel, told the jury they could decide to acquit at any time, before all the evidence was heard. The prosecuting attorney was appointed by the government.

However, the May inquiry into the Guildford case is progressing, with Sir John May preparing to present his findings to the Royal Commission on Miscarriages of Justice this month.

First it was reported that Bill Clinton was planning a visit to Ireland, and may even become the first American President to visit the North of Ireland, then the denials were issued by the White House. No, he’s not going, he’s too busy, etc. Well, now it appears that Clinton will actually be stopping off at the Emerald Isle during a European trip in the summer of 1994 which will also include England, Italy, and other destinations.

Irish President Mary Robinson, on her recent visit, was told by Clinton that he would welcome an invitation to isit Ireland, and the Irish government is expected to stick one in the diplomatic mailbag pretty soon.

Clinton may even end up in Northern Ireland after all, as his ancestors on his mother’s side hailed from County Fermanagh, and emigrated in the late 18th century to end up in Arkansas

Annie McCarrick, a 26-year-old Irish-American from Long Island, New York, has not been heard from since mysteriously disappearing from her home in Dublin on March 26.

Her parents, John and Nancy McCarrick, spent almost two months in Ireland on a futile search for their daughter, and have now returned to their New York home to wait further developments.

After graduating from Maynooth College in Co. Kildare in 1990, Annie decided that she wanted to spend more time in the country she had fallen in love with, and remained in Dublin. As her parents prepared to visit her, they received word on March 29 that Annie had not been heard from for three days.

Her mother left for Ireland immediately. Despite an enormous manhunt by the Irish police, no clues were discovered as to Annie’s whereabouts. The McCarricks hired a private detective to help, and even a clairvoyant, but nothing has come of it. Meanwhile, they pasted posters of their daughter all over Dublin and searched the mountains with an army of volunteers.

A relatively new Irish TV show, Crimeline, which is along the lines of America’s Most Wanted, aired a reconstruction of the events leading to Annie’s disappearance, and as over 1.2 million people saw that show, hopefully the McCarricks won’t have to wait much longer.

An Irish architect, Dawson Stelfox, 35, became the first Irish person to reach the top of Mount Everest on Thursday, May 27.

Stelfox, a member of an eight-person climbing team, managed to scale the treacherous north face of the mountain and reached the summit twelve and a half hours after leaving base camp.

Stelfox radioed back to base as soon as he reached the peak, and spoke to his sponsors from 29,028 feet.

“I find it difficult to put it into words, but all the big peaks of the Himalayas are sticking up through the clouds and the sky above is perfectly blue. It’s lovely and warm, hardly a breeze, and I can see right down into brown Tibetan plains, and down into base camp. It’s absolutely superb, and certainly one of the finest moments of my life.”

A mountain guide in both the European Alps and Scotland, Stelfox has been involved with mountaineering and rock climbing for almost twenty years.

Belfast Crown Court has convicted British paratrooper Lee Clegg of murdering 18-year-old Karen Reilly in September of 1990, when soldiers opened fire on a stolen car in which she was a passenger.

Clegg, 24, the fourth soldier to receive a life sentence during the 23 years of fighting in Northern Ireland, was cleared of attempting to murder 17-year-old Martin Peake, from West Belfast, the driver of the stolen Vauxhall Astra. A second paratrooper, Barry Aindow, also 24, was found guilty of attempted murder, and sentenced to seven years imprisonment. Both men are expected to appeal.

Karen Reilly, from Twin-Brook, was a back-seat passenger in the car and was killed by the last of four shots fired at the car by Clegg. Driver Martin Peake, on probation for joyriding, was shot once in the head.

No one was charged in Peake’s murder as the prosecution could not prove who fired the fatal bullet.

In a gruesome display of the soldiers’ humor, a mural of the teenagers’ car was hung on the wall in the officers’ mess at Palace barracks three months after the killings, in December 1990. The mural was a parody of a Christmas decoration, surrounded by balloons and reading “Vauxhall Astra. Built by robots. Driven by joyriders. Stopped by a Coy.” (Coy is an idiom for a paratrooper.) This disgusting display was roundly condemned by nationalists, as was the fact that the Justice Campbell did not specify the length of the prison sentence Clegg would receive.

“The Judge gave a life sentence but he did not specify any length of time,” said a spokeswoman for Relatives for Justice. “What does a life sentence mean? Does it mean two years and three months as in the case of Private lain Thain who was also found guilty of murder?”

Thain was the soldier convicted of murdering 22-year-old Belfast man Thomas Kidso Reilly, who was shot once in the back. The nationalist community was outraged when it emerged that Thain was released from prison in England and taken back into the army after serving 26 months of his life sentence. An army spokesman said Thain had been released on license as he was “a young man and only in the army for two years” at the time of the killing. Thain has since left the
army.

“Does this mean that if it suits, Private Clegg could do six months and be allowed to go free?” the spokeswoman continued. “Far from showing any remorse after murdering these children, the soldiers actually went back to their barracks where a mock-up was made of the car.”

In more than 350 deaths involved with the troubles, the only other soldiers convicted of murder were Sgt. John Byre and Sgt. Stanley Hatherway, both non-commissioned officers of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. These men pled guilty to murdering Co. Fermanagh farmers Michael Naan and Andrew Murray in a brutal attack which came to be known as the “pitch-fork murders.”