‘Tis the start of the Celtic festival season, with Chicago kicking off the fun with its Gaelic Park Irish Fest featuring plenty of entertainment and family fun over Memorial Day weekend. Gotta there and do some Gaelic boogie. Cleveland, Texas and many others are set to roll, with the 25th anniversary of Milwaukee Irish Fest in the works for August. 

While Stateside revelers have a lot to look forward too, the party almost ended badly for Britain’s Tony Blair. His Labor Party got the bum’s rush from voters during the recent election there. Dozens of Laborites got the bounce. The war in Iraq, which T.B. is now urging everyone to forget and put behind them was the hot button issue that almost noogied him out of office. Blair will be hard-pressed to keep up that chipper attitude as the conflict grinds on and on and on. Hey, British troops are still in Northern Ireland after 30 years on patrol. Why not stay for a time more in the idyllic Mideast. 

In Northern Ireland, most of the hard-liners on both republican and unionist sides kept their seats. But David Trimble took a surprising tumble from power, losing his position and giving up his Ulster Unionist Party leadership. Whether, or how, he comes back in the political arena is unknown at this writing. 

In more shakeups, Paul Murphy is being replaced as Britain's Northern Ireland Secretary by Peter Hain as part of British Prime Minister Tony Blair's cabinet reshuffle. The new Northern Ireland Secretary will continue to work in his old portfolio as Welsh secretary. It’s interesting to note that Hain once had the security services monitoring his activities while coming to national prominence as a radical Young Liberal. In his salad days, he was in the forefront of the campaign against South African apartheid He lived in South Africa until he was 16 and his family came to Britain. 

Martin Hintz, publisher.

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