Like many of us, I have lots of relations in America. They’re good people and, as a kid, I always looked forward to them coming back to Ireland for a holiday.
They brought me cool American comics that you couldn’t get in this country back then. I’d usually be thrown a few bucks as well, so, I was always extremely fond of the US branch of our family tree. But I would never allow them anywhere a voting booth in this country.
One of them, who is sadly no longer with us, was a tough-talking ‘Noo Yoik’ cop who liked to regale me with war stories from his time on the mean streets. He was a hard-drinking, hard-living, hard-edged sort of guy who was also, back in the day, a keen supporter of Noraid.