Alex Maskey

SF West Belfast. Former Assembly Speaker. Belfast's 1st Republican Mayor. Lifelong Republican activist.

[Gerry Adams @GerryAdamsSF]

Maith thú Roís Máire!!

[urko aiartza azurtza @uaiartza]

💯years anniversary of the birth of South African freedom fighter and cde. Joe Slovo, a colossus of South African liberation struggle and a reference for all liberation movements!

[peter fury @peterfury]

@JazzaDickens10 @octoberreduk 🤝♥️🙏

[Alex Maskey @AlexMaskeySF]

Let’s extend our very best wishes to Ciara Mageehan on such a beautiful day as today. Ciara continues to really inspire us as a community. Best wishes Ciara

[Alex Maskey @AlexMaskeySF]

Wishing Caoimhín all the very best for this great opportunity to get a crack at the IBF world title🥊Caoimhín has worked very hard and really has earned this tilt at the title.

[Zach Schumaker @ZachSchumaker]

Brandon Adams and Caoimhín Agyarko sit down for their final words before their IBF Title Final Eliminator in Las Vegas.

We discuss Agyarko's US debut, Adams' veteran experience, and the mutual respect before they go to war.

Watch: 👇
https://t.co/VkGJYZd3d4

[Alex Maskey @AlexMaskeySF]

Mighty congratulations Anto and team for creating yet another piece of history. Tough enough fight but well deserved the win and you certainly earned it🥊🥊

[Chris Donnelly @chrisadonnelly]

Gotta love this.

[Madden & Finucane Solicitors @madden_finucane]

An open letter to Gavin Robinson from Robin Livingstone

Dear Gavin,

Last Wednesday you advised the families of the Bloody Sunday dead to “move on”. You were speaking after the PPS decided not to prosecute members of the Parachute Regiment for perjury. The families should stop, you added, “the endless pursuit of others”.

Although I’ve lost someone close to me in violent and unexpected circumstances, and although I write for a living, I will never if I live to write another billion words come anywhere near to bettering a description of the chest-emptying reality of grief and loss that I heard some years ago. Let me share it with you…

“The only relief I get is when I wake up in the morning. There’s a few seconds when you’re still half-asleep, a few more seconds until you’re properly awake, and a few more seconds while you ease into the new day.

“Then, you remember…”

The woman who spoke those words that I’ve just quoted might like to “move on”, I don’t know. Speaking from my own family’s experience and that of the countless victims I’ve met as I potter towards the end of a long career in journalism, I’d say she would. I don’t know for sure, but why wouldn’t she? Who would choose to start every day with an electric jolt of newly-remembered grief in the heart? Who would choose to sob on hearing a bar of a half-remembered song? Who would choose to be suddenly racked with guilt during a moment of family joy? Who would choose not to open a biscuit tin of old family photos because sorrowful smiles are 99 per cent sorrow and one per cent smile.

Your concept of what the Bloody Sunday families are in pursuit of, with its concomitant imperatives of punishment and incarceration, is not one that I recognise. I can’t and don’t as a bereaved relative speak for every name in Lost Lives, that hefty Book of the Dead that’s still as essential to my desk in work as the notebook, phone and keyboard. I can’t and don’t even speak for every member of my family. But I know that what I feel is common coin in the place where grief lives.

Like the Bloody Sunday family, my family is in pursuit of justice, in our case for Julie. We probably won’t know what justice is until we get it – or until we get something that feels like it. At this point all I know about the British soldier who shot my sister dead at 14 is that he’s Welsh. I don’t know his name or where he lives. I have not the faintest idea of what he looks like. Heck, I don’t even know if he’s alive.

Why don’t I know these things? Simply because the man was never made the subject of the kind of meaningful investigation that would necessitate these things being divulged. What’s more, I don’t particularly want to know his name or where he lives – I don’t know if I have sufficient storage in my emotional hard drive to let him into my life. But if these things are made known as we try to complete the picture of how Julie died and why, then so be it.

What I do know, Gavin, is that I don’t want this anonymous Welshman – if indeed he is still alive – to spend a second in jail, never mind long years. What I do know is that the idea of punishing him has never entered my mind. But it goes deeper than that. The man who fired the plastic bullet is likely my age – probably just a little bit older. If, like me, he has children and grandchildren, I hope he loves and enjoys them as much as I do mine. The idea of pursuing him has not only never occurred to me, it is something that I don’t even understand. He is at this point merely a means to an end; as much a part of the drama of Julie’s death as the armoured vehicle and the plastic bullet gun; with more agency, granted, but not much. If he ends up being interviewed I hope it’s on his sofa in Wales and not in a barracks in Belfast. If he ends up being charged I can’t help that, but if he was convicted I’d step forward to ask the judge that he not be jailed, no doubt while your DUP colleagues queued up to get their pictures taken with him and claim him as one of their own.

It’s no surprise to me that you fail to understand that people can no more move on from doing right by those they have lost than they can move on from breathing. Why would you? What does surprise me is that you think victims of the British state like the Bloody Sunday families are in “pursuit” of human beings – of “others”. That is a venal and catastrophic misunderstanding of the sacred and immutable nature of a commitment made while standing over a coffin.

What they are in pursuit of, Gavin, is not Soldier X, or Y or Z. They are merely old and rusted signposts on the road to their journey’s end. What they are in pursuit of is a time when they can fall asleep at night in the knowledge that they have finally kept a promise they made – spoken or unspoken – to the innocent grey face among the mass cards; to the mother, father, husband, wife, brother, sister, son or daughter they lost. What they are in pursuit of is a time when they can wake up, and alongside the every-morning shock of that moment of re-remembering, feel for the first time a surge of pride in a promise delivered.

I don’t know what’s happened to you in the last year or so – maybe a little longer. I specify that time scale because December 2024 was when you crossed the city to get a drive-by picture taken on the Falls Road beside some pro-Palestine graffiti. I don’t think I need to remind you about the extent and nature of the wall art that you passed without comment in your East Belfast constituency to get here, so I won’t mention that except to point out that I don’t remember you ever having your picture taken beside any of it. It struck me forcefully then that this didn’t seem like the kind of stunt that a generally mild-mannered bloke like you would pull.

Then last March you again stuck your barrel chest out, thumbed your lapels and issued another stirring message to Loyal Ulster: you were going to instruct your MLAs to “put a marker down” in relation to the Irish language at Grand Central Station. That also didn’t strike me as a Gavin-style move. And in the autumn you got even more in touch with your inner-Jamie by welcoming the Soldier F acquittal on social media not just with the expected comment that it was a “common sense judgement” but with a big old Para flag. And now, in case anyone thought that the Para flag was a slip of your phone thumb, here you are telling the people still trying to get their heads round your Para play to “move on”.

The most recent LucidTalk poll shows your party up 1% to 19%, and the Belfast Telegraph was reliably excited enough to suggest that this statistically negligible figure points suggests your party’s “shift to the right” has won back voters. But it’s going to take a hell of a lot more than a single point to suggest that the DUP is back, whatever the unionist papers say. I’ve no doubt that your Palestine picture, your Irish language way cry and now your “move on” exhortation will bring familiar fish to the top in the pool you’re currently fishing in. But you need to drop your line in deeper waters and you need a bigger catch if you’re to move out of your polling teens. And in that sense, it may be you who most needs to move on.

[Alex Maskey @AlexMaskeySF]

So wonderful to get the health update comments from the always inspiring Ciara Mageean. Let’s hope and pray that Ciara continues to spread her positivity.

[Bunscoil Phobal Feirste @BPF1971]

Nollaig Shona ó Bhunscoil Phobal Feirste. Oíche Nollag. Oíche Chiúin. Nollaig Mhór Mhaith daoibh. 🎄 🎅

[Alex Maskey @AlexMaskeySF]

One of thee greatest Roberto Duran🥊

[Alex Maskey @AlexMaskeySF]

Great to see Jim McAuley finally get his belt after 57 years. An inspirational fighter to many young amateur boxers with the Holy Family and Immaculata, Jim had some of his glory days shared with his loving family. Thanks also to West Well-being for making this possible.👍

[𝗪𝗘𝗦𝗧 𝗪𝗘𝗟𝗟𝗕𝗘𝗜𝗡𝗚 🎗 @west_wellbeing]

🥊 57 Years in the Making! 🥊
Back in 1968, Belfast’s very own Jim McAuley became the Northern Ireland Featherweight Champion — but he never received the belt he rightfully earned… until now!

With a bit of teamwork and determination, West Wellbeing helped track it down, and thanks to John Gray, the NI Secretary for the British Boxing Board of Control, the belt was finally found — in a garage!

Today, after 57 years, Jim proudly holds the title belt he fought so hard for. A true local legend, a gentleman of the ring, and a reminder that it’s never too late for someone to get the recognition they deserve. 👏❤️

A huge thank you to John Gray, and a shout out to both Micky Hawkins from @HTBC_Belfast and @AlexMaskeySF for presenting Jim with his belt and stats book!

Thank you also to Lisa and her staff in Applejacks @DairyFarmSC for putting on a lovely spread for the event!
#BoxingHistory #BelfastLegend #WestWellbeing #NIBoxing #CommunityPride #NeverTooLate

[Alex Maskey @AlexMaskeySF]

Oh the arrogance🧐

[Alex Maskey @AlexMaskeySF]

Let’s hope you will fully recover soon from the stroke. You and your family will be in the thoughts and prayers of many.

[Wallace Thompson @wallyt53]

Just to let my friends and critics and those in between know that I suffered a stroke about 10 days ago and am now recuperating at home. I’ll steer well clear of X for the time being.

[Alex Maskey @AlexMaskeySF]

Are ye having a laugh says Annie………

[Michael-Angelo 🇮🇪 Mícheall Ó Labhraí Tréan @mickymobile]

Sonas ort Ma ❤️✊

[Alex Maskey @AlexMaskeySF]

Great joining Orlaíthi and Siobhán McCallan with busy community representatives Renee and Michael.

[Órlaithí Flynn @OrlaithiF_MLA]

Delighted to join my friend and comrade yesterday at the launch of the Woodbourne Environmental Improvement Scheme. People like Alex Maskey continue to inspire me in the work that I do every day 💚

[Alex Maskey @AlexMaskeySF]

Some pile on attacks on Catherine Connolly which I believe shows a great panic across the Irish political establishment.

[Seán MacBrádaigh @SMacB]

@rtenews Eh…that’s one way of putting it. What most people see though, is a desperate, unhinged smear campaign by one side!!

[Alex Maskey @AlexMaskeySF]

The forty foot barge pole😩

[Debs @DebShoes72]

Turns out dinosaurs can write

[Gerry Adams @GerryAdamsSF]

Luk who popped up on my Memory.

[Alex Maskey @AlexMaskeySF]

Congratulations to our own new record breaker and Silver medal winner Kate O’Connor at the World Athletics Championships. A welcome reminder of another champion Portaferry star Ciara Mageehan.👍

[Alex Maskey @AlexMaskeySF]

Great engaging with Arab Barghouti today during his hectic round of meetings and events seeking to build further solidarity to help end the genocide and campaign for Palestinian unity and statehood.