The Way Ireland Ought To Be

About the Book

The novel---THE WAY IRELAND OUGHT TO BE--- is a fiction of an impressionistic nature derived from the composite life experiences outlined.  The novel tells the story of a teacher Dr Quinn who is sectioned in a psychiatric clinic and is told he is schizophrenic.  The novel relates his struggle to discover his true self, his true identity as an Irish man and in the struggle he creates The National Government of Ireland Act as the solution to the Irish problem. He gives the Act to Dr Kane to read but the doctor dismisses it as unreadable rubbish.  He is then given an injection by force and is turned out of the clinic to live in a dirty dump of a flat.  The novel deals with reality, delusion, the imagination, identity and the solution to the Irish problem.

The author’s concise solution to the Irish problem is at present being published in the Irish political journal---The Blanket---and can be found on the Internet.

The author is in his sixties and has been married.  He has a family of four and three grandchildren. He is now divorced. He lives in Derry where he has many friends and enjoys the close support of his three sisters. His interests are writing, reading, gardening, interior design, charity work and a daily work out in the local gym. He intends to write two further novels, one titled The Rape of the Virgin, which has to do with good and evil in a rural parish in Ireland and another titled Size Matters, which will deal with communal bigotry in Ireland.

Chidi Lynn typed the novel on to disk and Tony Doyle, an art student at the N.W. Institute of Further and Higher Education in Derry, created the design for the cover.

Michael Gillespie B.Ed B.Sc (Econ) Dip.Ed D.A.S.E.  M.A. ( Ed)

About the Author

The author was educated at Queen’s University, Belfast where he holds two primary degrees, one in English and one in Economics and Mathematics. He also made an in-depth study of Education at Queen’s and holds an M.A. in Education. He intended to complete a Ph D in Education but that did not materialise.

The author taught in Strabane in Co Tyrone in N. Ireland in Sunbury-on-Thames in London, and in Belfast.  In Belfast he taught in a hard line Republican district called Andersonstown, in a Secondary School run by the La Salle Brothers, a teaching order of the Roman Catholic Church. He taught there during the height of the troubles and in the midst of violence and riot. 

The author was an active member of a teacher’s union, the Irish National Teacher’s Organisation, an All Ireland body. He was elected President of the West Belfast branch of the union; this branch being the largest branch in Ireland its Presidency was a position of status in the union.

As President the author learnt that one of the Brothers was an active member of the I.R.A. and was recruiting pupils into the junior wing of the I.R.A.---the Fianna---. The author challenged the brother who was school principal about this and called for the I.R.A. brother to be dismissed from the order and sacked as a teacher. This stirred up a hornets nest in the school and the hard line Republican clique that dominated the school retaliated by forcing the author to resign his teaching position. This was a life changing experience. The author decided to give up teaching and abandon his plans of doing a Ph D and instead work exclusively on the solution to the Irish problem.

On learning this the author’s wife thought he had gone mental so she talked to a psychiatrist who told her to have her husband admitted. In a clinic the author talked to a doctor about his work in La Salle about his work in the university and about his work in the union. He told the doctor he had given all of that up and would now devote his energies to work exclusively on the solution to the Irish problem. He explained he was convinced in his own mind that the Irish problem was now solvable in The National Government of Ireland Act which he was now writing and towards that end he had designed a new flag for Ireland  called the Royal Flag of Ireland, which he had seen in a dream. The doctor told him he was divorced from reality, that he was taken over by politics and that his ideas were bizarre and outlandish. The doctor told him he must realize he is a schizophrenic and as a schizophrenic anything he would write is rubbish.  The doctor advised the author to go on medication, which he refused. He was then sectioned and made to wear pyjamas in the clinic to impress upon the author that he was very sick with political ideas. Undaunted the author completed the Act to his satisfaction in the clinic. After this he was forced physically to have injections with catastrophic side effects.