Why I Left The Swedish-Irish Society

As many of you will have seen on social media in recent days, I have resigned from the Swedish-Irish Society over an email sent to me by the chairperson of the organisation.

The email was about work I did on “From There To Here”, the commemorative booklet and film which was created to mark the 75th anniversary of the organisation.

In more than 20 years of working with this community, the email I received and the ignorance and factual inaccuracies contained within it are the most hurtful and insulting things I have ever read.

I have so far refrained from going into the details of that correspondence, but the society has published – and then deleted – this statement below, signed by the chairperson Carmel Mellquist and which was sent to me by a number of people I know and trust in the community before it was removed, and it leaves me no choice but to set the record straight, once and for all.

Without naming me, they claim that my use of a quote on social media from an email written by the chairperson and sent on behalf of the Swedish-Irish Society was “without context”.

I agree that context is very important – so with that in mind, I am publishing, in full, the email sent to me by the chairperson on Monday evening.

In the course of this publication, I will add notes to explain the reasoning and thinking behind the issues raised. The email text appears as a series of quotes, and in some places, I have used bold font to illustrate some of the words that I found most problematic and hurtful, or to illustrate other points of interest or fact.

Let us begin.

Dear Philip

I began planning for the 75th event around this time last year and proposed to the Board that you would be the ideal person to highlight the work of SIS over the years. You have tirelessly supported the Irish community for many years, and I believed this project would be a fitting tribute to you from The Society. Additionally, I thought you would enjoy working on it.

Unfortunately, we have concerns about the quality of what has been delivered and I want to set out these concerns to you in this letter so that we can agree on a fair way forward.

That this project would somehow be a “tribute to me” is something I have a hard time understanding, seeing as it would mean me doing an enormous amount of work for a pittance of a budget, but I digress.

To then express concerns about “the quality of what has been delivered” to a professional journalist with decades of experience working for some of the biggest media outlets in the world is a very, very serious undermining of my professional experience and reputation, and it is something I absolutely will not stand for from anyone, anywhere.

The email continues:

As you know, we applied for funding from the ESP, and we are required to submit a report within a month of the event. Here is what we included in our application:

• A commemorative publication featuring oral history, memorabilia, and photographs related to the Society’s members and activities over the past 75 years. (Done)

• An event to launch the publication and pay tribute to the SIS and the individuals who have contributed to its success. A panel discussion is planned, where distinguished guests and members will share their perspectives and personal anecdotes. (This was changed to interviews from the night to be captured and submitted.  This change was approved by the Embassy, as the application goes via it).

• Attendees will hear firsthand accounts of the impact the SIS has had on individuals’ lives, friendships formed, and experiences gained through participation in its activities. (The booklet partly covers this.)

• An exhibition display showcasing memorabilia, photographs, and artefacts related to the Society’s history and activities over the past 75 years. Performances featuring music, dance, and poetry will celebrate the diversity and richness of the two nations’ traditions. (We feel we have covered this in Saturday’s programme, even if we didn’t have artefacts on show.)

The “ESP” referred to above is the Emigrant Support Program, which is funding available via the Department of Foreign Affairs, and as with all government money, there is rightly a rigorous reporting process to ensure that it gets spent correctly – and presumably my name would be attached to any report that goes in as the person who carried out the work.

Now, let us go through the rest, point by point.

Number one is the booklet that was produced, which entailed soliciting, collecting, editing and laying out stories from the community, a process which took dozens of hours (some of which were due to a request from the chairperson that a specific piece be included, long after the deadline had passed) – efforts dismissed here with one word: “(Done)“.

Point two was to collect the interviews on the night, rather than have a panel discussion – this was also done, and will be covered in more detail later on.

Point three refers to “firsthand accounts of the impact the SIS has had on individuals’ lives, friendships formed, and experiences gained through participation in its activities”, and is followed by the comment “the booklet partly covers this” – I think you’ll find that the booklet covers this more than adequately, given that it was the whole point of it.

Point four refers to an exhibition that we planned to hold; what stopped us was that, apart from two brochures provided by one member, there were no artefacts to show.

Then we get to the interesting part – the critique of the video work.

With the report in mind, I started noting down yesterday what we have achieved so far. (The report will be reviewed by the Embassy staff before being sent to the ESP section). For many of the points above, we’re adequately covered. Unfortunately, the video aspect in particular is weak.

Of all the points made in the email, this is the most hurtful. An enormous amount of effort and personal expense went into making the film, and on the night itself I sacrificed much of the early part of the evening – time I could have been sitting with my family – to record even more material, in the form of video interviews with those present.

Keep in mind that the budget for the entirety of the project (the booklet and film) was 30,000 Swedish crowns – for that, I edited the booklet as described above, and I did at least eight interviews filmed in seven different locations, as well as bringing cameras and a drone up to Gävle to showcase the way Gaelic games are bringing our community together there.

This was on top of a separate visit to the SIS/Stockholm Gaels Family Day, as well as the sourcing of further footage and extensive work on the music and soundtrack, and the interviews on the night itself.

Despite a standing ovation on Saturday night and almost exclusively positive responses since on social media, the society then described the “video aspect” to me in the chairperson’s email as “weak”.

Judge for yourself:

Even the headline of the next part is stunning, but we shall move quickly past it.

Points of Complaint:

• Screen Issue:

  • The screen in Galleriet was not working, and Lena at Jernkontoret was unaware it was needed. Did you confirm with Lena on Friday that it was required and operational?

On our first visit to Jernkontoret – a fantastic venue with great staff – before the summer, we told them we would need a screen in that room to either connect a laptop or a USB memory stick/disk to in order to show video content. The venue has since been renovated and a new screen installed, with the back of it no longer accessible. A media manager/conference device with a HDMI cable was provided and accessible but did not work correctly on the day, only intermittently allowing us to show footage on the screen despite a myriad of different cables and configurations being tried.

The sound in the main room did not work as planned either, and at one point I suggested cancelling the screening of the film as the conditions did not exist to do it justice.

I have no idea who Lena is, but when I visited on Friday at 1430 as agreed to set up and test everything, the screen in question was behind stacks of chairs and tables and could not be accessed, but I was assured that it was working fine.

• Video Content:

  • We had agreed beforehand that all guests would be interviewed “on the red carpet” as they arrived, and that the recordings would be documented as part of the project. Despite this, I didn’t see many interviews actually taking place. How many people were interviewed on Saturday?

  • Of the interviews that were conducted on Saturday, will they be integrated into the video, or will that be a separate composition?

Firstly, one cannot interview *all* guests – we can only interview those who wish to be interviewed, and interviewing over a hundred of them would have taken hours.

That the chairperson didn’t see any interviews taking place is not to say they didn’t happen; due to pressures of space (we had the entrance, then a band, then a welcome drink and a photo station in the reception, leading to overcrowding as most of the guests arrived), a decision was taken a few weeks ago that the video interviews would take place in the bar area (presumably called “Galleriet”, as it was in the same space as the non-working screen). Several people were interviewed, including one current committee member.

On the second point, it is apparent that the committee expected that either a new film would be made, or that they would be edited into the existing film – all within the original budget of 30,000 SEK.

Now, you’re more than entitled to ask yourself in what world that might be possible, but my actual intention after the event was to provide those separate interview clips with an intro and outro for use on their social media channels – in fact, I was just after purchasing a memory card reader for that purpose when I received the chairperson’s mail.

• Chairperson and Committee Members:

  • Several people asked me on Saturday why I wasn’t included in the video. Given that I am the current Chairperson, that would have been appropriate. Other committee members who weren’t interviewed would likely have appreciated being asked. Perhaps you did ask, and they declined?

• Video Distribution:

  • There are complaints that the video wasn’t shared with the Board sufficiently in advance of its publication, so none of us had a chance to provide feedback before distribution.

We now come to the creative choices made in the film, the first of them being why the chairperson wasn’t included in the video.

Except she was – twice. Once during the family day with the SIS/Stockholm Gaels, and once towards the end when interviewee Miriam Hill spoke of the great work that she and the committee have done, and continue to do.

As for “other committee members”, unless I’m very much mistaken Molly Breen is a member of the committee and was chosen as a voice to represent and appeal to younger member, which she did brilliantly. The acoustic guitar music that powers the middle part of the film is taken from a song called “For You”, written and performed by Kieran O’Loughlin (Loughy), who also wrote another brilliant song that he performed on the night – and is another committee member.

When I looked around that room as the film finished on Saturday night, I find it hard to believe that too many people there were thinking, “that was lovely, but there really should have been more footage of the committee …”

When the video was finally finished at 1714 on Friday evening, I shared it with one committee member, and the feedback was very positive – and frankly, given what has since transpired and the ill-informed comments about it in the chairperson’s email, I’m glad I didn’t share it with any more.

But the greater point is this – the film is not about the committee, it is about the community.

It was never meant to be an exercise in back-slapping, or a box-ticking exercise where credit was given to those who feel they deserve it; it was meant to be a document of where the society came from and where it is going, and to showcase some of the people involved and the difficulties they have faced.

That includes older members, younger members and non-members alike – and as with all community organisations, the SIS is keen to attract as many new people as possible.

Many of those featured were people who would never normally get a chance to speak at these events, and they were given a platform in the film. I stand by the choices I made regarding every single interviewee, and I thank them for their trust and cooperation.

• Venue Representation:

  • We were a bit surprised the Liffey was featured in the film instead of Wirströms, as Martin is an avid supporter and sponsor of SIS. It would have been a nice touch. I understand you asked him on Saturday if he’d like to be interviewed, and he declined.

This is straight-up wrong.

The Liffey was not featured in the film *instead* of Wirströms; in fact, both of Wirströms pubs, in Gamla Stan and the fantastic new location on Kungsgatan 7 in the heart of the city, were featured – one of the biggest laughs in the room was when the sign for “funeral sandwiches” served at its recent launch came up on the screen.

Molly Breen was interviewed outside it, Sofie Murphy inside, and the book club in the basement of the Gamla Stan pub featured as Sofie spoke over it about Irish culture.

The chairperson correctly stated that Martin is one of the most supportive people of our community and always has been; he is also one of the most modest, and he did indeed decline an interview on the night.

As far as I can recall, one of the only times he agreed to speak to me on camera was during Covid, when I did a piece from the pub about Sweden’s lack of a lockdown for a major international media outlet, and if he ever feels the need to go in front of the camera or to speak on the record, he knows where to find me.

• Interview Selection:

  • While I’m glad Brian, Padraig, and Sofie were interviewed, I would like to point out that they are not members of SIS. The video should have focused to a far greater degree on SIS members and their experiences of the Society.

The key word here is “should”. When making the film, I wanted the strongest, most entertaining, most diverse and representative voices I could find and film using the limited time and resources I had available.

Brian O’Connor’s reflections on the warmth, friendship and support in the community shown to him as a musician were so strong that he is the last person to speak in the film, and the McCann family are a perfect illustration of who the society says it wants to be in the future – should they then be excluded simply because they haven’t gotten around to joining yet?

Sofie has been a very active member and indeed served on the committee in recent years, and I was unaware that she had stepped down after 2023 and was no longer part of the society – an event that asks a whole lot of other questions that we do not have time for here.

All were accessible to me when I needed them to be, and all performed brilliantly.

And now to the final lines:

In summary, we’re not happy with where we landed here. We’re quite disappointed. I’d like to discuss what steps we can take to rectify it (where it is possible to do so), and to agree on a way forward.

Best regards

Carmel.

I have read and re-read these lines dozens of times, and cannot interpret them in any other way than the naked truth of what they say, as outlined by the chairperson.

The Swedish-Irish Society was not happy – in fact, it was disappointed – with my work.

That is of course disappointing, but it’s fine – I have explained above what I tried to do and how I tried to do it, and if it’s not good enough, then I accept that that is their opinion of it, even if I don’t agree with it.

All that remains is “that steps we can take to rectify it”, and mine are very simple – given the tone of how the criticism was presented, I told the society that, though I disagree strongly about their assessment of my work, I neither want nor expect to be paid for what I did on the booklet or the film.

To have put so much effort into “From There To Here” and to then receive that email from the chairperson of the most influential Irish organisation in the Nordic region is not something I can take lightly, and on Monday night I resigned my membership of the society and that of my family.

On Saturday night, when we couldn’t get the sound to work in the venue, I had spoken of how I hoped that my children who were there would be among those who take the society forward into the next 75 years, and I felt very emotional at that prospect.

On Monday night, all of that was in tatters as I resigned our family membership and requested that the chairperson, the committee and the organisation to leave me in peace and not contact me again. Some things cannot be unsaid.

I am very proud to have documented the 75th anniversary of the society in the way that I did – contrary to the opinion as expressed in the email above, I don’t think it’s “weak” at all.

I do what I do because of the deep bonds of love and friendship that I have forged with so many people in the Swedish-Irish community, and I make a point of never asking for anything for myself in return.

But I do demand to be treated with respect, and the mail above is anything but – any organisation that dismisses the value of my work, calls it “weak” or suggests that I in some way have not fulfilled my obligations to my community is something that I cannot be a part of, not now, nor ever again.

I wish them every success in the future, but it is a future that I will play no part in.