Gentleman Jim speaks out

I’m surprised by the number of people who’ve asked me, after my interview with him, “What’s Jim Allister like?”  Want the truth? OK. I found Jim Allister courteous, witty and the kind of guy you might like to, if not to have a beer with, at least a glass of good wine. Not that there were any signs of wine or strong liquor of any kind when I interviewed him in his office at Stormont.

His parents came from County Monaghan  - one of the three Ulster counties left behind, so to say, when Ireland was partitioned.  That and the fact that both parents were “quite robust and strong” in their unionism probably, he says, played a part in shaping his own political views. Have those views changed over time? Well, he tells me, his enthusiasm for devolution has waned in no uncertain manner, due to the kind of devolution he sees here in the North. 

When we talk about the signing of the Ulster Covenant, he brings it quickly round to the present day. And he’s more than critical of his fellow-unionists.

“They have settled for incredible propositions. We’re supposed to be an integral part of the United Kingdom but we’re not allowed to change our government, we’re not allowed to have an opposition. In fact we must have in government those whose organisations set about murdering and butchering us. As of right! These seem to me light years away from the principles that underscored the Ulster Covenant. I think if you were to say to anyone who signed the Ulster Covenant in 1912 that, a hundred years hence, manifestation of those whose politics you fear will be effectively ruling over you, as of right, and you will not be allowed to have an opposition against them, and you’ll not be allowed to put them out of government or change your government - they would say ‘That’s not what we’re signing the Ulster Covenant for, it’s the very antithesis of what we’re signing the Ulster Covenant for’ ”. 

He had a great-uncle -  his father’s uncle - who died at the Somme, so he believes tribute should be paid to his sacrifice and that of so many more.

“I wouldn’t want to see the Battle of the Somme or any other anniversary hijacked for the politics of the day. We’ve seen that so much, in the selling of the Belfast Agreement, from Bono and John Hume and all the rest in the Waterfront Hall, and every bandwagon being used to sell the latest political message. I don’t want to see a solemn occasion like remembering the Battle of the Somme being turned into a political circus. If the people in the Republic feel enthused to celebrate and mark those who donned the British uniform, then that’s a welcome thing. But my fear is, if you start massaging commemorations for political purposes, then they lose their real purpose. Joint celebration? There’ll be celebrations open to everyone. Just as joining the British Army was open to everyone, and thankfully many of both persuasions did join it. So I don’t think you have to go about and create some sort of artificial ambience for all of this. Either there is something there worth celebrating or there isn’t.”

I’ve saved the tricky one of the three centenaries  - the Easter Rising - for last. How does he see a commemoration of Easter 1916 panning out.

“I have no doubt that already, from the Sinn Féin direction, just as they turn the Hunger Strike commemorations into big political events for their own political advantage, that there will be every attempt on their part to celebrate those whey would see, in their terms, as their forefathers in the rebellion they have engaged in. To an extent they are entitled to do that as they wish. But likewise don’t let them patronise me or ram it down my throat - or rewrite history or recreate them as some sort of heroes.  In my book they were rebels taking the opportunity, as the IRA often did, of Britain’s extremity, to pursue a course of rebellion.  And I don’t want it sanitised and changed beyond the truth of what it was. They’re not going to persuade me that those who took over the GPO did the right thing and that they were anything other than how I’ve described them. If they killed in pursuit of their aim then yes, of course they were murderers, because they weren’t regular troops, acting under the protection of a state of war.”

He concedes that centenary commemorations could increase division between people here but he believes certain occasions demand a response. 

“I think a nation who forgets its history loses its soul.I mean, what is it that makes any nation what they are? It’s the War of Independence and the Civil War, among other things. Now no one suggests to an American that in the interests of the overall collegiate good we should forget about all that, we shouldn’t celebrate any of that or mark any of that.  Likewise no one should suggest to me as a unionist that iconic historic events should not be marked in the way that they deserve, in deference to some nebulous thing which is called progress”.

You could call Jim Allister a thorn in the DUP’s side, a throw-back, a fundamentalist. One thing you couldn’t call him is mealy-mouthed. With Jim Allister, what you see is what you get.  You may not like it but as he sees it, that’s your problem, not his.

[ In case someone hasn't already twigged: this is an edited version of my interview with Jim Allister in my book 'Whose Past Is It Anyway?'  Contact me if your bad local book shop hasn't stocked it and I'll sort you...]

Checking the mirror

I was in Omagh last night, talking to an audience that included a selection of History students and their teacher from the local integrated college. We were talking under the general heading of my book title Whose Past Is It Anyway?. Even as we discussed, back on both sides of Belfast Lough, in Carrickfergus and in Bangor,  loyalists/unionists were taking a leap back into the past - they were busy attacking the Alliance Party centre and issuing death threats to its members. Why? Because  Belfast Alliance councillors had dared to vote - in a completely peaceful, democratic way - for the Union flag to fly over Belfast City Hall on a number of designated days, rather than for 365 days each year. In short, loyalists/unionists had used violence to attack democracy.

In Omagh, our discussion ranged widely. There was quite some time spent looking at  the distinction between ‘celebrating’ a centenary and ‘commemorating’ a centenary, with a general feeling that ‘commemorating’  suggested a more thoughtful attitude to the past, seeing what we could learn from it and what no longer made sense. I quoted from Bernadette McAliskey in the book as exemplifying this take on the past:

“The dead are dead - they have no stake in it, they’re not here. They can inform - the past can inform and guide us in our thinking in the present - but we can’t make choices in the present because somebody died at the Somme or because somebody died in the Easter Rising or because somebody signed the Covenant in his blood”.

It was a lively and informative evening. Perhaps the most interesting moment was when a man who was clearly a committed unionist (“When I hear you come on the radio, I do everything short of throwing it out the window”`) made his contribution.  He declared that he was celebrating the signing of the Covenant, not simply commemorating it. When it was suggested that it might be helpful to sit down, either with fellow-unionists or better still with natioanalists/republicans, and discuss the different perspectives on the same event and what lessons might be learnt for the future, he was firm. Not interested.  Not an inch. End of story.

Maybe it was because he felt outnumbered - there were probably more nationalists/republicans in the audience than unionist - or maybe it was for other reasons. But I remembered the words of Danny Morrison, another of my interviewees from the book. He spoke of the need to “get unionists to relax”. Only when that happens, when they don’t feel threatened, can worthwhile progress be made. The not-interested man in the Omagh audience brought that home forcefully to me. I suppose like other nationalists/republicans, it’s something I tend too often to forget. 

On the other hand, I look at an opinion piece in yesterday's  Guardian by Gareth Mulvenna, which is talking about the violence at Belfast City Hall on Monday night. It concludes

 "Surely parties such as Sinn Fein and the SDLP would not direct such aggressive politics on to the very fringes of society, given that they continually preach about social, economic and political rights? If community relations have been damaged on this occasion, Sinn Fein, the SDLP and Alliance need only look in their respective mirrors."    

Mmm. If Mr Mulvenna were to look in the mirror, he might see my not-an-inch audience member from last night.

Invest NI CEO's pay-hike? FFS!

I’m sitting here listening to a debate the Nolan programme and it’s about the hefty pay-hike the CEO of Invest NI is getting. It’s around £30,000.  Jim Allister is arguing that this is too much, a brace of economic big-shots are arguing that it’s a hike well-deserved.

FFS!  Let’s try some facts about CEO pay, on this side of the Atlantic and the other side.

1. The argument that if you don’t pay CEOs chunky money they’ll leave is bogus. The University of Delaware has produced a study which shows that CEOs don’t move very often but when they do, they’re flops.
2. The bigger the gap between CEO pay and average worker pay, the lower the company’s morale, productivity and turnover. Studies by among others Northeastern University Business School and Bentley University show productivity decreasing as the CEO-average worker’s pay gap increases.
3. Is there any measure of parity between the top and the bottom? The University of California shows that in 2010 the top 1 per cent captured 93 per cent of the growth in income. 
4. But hasn’t it always been like this? Yes, but not nearly as glaringly. In 1998, the average CEO earned 47 times that of the average worker. By 2010 the figure was 120 times.
5. Some years ago, Sir Martin Sorrell, the WPP advertising boss, made an ass of himself when he claimed that, given the job, his £1 milliona year basic pay was “very low”. His total package was actually £4.2 million. 
6. While the good times lasted, the former bosses of Cable & Wireless and Thomas Cook took more than £15 million each from their companies. Then the shares crashed and Thomas Cook almost went bust. Neither man is handing any money back. 
7. ‘Performance-related pay’ is a sham.  What it means is that the CEO avoids paying taxes on the money.  Last year this cost the US tax-payer $9.7 billion.  With the same money, salaries could have been provided for over 140,000 elementary school teachers or healthcare for nearly 5 million low-income children.
8. In 1998 Britain, the average CEO earned 47 times the average worker. By 2010 the figure was 120 times. And if you think that’s bad, in 1980  the US's top CEOs got 42 times as much as the average worker. Today the figure is well over 300 times that of the average worker.

Tell you a secret? I don’t blame the CEOs for taking home truckloads of money. The system allows it. Why ain’t the system fixed, then? Because politicians (cf David Cameron’s cabinet) are part of the system as it is and benefit by it. 

About last night ( what, AGAIN?)

There are a lot of arguments advanced by those who think the Union flag should fly over Belfast City Hall 365 days a year ( +1 on a leap year). Their most obvious argument last night was to yell foul-mouthed abuse,  smash cars and attack police officers and security staff. Those unionists (i.e. the Alliance Party) who think 365 days is a bit over-the-top chose the selected-days option, and so it was decided. Latest word is that the Union flag will fly instead fly 365 days a year over the cenotaph beside City Hall.  This of course will help the city centre become a 'shared space'. And your granny was a jockey in last year's Grand National.

Unionists are violent/angry because, they say, the symbols of their Britishness are being cabined, cribbed, confined by republicans/nationalists. Oh really?  Put your hand in mine and let's take a walk through City Hall.

In the grounds in front of the Hall we see, among other things, an 11-foot-high statue of Queen Victoria and a memorial to Sir Edward J Harland MP (designed by Sir Alfred Brumwell Thomas and unveiled by Field Marshall Viscount Allenby). There’s more but it’s chilly. Let’s go inside.  

Now. Here we have a bronze statue to the Earl of Belfast, Frederick Richard Chichester, and this  mural commissioned to mark the Festival of Britain in 1951.  These are portraits of  King Edward VII, the Earl of Shaftesbury and Sir Edward Harland. Over there are stained glass windows showing the Royal Coat of Arms and those of the Chichester family. Here’s a special case displaying the Royal Charter granted to Belfast in 1613 and the 1888 Charter from Queen Victoria. And as we walk into the Banqueting Hall, you will note a series of stained glass windows showing  the Royal Arms and those of Lord Donegall and Lord Shaftesbury.  And you’ve probably noticed the stained glass windows showing King William III, Queen Victoria and King Edward VI.

Got the picture yet? Belfast City Hall, in the overwhelming number of its signs and symbols, is a warm-as-toast  house for those who subscribe to the union with Britain;  for non-subscribers, alas, it’s some degrees below cool.  And that, mind you,  without reference to a fluttering/non-fluttering Union flag above the building. 

Given that we’ve moved into an era where general lip-service is given to notions of parity,  an interesting question arises: what should be done about the historical decor of places like Belfast City Hall?  How might we make Belfast City centre a genuine shared space, with no signs/ symbols associated with one community crowding out those of another?

Well, you could do what was done with Nelson’s pillar in Dublin: set explosives, blow up what is out of place. When that happened in 1966, a considerable number of those living in Dublin and further afield were upset. They dismissed this direct-action approach as caveman, primitive.  It’s a reasonable argument, even though  I’ve never heard anyone within or beyond the Pale complain that in the 1920s  Great Brunswick Street in Dublin became Pearse Street, Great Britain Street became Parnell Street and Sackville Street became O’Connell Street. What’s more, did anyone of the pillar-lovers ring in and complain when the statue of Sadaam Hussein was pulled down following the American invasion of Iraq?  So it seems it’s  not always barbaric to remove the signs of a former regime when a new one comes into its own. 

I’m not for a moment saying all the British royalty and aristocracy artefacts listed above should be removed. I’ll not even argue that a balancing number of stained glass windows and statues should be constructed in honour of famous Irish leaders, or that street names be changed to reflect changed times. 

What I am saying is that those today wringing their hands and rending their garments because their Union flag will no longer flutter over City Hall every day that God sends, and who feel that Monday night stripped them of their British identity   -  those people really should take the City Hall tour.  That or  go to Specsavers. 

Tim Pat and 'Comrade' Kennedy

Maybe you caught it yourself. I missed the first half of the Sunday Sequence debate,  so I went into the Radio Ulster/Raidio Uladh site and listened to it all. It was like watching a couple of duellists, with a sword in one hand and a rapier in the other. I’ m referring, of course, to the debate on the Famine between Tim Pat Coogan and Professor Liam Kennedy from Queen’s University. 

The point of difference was clear:  Kennedy figured Coogan had written a book (The Famine Plot) which was narrow in its “evidential sources”, a book that was “out-dated and out-moded” and in which it was “terribly difficult to find any redeeming feature”.  The rest of us, gentle souls that we are, would have fallen to the floor, skewered for keeps in the face of such an authoritative attack. Not Tim Pat.  He cited AJP Taylor  ( a historian, he suggested, who might carry a bit more authority than Kennedy) who said that the Famine made Ireland  a kind of Belsen. The British welcomed the Famine, and led by the London Times,   looked forward to the day when “the Celt will be as rare on the banks of the Shannon” as the Red Indian in the US.  

Kennedy said this was misrepresenting the British, that it was in fact history as demonisation. He claimed that the British administrator Trevelyan acted “according to his own lights, trying to save as many Irish from starvation as possible”.  “I’m not defending the policies at the time” Kennedy concluded, which seemed a strange thing to say, since he’d been doing that with some energy for several minutes. 

Tim Pat’s book, it seems, centres on the question of whether the Famine was an act of genocide. He argues that according to the UN Protocol on genocide, the Irish Famine “ticks all the boxes”.  The English saw the Famine coming and did nothing. When it arrived they didn’t close the ports - grain was being exported as people died on the roadside. Yes, the government established soup kitchesn - but one year later cancelled them. He also noted, significantly, that the Famine commemoration committee, set up by the Irish government and of which he was a member, were not able to hold a meeting north of the border, such was the animosity displayed by some there.  

Who’s right? Well, maybe if you read Coogan’s book you can decide for yourself. Alternatively, you might like to read something on the subject by the man that Tim Pat referred to as ‘Comrade Kennedy’. That baffled me for a bit, until then I wondered if this  could be the Kennedy who ran with spectacular lack of success for the Conservative Party in North Down a few years back? Or maybe that was another of the Kennedys.

One thing’s for sure. The revisionist historians, exemplified by Kennedy, will find it harder to maintain the terrible-tragedy-nobody-could-have-averted line as more writers and historians like Coogan enter the field. 

Niall O'Dowd and the view from America

This is an edited version of the Niall O'Dowd interview in my book Whose Past Is It Anyway?

I meet Niall O’Dowd in a Dublin hotel during one of his frequent trips to Ireland. He was a central figure in the lead-up to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement and showed everyone how important the Irish diaspora is in creating a new Ireland. 

He now lives in the US but grew up in Co Louth in a family of mixed political allegiances. His father was “an unreconstructed de Valera-ite”, his brother is a Fine Gael TD, another brother was Mayor of Drogheda, one sister is active in Fine Gael,  another sister active in Fianna Fail.  His own political thinking has evolved over time.

“When I was young I was very much of the opinion that de Valera was right about the Civil War. Now as I get older and get more experience and less certain of myself, I can see Michael Collins’s point of view: take what you can at this point and then build on the rest of it.”

When I mention a notion popular among unionists and some nationalists - that Irish-American understanding of the situation here is romantic and clueless  - he gives it short shrift.

“I think we understand it better than people here. I think our history is a radical history. We funded the Fenian uprising, we funded the 1916 Rising. Our view all along was that the fundamentals, that partition was wrong and needed to be addressed. We succeeded in getting President Clinton and George Mitchell involved. I think everybody involved, unionists and everyone else would agree, instead of admiring the problem, Americans attacked it, which is what they do, and I think without them there wouldn’t have been a peace process”.

On the subject of the signing of the Covenant, he pulls no punches either.

“What the signing of the Covenant always spoke to me of was the hypocrisy of unionism, by saying that nationalists had to abide by political means, when 1912 was the very antithesis of that. It was the declaration of war against the Home Rule Bill and it was a declaration of war by unionism. It was followed up by the Curragh Mutiny, which was followed up by what occurred after the 1916 Rising. So from that point of view it’s a very important moment in Irish history. It’s not one that I think unionism should be particularly proud of, because it’s a notion that democracy or the rule of law was secondary to their own beliefs. They literally took up arms right after the signing of the Covenant, and the fact that they took up arms led, in many ways, to the Easter Rising”

And he sees the Rising as the cornerstone of the Irish state, with all that that implies.

“I see the 1916 Proclamation as the foundation document. It’s hugely important in terms of Irish identity, not just in Ireland but world-wide. I think it was the fire that lit the inspiration for millions of Irish-Americans, Irish-Australians, Irish-Canadians, that they suddenly realised that the Irish were going to step forward and take their place among the nations of the world. I would commemorate it the same way I would commemorate the American Declaration of Independence in America. It’s a foundation document that gets more and more important as the years go on, and I think the hundredth anniversary is a huge event for nationalists to celebrate. I have always looked on the men of 1916 as heroic figures and I will continue to do so. Anyone who looks on them otherwise is misunderstanding the bravery and the incredible courage of going out, knowing you were going to be killed, in pursuit of an ideal”.

I mention that some people would consider that not courage but madness.

“It may well have been, but it’s the madness of George Washington taking on the British army, it’s the madness of the French Revolution. That’s how revolutions begin.”

I bring him back to his admiration of the Proclamation of Independence and suggest that any commemoration of 1916 will have to face the fact that the struggle for independence wound up with partition.

“I personally would love to see a united Ireland. I think this country has been stymied because of the lack of a united Ireland. I think the Irish Republic has suffered greatly as a result of a sort of Little Ireland mentality, that Northern Ireland wasn’t part of this island for sixty, seventy years, and I think that historically partition will be seen as the greatest mistake, as it was in India, by the British, and any other country they partitioned. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t work as a long-term solution to anything, and it didn’t work in Ireland.”

He’s a man of very firm views, delivered with a pleasant smile. When we talk about the Battle of the Somme,once more there are no ifs and buts.

“The First World War was an absolutely catastrophic event that should never have happened. Thousands and thousands of Irish people - Northern Irish Protestants and Irish Catholics -  died needlessly. The First World War was complete disaster, the Battle of the Somme was a complete disaster.”

But does he not see that a case can be made for the courage and devotion of the men who gave their lives in the Great War?

“I see a case for retroactively court-martialling the British Chief-of-Staff, General Haig - that’s what I see. I  think the courage of the men who died should be remembered because they were cannon fodder. They lived in a very different era where men were sent forth to die so that generals could draw lines on maps”.

He’s convinced that commemorating the Somme or 1916 or the Ulster Covenant need not deepen division here. If the Troubles were still ongoing, it’d be a different matter.

“We’ve moved on with the Good Friday Agreement, the power-sharing government, the intervention of the United States, the intervention of the Irish and British governments, the extraordinary achievement of the Irish peace process. When history is written, this era will be remembered as a golden era, because of what was accomplished by the Irish peace process, which ended the longest-running warfare in Europe. In fact it’s seen as the defining event as to how things could happen elsewhere in the world. So it’s something we should be very proud of.”

Peter Robinson: are you the Captain in disguise?

Peter Robinson doesn’t look like Terence O’Neill and he doesn’t sound like him (OK, maybe a smidgen of nasal-tone match) but in his  DUP conference  speech he reminded me of the Captain.

For the benefit of the younger members of our audience, Captain Terence O’Neill was the top man of unionism in the 1960s. Most people remember him for his famous Crossroads speech, of which nobody took a blind bit of notice. Some people remember him for inviting An Taoiseach Sean Lemass,up to Stormont for a cup of tea. Myself, I remember him as the Man Who Visited Convents. One minute, he’d never been near one, next you couldn’t open a newspaper but you’d see Terence  flanked by a set of smiling nuns. No, Virginia, Captain O’Neill was not thinking of converting to Catholicism. He was in those convents in search not of faith but votes.  Catholic votes. Alas, Catholics started demanding civil rights instead and then the balloon went up.

You may wonder why O’Neill wanted Catholic votes.  Hadn’t he more than enough votes from Protestants/unionists? He had.  But maybe the Captain figured the demographics, long-term, were against him.  Or maybe he felt nervous with this large undigested section of the population straining in the opposite direction from him and unionism. You may be sure he wasn’t looking for Catholic votes because he really, really liked Catholics. He wanted their votes because he was convinced it’d be in the interests of unionism.

Which brings us to Peter Robinson’s speech. In it, Peter scoffed at the idea of having a border poll and declared more Catholics than ever before are now happy to remain in the United Kingdom. 

Those two statements surprised me, coming from Peter. I’ve always thought of  him as a man of logic.  On the few occasions when he tried making gestures towards the emotional or dramatic,  like wearing an Ulster Resistance beret or breaking windows in Clontibret, he just looked silly. So it baffles me how he could hold those two views in his head simultaneously: (i)  a border poll is laughable and (ii) more Catholics than ever want to stay in the union.

John Taylor,  the greatest leader  unionism never had, used to say the second bit - that lots of Catholics were happy as pigs in muck with the present set-up. But he never added “And a border poll would be ridiculous”.  Peter, in contrast, did.  Which pushes to centre-stage the obvious question: what better time for a unionist to have a border poll than when loads of Catholics are in favour of the union? Think what it’d mean if the union got a resounding Yes from tens of thousands of Catholics: a major - perhaps the major plank in Sinn Féin’s platform would have been sawn clean off.  If I thought like Peter, I’d be yelling “Bring it on, right now!”  And were he to do so, I’d be the first to clap him on the back. Not because I have access to the voting intentions of Catholics ( which Peter appears to have) but because I think we should dealing in realities and not dreams. 

For fifty years, successive Irish governments in the south dodged reality, particularly the reality of the border. They gave impressive speeches about the need to strive for the historical goal of a united Ireland, but they never stirred a finger to help achieve that goal. So let’s all, unionist and anti-unionist, try not to sink to that hypocritical level.

Because here’s the thing: a border poll would tell us all where we stood. Peter is confident any referendum on constitutional change would be resoundingly defeated. Maybe he’s right. Or maybe he’s wrong. But if we had the actual wishes of the people, we’d know where we stand. If a majority favours continued union with Britain, then nationalists and republicans will have to go off and have a rethink.   If, however, the poll indicated that Peter was wrong and that a majority of people are in favour of a re-united Ireland, then their wishes, in line with the Good Friday Agreement, will have to be acted on.

One thing’s sure: driving into the future with your headlights switched off isn’t just silly. It’s dangerous.