Theresa Villiers - what is she for?

As Belfast City Hall braces itself for another flags protest at lunchtime today, and Leinster House in Dublin waits with fear and trembling for the arrival of Willie Frazer and his rag-tag-and-bobtail crew, who will demand “sarcastically” (Willie’s word, I promise you) that the tricolour be removed from above that place, my thoughts turn naturally to Theresa Villiers, the British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.

What is she for? I mean, not what does she support (we’ll get to that in a minute) but what purpose does she serve? Apart, that is, from being ready to keep in jail someone like Marian Price, on the impeccable legal grounds that she doesn’t like the look of her or what she might do next. At one time - when we had no Assembly - I could see a case being argued for a Secretary of State. These days, other than living in luxury above in Hillsborough Castle, does she do anything?

Well yes. Let’s be fair. The woman has come out and has said that the flags protest is a bad thing and should stop. What, after all, is the point in disrupting civil life and issuing death threats, all over a flag that’s going to get its 15 or 17 days in the sun anyway? To the cool eye of a detached observer like Theresa, the people gathering in front of City Hall today, not to mention the ones attacking police in places like Carrickfergus and Albertbrige Road,  must appear a bunch of primitive natives. 

Except, er, um, it appears to depend on what flag we’re talking about and where it’s being flown/not being flown. Thanks to a pointer from a sharp-eyed poster on one of my blogs,  I can now reveal that Theresa believes flags are very important. In 2000, a newspaper report records that the Foreign Office “came under fire” when it was found that two of Britain’s three embassies in Belgium fail regularly to fly the Union flag. This  is when the Tories were in opposition. They were very miffed at this non-flag-flying, and said it showed a lack of national pride by the Foreign Office.

“It is part of a conspiracy to sell us down the road until we find ourselves just a province of the United States of Europe. Our flag should fly every day, that’s what embassies are for”.

Change a few words in that and it could have been drafted by one of our own revolting flag-people. And who was the speaker? Non other than a London MEP of the time, one Theresa Villiers. 

I think she and Willie Frazer should have a little chat together. They’ll be amazed at how much they have in common. 

History and her abuse

“History’s a whore. She rides the winners”.  That was the blunt assessment of one of Stewart Parker’s characters in Northern Star.  Is it a fair judgement? What is history anyway?

When I was interviewing for my book Whose Past Is It Anyway?  Davy Adams made the point that he’d be happy to see  TV commemoration of, for example, the Easter Rising, but that “each programme should be a historical analysis, a straight historical analysis pointing out benefits, faults, why people made the decisions they made and the rest of it”. 

The trouble with that is that analyses differ and history suffers. In Glasgow at present there are moves to establish a monument to the victims of the Irish Famine and the impact they had on Scottish society, when 100,000 Irish people came flooding into that country. Professor Tom Devine, who’s the director of the Scottish Centre of Diaspora Studies in Edinburgh University, has warned that they must deal in truths, not myths. For example, their account should beware highlighting Glasgow’s generosity at the time, since almost 50,000 immigrants were sent back to Ireland.

Ian  Paisley Jr, who I also interviewed for my book,  sees himself as something of a historian. While he has some regard for James Connolly, he says,  Patrick Pearse was “a lunatic”. That’s because, he says,  Pearse entered a battle knowing that it was doomed but doing so because he believed Ireland required a blood sacrifice. “In his own words he compares his blood sacrifice to that of Christ’s. Those are the words of a lunatic. I mean, he was going there deliberately to die. You go into battle to win - even if you know you’re going to die [Laughs]”

We really shouldn’t need to think twice about the slipperiness of history and the different faces that are put on it. The same applies to current events.  The Assembly at Stormont, by and large, has stopped doing it but the Dail in Dublin continues the whorish practice of selective condemnation. One example: any time a Sinn Féin TD, whether that’s Gerry Adams or Dessie Ellis or Mary Lou McDonald, confronts a member of the government with uncomfortable facts about the savage cuts they’re making, the government will throw up a shield composed of carefully-selected items from the past. Whether it’s Gerry Adams’s membership or non-membership of the IRA, Dessie Ellis’s involvement or non-involvement in “fifty murders” or Mary Lou McDonald’s party and what happened to Jean McConville, carefully-selected facts/opinions/myths are produced so that people can get caught up in the emotion of that instance and forget what the original question was. 

Or if the Dail’s too far away, read the Indo  on any given day and whether it’s Corporal Kevin Myers or some of his less-well-known scribbling comrades, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the entire northern conflict of the 1970s and 1980s was the product of a mass onslaught of psychotic mayhem  by the IRA on an innocent and peaceful populace. Start and end of story. 

Professor Devine may think it’ll be difficult getting the history of the Irish Famine straight in terms of Scotland. He should sit in on a Dail session where Enda has been backed into a welfare-cuts corner. Or read the Indo. 

I read the news today, oh boy!

One of the marks of a civilized society is a free press. Free to print any headline they like. You'll remember when Gerry Adams resigned his Westminster seat,  the press had great fun with headlines about how he now was a baron or something like that, because if you resigned a seat at Westminster they gave you one, whether you wanted it or not. How we all laughed!

Now Martin McGuinness has resigned and the free press  have swung into action once more, as only they can:

Martin McGuinness accepts title to resign as MP

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/martin-mcguinness-accepts-title-to-resign-as-mp-8435819.html

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………

McGuinness rejects title after resignation from Commons

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2013/0103/1224328378918.html

Sometimes, in your anxiety to take a swing at a fellah, you can fall head over arse. Nice one, guys.

A can of worms? Leave it to Leo

Leo Varadkar , the south’s Transport Minister, is generally regarded as seriously right-wing. So I’m not sure what he was thinking of when he told journalists that he was in favour of votes for the Irish diaspora. “I like the idea of the President being the President of the Irish people and the Irish nation. We would like to extend voting rights to all Irish citizens”. 

He then added two highly significant points.  “I would favour it for people who are only out of the country for a short period of time - maybe say they’re gone a year or two, But I don’t think people who are gone a long time should vote for our parliament.”

What nice Leo is saying is that the diaspora vote would have to have boundaries - you couldn’t have some paddy who’d arrived in New York circa 1957 lining up to vote in an Irish election in a couple of years' time. The second and more significant point here is that he’s talking not just about the presidential election but elections to the Dail.

“So what?” you may say. “I’m not part of the diaspora - I live in the north”. Yes indeed. And can you see a circumstance where emigrants are allowed to vote for the President while people from the north are not? Unsustainable - totally unsustainable. Not even a Sindo columnist could twist that one into something credible. And supposing those of us in the north had a vote in the last Presidential election: you don’t think that would have affected the outcome? For a start, all those people in the north who vote Sinn Féin would almost certainly have thrown their weight behind Martin McGuinness. That’s a lot of votes and a lot of weights.

Then there’s the unionist factor (which Leo diplomatically doesn’t mention either). Had people in the north been allowed to vote for who should be President of Ireland, would they have abstained with disdain? Or would they have voted to make sure that McGuinness didn’t get the job? Alternatively, would they have voted so he did get the job, since it’s generally acknowledged that McGuinness is one of the most popular politicians in the north, and not just among republicans. 

And finally, supposing Leo’s dream became reality and “all Irish citizens” had a vote for Dail Eireann. Would that swell or diminish the ranks of Sinn Féin in the Dail? I think you know the answer to that one. But even more intriguing is, what would unionists do? At first glance, you might think they’d declare they didn’t vote in foreign elections and ignore the whole thing. Maybe better take a second glance. The kind of government south of the border has always been important for the north, whether it’s tourism or ‘terrorism’ that’s at issue. There’d be several good reasons why unionists should cast a vote that would make the complexion of the Dail closer to their taste. On the other hand, that would mean unionists when they voted for the Dail were part of an all-Ireland electorate. Which would leave one big question:  whither Stormont?

I wonder if Leo knows how big is the an of worms he’s just unzipped? You know, the odd thing is I think he does. 

That Border poll: who's right?

When I was interviewing Gregory Campbell for my book he made an interesting point regarding unionism. He said that when the south of Ireland was riding high ten years ago, unionists weren’t interested in a re-united Ireland; now that they are a bankrupt state  unionists still aren’t interested. In short, he said, economics had nothing to do with the matter. 

That’s a parallel but different track from the line that Peter Robinson has been taking of late. His argument that many Catholics are now happy to remain within the UK - that is, have become unionist - is because they have no wish to associate with the bankrupt republic to the south. In other words, they know which side their bread is buttered on. They want to stay in the union with Britain for economic reasons.

To sum up: unionists/Protestants simply can’t be bought - their commitment to Britain is total and unchanging. Nationalists/Catholics, however, can be bought - their commitment to a re-united Ireland is partial and dependent on material prosperity. 

Do you believe that? I don’t.  Certainly the past 400 years seem to give a different answer. But who knows? Times change.

Interestingly, today’s Irish Times  reports that Sinn Féin over the coming weeks will launch a campaign for a Border poll on a re-united Ireland. And the man who says that many Catholics/nationalists are now happy to be part of the UK, that less than 10% of people here want a re-united country,  says there’s no justification for such a poll and that it would only deepen division. 

Odd, that. The man who calls for a poll - Gerry Adams - is doing so in the teeth of polls suggesting it would be lost by nationalists/republicans. Why is that? Does he just want to put a re-united Ireland on the agenda? The man who’s opposed to a poll - Peter Robinson -  is convinced it would be won with a spanking majority by Protestant + Catholic unionists. Why is that? Does he want to avoid eye-balling the gorilla in the room? 

One teensy footnote: The Irish Times  today also reports Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore as predicting that a ‘post-recession’  south will emerge by the end of this year. “I believe there is going to be a commitment and understanding in Europe that the EU needs a winner to come out of a bail-out programme. Ireland is the best placed to do that”.

So supposing he’s right and the south starts to recover. What implications for a border poll would that have, especially among the finances-fixated Catholics/nationalists?  We live in interesting times.

Nervous look over shoulder at 2012

OK, January 1. Time to look back at what was lost and what was won. 

On second thoughts, the hell with that. Read back issues of the papers if you want that. I’ll give you what I see as the most significant event in the year: the census figures.

Last time -  2001 - we had a census up here, there was much breath-holding. It was figured the Catholic population would make a seismic leap ( and you know the size of leap a seism can make). I consulted a number of experts in advance of the figures coming out. Oh yes, definitely, this will be a game-changer. If memory serves (and it’s getting lazier all the time), my old chum Brian Feeney from the VO bet a bottle of champagne (they’re a classy lot at the VO - always were) that the figures would be, um, seismic or something. He lost. When the figures were announced, Catholics had increased in number but nowhere near what the experts had confidently predicted. 

This year, the figures were down-played in advance, probably because no one likes looking like an arse twice in a row.  And this time they were seismic. Protestant population down by 5%, Catholic population up by 1%.  Which leaves Protestants a minority in the state founded as a Protestant state for a Protestant people. If this last census’s figures were replicated in seven years time,  Catholics would have a 3% majority. 

“So what?” you say. “It’s clear that old-fashioned ideas like Catholics voting for nationalist candidates and Protestants voting for unionist candidates is completely out-of-date. Things are more complex, fluid now. Get with the programme”. 

Funny, I never heard much about this many-Catholics-love-being-in-the-UK until a short while before figures were released, and the claims for same were led by Peter Robinson, not until now known as a reader of nationalist sentiment or intentions. Of course Peter had previous - a few months earlier, he had appealed for a single education system. This of course had nothing to do with the firm majority of Catholics now attending schools in the north.

“Northern Irish” -  that’s the flag around which somewhat nervous unionists have rallied. It’s all change now, because 21% of people described themselves as ‘Northern Irish’ and only a quarter described themselves as ‘Irish’. Oh, and an awful lot of Catholics/nationalists carry a British passport. Sorry, guys. You can skip the passport one. The British model is much cheaper and more easily available here in the north; and ticking the ‘Northern Irish’ box means just that - it doesn’t mean “I’m really glad I live in the UK”. And it certainly doesn’t mean I’ll vote NO in a referendum for a re-united Ireland.

So that’s my significant event over the past year. Sectarian head-counting? Attempting to out-breed rather than out-bomb? Call it what you will: it could well be that the 100th anniversary of the creation of this state will also mark the date of its funeral. 

Happy New Year, all.

You murder, he kills, I clear the area

Either a number of commentators - notably from the Indo - are strangers to some of the grimmer facts of life,  or they are pretending to be shocked and horrified when they’re not. What am I talking about? I’m talking about Dessie Ellis.

Mr Ellis is a Sinn Féin TD who has never, as far as I know, made any secret of his former membership of the IRA. For several decades the IRA was engaged in a conflict/war/terrorist campaign (take your pick) against the RUC, the UDR and other British armed forces in the north. What happens in conflicts/wars/terrorist campaigns is that people try to kill each other. Put like that it sounds brutal and it is brutal. You might even say barbaric. But that’s what happens in conflicts/wars/terrorist campaigns. The winners are the ones who do the most killing or threaten to do the most killing ( cf Lloyd George’s threat of ‘terrible and immediate war’ in 1921). 

Now British documents hitherto under wraps allege that Mr Ellis was involved  in over fifty “murders” during the conflict/war/terrorist campaign in the north.  I’m not sure what Mr Ellis’s role in the IRA was, but it’s generally accepted that he played a prominent part. And since conflicts/wars/terrorist campaigns involve by their nature killings or attempted killings, the allegation could be true. Except, of course,  that conflicts/wars/terrorist campaigns don’t usually term the object of the exercise as “murder”.  We don’t say “President Truman ordered the murder of 255,000 Japanese civilians in Hiroshima”  or “Winston Churchill arranged for the murder of 25,000 Germans in Dresden” or “Between them, George Bush and Barack Obama used drone bombs to murder 2680 people, including 173 children” or “Opposition forces in Syria today murdered 18 state soldiers”. 

That’s because we don’t always disapprove of killing. We use “murder” when we want to say we disapprove, but we say ‘take out’  as in ‘Americans took out Osama bin Laden’, when we don’t think the killing was too bad an idea. When we think that the killing was a very good idea, of course, we pin ribbons and medals on the chests of the men who did the killing. Sometimes we erect statues to them.

My point? That when Indo writers such as Fiach Kelly  talk about Dessie Ellis and alleged  murder, they  mean that they disapprove of the IRA campaign in the 1970s and 1980s. Which most of us already knew. Had they been talking about the IRA campaign of Michael Collins in the second decade of the last century or the Arab Spring last year or countless other conflicts,  it’s a safe bet they would have used another word and shown considerably less moral outrage.