Basil McCrea and telling the truth

I like Basil McCrea. There’s something about his boyish chubby face and flop of fringe that reminds me of a bit player from Greyfriars School ( which Billy Bunter attended, and if you don’t know who Billy Bunter is, just trust me, OK?). He looks and sounds like a man who enjoys talking to people,  and he has shown himself open to engagement with political opponents in a no-big-deal way. (Actually when it’s put like that, it seems odd that he should stand out as different. But then we live in an odd place.)

Anyway, Basil is on the Unionist Naughty Step at the moment,  and it looks like he’ll spend more time there after his recent interview with a Lisburn local radio station.  In it he says some very interesting things. Here’s one, on the flags protest:

You first of all have to get people off the streets. And then you have to go through a long process of telling people the truth. You do have to explain to people that compromise is necessary. It is not a dirty word. It is the way you go forward in any democracy, trying to work out what is the best for the most people. 

I like some of the above paragraph a lot, especially the bit about ‘telling people the truth’.  If unionist leaders were to tell their constituents the truth, they’d remind them that Belfast City Hall has standing-room-only, it’s so packed with unionist memorials, paintings and statues. And they’d remind them that the city is saturated in streets, buildings and bridges, all of which loudly shout out “We’re unionist!”

Except that Belfast is no longer unionist. The city has more non-unionists than unionists.  If you reflect on that fact for a moment, you’ll quickly spot the bit of Basil’s paragraph that doesn’t work for me. He’s right to talk about the need for compromise, but psst, Basil. Flying the Union flag 17 times a year is not “what is best for the most people”. 

Try it from a Martian’s point of view. He gets out of his space-ship and is told that two more-or-less equal groups each has its own flag, how will they resolve this impasse fairly?  The Martian, assuming his brain hasn’t fried on entry to Earth, would almost certainly reply (in Martian) “Fly both flags or none”.  That actually would be a balanced compromise. But even when all 17 flag-flying occasions will feature the Union flag and none the Irish tricolour, all unionist hell breaks loose. So yes, Basil, there certainly is room for some more truth-telling.

Unfortunately, Basil’s position within his party is shaky, which tells you something about his party and about unionism in general. On Monday, even though still strictly speaking an Ulster Unionist, he voted against his own party. Clearly the Ulster Unionist Party is in a mess - rapid shuffling of leaders, mutterings against the present leader, people quitting the party. The DUP, in contrast, is much more cohesive, but it faces an appalling vista:  that its leader might be defeated not once but twice by an Alliance candidate. If that happens, the knives will be out and used. Then there’s the PUP,  intent on reviving its fortunes on the back of the flag protestors.  And after that there are all those unionists who are fuming with the laughing stock that’s been made of unionism by the fleg people.  In short, unionism is fracturing in the face of change, with more change, like it or lump it, on the way.   And the moral is? As Basil says, tell people the truth. And tell them it before it’s too late.

    

How smart is Arlene Foster?

Has the DUP’s Arlene Foster got a brain? She’s a lawyer so she may well have  (although not necessarily, since some members of that profession possess more in the way of low animal cunning).  But let’s give Arlene the benefit of any doubt and say she has a brain. If so, she parked at the studio door before appearing on the Nolan show last night. 

The topic was the border poll. Arlene made several points, sometimes cutting across others to make them. I can’t remember them all but two stick in my memory this morning. 

The first showed that she really really likes clichés. Her debate opponent was Alex Maskey, so when they came to discuss the possibility of a border poll, Arlene delivered the judgement that Sinn Féin were a party of “economic illiterates”.  You've almost certainly heard the term before. It  had its origin in the famous debate some years ago between Michael McDowell and Gerry Adams on RTÉ, where McDowell was seen to have exposed Adams’s ignorance of economics with a slam-bam-game-set-and-match disposal of the Sinn Féin president’s thinking on the economics of the south. "Economic illiterates" has now has passed into the off-the-shelf vocabulary of people who are averse to thinking and averse to Sinn Féin. If you go back and listen to the recording of that debate, McDowell certainly emerges as the one who talks with an air of great certainty, as did Arlene last night. The only catch is, the economic vision pushed by McDowell and practised by his government fell to catastrophic pieces a few months later, when the entire economic edifice of the south  did an imitation of the Twin Towers on 9/11.  In short, McDowell was the one preaching Stone Age economics and Adams the one attempting to resist it. Yet Arlene chose to parrot the phrase again last night rather than use her brain. 

The second incident which showed switched-off grey cells ( to put it charitably) was when she shouted Alex Maskey down as he tried to make the point that a border poll would ultimately be held.  Having made it clear the previous day that she was all for calling Sinn Féin’s “bluff” about a border poll, she informed Maskey last night that a border poll would “never happen”.  That went down well with the largely unionist audience (that’s two weeks in a row, guys) but it also denies what’s in the GFA document: that the British Secretary of State should call a border poll when she judges there are numbers sufficient to affect a constitutional change. It even suggests, according to the BBC’ s Mark Davenport, that she can call one more or less because she thinks it’s a good idea. So either the GFA has been scrapped while we weren’t looking or Arlene was showing that her debate line was unencumbered by anything like awkward fact. 

I was in the audience myself and, as expected, got asked my opinion. I had time to say I thought it would be a good idea, because the border has been the cornerstone of our main political parties and our voting patterns since the inception of the state, and ....At that point Stephen was hurrying on to the next comment.

And that was the final, slightly depressing feeling I was left with at the end of the night. I was sitting beside an English journalist, who got to speak briefly during the debate about gay marriage. At the end of the show I asked him what did he think? “Infuriating and frustrating” was the essence of his reply. The BBC’s founder, Lord Leith, declared that the Corporation's mission was to “inform, educate and entertain”.  Last night’s show certainly gave the first and second of Leith's goals a wide berth. When and if a border poll is called, let's hope it's characterised by thought, discussion and informed debate. In short, the opposite of last night's show.

A border poll: what a pity Theresa Villiers gets to decide.

Tonight, barring natural disasters and acts of God, I'll be on the Nolan Show. Not, I rush to add, as one of the top-table people: I'll be down there with the commoners (and boy, were they  common last week), with an occasional filler-in question lobbed my way if I'm lucky. The debate, again barring natural disasters and acts of God, will be about the pros and cons of a border poll.

What will I say? Well, I'd like to say I think it is an excellent idea. The border is THE issue here. It was created by Lloyd George under threat of "terrible and immediate war" if the Irish delegation to Downing Street didn't accept it.  It has shaped our voting patterns with uncanny accuracy ever since.  So yes, it would be good if we could see if thinking has changed since nearly 100 years ago.

I'd particularly like to see a border poll because it will - I hope - allow us to find out if we know what we're talking about when  we say we're pro-union with Britain or pro-united-Ireland. At present we tend to fill this great gap between us with flags, screeches of "No surrender!" or "Tiocfaidh ár lá!". I hope - I pray - that we'll be given time to look at the matter from every angle. If I were moving house to the other side of town, I'd consider house prices but also facilities like schools, shops, hospitals. I'd talk to people who lived there, I'd drive around and check out the neighbourhood. And after loads of thought and discussion I'd make up my mind, to move or stay. I wouldn't allow my granda, who always hated that side of town, or my da, who didn't like the way people on that side of town talked, to make up my mind for me. I'd make my decision in the light of the present day, taking all the factors into consideration. Constitutional change demands the same measured investigation.

If we could have a factual, contemporary look at the advantages and disadvantages of union with Britain, the advantages and disadvantages of a re-united Ireland, we' d really have done ourselves a service, almost regardless of the outcome of the poll.  In fact, a border poll is so obviously a Good Thing,  it's astonishing we've never considered it before.

When should it be held? Well, Alex Salmond has arranged that Scotland's referendum on independence should happen after a three-year period of thought and discussion. I think we're entitled to as much. The sad part is, the poll/no poll decision rests in the hands of a woman who lives  here only part-time, stays in a castle when she does come, and who obviously knows little about our history and cares less about our needs. The fact that an English secretary of state like Theresa Villiers is able to make the decision about the holding of a border poll here shows at least one drawback in being governed from London. Let's hope she has sufficient brains to say "Yes" to this request.

Inez McCormack: a great and good woman

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j5pIaYjYWI

Today is a sad day, and not just because it's grey and cold out there, but because the light comes up on a day without the living presence of a great woman. I interviewed Inez McCormack first about twenty-five years ago and found her to be a woman full of warmth and idealism. When I interviewed her again about a year ago, the warmth and idealism burned even more brightly, if anything. That last time - we met in the Cultúrlann McAdam Ó Fiaich on the Falls Road, because she was on her way to give a talk to the students of St Mary's University College, just across the road. I asked her about a lot of things, including her name ( it should be pronounced something closer to "Eeen-eth", but as she said, about Belfast you'd be lucky not to get 'Agnes'). She spent her life with an unwavering focus on the needs of others and their rights as human beings. Long before the Women's Coalition was thought of, Inez was giving a voice to women, particularly women working in low-paid jobs.

Today, the tributes are pouring in for her - President Michael D Higgins, ex-Presidents  McAleese and Robinson, Hilary Clinton, Meryl Streep who played her on Broadway. In her life she shrugged and laughed at such fame, and pointed again at the women  - and men - she worked for throughout her life. Her final words at the end of our interview were that at some point, I should interview one the women living in sub-standard accommodation. "Not that I'd want to tell you your business!" And she laughs.

Ar dheis Dé go raibh a hanam uasal.     

(I've just discovered that interview from last March, so I'll reprint it below.)

NTERVIEW:

I’m already settled with my teapot and mug in the Cultúrlann when Inez McCormack joins me. She’s on her way to give a talk to the young people in St Mary’s University College across the road, but she pulls back her chair and pours a cuppa like a woman with time and attention only for me. 

That name – Inez - where’d it come from?  Well, her great-great-grandmother was Spanish and she met her great-great-grandfather, a sailor, and the name filtered down. ‘Though how in the whole of Spain do you meet a Protestant in Barcelona?” She laughs with delight at the thought. Her name should be pronounced “EE-nez”, but she’s given up on that long ago. In Belfast you’re lucky they don’t call you Agnes. 

She joined the Civil Service after leaving school early  (“The school I’d gone to in Bangor was about teaching an accent, not about teaching you to think”). At the Civil Service interview they asked how she’d react to her brother marrying a black woman and how she viewed homosexuality. “In a sense you were being asked the disguised question, which was about Catholics”. 

But she got the job, working alongside older women – “lovely women” – who covered for her while she went up and studied for O and A Levels in the Stormont library. And yet those same “lovely women” would talk openly of how “they can’t be trusted”. “I wasn’t that bright at the time but I worked out there couldn’t be Catholics in the room”.  It was an early and important lesson. “If you see people as a lesser being, because of who they are or where they come from, then it becomes permissible to treat them as lesser beings”.  

From there she went to London and found herself involved in the famous Grosvenor Square demonstrations in 1968, and was arrested. “I didn’t run – I’d relatives in the police and I didn’t know you ran when the police were coming for you. I learnt”. But she couldn’t ask questions about what was going on in the rest of the world and not ask questions about what was going on at home.  She married a Derryman and became involved in the civil rights movement of the late 1960s. 

“My father-in-law, a quiet, devout Catholic, had been wounded in the war three times. When the Bogside got raided that first night after the civil rights march,  and there was a march the following day of all the people,  I saw him do something I’ve never forgotten. He put on his good suit. That was his way of asserting that neither he nor his family were lesser beings. That taught me that humiliation is the absence of right”.  When she went home with her scars  showing from being beaten up at the march,  her family told her if she hadn’t been there, nothing would have happened -  “Instead of accepting responsibility that there was something wrong”.

She became “a very bad social worker”, working in places like Ballymurphy, where she was supposed to do counseling. “I just wrote vouchers instead. The budget for the place shot up”.  She saw women being treated by the public bodies “as less than animals, if they were looking for something for their kids or for something to do with their housing”.  She remembers making the case for a woman who had several children and was down to her last few pence. The official response she got was “She could withdraw her conjugal rights, couldn’t she?”. 

Shortly after she joined a trade union with two-hundred-and-fifty officials; she was the only woman. Working on behalf of women in lowly-paid jobs, she soon discovered that the reason for the low pay was, these women were not “at the table” – their voices were not heard. “And that’s as true now as it was then”.

The promises of the Good Friday Agreement are about dignity, respect and right. “Yet I look in areas of North Belfast and West Belfast at the absolute lack of opportunity for the last ten or twelve years, for young people in particular. In North Belfast, there’s a huge refusal to provide social housing and the gerrymandering of figures to redefine the housing lists. Some 90% of those on the housing waiting lists in North Belfast are Catholic. There’s a refusal to build houses on the grounds that you have to get agreement between loyalist politicians and republican politicians. I have a simple answer to that: if you had to wait for agreement on housing in the civil rights movement, we would never have got it”. And if building occurs on the basis of ‘good relations’ – 50% for Catholics, 50% for Protestants? “What you are doing is screwing the poor because of their religious background. I came into all this a long time ago to make sure that would never happen again”. 

She welcomes the political accommodation that’s been reached, but the facts and figures show there’s a growing gap between the prosperous and the poor. “What I see growing is not the problem with the peace walls. I see a growing wall with on one side, economic protections, and on the other side of the wall, the growing number of those excluded”. Protestants are among the excluded but “over 60% of long-term unemployed males are Catholic”.

She believes institutional behaviour that produced exclusion in the first place has to be challenged. “The majority investment which has come into Northern Ireland, both public and private, has not gone to north or west Belfast. That has to be challenged. Good relations are not good relations if they’re built on silencing the poor”. 

“Look at the work I’m involved with in PPR  [the Practice and Participation  of Rights project, which supports disadvantaged groups to assert their right to participate in social and economic decisions which affect their lives].  You ask a public body like the Housing Executive ‘How are you gathering data about housing under the equality requirements of the Good Friday Agreement?’ and they come back and say ‘It’ll cost you £33,000 to get an answer to that’. It is deeply disturbing that that can be said with  complacency, post-Good Friday Agreement.”  What about the notion that we sort everything else out and then a trickle-down system looks after places like north and west Belfast? “Well I’m telling you, trickle down doesn’t happen. Sixty-one per cent child poverty in New Lodge, two per cent in Malone”.

“All those years ago with my father-in-law and his good suit – the Good Friday Agreement is supposed to be that good suit. A lot of my work is to enable people to speak and challenge for themselves, because those women who speak to power are treated like rubbish. An example. The women among the residents in the Seven Towers brought in some of the best experts in the world to find how could you proactively change the Seven Towers, how could you bring in better heating systems, how could you actually work with architects and planners, to change the spaces in north Belfast to build social housing. The answer was to dismiss the work of these two men – one of whom is used by Obama in terms of federal housing authorities, one of whom is used by the Health Organisation – the response was to dismiss them in a half-page”. Who dismissed them? “The Housing Executive and the Department of Social Development”. 

She’s been asked to be a global ambassador for places like Haiti where the society has been shattered, she’s been awarded honorary degrees by universities, Meryl Streep is playing her life on a New York stage. But she looks at women in the New Lodge, women who’ve got water running down the walls of their flats, their children getting asthma : “You have to bring your victories to them”.  

She’s more than glad to see an end to violence here. “But there’s another violence – the violence that happens when there’s an absence of right. Change is not happening for the most excluded. In fact the gap is widening. And I’m saying now, as a wake-up call: ask what it will take to change the expense in education, health, investment, to change conditions in these areas – and give a timetable for change.”

As to the coming of the University of Ulster to Belfast, it’ll be good if the massive procurement contracts are handled properly. “The university must say ‘Anybody looking to us for money for a contract, must employ people who are long-term unemployed of twelve months or more – the ILO [International Labour Organisation] definition. Now suddenly this has been redefined as three months or more. This means that people who are just out of the labour market will get the jobs; people who are most excluded will go again to the back of the queue.  That will affect North Belfast – largely Catholic, but it’ll also affect the Lower Shankill.”

Some years back she worked, she says, with both communities, when Springvale was supposed to be coming to West Belfast – “and suddenly we find it over in the Titanic Quarter”. When I quote the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ulster who says the transfer of the university to central Belfast will raise local educational aspirations, she’s pretty brisk, not to say cutting. 

“What is needed is not talk about local people and their aspirations. What is needed is a systematic outreach that’ll allow them to fulfill their aspirations.” 

The one change above all that she’d look for in our society? 

“Accountability. I mean that in the Seven Towers, when they brought in the two international experts, who produced practical changes and brought proposals forward, and they were dismissed out of hand. There should be a requirement for public bodies to be accountable for that kind of behaviour. 

“Mary Robinson said to me thirty or forty years ago, when she took the first cases on social benefit in the Republic of Ireland, cases that went to Europe – she said to me ‘It’s about putting manners on them’. And in a sense that’s what the Good Friday Agreement is supposed to be about – manners.    I fought all my life for non-violent means of social change. Non-violent doesn’t mean ineffective change. I want local politicians to grasp cases like those I’ve mentioned and say ‘We want change and we want an outcome and we want it now’ ”.  

I pack my tape-recorder and leave as she bends over her notes for addressing the young people of St Mary’s in ten minutes’ time. If InezMcCormack, the woman with the Spanish great-great granny, doesn’t inspire them, nothing will.

Irish unity or union with Britain - what's the difference?

Gerry Adams has called for a border poll and has been met with widespread derision. There’s no chance, Peter Robinson says, of the majority of people in Northern Ireland voting for constitutional change. They point to the census figures which show 63% of people here wanting to maintain the Union with Britain.  

Adams, however, points out that the census also shows only 40% of people here describing themselves as exclusively British. So again maybe it’s a question of lies, damned lies and statistics - it all depends on how you look at them. However, Sinn Féin have taken on the task of persuading at least some of  those who presently believe in the Union to change their minds.

There are two ways in which people here might shift their position on the constitutional question. They might look at what a united Ireland has to offer, economically and socially, and be drawn to that vision. In contrast, they might look at the union they now have and see the things they thought were good about it have in fact disappeared. They might move, in short, to a pro-united Ireland because the alternative has become unpalatable. 

At present, unionists (and some nationalists, I’m sure) believe that Gerry Adams’s call for a border poll is simple politicking - that he wants to show his party’s republicanism in a brighter and more attractive light than Fianna Fail’s new-found republicanism. I’m sure there’s something of that in it - Sinn Féin’s ambitions for development in the south are there for anybody to see. And political parties, by definition, work in the interests of their own party. 

Some unionists, Peter Robinson included, think that unionism should try harder to sell its benefits to the Catholic/nationalist population here. I don’t see any serious effort to do that - and of course the flag protestors have sent not just nationalists but many unionists reeling backwards in horror. 

An interesting comparison for us is that with Scotland, about which Kevin McKenna has an interesting article in yesterday’s Observer.  He looks at how those firmly in the Union - the people of England - are faring. Not so hot, it seems. The poor are getting seriously poorer, while employees of Goldman Sachs were last week awarded on average a bonus of £250,000. The gap between rich and poor is widening; the Tory government, with Lib Dem assistance, is allowing greed and corruption to be rewarded. The Citizens’ Advice Bureau is getting nearly 1,000 calls a day from impoverished families. The sons of the UK are being sent to fight and die in pointless foreign wars. To avoid focus on such matters, distracting displays such as the Olympics and royal jubilees are hyped, not to mention the dream of a big Lottery win. The UK treasury, according to McKenna, has just declared that each person in Scotland  would be £1 worse off in an independent Scotland. It seems, McKenna believes, a decent price for a change to a fair society where people run their own affairs. 

It’s time the benefits of the Union were spelled out. The flag protestors complain that the flag matters - “people have died for that flag”. Is the flag that leads people to occupations and invasions of other people’s countries the only benefit the Union has to offer?

Politics: what's possible and what's impossible

I was listening to Mick Fealty being interviewed on RTÉ radio today. It was about the flag protest and why it was that Peter Robinson was not prepared to appear on camera, shoulder-to-shoulder with Martin McGuinness to denounce the violence and law-breaking of the protestors. After all, McGuinness had done the shoulder-to-shoulder thing when the two British soldiers had been shot dead at their barracks and when PC Ronan Kerr had been killed. Mick’s response was that “it was politically impossible” for Robinson to do that. 

Crikey. What does that mean, “politically impossible”? Well, I presume it means that if he did, Robinson's constituency would be sorely displeased with him and would vote against him in the next election. I’ve tried to think of another interpretation of the two words but that seems on the face of it to be the only possible one. Which, if it’s accurate, is profoundly depressing.

Because it means that the unionist population of East Belfast - and probably beyond - looks with approval on these law-breakers. In other words,  the unionist population of East Belfast - and maybe beyond - are behind the people who opposed to the workings of democracy in Belfast City Council. They're of one mind with the audience (barring a few exceptions) at the Nolan show the other night.

But hey - let's be optimistic  and assume  Mick got it wrong - that in fact the unionist people of East Belfast have no time for these police-attackers and  road-blockers.  I know if I was an East Belfast unionist, rather than embrace them I’d be embarrassed and disgusted by their actions. I’d also have a pretty low opinion of the guts displayed by the man who used to be my MP before he was defeated by the Alliance Party's Naomi Long.

PS I just got this link to his interview from Mick - he promises to comment later

http://www.rte.ie/radio1/podcast/podcast_thisweek.xml

They haven't gone away, you know

Can you believe it? There was a West Belfast priest on the local TV evening news yesterday, with important information. Groups of aggressive young people waving and wearing Irish tricolours have begun blocking routes into and out of Belfast, and attacking the police when they ventured near. The priest said that the Provisional IRA, the Real IRA and the INLA had all accepted that  these street protests as well as road blockages should stop  The priest said he greeted this news with relief but nothing was finalised yet. There is no truth to the rumour that Chief Constable Matt Baggott has expressed horror at news of the existence of the three paramilitary groups, regardless of their views on Irish tricolour protest groups, and has called on them to disband immediately or face the consequences.

Shocking stuff, eh? But of course you’ve seen through me - I made up all of that stuff in the first paragraph. This next paragraph, though, is the real deal.

An East Belfast clergyman was on the local TV evening news yesterday with important information. Groups of aggressive young people  waving and wearing Union flags have been blocking routes into and out of Belfast. The clergyman said that the UDA,the UVF and the Red Hand Commando had all accepted that these street protests as well as road blockages should stop. The clergyman said he greeted the news with relief but nothing was finalised yet. There is no truth to the rumour that Chief Constable Matt Baggott has expressed horror at news of the existence  of the three paramilitary groups, regardless of their views on Union flag protest groups, and has called on them to disband immediately or face the consequences.

Tell me I’m not hallucinating:  the UDA, the UVF and the Red Hand Commando were supposed to have decommissioned and disbanded years ago, right? So why is a clergyman - or anyone else - talking about them as though they were a local branch of the Rotary Club? And why is Matt Baggott not expressing his horror at their existence? Answers, please. Because right now I feel as if somebody has begun - that’s right - chipping away at my sanity.