A rose by any other name...

I think Herr S Freud would have enjoyed this one...(No prizes for the eagle-eyed, sorry)

Action and reaction

Ill-informed Person:  Why is there unionist opposition to the appointment of Rosa McLaughlin as Vice-Principal of St Mary’s College in Derry? I thought unionists weren’t interested in Catholic education.

Know-it-all Person:  It’s different this time. Rosa McLaughlin was once in the IRA and served a three-year prison sentence. 

Ill-informed Person: But she’s out now.

Know-it-all Person: Oh yes.

Ill-informed Person: So what’s the problem?

Know-it-all Person: Well, there have been suggestions from unionist quarters that someone who’d been in the IRA would be sort of, um, corrupting the young if she/he taught them.

Ill-informed Person: How so?

Know-it-all Person: Afraid I’m not clear how.

Ill-informed Person: If Ms McLaughlin is down to be Vice-Principal, what has the Principal to say of her appointment?

Know-it-all Person: ”Ms McLaughlin is a more than capable teacher and she is in school working this week despite the difficult situation she has been facing”.

Ill-informed Person: Sounds like the Principal is happy enough with the appointment.

Know-it-all Person: It does indeed. Can we talk about something else for a while?

Ill-informed Person: Certainly. Who is Nigel Lutton?

Know-it-all Person: He’s the ‘agreed’ unionist candidate for the coming Westminster by-election in Mid-Ulster. And before you ask, the by-election was called  because Martin McGuinness gave up his Mid-Ulster seat, as part of Sinn Féin ending double-jobbing.

Ill-informed Person: Right. So this Mr Lutton -  he’s a well-known politician then? An MLA perhaps?

Know-it-all Person: Well no. Although he is a cousin of David Simpson.

Ill-informed Person: Who?

Know-it-all Person: David Simpson, the well-known DUP MP. 

Ill-informed Person: What’s he well-known for?

Know-it-all Person: Well in this instance for what he said in the House of Commons in 2007.

Ill-informed Person:  Which was?

Know-it-all Person:  That Francie Molloy was involved in the killing of Nigel Lutton’s father in 1979. Mr Lutton Sr was a part-time RUC reservist. 

Ill-informed Person: Why did Mr Simpson make this claim in the House of Commons?

Know-it-all Person: Parliamentary privilege

Ill-informed Person: What’s that?

Know-it-all Person: Well, apparently you can say nearly anything about a  person in the House of Commons  under parliamentary privilege. 

Ill-informed Person: Why not say it outside the House of Commons?

Know-it-all Person: Because you’d need proof or you could be sued.

Ill-informed Person; Had Mr Simpson proof?

Know-it-all Person: He said the police told him.

Ill-informed Person: But no proof beyond that?

Know-it-all Person: Not as far as I know. Mr Molloy has strongly denied the charge and challenged anyone to make the claim outside Parliament. 

Ill-informed Person: And has anyone taken him up on it?

Know-it-all Person: No. 

Ill-informed Person:  I see. So who’s standing for the Shinners then?

Know-it-all Person: Francie Molloy.

Ill-informed Person:Eh?

Know-it-all Person: Francie Molloy. The veteran Sinn Féin MLA and deputy Speaker up in Stormont. 

Ill-informed Person: So did the choice of Mr Lutton as ‘agreed’ unionist candidate happen before or after the Shinners chose Mr Molloy?

Know-it-all Person: After. 

Ill-informed Person: I see. Then is that why unionists chose Mr Lutton as an ‘agreed’ candidate? That his father was killed, probably by the IRA, and David Simpson claimed, without evidence, that Francie Molloy was involved?

Know-it-all Person: You may say that. I couldn’t possibly comment.

Ill-informed Person: So have the unionists a chance of winning this seat? And is it true that Willie Frazer may also stand as a unionist candidate?

Know-it-all Person: Oh yes.

Ill-informed Person: Oh yes what? That the unionists do have a chance of winning this seat or Oh yes Willie Frazer may also stand as a unionist candidate?

Know-it-all Person: Oh yes both. 

Ill-informedPerson: And how highly would you rate either Mr Lutton or Mr Frazer’s chances of being elected?

Know-it-all Person: About that of a snowball in Hades.

Ill-informed Person: So you’re saying Mr Molloy may well retain the seat for Sinn Féin?

Know-it-all Person: He may well indeed. In fact do you notice my hat?

Ill-informed Person: What about it?

A: I will eat it for lunch if he doesn’t. Although we must await the outcome of polling on 7 March.

Ill-informed Person: How wise you are. Go raibh maith agat.

Know-it-all Person: Failte romhat.

Mid-Ulster: a tale of two candidates

So now we know. Sinn Féin some weeks ago chose their candidate for the Mid-Ulster seat vacated by Martin McGuinness:  they picked veteran republican Francie Molloy, who was director of election for Bobby Sands and is currently deputy Speaker in the Stormont Assembly. The two unionist parties, after much to-ing and fro-ing, have now come up with an agreed candidate: Nigel Lutton. He’s a cousin of the DUP’s David Simpson and his father, an RUC reservist, was shot dead by the IRA in 1979.

There are a number of things to be kept in mind about this by-election. The first is that Nigel Lutton relates to David Simpson in other ways than that they are cousins. In 2007,  David Simpson in the House of Commons named Francie Molloy as having been involved in the killing of Nigel Lutton’s father.  The fact that he made the claim - which he said the police had given him - meant that he was protected by parliamentary privilege. That is, he couldn’t be charged with slander. Of course, if you have proof of your statement or claim, it stops being slander. 

How has Molloy reacted? He has denied any such involvement and has challenged anyone (with Simpson in mind, I should think) to make such a claim outside the British parliament. The implication is that he would sue them. 

So why did the DUP and the UUP choose Mr Lutton as their candidate? Well, the claim is that he helps highlight the plight of victims of the Troubles, and certainly Mr Lutton exemplifies just that. It's striking, though, that their choice was made after Sinn Féin had made theirs, so you may be sure Mr Lutton was chosen with Mr Simpson’s 2007 House of Commons claim in mind.  The death of Mr Lutton’s father will now be a feature of the election campaign.

Statements made under parliamentary privilege are or can be deeply disturbing. The example that jumps out in terms of the north of Ireland is that made by Douglas Hogg in 1989. After a briefing from senior RUC officers,  he claimed that some solicitors here were “unduly sympathetic to the cause of the IRA”.  A few weeks later, Pat Finucane was shot dead in his home. Sir John Stevens, who authored a major report into collaboration between security forces and loyalism, said Hogg’s comments hadn’t been justified. 

One of the cornerstones of the British justice system is that you are innocent until you are proved guilty. The fact that David Simpson made his claim under parliamentary privilege strongly suggests he had not got proof of that claim, any more than Hogg had of his. Yet the UUP and the DUP appear to have chosen their candidate with the notion of targeting Francie Molloy’s reputation. Had their sole objective been to highlight the unhappy state of victims of the Troubles, there are many others - unionist others - they could have chosen.  By choosing Mr Lutton, they have put the notion of people being innocent until proven guilty under near-breaking-point pressure.

What’s almost equally dismaying is that the two unionist parties know that their man has practically no chance of winning. And of course if Willie Frazer were to come off the fence and stand, they’d have less chance still. 

Footnote: As always, I welcome comment on and argument with this posting. But please, in the light of the response to my posting last Friday, engage with the argument and skip the insults, OK?

Whither the flags protest?

Where are the flag-protestors going? Nowhere fast, it would appear. There have been dwindling numbers, which is not surprising, since pretty well everybody accepts that Belfast City Council isn’t going to accede to their demands that the Union flag be reinstated to fly 365 days a year.  If they did, it would be a signal that democratic decision-making can be stopped in its tracks if you defy the law loudly enough and often enough. But when you know your objective is never going to happen, it’s common sense to stop standing about in the cold codding yourself you’re doing something useful.   

But I do agree with the flag protestors’ Jamie Bryson on one point:  "I view this as a cynical attempt to use the UDR parade and the protest to undermine each other and create divisions within our community” Jamie says. Well no, I don’t quite agree with him. The aim of unionist politicians is not to undermine the flag protest movement. The aim is to kill it. It’s embarrassing them as well as harming the international image of Belfast and local trade.

Maybe I’m just getting forgetful, but were there 1,000 people on the streets this time last year, commemorating the two UDR soldier killed by an IRA bomb in 1988? Perhaps there were. But if there weren’t, then it’s hard not to see unionist leaders using the anniversary of the two men’s deaths as anything other than a weapon with which to club the flags’ protest out of existence. 

Tears, idle tears

There’s a difference between crying wolf and just crying,and last night Enda Kenny made it clear that he was on the verge of tears as he talked about the Magdalene laundry and that good old close-harmony tear-jerker, ‘Whispering Hope’. “Too hard!” you say. “The man was moved”.

Right. In the recent polls his party were moved to a place lower than (I can hardly bring myself to say this without reaching for a grubby hanky) Fianna Fail. But there’ve been others who’ve opened the tear ducts in public. 

Ed Muskie, you’ll remember if you’re old enough, had tears streaming down his face in  1972, when he stood amid the snow of New Hampshire and defended his wife from criticism. He always claimed it was snow melting on his face, not tears; but either way it finished his presidential hopes. Maggie Thatcher had a dewy eye twice - once when her son Mark got lost in some remote place, and once when she got the heave-ho from Downing Street. “It’s a funny old world” she said as she bit her lower lip.

And on the subject of biting lower lips (their own), both Bill and Hillary Clinton could turn on the taps when necessary. “I’m so proud of her” Bill said, wiping away a tear when Hillary won the New Hampshire primary in 2008. Earlier in that primary, Hillary herself got a bit lachrymose. “I just don’t want to see us fall backward as a nation. I mean, this is very personal for me. Not just political”.

In Australia, Prime Minister Bob Hawke blubbered on TV when admitting to an extra-marital affair. “I’m only human” he told the interviewer. It worked - he won his fourth consecutive election victory the following year. 

Nearer home, you’ll remember,  QE2 got some stick for not crying when Princess Di came to a sticky end in that Parisian tunnel.  Both David Cameron and Ed Balls  claim to be wet-faced  heaps when they watch The Sound of Music.Jeffrey Archer, novelist,  Tory and former jail-bird says he gets very weepy watching washing-up liquid ads. “There is one where a mother washes up with her little girl. I always wanted a daughter - I burst into tears when I see it”. Fianna Fail's Senator Tom Fitzgerald was full of tears when Charlie Haughey resigned from office, and Taoiseach Bertie Ahern was overcome during an RTÉ interview in 2006 as he considered his past: "It was a very dark period for me, a very sad period for me". Cue widespread sympathy for Bertie.

Will present-Taoiseach  Enda’s choke-up last night result in a Fine-Gael-favouring swing in the polls? If it does I’ll be inconsolable.  

Psst, Mike. Wanna bet?

Mike Nesbitt is a nice man. Or he was a nice man when he used to work for the BBC. At that time I found him pleasant, friendly and intelligent. Have I changed my mind since those far-off days? Mmm, not sure. But he’s certainly doing all he can to get me thinking differently.

Since becoming UUP  leader he’s managed to lose Ken Magennis, David McNarry, John McCallister and Basil McCrea from the party. These losses came for many reasons but principally because of thinking which sent Mike into a huddle with Peter Robinson, after which they selected an ‘agreed‘ unionist candidate for the coming election in Mid-Ulster. Were these losses worth the possible gain in selection agreed-man Nigel Lutton?  Mike thinks so because...

Well, the because of it is a bit hard to spot.  Nigel Lutton is not going to beat Francie Molloy of Sinn Féin to the seat in Mid-Ulster. Willie McCrea in his, um, not-totally-gracious speech after being defeated by Martin McGuinness for the seat in 1997, warned the electorate of Mid-Ulster that if they lay down with dogs, they would rise up with fleas. For sixteen years now the voters of Mid-Ulster appear happy to carry on scratching,  including scratching their voting mark against name of Martin McGuinness. 

But Mike Nesbitt is now hopeful all this may change. 

“Nigel Lutton has worked for many Catholic victims. He’s worked for WAVE, which is absolutely across all sections of our community, he has worked for victims in Mid-Ulster, both Protestant and Catholic, and I see no reason why you would assume that Catholics or indeed that some nationalists would not vote for Nigel Lutton, particularly nationalists who would prefer that their Member of Parliament sat on the green benches once in a while”. 

Basil McCrea begs to differ. In fact, he believes the selection of an ‘agreed’ unionist candidate will work against unionism. “From the experience of Fermanagh/South Tyrone we have seen that unionist unity candidates tend to energise the electoral opponents more than their own supporters”.

I think Basil (another nice man) has got it right on this one. Those of you who know me will know that I am not normally a betting man. But I am prepared to bet Mike Nesbitt  £50 at odds of 5-1 that Nigel Lutton, despite all those Catholic and nationalist votes he sees swinging behind unionism, will be defeated on 7 March. Over to you, Mike.

Polls apart

In the run-up to the 1997 Westminster election, the Labour Party used play over and over the pop tune Things Can Only Get Better by D-Ream. It was a bouncy, driving number and it caught something of the rising hopes of the Labour Party at the time. Is it possible that the Fianna Fail party have been sitting  in smoke-filled rooms for the last couple of years,  listening to George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass? If they have, it’s worked. According to the last opinion poll, Fianna Fail were at 26% - the most popular political party in the twenty-six counties. 

You heard me -  Fianna Fail are top of the heap. Ahead of everyone, including Fine Gael (25%) and Sinn Féin (18%), with the Labour Party vanishing at speed  with 10%.  That’s Fianna Fail, the party that lost 51 seats in the general election in 2011, the party that arranged for the twenty-six counties to  morph from Celtic Tiger to €85 billion-in-debt arthritic mouse. The party whose very name, two short years ago, was enough to bring the southern electorate out in hives. How did they do it, you may be wondering. How did they climb out of the pit that just two years ago looked as though it might be their grave?

Well, there are a number of reasons. One is their leader. Brian Cowen was generally acknowledged to be a smart man but he looked...rough. Biffo, they called him, and Fianna Fail couldn’t get rid of him fast enough. So they installed instead Micheál Martin.  Micheál is the opposite of Biffo. He’s a soft-boiled-egg man.  Close your eyes and you could be listening to Jack Lynch. Or even, accents aside,  Enda Kenny. Both  guys are difficult to hate. It can be done but you have to work at it.  A bare 1% separates their parties  and you could say  the same thing about their leaders. Peas from the same pod. 

While the two parties grew from opposing sides in the Civil War, that was a long time ago. Now, it’s the similarities between them that impress. Remember how Fianna Fail warned that, due to the mess they’d made of things, hair-shirts were going to be the order of the day? And  Fine Gael  threw its collective hands up in horror, before winning the election and implementing those very same policies. A final binding element for both men and their parties? They are united in detestation of Sinn Féin. 

That’s because Sinn Féin  could do the one thing successive governments in the south have been desperately trying to avoid:  bring the north down south. Not literally but by being an all-Ireland party,  by walking in muddy boots all over the traditional  carpet of southern politics, by raising the north as an issue in the Dail.  Sinn Féin have done terrible things to the blood pressure of Enda and Micheál and even little Eamon. 

So. Is that it? Will Fianna Fáil arise from their political dead and win power next time out with an electorate sickened by the gap between Fine Gael rhetoric pre- the 2011 election and Fine Gael action post- the 2011 election? Who can say? Sometimes it seems that much of the electorate in the south is suffering from political Alzheimer’s, given its readiness to forget the truly mortal sins of the Soldiers of Destiny. Maybe, when the next general election rolls around, Fianna Fail will return to power as though nothing had changed. If Peter Robinson could survive Irisgate and those 40,000 leaflets, why not  Fianna Fail, despite their taking a wrecking ball to the south’s economy? 

But Sinn Féin can take one consolation from that 18%. There was a time when wise heads in the north explained that the Shinners had peaked in Northern politics when they hit 19%. There were people who predicted - even bet money - that Sinn Féin would lose their remaining four seats in the 2007 election to the Dail. 

The one thing we can be sure of is that we’ll be surprised. Otherwise we’d scrap elections and save money by using opinion polls instead. Scottish independence would be dead as a dodo, the Irish border would be permanently in place, and we could all stay at home and watch the Brit Awards. But we don’t and we won’t, because,  as  Chuck Berry sang so long ago,  “You Never Can Tell”.