Taking care in a new Ireland

I wonder how many of the people who voted  for Francie Molloy on Thursday believe in a united Ireland? What’s that - all of them, you say? Right. And how many of them have a clear vision of what that new Ireland might look like? Mmm, you could be right. Not too many.

OK, here’s a little experiment. Close your eyes and imagine you’re in your 60s,  70s, maybe 80s. You have Alzheimer's. You’re not sure who your loved ones are when they come to visit you. Sometimes in the middle of the night you get up and get dressed, because you think you should be going to work even though it’s 3.00 a.m. Other times you think your mother is still alive and you’d better get home quickly or she’ll be wondering what’s happened to you. And then, in the middle of all this mental confusion, a bombshell. The place where you’ve been staying, the little bit of familiarity and routine that you were clinging to - it’s all swept away. The nursing unit you’ve been living in is to be closed and you and everyone in it will be farmed out elsewhere. 

What's that? Sound like the south of Ireland, where the health system is a joke?  Uh-uh. This is the north. This is the NHS,  one of the reasons some people cite for remaining in the UK. This is a real-life, eyes-open NHS unit in Derry. The Trust there plans to shift the six remaining residents and put them into private care homes. The families are resisting because (i) their loved ones are likely to be in an agitated/bewildered state with the move; (ii) it all looks part of the increasing movement to privatize the NHS; and (iii) they don't like the idea of putting their loved ones into the hands of those who make a business out of others' misery. 

I said at the start that not many people who are in favour of a united Ireland actually think through to the kind of state they’d like to see created. They might want to start by looking at health care on both sides of the border ( yes, both - as this case shows, the NHS in the north is being dismantled bit by bit).  In fact, now that we have devolved government, wouldn’t it be great if we were able to work towards the kind of health service that a new Ireland might offer? Maybe if we start with some ghastly examples on both sides of the border, we’ll begin to develop a picture of the kind of united Ireland we really want. It wouldn’t be the south’s system and it wouldn’t be the north’s or Britain’s. It’d be ours, and surely to God we could do it better. Maybe time to make a start?

Robert Ballagh and Geraldine Finucane: talent and determination

I was at an event last night that impressed me and depressed me at the same time. I was impressed by the quality of at least two of the people in the room, and I was depressed by the energy and  quality of both people.

The event was in the Gerard Dillon Gallery - the new bit of the Cultúrlann on the Falls Road. The occasion was a display of works/ paintings by that remarkable man, Robert Ballagh. I interviewed him for my book and was struck then by the quiet gentleness of the man. We did the interview in his studio, and he'd obviously taken time off from his work to talk to me. Nothing in it for him, but he was the essence of relaxed receptivity. At the event last night he noted that his painting career, spanning from 1968 to the present day, covered the Troubles. And he talked, again with self-deprecating humour, how he was moved out of his comfortable view of the world and his country by what was happening in the north back then and since. If you're in Belfast or near it, I urge you to go over to the Culturlann and look at the range of work he has on display there. It's all - or nearly all  - for sale. (And dammit, the one piece that caught my eye and my heart yearned after is not for sale.)

The reason for the sale of this wonderful range of works by Ballagh was embodied in the second person there last night who impressed/depressed me: Geraldine Finucane.  In real life she's smaller than on telly, but you sense that unstoppable quality she's had to show in trying to get to the truth about the shooting dead of her husband back in 1989, as he sat having dinner in his home with her and their  children.  She was there because Robert Ballagh has been generous enough to gift all the paintings/works on show to raise funds for the Pat Finucane Centre.

There were lots of other important people there, including Michael Farrell, the lawyer, civil rights activist and former leader of People's Democracy (ask your granny), but Ballagh and Finucane shone out particularly. Like all truly good and gifted people, they have a modesty, almost a shyness about them, while maintaining a focus that cuts through distractions.

I felt privileged to be there. And as I say depressed, but I took that out on the cat when I got home and I'm quite cheerful now, thanks.

Peter and Nigel: a tale of two conversions

“Between the stirrup and the ground

I mercy asked and mercy found”.

It’s always good to see and hear a conversion. This past few days we’ve had two for the price of one. You remember how the flag protestors made it clear it wasn’t just the flag being “ripped down” they were upset about, it was the way politicians seem to have abandoned them?

Good news, then. Those politicians have had a change of heart. After years of neglect, they have suddenly found conversion, repentance, as they sense that they are in danger of falling from their high horses. A day or three ago, we had Peter Robinson criticising the rough deal that was being doled out to loyalist protestors in terms of bail, when compared to a republican who was granted bail. “Lack of impartiality!” was Peter’s cry, which must have cheered the hearts of many nationalists,  who for so long have felt the police were less than impartial.

Then this morning I hear Nigel Dodds on BBC Raidio Uladh/Radio Ulster, explaining vigorously that there really really must be impartiality, that release of loyalist protestors who were in no danger of doing anything unlawful (give or take the odd road-block) should be released on bail. He was quite worked up about it, I thought.

And then I asked myself: have these two last-minute conversions got anything in common? Might they have, at the heels of the hunt, any similar motivation? And you know, I think it’s just possible they might have. Last time out, Peter Robinson lost his Westminster seat to Naomi Long - that can’t happen again. And Nigel Dodds can feel the hot breath of Gerry Kelly on his collar as his, Dodds’s, majority shrinks and shrinks and shrinks. Call me a hardened cynic, but might the two men’s sense of outrage link with their desire to get back into their seats at all costs, even it involves appealing for mercy to people who’re convinced they were abandoned by them years ago? Just askin’, like.

What Hugo Chavez did

It’s started already and he’s hardly in his coffin. “Populist”, “controversial”, "eccentric" - those are just some of the names the media have used of him so far. You’d think that a man who had turned the political tide in South America, let alone in his own country, would get a better epitaph than that. 

Hugo Chavez became President of Venezuela in 1999 and soon made it clear that things were going to change in his oil-rich country. He started with the price that was paid for Venezuelan oil, so that between 1998 and 2008, it increased by 660%. The money thus derived was used to eliminate three-quarters of the extreme poverty in his country and to provide free health and education for everyone. 

But of course his big sin in Western eyes was that he stood up to the US.  Fifty-four countries around the world allow the US to detain and torture people they, the Yanks, dislike. Chavez refused to be one of them. The US followed its usual procedure and supported a coup to overthrow him, despite the fact that the Venezuelan people had chosen him at the ballot box. 

But Chavez’s influence went beyond the borders of his own country.  In 2005, it was reckoned by the BBC that three out of every four people in South America now had elected a left-leaning president. This “pink tide” had one common denominator: a determination to break what used to be called the “Washington consensus”  which pushed for open markets and privatisation, and was led of course by the US.

Like all politicians, Chavez had his faults. He alienated the middle classes in his own country as well as the powers-that-be in the US.But whatever his sins, the example he set to the rest of South America that they didn’t have to be a lucrative back-yard for the US and that they could play their own tune rather than dance to the one provided by the US, the real difference in health and education he made for his own people - all these far outweigh what wrong he may have done. He was a heroic figure and his death at 59 is a loss not just to Venezuela but the world. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam.  

The importance of serving sauce equally

There’s nothing like listening to your First Minister waxing moral as you chew on your Rice Krispies. I had this instructive experience this morning, as Peter Robinson explained to Noel Thompson on BBC Raidio Uladh/Radio Ulster that he wasn’t bending Chief Constable Matt Baggott’s ear with that recent meeting, he was just pointing out some facts. Which when boiled down amounted to one fact:the  police service - oh, and the judicial system - were treating loyalists much more harshly than they treat republicans. For example  loyalist bail denied,  republican bail granted. Where’s the equality?

Indeed, Peter. We’re all behind you on that. We can’t have a system where one section of the public is treated differently from another. Like, Matt Baggott has played a waiting game with flag protestors who broke the law week in week out, and I think I said he came across in a TV interview with all the ferocity of a week-old lamb. But I’m willing to accept I could have been wrong. Any policy that puts Willie Frazer and Jamie Bryson  behind bars can’t be all bad. 

But of course the ultimate test will come in about four months time. If Ardoyne residents or any other nationalist community decides to block the intrusion of bigots in bowler hats,  will Matt be patient and allow his plan of prosecution to come to fruition around four months later? Or will he give instructions for his men to wade in there and apply the law at the business end of a baton?

Why I'm off pollsters for Lent

So - whaddya think of the latest opinion polls from down south - exciting, eh? I mean the recent ones that show Fianna Fail clambering out of the coffin and stuffing cotton wool into the hole in its chest where everybody thought the stake had been planted.  Mind you, I’m biased. I love polls.

The main thing I love about them is the snapshot quality they have. My father wouldn’t have liked them. He was a cattle dealer, and before he’d buy a beast he’d get up close and personal with it. Prod it in places that I didn’t always want to look, check the mouth, feel the belly - thorough scrutiny before reaching his decision whether to buy or not. Polls aren’t a bit like that.  They give NO information about the political parties or what they have to offer the public. Instead they say ‘Say cheese!’ and flash-bang-wallop, you’ve got your public opinion snapshot. 

So here’s my Lenten resolution: I’m going off polls. Sexy though they are, I suggest they be banned for the next six months, say. Or better still, a year.  And instead of pollsters spending all that time and money trudging around asking members of the public to say which party they like most right now, get the parties to discuss - maybe live on television - an agreed set of issues that are of  actual importance to people. Like, how much of the budget should go on public health. Or how much on education, or how much on the armed forces. (In Britain, you may have noticed, they’re thinking of cutting a chunk off the social services and sticking it onto the armed forces. Wouldn’t it be interesting to hear what each party thinks of this?). And yes, what’s your thinking on a united/partitioned Ireland.

In the end, like so much else, it comes down to what a party thinks of the public. If they think the public are generally thick, then popularity contests, opinion polls, and making sure your hair is nicely combed will be the focus of the politicians’ energies. If on the other hand they think the public are their adult masters,  they’ll be willing to explain clearly  to these adults what they’re up to and why.  Guess what? The’ll find the public have a real appetite for real politics.

So ditch the grin for the camera, guys. Give the pollsters their P45. Instead, explain yourselves, particularly regarding past record and future plans. Because believe me,  some of you have an awful lot of explaining to do. 

Nigel Lutton, his father and his Uncle Joey

I’ve just watched a News Letter  online interview   with the elusive Nigel Lutton, who is the agreed unionist candidate for Mid-Ulster. Nigel was most conspicuous by his absence (as was his chief opponent, Sinn Féin’s Francie Molloy) on the BBC’s The View earlier this week. 

I’ve written already about the fact that Nigel was selected after Sinn Féin had nominated Francie Molloy as their candidate. The prominence that was given to the fact that Nigel’s father Eric, an ex-RUC man, was shot dead by the IRA in 1979, and to the fact that Nigel’s cousin David Simpson (DUP) had used parliamentary privilege to name Francie Molloy as implicated in that killing, made it clear that Nigel’s candidature would be used as a spear to stick into Sinn Féin. There is little hope that Nigel will win the seat - it’s got a whopping Sinn Féin majority - but  the DUP hope it will do two things: (i) wound Sinn Féin via Molloy, by highlighting Nigel as a victim of republican violence; (ii) make it easier to gobble up what's left of the UUP. 

But while the world and his mother knows of David Simpson’s charge against the Sinn Féin candidate, there’s been rather less talk about Uncle Joey. Joey Lutton was a member of the UDR and was convicted of involvement in a number of atrocities as part of what was known as the Glenanne Gang. His crimes included a gun attack on Clancy’s Bar, which killed three people, and another on the Eagle Bar, which killed one person. 

Clearly Nigel isn’t responsible for what Uncle Joey got up to, but it’s interesting to note the prominence given to cousin David’s House of Commons claim against Molloy (no evidence) with the deathly silence on Uncle Joey’s actions (lots of evidence). 

Nigel says in the online interview that “It [the matter of victims] has came [sic] forward so often in this campaign” and that “every victim is the same” and that he isn’t ready to shake Francie Molloy's  hand at the electoral count on Thursday because “there’s been no apology [for killings] from republicans”.  Mmm. But Nigel,  if "every victim is the same", wouldn’t the loved ones of those killed by Uncle Joey and the Glenanne Gang be equally entitled to apology? 

Nigel wrapped up his News Letter  interview by saying “I am an ordinary person” and it’s true: in his ill-at-ease interview he looked very ordinary. But he’s not. He’s been selected as someone who will highlight the suffering of victims of the Troubles. One provision:  they must be victims of the IRA campaign. Victims of Uncle Joey and the UVF/UDA need not apply.