The Orange Order: marching to a different drum?

I was listening to the Nolan Show yesterday as I drove to the meeting of the British-Irish Secretariat yesterday and the difference between the two events couldn’t have been more marked. In the MAC Theresa and Eamon were all sweet reasonableness, feeling good about what’s been achieved and hungry to achieve more. On the Nolan Show,  a couple of bare-knuckle fighters were having a discussion about how the Orange Order had broken the terms of its march past St Patrick’s Church. It’s what you might call shadow and substance, the shadow being with Theresa and Eamon. 

It’s an interesting institution, the Orange Order. I once said in a broadcast that it was an anti-Catholic institution and was told by a prominent Protestant clergyman that such a statement said more about me than it did about the Orange Order. And I expect lots of people listening agreed with him. But then again, that wouldn’t mean I was wrong. I expect the same will happen to what I now say.

The Orange Order is an anti-Catholic organisation. Anyone who has  taken even the most cursory reading of its founding and history will see that that is the case. Anyone who looks at the rules that govern it (I really don’t have to go into those again, do I?) will see that that is the case. Republicans in general and particularly Sinn Féin say that there are just a handful of contested parades, and that otherwise they have no problem with the Orange Order celebrating its culture. I disagree. If I’m right that the Order is anti-Catholic, then it isn’t simply at flashpoints that it becomes anti-Catholic  - it’s anti-Catholic everywhere.

“Total hogwash!” you're saying. “For the vast majority of Orangemen and their families, the Twelfth is just a good day out - they have no wish to engage in anti-Catholic sentiment”.  That's probably true. Many people belonging to the Order have, over time, detached their awareness of the Order’s nature and replaced it with what the Order delivers - a bit of craic in a boring summer. 

But that doesn’t mean the Order’s nature is changed and it doesn’t alter the fact that there are some 3000 parades by the loyal Orders each year. The great bulk of those parades are intent on reminding Catholics/nationalists/republicans that ‘their side’ was hammered in battle hundreds of years ago. And then people affect to be surprised that Catholics/nationalists/republicans should object to the thousands of parades. 

I believe there are many unionists  increasingly embarrassed by the Orange Order, its refusal to talk to the people it is offending, the general ugliness of many of its bands and the sneaking suspicion that what I and others say is in fact the truth: the Orange Order is an anti-Catholic institution. In a state where respect as well as equality are claimed as core rights, it’s really time it packed up its sectarianism in its old kit bag and left the stage. 

Eamon and Theresa: dancing in the dark

There was a meeting of the British-Irish Secretariat today.  It was held in the MAC in Belfast and it had two big political beasts (metaphorically speaking) performing: British Secretary of State Theresa Villiers and Irish Tanaiste Eamon Gilmore.  Theresa said that British-Irish relations had never been better than they are now. And thanks to the British, Irish and US  governments, terrorism had ended. Fifteen years from the Good Friday Agreement,  the big priority for the next fifteen would be to fix the economy and provide jobs. 

Tanaiste Eamon said the Good Friday Agreement had “put the politics of the past in the past and left it there”.  When he was fifteen or sixteen, he said, people were still talking about the Civil War; he, on the other hand, wasn’t interested in the past - he was interested in the future. 

There were then a series of questions from young people .One youngster asked what did Theresa and Eamon think was the biggest achievement of the Good Friday Agreement. Eamon said an end to the killings was its big achievement, and made reference to tit-for-tat killings.  Theresa said “I agree”.

I know I should have been cheered up by the meeting but I found depressing.  As I sat and listened to the young people’s questions and the two  politicians’ careful answers, it struck me that the whole operation was a dance of sorts. In the middle of the room was a big smelly gorilla, scratching itself and glowering, while the speakers danced round it, eyes averted.

What gorilla? The gorilla behind the Troubles, the gorilla at the heart of our differences. Partition, British Presence, Irish Unity - it has several names. Quite right, Eamon and Theresa, we all want to press on to a better future, one with jobs and economic stability and equality.  But if we’re so petrified by the possibility of sinking back into our bloody past that we can’t even tell ourselves what it was about, there’s little chance we’ll push on to a future with our eyes wide open.  And heading anywhere with half-shut eyes is hazardous.  

David Cameron - just a dad. Honest.

When you hear David Cameron weaseling on about football, you begin (or continue) to be worried about his reasoning abilities as a prime minister. Before ever the FA had delivered its verdict on Luis Suarez and Teethgate, Cameron was in there like a shot announcing that the normal three-match ban would definitely not be enough. When Suarez got hit for ten games, Liverpool FC not unreasonably said that Cameron’s statements before the decision were likely to have influenced those who handed Suarez ten weeks. 

Oh no, Cameron said. Oh no no no no. “I made my own views clear just as a dad watching the game. I’ve got a seven-year-old who just loves watching football...Bringing up children is one of the toughest things we do but you can’t wrap them in cottonwool and hide them away from the world, they do see these real-life examples and they repeat them back to you.”

Where to start?  David old chum, when you make your views clear you do at as the Prime Minister of England. If you were just a regular dad, you wouldn’t be reported in the newspapers.  And if you can’t see that your urging of a heavier ban wouldn’t have put pressure on the FA to come up with something thumping, then you shouldn’t be running a country. As to your child watching TV - does he react to everything he sees on TV? Say in an average game, there are - what -  twenty free kicks. These are usually not for biting but for pulling people’s shirts, elbowing them in the face, kicking their shins, jumping on their foot, complaining loudly and persistently to the referee.  Does your wee lad “repeat those back” to you? As a keen soccer fan he must be watching them every week of the season. And what about movies where people get shot - you figure maybe he...No, stop me somebody, stop me. Let’s just say Cameron is one more toff climbing on the footballing bandwagon who then denies doing any such thing and presents himself as a “dad”.  I wonder how many bad habits his child picks up, just watching Dad around the house. Or even watching him on TV arguing the case for nuclear weapons.

I think I’d better go into a darkened room and lock the door behind me. I’m getting this terrible desire to seek out a prime minister and bite him. 

Micheal Martin: a far-seeing bird?

Micheal Martin reminds me of the Skibbereen Eagle. Not in appearance, more in tone and self-image.   You remember that newspaper’s famous declaration in 1914: “We give this solemn warning to Kaiser Wilhelm: The Skibbereen Eagle has its eye on you”.  Micheal is a wee bit that way too.  In his speech at Arbour Hill last Sunday, Martin announced that the British and Irish governments had taken their eyes off the North, showing “a clear and dangerous lack of commitment”. 

Well, well. He’s right but sort of in the same way that I’m right when I look out my window at 9.00 am and announce that it’s daylight. When the northern state was formed, Britain passed over the running of it to unionist politicians and what followed was fifty years of discrimination and gerrymandering. During that same period the southern government - almost always Fianna Fail - made patriotic noises at regular intervals but did nothing to right the wrongs of the north or to make any movement towards the realisation of the goal of unity it claimed to revere. And of course when the crisis came in 1969 Jack Lynch, the Fianna Fail leader in whose footsteps Micheal would one day follow, announced that south could not stand idly by. Which it then proceeded to do. 

Micheal has declared the north’s political institutions to be in a  “dysfunctional state” and that this provides a dangerous vacuum. The Irish Times this morning features his warning and accepts it unquestioningly. This, from a party leader in the south where under Fianna Fail the state crumbled under the weight of  corruption and mismanagement, leaving future generations to pick up the tab.  

A blind man on a galloping horse could tell you what Micheal is really concerned with in his Arbour Hill analysis. He wants to underscore the ‘Republican’  in his party’s strap line ‘The Republican Party’, and in doing so lay claim to be the party that really cares about all of Ireland, not just the southern state. In other words, to win back those southern voters who currently see Sinn Féin as the only party which gives a damn about Ireland as distinct from the 26 southern counties. 

Will it work? Well, when the SDLP abandoned its post-nationalist stance and emoted about its concern for the entire country, it didn’t work. The voters looked at them and then at Sinn Féin and decided to go for the real thing rather than the lite version. It’ll be interesting to see in the next opinion polls if Micheal’s Arbour Hill speech makes a difference. My guess is it'll prove more of a cock sparrow than an eagle.  

Let's reconcile but don't forget we're British

What does ‘reconciliation’ mean? In everyday language it suggests that people who for a short or long time weren’t getting along together have now made up their differences. Does it mean the same thing in politics? Presumably.

Sinn Féin is pushing forward with a reconciliation programme headed by Declan Kearney. It’d be fair to say that  the bit in Gerry Adams’s Ard Fheis speech where he spoke about working class republicans and working class loyalists uniting to pursue mutual concerns was part of that reconciliation programme. Sounds good to me, especially when we remember that the thirty years of the Troubles were conducted - and suffered - very largely by people from and in working-class areas. The middle classes - again, for the most part - remained blessedly free from the impact of the conflict and so had an insulated view of what was happening. In which case it makes sense that the working class, who suffered most, should be the focus of reconciliation. If that’s what people want.

“Eh?” you say. “ ‘If that’s what people want?' Of COURSE it’s what they want”. Mmm - maybe. There are people so bigoted they can’t entertain the idea of getting closer to those who were their political and sometimes paramilitary enemies. These people feel more comfortable within their own insulated bubble, confining their contact to those of a like mind to themselves. It's cosier, less stressful.

But there are others who are open to new thinking, who  see the need for new approaches to people who were pitched against them for decades. Recent comments from the PUP suggest they are open to such thinking. Their very existence suggests they don’t feel the DUP (or UUP) are reflecting their concerns or working for their benefit. 

But there are at least three problems with the PUP position.

1. They are electorally very weak. So weak, in fact, they’ve changed their leader almost as often as some people change their socks. Given that, what they have to say may not reflect the thinking in unionist working-class districts.
2. The PUP has made it very clear that this coming-together, this reconciliation should be carried out at a social level and not a political level. I don’t know what that means - do you? Is it suggesting that the people we elect to represent us have no part to play in achieving reconciliation? On the face of it that’s absurd. Everybody has a political perspective, even if s/he isn’t aware of it. Politics is about pursuing particular goals for your society and reconciliation is one of them.
3. The PUP, having finished saying that politicians or political involvement won’t work in terms of reconciliation, goes on to say that the position of Northern Ireland within the UK for the foreseeable future must be accepted by all sides if reconciliation progress is to be made. Whiffs of having your cake and eating it. Having dismissed  politics and politicians as facilitators of reconciliation, the PUP immediately poses a precondition:  anyone working for cross-community reconciliation must accept a common political viewpoint: that we’re all British and we’ll be staying that way for as far ahead as we can see.

        In other words, they'll allow into the Reconciliation Tent only those who carry a ticket with                  'British’ stamped on it. If that’s the case, the PUP have nothing to contribute to reconciliation and not much to anything else. 

Does the Observer know about Marian Price?

Did you know there was a hunger-strike in progress at Guantánamo Bay? Neither did I until I read it in The Observer  last Sunday. Prisoners are on hunger strike because half of them - some 86 - have been cleared for release, only it hasn’t happened. The Observer  editorial highlights the case of a British man, Shaker Aamer, who has been cleared for release yet is still being held in Guantánamo.  The paper notes that Barack Obama in 2009 promised he would close the detention centre: “The existence of Guantánamo likely created more terrorists around the world than it ever detained”. The paper goes on to widen its argument, commenting on the damage done to democracy by such detention. “It is a fundamental principle of open and democratic societies that those accused or suspected of serious crimes should be submitted to due legal process within a reasonable time period. Indefinite detention of those cleared of any crime, or if those authorities have insufficient eveidence to prosecute, is a gross violation of human rights”.

I wonder, then, what The Observer  would make of the case of Marian Price. She is facing two charges - (i) that she allegedly provided a mobile telephone for a terrorist purpose in March 2009; and (ii) that she aided and abetted a meeting in support of an illegal organisation on 25 April  2012. She had been granted bail but Owen Patterson revoked her licence. 

Is four years a “reasonable time period” to be kept awaiting legal process?  Is the imprisonment of people on the decision of a British Secretary of State something that looks like justice to you? Gerry Adams in his Ard Fheis speech called for her release and that of Martin Corey, who’s been imprisoned three years now with no reason provided. But Sinn Féin are caught in a cleft stick here, since both Price and Corey are vocal critics of the party and the Good Friday Agreement. Naturally they hang back from shouting too much about the release of two people who would probably repay them by denouncing them as sell-outs.

That’s not a good decision. I remember asking a young Dublin barrister how he felt about taking on cases of people he knew were guilty. His reply was that he sought out such cases, because even those apparently guilty are entitled to the full support of the law.  The same applies in the Price-Corey cases. For the very reason that Price and Corey are their political opponents/enemies,  Sinn Féin - and every other party - should be exerting themselves to the maximum to secure their release. As John Donne told us not to ask for whom the funeral bell tolls because “it tolls for thee”, so with Price and Corey. While they are in prison without trial or jury,  we are all interned. And that should worry us all. 

Crime and punishment: Barack Obama

I was on Sunday Sequence (Raidio Uladh/Radio Ulster) yesterday morning with Catherine Clinton, an American academic  from Queen’s University.  Our topic for discussion was the Boston Marathon and subsequent events. It was an interesting conversation -  Catherine is an intelligent  woman, and when you’ve William Crawley as presenter, you know you’ll have another thoughtful  voice in the debate.

My immediate reaction to the Boston Marathon deaths was that they recalled the Omagh Half-Marathon a couple of years back. I took part in that race and only later discovered that PSNI officer Ronan Kerr had been killed in a booby-trap bomb. So it was easy to empathise with the sense of shock and outrage the people of Boston must have felt after those explosions. 

But  the explosions in Boston called for more than just feelings of grief or even anger. For example:

• President Obama was impressive in his determination to locate those responsible and let them feel the full weight of justice. What he didn’t mention and the media conveniently omitted is that his orders have led to the release of drone bombs in Pakistan which have killed over 3000 people. Of these it’s estimated that 1.5% were ‘high-profile’ - i.e,  active military enemies of the US. The pain and grief of the remaining 98.5% innocents were just as real as that felt in Boston. But the media didn’t mention the irony of a man speaking of the ‘evil’ of the deaths and mutilation of the Boston bombs, when he himself had been responsible for ‘evil’ on a far more massive scale. 
• The two suspects - one of whom was killed, the other shot through the throat - were just that: suspects. Yet the way that it was reported, it seemed their guilt was beyond question. What ever became of being innocent until proved guilty?
• The flooding of Boston with over 10,000 heavily-armed men, to search for and engage a 19-year-old fugitive was massively excessive. I kept waiting for Mel Gibson or Bruce Willis to appear wearing a sweaty t-shirt. The ‘lock-down’  which confined millions of Bostonians to their homes was highly theatrical, with the authorities essentially saying “We’re the guys in the white hats, you just stay clear and we’ll sort this out for you”. Then when it was all over, the confined people were let out and patted on the head and told they were the salt of the American earth. I call that infantilization and a very bad precedent for future, similar events. 
• While we were on air, somebody texted in to castigate me for introducing drone bombs into the discussion of the marathon explosion. They’re entitled to their view - even my massive vanity concedes that not everyone loves me. But I’m convinced that US drone bombs have everything to do with what happened at the Boston marathon. Both killed innocent people, the difference being that the drone bombs were launched and continue to be launched on the say-so of the US president, that they cause death and destruction on a far more massive scale than in Boston, and that nobody came after Barack Obama as he hid in a backyard boat hoping he wouldn’t be shot dead like his brother. What’s more, no one in the media (that I’ve read/seen) mentions the hideous irony of Obama posing as the defender of life while dealing out death in distant parts with no sign of pity for the innocent.  I’d say that was a parallel well worth drawing, and it’s to the shame of the mainstream media that they haven’t done this.