Barmy about Obama

I was walking along a street near Belfast yesterday and some schoolboys passed me on their way home. “The one I want to see is Obama!” one of them shouted, the way schoolboys do. And sure why wouldn’t he? Isn’t Obama the most powerful man on earth? And isn’t he a breakthrough - the first African-American to be elected to the White House? The man who believes in a policy of talking to one's enemies rather than attacking them.

That’s the message he’ll be bringing to schoolchildren and adults when he speaks in Belfast -  put violence behind you, find new and better ways of working together. You couldn't ask for sounder advice.

Except that Obama, like a lot of other political leaders, is a hypocrite. Take one instance: his drones policy. There are no firm figures but it’s estimated that for every terrorist that a drone bomb kills in Pakistan or the Yemen,  fifty innocent people have to go with him. Such drone bombs are used on a near-daily basis. Americans would argue that this saves the lives of American troops, and it probably does. Better have CIA agents in Virginia sending in unmanned drones than risking the lives of American troops, right? But think for a minute: this is defence of the US? Going to the other side of the world and sending in bombs that wipe out fifty innocents for every  (presumably) guilty person? 

Drones are now being used in the US for ‘peaceful’ purposes - a kind of eye in the sky. I even seem to remember that the PSNI here had purchased a number, whether to use permanently or just during the G8 conference I’m not sure. Shades of 'Big Brother is watching you'. But if you think that drones which can be armed will always be used for strictly observational purposes in the US or here or anywhere else, then you really should see your doctor. 

The commentator Maureen Dowd wrote in the New York Times  two days ago: 

"Back in 2007, Obama said he would not want to run an administration that was "Bush-Cheney lite." He doesn't have to worry. With prisoners denied due process at Gitmo starving themselves, with the CIA not always aware who it's killing with drones, with an overzealous approach to leaks, and with the government's secret domestic spy business swelling, there's nothing lite about it.”

This is the man we feel honoured to have come visit us. Maybe we all should see a doctor. 

How not to read a book

George Bernard Shaw had a word or two to say about book censorship: “Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads.”

That hasn’t prevented the CCEA obediently following the promptings of Mike Nesbitt and his party that the teaching guide with the Carnegie-Medal-winning  novel Bog Child  be taken off the syllabus, perhaps temporarily, perhaps forever. Why was Mike so annoyed with it? Well let the man speak for himself:

“How dare the Department of Education ask pupils to put themselves in the shoes of hunger strikers! What about the shoes of the prison warders who had to carry out their jobs during dirty protests and hunger strikes, constantly having to endure the whispered death threats from inmates directed at their wives and children? What about the prison officers who were murdered?”

I think Mike has a point there. In fact, it’s a well-worn strategy in English teaching to ask pupils to put themselves in the shoes of some of the characters in a book. So yes, it would be an idea to have children empathise with the prison warders as well as the hunger strikers. In fact I thought that was what we all were supposed to do, schoolchildren or not - walk a mile in the other guy's shoes. 

On the other hand I’m deeply uneasy about the direct intervention of a politician in how a subject should be taught. Teachers and curriculum devisers are presumably chosen because of their expertise in their field. You might as well ask a ditch-digger or a dentist to judge on the adequacy or otherwise of a teaching strategy as ask a politician. In fact the ditch-digger or dentist would be better placed to judge, since they’d be less likely to have a political agenda. 

There are people who are contemptuous of Mike Nesbitt. I’m not. As a person I think Mike is generally calm and articulate and reasonable. But with this intervention he has shown bad judgement and set an appalling precedent. What next? Strike Yeats’s poem Easter 1916  off the curriculum for appearing to empathise with the revolutionaries? Or should that be ‘murdering terrorists’?

Shaw had another comment on censorship: “Assassination is the extreme form of censorship”.  Maybe the teaching guidelines writer got off lightly.

Nelson puts a bit of stick about

I see my old friend Nelson McCausland is in the news again.  Nelson is a man of great moral integrity, which means he’s always alert to any case where people may be falling short of the high standards he himself observes. In case you’re raising your eyebrows at that, let me remind you that when he was Minister of Culture, Arts and Leisure, he wrote to the Ulster Museum telling them to display a range of Creationist and other anti-evolution material. His high standards told him that the job of the Museum was to “reflect the views of all the people in Northern Ireland”. Richard Dawkins at the time suggested that maybe the museum should also exhibit the stork theory of where babies come from - “or perhaps the museum should introduce the flat earth theory”.  

These days Nelson is getting a bit puce-faced over this  £18 million in the Housing Executive accounts that's gone missing. He says it’s “a scandal”  and the result of either “incredible incompetence” or “wilful corruption”. “This is taxpayers’ money that could have been used to build around 200 much-needed social homes”. 

I like that kind of talk. It shows a Minister with a strong ethical backbone, and when he comes on people who have done wrong, he swings his parish-priest blackthorn stick with energy and in a very public way.  In fact, Nelson is so caught up in stick-swinging he's quite forgotten that there’s a link between the Minister for Social Development and the Housing Executive. That is, the Minister is er um you know responsible for the Housing Executive. If that’s the case,  the buck stops at the top and the Minister is maybe damaging himself each time he swings that blackthorn  at the Housing Executive. 

But I’m sure there's another, more innocent explanation. It’s surely not conceivable that a Minister would yell for everyone’s attention while he hits himself over the head with a big stick. Isn't it?

Is Mike Nesbitt mad?

Is Mike Nesbitt a bit mad?  Does he spend his evenings threading daisies in his hair and claiming to be the reincarnation of one of the Wooden-tops? I doubt it. But at the same time there are different kinds of madness and different degrees of madness, and I’m beginning to think Mike may need, um, help. 

Consider if you will his political path. Having assumed the UUP leadership, he’s been casting around for an issue that’d give his party credibility. So far he’s been spectacularly unsuccessful. Which is a pity, really, because Mike clearly wants to be seen as a moderate, rational sort of unionist, one who eschews the flag-waving, croppies-lie-down approach to things.  It’s also a fact that he’s perhaps the  first leader of the UUP not to be an Orangeman (there is no evidence either way on Edward Carson). And he’s a graduate of Cambridge University.

So when a golden opportunity to present unionism’s case to the people who most need to hear it -  republicans  - became available at the Shinners’ Europa conference last Friday, you’d think Mike would have leapt at the chance. Uh-uh. First it was yes, then it was no. Instead  Mike backed into the unthreatening arms of the Belfast Telegraph. There he  explained how if we got our past right, we’d be in a key position to make progress with the future.

Spot on, Mike. So what about the past? What’s called for?

Well, Mike sees any fruitful future dependent on one thing: that republicans concede publicly that their campaign of “terrorist murder” was unnecessary to get to where we are today, and that they should apologise for what they’ve done. Or to put it another way, the best way for two antagonists to make peace is for one of them to admit he was totally to blame for everything. 

The interesting thing is, I was at the Sinn Féin conference and do you know, none of the unionists who spoke, either from the floor or in the group sessions, mentioned the need for republicans to take all the blame. In fact they seemed much more focused on the future, on unionists finding a secure place in a world where nobody seemed to want them - not Britain and not the south of Ireland either. What they wanted, they said, was people sitting down and presenting a clear articulation of the advantages of the union, and ditto from those who believe in a united Ireland. 

That struck me as an eminently sane approach and sharply divergent from the UUP leader’s position. Which would suggest that Mike might, despite being smart and having been to Cambridge, be a bit out of touch with  the real world. Which is madness of a sort, isn’t it? Or maybe he’s been out in the sun too long. 

Funeral of an unreconstructed republican

I never met Ruairi O Bradaigh. The nearest I got was on a ferry from Cherbourg to Rosslare, as we returned from a holiday in France. Getting into his car and waiting for the boat to dock, his familiar semi-smiling front teeth were the only thing that distinguished him from the dozens of other drivers. 

His death and funeral were in the news yesterday, as the TV showed the gardai clashing with members of the funeral party. We weren’t given details of why, but the picture was so reminiscent of similar clashes between mourners and the RUC over the years of the Troubles, it was like a brief dip into a time warp.  The RUC used to make the display of beret and gloves on the coffin of the dead IRA man or woman an excuse for scenes that would, to quote Peter Brooke in a different context, have disgraced a tribe of cannibals.

Like the Bourbons, the gardaí appear to have forgotten nothing and learnt nothing. The echoes of the past that such scenes evoke will not be lost on young men and women today, and the primitive activity of the gardaí, whatever the provocation (if any) will hardly win the sympathy of those who were intent on burying a man they considered an Irish patriot. As so often in the past, the forces of law and order have stupidly played the role of recruiting sergeant.

Come together: Sinn Féin at the Europa

I spent an interesting couple of hours at the Sinn Féin conference in the Europa Hotel yesterday. It was titled Belfast: A City of Equals on an Island of Equals and the main speakers were Pete  Shirlow from Queen’s Univeristy and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness.

The interesting stuff began outside the Europe, where a dozen or so protestors with large banners  and union flags stood. ‘Our Deputy First Minister - When Will He Be Arrested?’  and ‘PSNI - Gerry Kelly’s Puppets’  were among the more prominent.  I spoke briefly to Gerry Kelly and he confirmed that he’d had lots of verbal abuse hurled at him as he came in. One guy, apparently, kept calling ‘ No, listen Gerry, can  you give me a second, I’ve something I want to say, c’mere over here!’  Gerry, having been round a few corners in his time, declined the invitation. “What he wanted was me near enough so he could hit me a dig”.  I reminded him that the opposite of being loved was not to be hated but to be ignored. I’m not sure if he believed me either.

The conference was notable for the people who were there and for the things that were said. There was a former member of the Parachute regiment, the Chief Constable and Assistant Chief Constable of the PSNI, Gerry Adams, Gerry Kelly,  Jim Gibney, Dawn Purves, Alan McBride whose wife and father-in-law died in the Shankill bomb,  Methodist minister Harold Good, Pastor Gary Mason from the East Belfast Mission,  interested unionists, interested republicans  - but no Mike Nesbitt. Poor Mike.  Like Lanigan’s Ball, he stepped and he stepped out again. He was to come and then had second thoughts. He was, as they say, conspicuous by his absence. 

I’m not sure the title of the conference conformed totally to the Trade Descriptions Act. There was much more talk about coming together than equality. Martin McGuinness and others said it was a pity the protestors outside couldn’t have been persuaded to come in and be part of the discussion. And that’s what the conversation was about: how can the people in this state come together and see where they agree and disagree, what their vision of the future is. 

There was a group discussion afterwards which I found very informative. I’d say there probably was a balance of unionists and republican in our group, and the discussion time was sadly limited. But what I was impressed by was how open unionists were about their feelings. They spoke of the suspicion that is aroused among unionists when Sinn Féin take the lead in some initiative, including this conference. They spoke of their awareness that Britain would be shot of them tomorrow if she could. They spoke of their shock in discovering that their grandparents were from Westmeath, and urged that funding be made available so that more unionists could discover that their roots were not confined to this tight little corner of the island. They spoke of their concern to find out what republicans meant when they talked about a united Ireland. They spoke of their desire for a sense of belonging. 

Very impressive. Martin McGuinness too touched on the problem of suspicion when Sinn Féin took the lead also. It reminded me of the days when people said they’d like to learn the Irish language but it had been hi-jacked by Sinn Féin. The answer to that, of course, was to hi-jack it back again, which is what is happening in places like the East Belfast Mission where unionists are learning Irish in growing numbers. 

That’s what needs to happen in terms of discussion of how we see the future. All sides, from flag-protestors to Sinn Féin to eirigi, need to share a platform where each can articulate the problems they see with the present. and how they see the future and why.

My own feeling is that those who believe in a united Ireland - notably Sinn Féin - need to be precise and clear about the two or three major reasons why they think a united Ireland is desirable. One of those reasons would probably be economic, in which case they need to point to hard evidence, in terms that the ordinary unionist can understand. Likewise flag people and hard-core unionists need to make clear what benefits they see themselves enjoying as part of the United Kingdom, and how those would be lost - if that’s what they believe - in a united Ireland.

It was a morning filled with insights, particular during the group discussion. I’m left with the strong conviction that we’re in a time of flux, with the opportunity to shape the future so that everyone in the north feels a sense of ownership and inclusion. It’s a bit like siblings that’ve been separated for a lifetime and then meet. It can end in permanent estrangement or exciting new relationships.  After yesterday, I’m considerably cheered that the latter may be the case.  

"I wish I was in the NI21" - the Saw Doctors. Sorta.

Basil McCrea and John McAllister are two of the nicest men you could meet. On the few occasions I’ve been in Stormont, I’ve had reason to be introduced to both and they were polite, friendly and good company. If ever there were a pair of unionists who were likely to bridge the Protestant-Catholic gap, they’re it.

That’s the good bit. The bad bit happened last night when both men were interviewed, notably by Mark Carruthers on the BBC’s  The View.  Mark asked regarding the constitutional question  (what a lovely way of putting it that is!) and Basil said sure we all know that’s been done and dusted, the constitutional question is no longer an issue. 

Dream on, Basil. And John. It may have moved from physical force to the force of argument, it may not emerge naked and red-eyed to dominate every debate, yes people have other things they’re concerned about like a job and a mortgage and the quality of society they live in. But alas Basil, there ain’t no dodging it, which is  why you’ll designate your brand new shiny  NI21 party ‘unionist’ up at Stormont. And while I’m sure there’ll be a number of Catholics will join, just as there are a number of Catholics who joined the Alliance Party,  I wouldn’t hold your breath that you’re about to change the face of politics here. 

I do wish NI21 success. If we’re going to have a unionist party here, I’d much prefer to be working alongside Basil and John than I would, say, Peter and Sammy. But I fear for them, I really do. Plus I’m beginning to fear for unionst parties of any hue. Why?  With the arrival of NI21, that makes four unionist parties (oh stop making those noises, David Ford and admit it - you’re a unionist). Which means we’re moving back to a point which I thought we’d left behind, when there were something like seven different unionist parties represented at Stormont. The arrival of NI25 means there are now only four unionist parties. In nationalism, there are two. 

It’s a bit like the PUP, guys.  I like you, I like your leaders,  you’re as good as a unionist party can probably get. But t I’m afraid you’re going to go away, you know.