Attack on Lord Mayor: deeper and deeper in the sludge

If the Lord Mayor of Belfast got a jostling yesterday, the DUP gave itself a thorough kicking. 

Two parks, two reactions. At Dunville Park sunshine, the Lord Mayor sliding down the chute, Nelson McCausland and Gavin Robinson standing by as people listened, applauded, went about their normal business and  youngsters enjoyed their play.  At Woodvale Park, a vociferous knot of people, clutching their glossy placards telling ‘Miller’ he wasn’t wanted there; the PSNI officers trying to form a human chain to protect the Lord Mayor;  a melée as the manipulated knot pressed in, shouted abuse, aimed kicks and punches, leaving the Lord Mayor and eight PSNI officers in need of hospital treatment.

There are two terrible temptations. One is to focus on the knot of abusers and kickers; the other is to forget about the unionist politicians.  The abusers and kickers share...well, not a lot, really, in the literal sense. Their traditional self-concept as superior to their Catholic neighbours has slipped away, along with jobs and the possibility of a life where they have a representative voice in the world of officialdom. The temptation  - and I’ve yielded to it myself - is to see them as violent thugs, full stop.

That’s a mistake. Why did McCausland and Robinson receive a civilized reception in Dunville Park? Because the republican leadership had persuaded the people there that peaceful means are the best to follow, that bridging the chasm between communities makes more sense than attacks on fellow-Irishmen and women. Why did Mairtin O Muilleoir receive a violent reception at Woodvale? Because the unionist leadership has seen fit to let its people remain mired in the past, has in fact encouraged them to see moves towards equality as an attack on their ‘culture’. The DUP’s reaction to the attack, where they blamed the victim, said it all. 

So what are we left with?  In the Shankill, a people whose leaders have left them stuck in the sludge of yesteryear, have encouraged them in attitudes that end with shouted platitudes and mindless attacks. 

Since we’ve been on a football theme for some days now, let’s end on one. Yesterday the DUP scored a spectacular own goal and their club went into political administration.

Ruthie, Doublethink and Castlederg

My dictionary defines ‘double-think’  as “the acceptance of or mental capacity to accept contrary opinions or beliefs at the same time, especially as a result of political indoctrination”.  I think that summarises rather nicely what’s going on over the proposed republican parade in Castlederg. 

“It is an outrage that Sinn Fein in west Tyrone has even organised such an event in this community” says the DUP’s Tom Buchanan. I don't think Mr Buchanan has expressed his views on the 20+ loyal order marches through the centre of Castlederg every year but I’m  going to go out on a limb here and say he is vigorously in support of them. So our lot commemorating and even celebrating a battle in which at least 1500 died is commendable;  that lot commemorating a conflict in which IRA volunteers died is ‘obnoxious’. QED.

And then there’s Ruth Patterson. The DUP councillor made her Facebook comment on a make-believe account of a loyalist murder attack on named republicans involved in the Castlederg commemoration parade. “Would I shed a tear? No. Would I loose (sic) a night’s sleep? No, would I really worry about what anyone else thought? No.”  I’m going to go out on a limb here and say Ruthie is vigorously in support of the 20+ loyal order marches through the centre of Castlederg every year. Of course, you might decide that her later apology for her ‘lapse of judgment’ disqualifies her as a double-think  representative but I must respectfully differ. My guess is that the DUP hierarchy leant on Ruthie and she was left with no other choice but an apology. 

I’ve said it before but it bears repeating: conflicts, battles and the dead of same can be commemorated without doing the restless-legs thing and parading about.  But if unionism sees it as perfectly reasonable/time-honoured to march through a town 20 times  (not to mention the 3,000+ marches throughout the north every year),  it’s entering  Doublethinkland when it gets all outraged about one republican parade through - no, actually avoiding the centre of -  the same town. 

Please, tell me there are unionists out there who disown such mental knuckle-dragging.

QE2 and her nightmare speech

I remember walking into the scullery and detecting that something was wrong. I was four at the time, and one of my older sisters and my mother were talking as they washed the dishes.  I  asked what they were talking about and they told me a bomb had been made, so big it could blow up the world. I was very impressed - and scared. The notion of a bomb so big, there’d be no place to hide: that was a real frightener. For years after that I kept dreaming about looking up and seeing the biggest bomb being released from a plane, and then the huge mushroom cloud. My dream filled with that empty, hopeless feeling of everything ending.  In my teens I confided this recurring nightmare  to a friend. He laughed and accused me of having ‘intellectual dreams’; why couldn’t I dream about girls like a normal person?

Memories of that nightmare were revived a week or so ago, when they released those papers showing that QE2 had a pre-cooked speech-in-waiting ready, to be delivered in the event of a nuclear war. The idea, presumably, was to lift the sagging morale of the nation:

“But whatever terrors lie in wait for us all, the qualities that have helped to keep our freedom intact twice already during this sad century will once more be our strength”

Quite. No mention of what steel-lined hole-in-the-ground she’ll be hidingin,  or the Cabinet, or the other selected important people. Because don’t think that arrangements hadn’t and haven’t been made to protect, if protection is possible, the Important People. What's truly frightening is that they clearly believed it’d be possible for some to survive, leaving the rest of us to become vague piles of dust.

The late Peter Cook, when he was part of Beyond the Fringe, had thoughts on the subject that summarised the insanity of it all:

 "Now, we shall receive four minutes' warning of any impending nuclear attack. Some people have said 'Oh, my goodness me, four minutes, that's not a very long time'. Well, I would remind the doubters that some people in this great country of ours can run a mile in four minutes".

And in case you think the madness stopped back in the 1960s or 1980s, don’t forget: the Tories plan to spend somewhere between £20 and £35 billion on a replacement for Trident. Thank God I kept up my running.

Joe goes ballistic

Let me make one thing absolutely clear. Well, two or three things actually. First I like Joe Brolly. I like his mother Anne and his father Francie even more: I have a splendid pic of Anne on the wall in front of me as I write, smiling that beautiful smile of hers. And I remember Francie as a likeable, dark-haired darting forward playing soccer (yes, soccer) in St Columb's College in the mid-1950s.  Good lineage, then.

 There's a fresh quality to Joe himself -  an originality  dating back to those days when he used to blow kisses to the crowd as he wheeled away from scoring yet another point or goal for Derry. As a pundit, his clashes with Pat Spillane were always entertaining and sometimes informative. Yesterday he did a bit of highly successful or shamelessly self-serving punditry, depending on how you look at it.

Personally, I'm convinced his tirade against Tyrone footballers, management and in particular Sean Cavanagh was a blatant attempt to position himself as moral guardian of authentic GAA football. In short,  Gaelic football's Eamon Dunphy.

The fact that he's a barrister shone through. Like actors, barristers are very good at switching on the display of a mood or an emotion. That's what Joe did yesterday.  He came near to frothing at the mouth as he denounced Sean Cavanagh's foul on the Monaghan player McManus.  The whole team had achieved "something rotten". They were "a  total and absolute disgrace". In fact, what happened was "a total and absolute obscenity". "There is no other sport apart from Gaelic games where that is permitted". (Joe clearly has had limited exposure to Canadian ice-hockey).  If Sean Cavanagh had produced a knife and plunged it into the Monaghan player's side Joe couldn't have sounded more disgusted.

I went off and made my bread between the Tyrone v Monaghan and the Dublin v Cork game. I half-assumed that Joe would have stalked out of the studio or at least have appeared huffy or out-of-sorts in his punditry on the Dublin-Cork game. Not a bit of it - he was cracking jokes, perfectly relaxed, his usual boyish self.

If you want to get a donkey's attention, they used to say (and mark - I'm not suggesting I approve), first hit it over the head with a post. If you want to get the public's attention as a sports pundit, first hit it over the head with a verbal post. Say something that will really annoy lots of people.

I said at the top of this piece that Joe's outburst was either highly successful or shamelessly self-serving. I was wrong. It was both.

Noam Chomsky and Declan Kearney: cliff-climbers.

I read two interesting pieces this week. One was by Noam Chomsky, the famous linguist and long-time critic of the US government. The other was by Declan Kearney of Sinn Fin, who is a leading figure in his party's out-reach programme.

Central to Chomsky’s talk to the Geneva Press Club is the validation of Edward Snowden, the young guy who released files showing that the US National Security Agency had been accessing the email, Facebook accounts and videos of citizens all over the world, not to mention phone records of millions of Americans.  Now the US government wants to get its hands on him; there’s talk of him being tried for treason for endangering government security.  Chomsky’s line is that the only threat to the US government is from the people themselves: they might tell their government “Enough is enough!”  

Central to Declan Kearney’s piece is the call for people here to confront the things that divide us and see what we can do to eliminate them.   He contends that while both the Orange traditions and British identity deserve respect, so too do Irish identity and republican traditions. He’s called for a revival of the Civic Forum with a view to mapping the road to mutual respect. 

Both men face huge difficulties.  Chomsky needs to bring the US government from its present position, that Snowden is a traitor,  to acceptance that Snowden has performed a public service.  Will he succeed? It’ll be an uphill task, to put it mildly.  

Kearney  faces the difficulty of persuading unionism, including the Orange Order, that equality  is not a threat and ultimately is to the benefit of everyone. Will  the Civic Forum be re-established and will he succeed in changing unionist thinking?  It’ll be an uphill task, to put it mildly.

There is only one way that the  US government can be brought to heel, and that is when/if Chomsky convinces enough Americans that their government must, no ifs and no buts, abandon spying on and threatening anyone who doesn’t agree with their thinking. Did I say uphill? Sheer cliff face might be a better term. 

Meanwhile in this little cul-de-sac there are some grim facts to be faced. Unionism to date has not been thrilled by the changes that have been implemented. Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness were introduced as the Chuckle Brothers, but a blind man on a galloping horse could have told you that the DUP generally thought republicans around the Stormont place was a very undesirable if unavoidable state of affairs. Likewise republican attitudes to flags, parades and the past. Ruth Patterson is a nice example of the DUP unzipped.

At the same time there is some logic to the unionist position. Once you see the Troubles as having been brought about by a group of murderous thugs, you’re going to resist any calls to respect the culture of said thugs and/or their colleagues. Instead you’ll look for signs of a ‘cultural war’ between unionism and republicanism, and believe that your culture must be protected from all tampering and no ground conceded.

But there is one major difference between the people Chomsky must deal with and the people Kearney faces.  The people Chomsky faces may be stony-faced in their attitude to his ideas, but they haven’t emerged from thirty years of armed conflict within the state. Unionism, in contrast, has, and this makes it  that much harder for them to accept notions of equality/parity of esteem.

There is one hopeful factor. Unionism in Ireland has always had one great dream: to develop an Irish Catholic population which was content within the Union, or even felt they had a stake in its maintenance. Maybe the thought of that will encourage unionism to engage in the kinds of discussion which Declan Kearney is urging. With polls suggesting that a lot of Catholics are happy to remain UK subjects indefinitely, unionism may see the concession of equality to Catholics/nationalists/republicans as the best road to a settled union. 

The fly in the UK ointment is that republicans have never made any secret of their twin goals: equality now, independence in the medium/long term. 

It’s uncomfortable living in a state which refuses to respect your culture and beliefs in a myriad of ways. It must be even more uncomfortable to live in a state where you’re constantly peering at the horizon, trying to see what that big vague Celtic shape is, coming towards you at such frightening speed. 

Mike Nesbitt speaks clearly and absolutely. Or does he?

Imagine this.  You meet me, we talk and the conversation turns to killing. (Use your imagination, would you?)  I declare that I am opposed to all killing involving knives. “What about  kitchen knives used by impressionable teenagers?”  you ask. “I told you” I say. “ I’m opposed to ALL killing that involves knives. For me, that is an absolute”.

I expect you’d be impressed with my no-ifs-or-buts approach to the matter. But let’s imagine you have with you an awkward friend, and instead of admiring me for my consistently anti-knife stance,  he were to say, awkward git that he is, “What about a knife used by an abused woman on her husband, who treats her like dirt? And by the way -  why are you confining your condemnation to knives?  What about poison, clubs, guns and bombs?” Faced with that sort of interrogation, my originally admirable stance might well be exposed for the paper tiger it is. 

But you don’t have to imagine. The leader of the UUP, Mike Nesbitt, was on Raidio Uladh/Radio Ulster this morning. He made it clear that he was against that Castlederg march later this month, honouring Tyrone IRA men. He was asked about the banners that appear in some Orange and other loyal orders’ marches, honouring dead loyalist paramilitaries. “I’m opposed to those marches too - I’m opposed to terrorism in whatever form and from whatever source. With me that’s an absolute”.  Or words to that effect. 

Mmm. Here’s my question, Mike (we’ve left the world of imagination now, by the way): are you opposed to killings by armies - say, the Iraqi army under Sadaam Hussein? And what about your thoughts on George Washington and Nelson Mandela, terrorists in their day? And how about Churchill’s exhortation to the British people that, if called on, they should adopt terrorist tactics? 

“We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender”. 

It soon becomes clear, as someone tried to explain to George Bush, that ‘terrorism’ is a tactic, not a philosophy.  You might as well condemn scalpels or golf clubs or cars, since all three can be used to kill someone. The question is not what tactic is used but whether the cause behind that tactic is supportable. Churchill clearly believed that the invasion of his island home would justify the use of ‘terrorist’ tactics.

So as I say, I wonder what Mike’s views on Churchill are. And Nelson Mandela. And the Parachute regiment in Derry during the early 1970s. And having answered those questions, does he still want to ban that republican march in Castlederg?

Thatcher and Long Kesh escape: 'Even worse than we thought'.

I was going to write about QE2’s pre-cooked speech in the event of nuclear war, but I find myself roadblocked by the heading on the BBC website today:  “Margaret Thatcher Maze prison escape shock revealed“.  The story, from  recently released papers, shows how the conflict here was as much a propaganda war as a physical one. I know I shouldn’t, given that a prison officer died in the wake of the escape, but it’s hard not to hug oneself as you read bewildered British government reaction. This, you’ll remember, a government led by  a woman who  a few years earlier said “A crime is a crime” and there could be no distinction between republican prisoners and ordinary criminals.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office tried sticking fingers in the dyke: “You should take every opportunity to limit the propaganda benefit the IRA will reap from the outbreak” it told all its outposts throughout the world.  “The Provisionals  clearly regard the latest escape as a propaganda tonic for their flagging morale".  On the grounds that the case was still sub judice, they were urged not to divulge details of the escape or any suggestion of bungled security. And we get Thatcher’s own scribbled reaction to the matter “Even worse than we thought”.

Well yes, Mrs T.  The average Joe or Josephine, even though neither might have had sympathy for republicanism,  could not but react with admiration to the escape. The problem for you, Thatcher,  and the British government,  was two-fold. You’d been insisting, as I say, that republican prisoners were just common criminals - yet here they’d organised something  no common criminals had ever come near: thirty-eight men breaking out in one meticulously-organised manoeuvre from the most high-security of prisons - even if half of them were recaptured soon after. But most damaging of all, Thatcher, you  were up against the movies. 

In the movies, when a break-out is shown, invariably the sympathy of the audience is positioned, not with the prison authorities, but with the escapees. The weight of that viewpoint was such that not even the Iron Lady could prevent it  crashing around the ears of the British government. 

I’m subject to correction but I don’t remember the mainstream media ever providing a detailed picture of the escape, how it was possible, what the risks were and how they were overcome by the men who escaped. Would that be simply that I have a bad memory? Or would it be once again a case of the docile British and Irish media falling meekly behind the British government’s stated wishes?

I