About last night, this morning and tomorrow

I’ve just come from having my breakfast ( yes, it was lovely, thanks), during which I listened to the top story on BBC Radio Four’s Today  programme. It was reporting the rioting that took place between police and loyalists near Castlecourt shopping centre last night. It also moved on to consider the republican parade scheduled for tomorrow in Castlederg.

The Castlecourt area rioting was explained by a unionist interviewee. The problem was that a republican parade approved by the Parades Commission had been organised by dissident republicans, which he appeared to believe meant they were in favour of violence. A disappointing but not too surprising analysis. For a start, not all dissident republicans - that is, republicans who disagree with Sinn Féin’s strategy and think that being part of government here is not the way to a united Ireland - not all dissidents are in favour of violence, and to assume they are is to distort the issue. But maybe more important, this line on last night was a case of blaming the victims for the violence that ensued. The anti-internment parade, regardless of who organised it or were included in it, was a legally-sanctioned parade remembering an unjust system: internment without trial. Because you don’t like some people doesn’t mean that their demonstration lacks validity. 

The Castlederg issue was then discussed with Sinn Féin’s Barry McElduff, who did something you could interpret as foolish or brave, depending on your viewpoint. He made the point that the people holding the commemorative parade in Castlederg believed the dead IRA men were Irish patriots. You’d consider that foolish if you believed that certain trigger words like “IRA” and “patriots” tend to send some people into a state of combustion. You’d consider it brave if you believed that he was simply describing the facts and hence the motivation for the march. The interviewer Justin Webb  pointed out that, although approved by the Parades Commission, the Castlederg parade should perhaps be abandoned, as it might well give offence to people whose relatives had died at the hands of the IRA. Again, McElduff said something that was either foolish or brave. He pointed out that the relatives of the 165,000 people who were incinerated in a bombing raid on Dresden during World War Two might well feel offended at the annual commemoration of British armed forces every November. If you believed that the actions of the British armed forces were legitimate violence by a ‘proper’ army - the position taken up by the unionist interviewee (I apologise for not catching his name) - then you’d see the comparison of the Castlederg parade with Remembrance Day as absurd/offensive. If you believed that the actions of the British armed forces  - in this case, in killing tens of thousands of German civilians - were at least as cruel as anything perpetrated by the IRA, you’d see McElduff’s comparison as legitimate and revealing. 

In the end it comes down to tolerance. Republicans have to accept - and for the most part I believe they do accept  - that unionists have a view of the conflict which casts the IRA as murderers who skulked around ditches and weren’t part of any real army ( the view of the unionist interviewee this morning). Unionists have to accept - and I don’t think I’ve ever heard any unionist spokesperson do so - that to republicans, the IRA men and women who died during the conflict were Irish patriots.  Until there is an acceptance that people on the other side are sincere in the views they hold, and that fact is acknowledged, we’re going nowhere. The attempt to control the narrative of the past so that your opponents’ views  are obliterated,  and any attempt to give expression to them through commemoration parades or  media interviews is outlandish and offensive, means we’re doomed to a ghastly stalemate. 

We all, unionist, republican and neither,  get a short time on this planet. It’s past time we found ways to respect each others’ views on the past, even if - especially if - they clash with our own. Otherwise we face a moronic and bleak future. 

Six things we now know about Sunday's Castlederg commemoration

1.  When Arlene Foster speaks about leadership, she is of course talking about the abysmal failure of Sinn Féin to show leadership over the Castlederg republican parade. She is not talking about the brave leadership of the DUP, which has repeatedly denounced the violence of those who attacked the Lord Mayor in North Belfast, and has even gone so far as to heavily criticise those who would suggest the Lord Mayor had been warned not to go there. 
2. There is no equivalence between the Castlederg commemoration and that devoted annually in Coleraine to the memory of loyalist paramilitaries. 
3. There is no equivalence between the respectful 20 + loyal order parades which go through the centre of Castlederg each year and the planned republican commemoration.
4. There is no equivalence between Sunday’s Castlederg commemoration and  the annual Remembrance Day ceremonies in that town, where the heroism of British armed forces down the ages and up to the present day is honoured.
5. Martin McGuinness has failed the unionist community by his refusal to accept that there should be no commemoration of any kind anywhere of any republican dead. He has also failed the unionist community by not accepting that they have the right to hold commemorations of their dead anywhere, anytime of their choosing. 
6. Black is white. 

West Belfast Talks Back

I was at ‘West Belfast Talks Back’ last night -  the signature event of Féile an Phobail.  Tara Mills was in the chair and the panel consisted of Peter Osborne of the Parades Commission, Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald,  the UUP leader Mike Nesbitt and Jeremy Corbyn, the Islington MP. 

As always it was an interesting event. A range of topics was covered - Israel's attitude to Palestine, the banning of the Orange march past the Ardoyne shops, dealing with the past.  But it was a small moment that particularly caught my attention. Someone from the audience asked if, since suicide is a major problem throughout Ireland, would the panel support an all-Ireland approach -  joined-up addressing of the issue, as it were. Everyone on the panel gave a Yes. Well, sort of. Mary Lou McDonald and Jeremy Corbyn agreed that an all-Ireland strategy made sense,  Peter Osborne agreed ( I think)  and so did Mike Nesbitt. Except that Mike put the emphasis on suicide being not just an all-Ireland problem but a global problem, a problem that concerned all humanity. 

You see what he did there? Side-stepped the possibility that some headline today (or blogger) would announce “UUP leader calls for all-Ireland mental health initiative” by saying it’s a global problem. Of course it is undeniably global but you have to start somewhere and here in Ireland seems a sensible place.

What caught my attention was the extent to which politicians are prisoners of the electorate. When they speak, it’s always with one eye on the people who elect them and keep them in a job. So we’ll never know for sure whether Mike Nesbitt believes an all-Ireland initiative to counter suicide would be a good idea, because to say as much would be to commit political suicide.

In passing I should add that I was talking to Mike after the panel discussion and even though I’d once written a blog headed “Is Mike Nesbitt Mad?”  he still shook hands and was good-humoured and civilized. It’s  a teensy bit embarrassing to meet face-to-face with someone you’ve been highly critical of, but if you’re going to put words in the public domain you have to take the occasional omg moment. 

I also did a 3-minute interview with Danny Morrison, who is the chair of Féile an Phobail. If I manage to get the video up it’s worth listening to - how something that was born at a crisis point in our Troubles grew to be the healthy giant it is today. Grassroots up, you'll notice.

Right - I THINK this'll take you to the Danny Morrison interview: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJimQVmfzTU

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.