Home thoughts from abroad

We were in Siracusa today and a lovely place it is. Full of shadowy side-streets to cool you,  piazzas to make you dizzy with their elegance, and several churches to make you marvel at the faith that built them. In one of the piazzas a young wedding couple were getting photographs taken. Passers-by called good wishes, cameras  snapped, the groom grinned and waved beside his gorgeous bride. As I watched it struck me how little the rest of the world cares about whether we condemn a mob attack on Belfast’s Lord Mayor, whether we work with Dr Haass to deal with the absurdity of flag fascism or manipulation of the past.  They don’t even know or care that the SDLP have selected Fearghal McKinney and not Claire Hanna to replace the unfortunate Conall McDevitt. 

I don't care that much myself, to be honest.  I’ve never seen Fearghal McKinney other than on the television, but  I did by accident meet Claire Hanna briefly about a week ago. She struck me as charming and energetic and probably pretty smart.  But clearly the SDLP think Fearghal is even more charming, energetic and smart. Odd, really.

Because Fearghal has had one incarnation as a politician already. You probably remember when he sprang from the television screen and stood for the SDLP in Fermanagh-South Tyrone in 2010. The notion was that his TV profile would somehow impress the electorate and that Sinn Féin’s Michelle Gildernew as well as other contenders would be knocked for six and Fearghal slide past her and others  into the House of Commons.  That’s the charitable interpretation of his candidacy. The less charitable is that the SDLP hope was, while he wouldn’t win, he’d take enough votes off Ms Gildernew to knock the Sinn Féin woman from her abstentionist seat. In short, he'd be an effective spoiler.

Well, it very nearly worked out. But not quite. The bould Michelle, you’ll remember, amid scenes of much rejoicing, came home with a four-vote majority. You read me right - four votes. Fearghal, alas, stirred all of 3, 574 voters to cast their ballot for him - a shuddering 7.6% of votes cast. 

What was it they used do say, when Mickey Rooney married his seventh wife? Ah yes - the triumph of hope over experience. There’s another saying about those whom the gods wish to destroy, first they make mad. Both I think are apt here. I don’t expect to encounter SDLP people running naked through the streets with straw in their hair when I get home; but I will be watching them carefully for any sudden, possibly dangerous movements.

The Loo of Malta

We did  a day-trip to Malta yesterday.  Ignoramus that I am, I knew little to nothing of Malta beyond John Huston’s movie  The Maltese Falcon  and the existence of a group called the Knights of Malta. I now know that it’s a small island with an even smaller one, Gozo, tagged onto it, and that the population totals under half a million. From the brief contact I had with them, the people seem similar to the Sicilians, who live a 90-minute ferry-ride away (although that could be my ignorance working again, since Belfast and Cairnryan are separated by about the same amount of time but the Irish and the Scots,  are quite distinct). 

Our guide was a small, craggy-faced bundle of energy who peppered us with information about his country, of which he was clearly proud. What struck me was the way in which  the island had been used by a succession of superior forces down the centuries. The Arabs, the Holy Roman Empire/Knights of Malta, the French, the British - again and again outsiders overran it and used it for their own purposes. Each invader left benefits in  terms of architecture and trade while essentially using the island for their ends, not that of the Maltese. Napoleon for example during his short stay there reformed finance and education and  abolished slavery,  but he also seized the island in the first instance by pretending he wanted to resupply his ships on their way to Egypt, but once in port, turned his guns on the hospitable Maltese.  The start of the nineteenth  century saw Malta become part of the British Empire, used as a stop-over point on the way to India. During the Second World War the British made sure that it wasn’t overrun by Mussolini’s Italy, not for its own sake but rather because its loss would have dented British morale.  Today it’s a  tiny republic and regularly gets thumped in international football. 

Three things stand out for me from our brief day. There’s a massive painting by Caravaggio in the Co-Cathedral, showing the beheading of John the Baptist. As with all Caravaggio paintings there’s a brilliant sense of the fleshiness of the figures -  light reflecting off muscles as the executioner, having already killed John, reaches behind him for a knife with which to slice off the head. It catches wonderfully the brutal ghastliness of killing; my wife tells me the killer’s pose, leaning forward on one leg while arching his body back to select the knife, is almost identical to a pose she is asked to take and hold in yoga class. It hurts, she says. 

The second was the mark which the invaders left. Everywhere there are huge honey-coloured walls,  with a giant dry moat making it near impossible to storm the ramparts. Even the little streets are built with a series of curves, so that any attackers wouldn’t know what awaited them round the next corner. There are busts of Churchill, monuments to the sacrifice of the Maltese on the Allied side during the Second World War,  a memorial flanked by two eternal flames. 

The third was the pride our guide took in pointing out the island’s state-of-the-art hospital, recently constructed. Its modern design and purpose - saving lives- contrasted nicely with the countless buildings and ramparts constructed down the centuries to help the inhabitants kill as many invaders as possible before being overrun. 

 And the Loo of Malta? That was in  the restaurant where we stopped for a mid-day meal. It was small, smelly and didn’t flush.  I could have been back in Ireland. 

Honouring the dead

I see speedy reaction in unionist circles to that speech by Eamon Gilmore (about which I plan to blog later this week). The reaction is interesting in that it raises the wider issue of how we deal with dead combatants. 

One answer would be to leave them in peace. The dead, whatever they may have done or not done, are beyond our reach. We can’t actually honour them or dishonour them, since they are beyond our living world. Despite the fact that we would recoil in horror at the thought of a corpse or a grave being treated disrespectfully, the dead person doesn’t mind one way or another. They can’t, because they’re dead.

What we really mean when we talk about honouring the dead is honouring the memory of what they have done. Clearly if you believe X to have been a noble, courageous person who lived his life for his country or even gave his life for his country, you may wish to give public expression to that admiration. By doing so, you hope his memory will be kept fresh and others, perhaps, inspired to act in a similar (although not necessarily the same) fashion. 

That seems to me eminently reasonable, regardless of who X was. Clearly we all have different people we admire among the living. Likewise we revere the memory of different people among the dead. It seems to me to be verging on dictatorial to demand that people forego the commemoration of someone on the grounds that we don’t share a similarly positive view of that person. Different people have different loyalties, and we must allow them room to give expression to those loyalties. 

Where the difficulty arises is when, in commemorating X, I bring my commemoration to the doorstep of people who have no time for X and whose loyalties lie with Y, his deadly enemy.  That seems to me to be using the dead as a weapon against those we disagree with. So I would see a  considerable difference in commemorating X in an area where his memory is held dear, and exporting my commemoration to an area where X and his memory is disliked/detested.  That’s why as a rule I’m opposed to marching of all kinds, because there’s the danger at least that  X’s memory is exported, so to say, to places where it will excite indignation. 

To come back to particulars, then. I believe unionists were fully entitled to commemorate the signing of the Ulster Covenant, even though I would not regard the Covenant and its aftermath as desirable or something i would wish to honour. Similarly, I believe nationalist and republicans are fully entitled to commemorate the Easter Rising or those who died on hunger-strike or others  they hold dear in their memory. It seems to me wrong that unionist politicians should urge the need for republicans to show ‘sensitivity’ in how they commemorate 1916 or any other year. If they don’t attempt to export that memory and deliberately bring it to the doorstep of those who don’t share their thinking, then how they conduct their commemoration is a matter for them and others of like mind. Those of unlike mind should accept that and restrain their desire to give advice on matters in which they have no part.

Gimme that ol'-time cliché...

I’m in Sicily  at the moment for a short holiday. It’s  beautifully sunny, the people are friendly, prices reasonable - and yet I’m slightly disappointed. Where are the sheep with the bells attached to their necks, where are the clouds of dust rising from mountain tracks, where is Michael Corleone?  Isn’t Sicily supposed to be the home of Cosa Nostra/the Mafia/whatever you’re having yourself?

I guess this kind of clichéd thinking is similar to that of visitors to Ireland who get a bit tetchy when they find the waiter serving them in a hotel has a Polish or Lithuanian accent. Some tourists even complain openly - it disrupts their whole Irish experience.  And the same with some visitors to Belfast or other places of the north. Where are the burnt-out cars, the furious rioters, the gun battles?  How come walking through the centre of Belfast feels like walking through the centre of virtually any city in Britain or Ireland?  

Hundreds of years ago the French writer Montaigne, who lived in a time of great turbulence, made the point that even when there are wars and pestilence and disaster, most people most of the time go on living life, doing the ordinary things - cooking, working, eating, sleeping, quarreling, loving. 

I know what he means. When I lived in Canada during the 1970s, the impression through the media was that Ireland, from Malin Head to Mizzen Head, was aflame with religious war. It’s only when I returned that I realised most people accepted being frisked when they entered a store, evacuating when a bomb scare was announced, being stopped again and again by uniformed men with English accents.They could live with the Troubles because in the end they were insulated from them. Which is why many people condemned those  caught up in the Troubles. Why couldn’t they be reasonable like those of us who were outside the war zones and judge these things objectively? Such slow learners, really.

You’ll have to excuse me now. Our room has just been cleaned and I must  check if my bed contains a horse’s head. 

Pots, kettles and bombs

Dr Richard Haass, a former senior State Department official under Republican presidents who now heads the Council on Foreign Relations, told reporters  on Monday that cruise missile strikes on “anything associated with Syrian chemical weapons capabilities, storage depots or potentially the troops that are believed to be associated with their use” are most likely. Additionally, Haass predicted Syrian command-and-control facilities also could be targeted. “I would be in favour of a fairly heavy use of cruise missiles”  in Syria. This he thinks would “discourage the Syrians from using chemical weapons again”. 

Quite right, Virginia. This is the same Dr Richard Haass who is coming here shortly to tell us how to solve our problems. In light of the above I don’t think I can tell you how much I hope he’s on our side. 

Meanwhile, it’s useful to remember the US’s record on the use of chemical weapons.  Napalm was used by Americans in Vietnam from 1965-1972.  Napalm is composed of polysteyrene, hydrocarbone benzene and gasoline. This gets you a jelly-like mess which, once ignited, sticks to practically anything and burns for up to ten minutes. On the human body it produces unbearable pain and almost always death. It was at first used by American troops on the ground armed with flame-throwers; later B-52 bombers dropped napalm over huge areas. It’s reckoned that 20,000,000 gallons of this toxin were dropped on Vietnam. (Yes, that is the correct number of zeros after the 2.)

Has the world gone collectively mad?  A man who is in favour of dropping bombs on Syria, from a country which killed around 2,000,000 Vietnamese, let alone the numbers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, is coming here to show us how to put past hatreds aside and create a better tomorrow? Pinch me, someone. I know this is a bad dream. 

Finally,  three questions. When (if ever) did Britain and/or the US use chemical weapons?   Does the US store chemical weapons at present? Does Britain?  Just askin’, like.

    

Time for the DUP to know that actions have consequences

Why did Peter Robinson, and him in Florida, send a letter that threatens the very existence of the Stormont institutions? Maybe it was being too long out in the Florida sun. Or maybe there’s a clue in something he said earlier this year: “One of the elements of leadership that is always important is to know just how far ahead of the pack that you should be. And it is all right having great ideas and great wisdom on these matters but you have to be able to bring people along with you.”

That’s a leader talking. But are those the words of a shrewd pragmatist who knows the limitations of power,  or the voice of one who says “There goes the mob, I am their leader, I must quickly follow”?

Alas, it looks more like the second rather than the first.  For weeks now, various top DUP people, particularly Arlene Foster, have been loudly critical of the republican commemorative march held in Castlederg earlier this summer. In razor-sharp contrast, there hasn’t been a peep about loyalist rioting in Belfast City Centre which left over 50 PSNI officers injured. This isn’t a case of the DUP leadership having great ideas but the grassroots refuses to stomach them. This is a case of the DUP leadership being bereft of ideas and  its right-wing elements leading it by the nose. We saw the same thing in Belfast City Hall on Monday night, when the DUP couldn’t bring itself to support a motion condemning the Woodvale attack on Belfast’s Lord Mayor. 

Instead, Peter and Co have chosen to turn a blind eye and deaf ear to illegal activities (yes, Virginia, it is against the law to attack the police or assault a mayor) while using a megaphone to trumpet its outrage at the totally-legal republican parade in Castlederg. In fact, Peter Robinson used Castlederg as part-excuse for his Long Kesh/Maze U-turn.  He knows (I hope)  that his U-turn could be a deal-breaker for the whole Long Kesh development. He appears less aware that his U-turn could break the whole power-sharing deal.

How so? Well, let’s consider the options open to Sinn Féin. They either agree to go along with the DUP rethink and abandon the notion of a peace centre at Long Kesh; or they insist that the DUP have crossed a red line  - gone back on its pledged word - and that working with such people is impossible.  Martin McGuinness could say “OK, put Stormont back in moth-balls again, there’s no point in trying to work with a party whose face is so stonily set against power-sharing”.

I’d favour  the second response, for the good reason that it’d force the DUP to  face a choice. Either it accepts its equal part   in the governing of what Joel Taggart last week  on Raidio Uladh/Radio Ulster fondly called  “our wee country”, or they face the massive loss of income and power that must come with a collapse of Stormont. And as the good Dr Samuel Johnson said,  there's nothing like the prospect of being hanged to concentrate the mind.

Wasn’t it  Arlene Foster herself who warned Sinn Féin to be careful what they wished for regarding a border poll, since they might just get one? Well indeed, Arlene. Maybe have a word with Peter so he doesn’t wish too hard for no shrine-to-terrorists at Long Kesh.  He could get his wish, and a whole lot more as well. 

Conall packs it in

And so farewell, Conal McDevitt MLA - or should that be ‘Slan go foill’ - G’bye for now?  In retrospect it seems inevitable that he had to walk the plank, but there were moments after that payments-to-his-wife’s-company thing broke, I thought he’d manage to tough it out. Or brazen it out,  if you’ d prefer that word. After all,  Peter Robinson came through the hell-fire of Irisgate and sure  now you’d think it never had happened. I know the two men had quite different problems but they both did have problems, big ones.  Peter made it across the fiery coals, Conall rolled his eyes and hopped off the sole-scorcher half-way. 

For me it’s another case of liking the person whose political view by no means coincide with my own. I liked/like Conall. I’ve never met him but I liked his fluency in interview and I liked his general good humour and I liked the sort of... open quality he had. Let’s say if all our MLAs had a similar civilized demeanour, Stormont would be a better place. On the other hand, he was caught with his trousers round his ankles. No matter what explanation for this state of undress, it was still unavoidably the case that his wife’s company received thousands of pounds when it shouldn’t have. The plank beckoned. 

What effect will his leaving have? There’ll be those in the SDLP who will have to restrain themselves from breaking into a tap-dance at the sight of his departing back. From what I’ve heard, Conall wasn’t at the top of everyone in the SDLP’s Christmas card list. Grumblings about the frequency of his media appearances, until some people were beginning to think of Conall and the SDLP as synonymous. Uh-uh. Not good.  That’s not to say there aren’t people rarin’ to fill his shoes (step forward Claire Hanna - no, not you, Fergal McKinney - once was quite enough). But to have someone who was thought of as a prospective leader of the party plunge from the skies must induce a sickening feeling in the collective SDLP stomach. 

A number of people have asked “What’ll he do now?” It’s no joke to lose an MLA job with nothing else lined up. But Conall was a PR man before (even if it was for the constantly-shrinking Labour Party in the south) so there’s no reason why he couldn’t go back to that kind of work. Still,  while admitting that I’m a lousy fortune-teller, I have a funny little feeling we haven’t seen the last of  Conall McDevitt in northern politics. Or even in the SDLP. So au revoir, Conall, rather than goodbye,  slan go foill rather than slan leat.