President of Ireland? Then gisse a vote

Barry McElduff is a very effective politician for a number of reasons, among which his good humour and his being a Tyrone man feature prominently. He was on the  Sunday Politics show on BBC One this morning and he was talking about a subject that has potentially profound implications: who can vote for the Presidency of Ireland. 

It seems that after some pressure, particularly from the north but also from ex-pats in the US,  there’s a real possibility that people beyond the borders of the twenty-six counties will be able to vote in the next presidential election. That makes sense: if someone is going to be called the President of Ireland, it’s a bit daft having one and a half million Irish people deprived of a vote. Noel Doran, editor of the VO/Irish News, was quick to reassure those who might worry about such things that even if Shinners from the North had been able to vote in the last presidential election, Martin McGuinness would still have finished third. He didn’t tell us how the inclusion of  (among others) northern voters might have affected southern voting patterns. My guess is that, just as a united Ireland would be more than just the north bolted onto the south, so too the extension of voting rights to Irish people in the north would have  considerable impact, one way or another, on  southern voters. For the partitionists in the south, it'd most likely stiffen their partitionism. For non- or anti-partitionists, it would have a similarly galvanising impact.

Mark Carruthers, chairing the discussion, put it to the DUP’s representative that this could be seen as the thin edge of the wedge, to make the Irish presidental race the outcome of votes cast by Irish people everywhere but notably the north.  It’s a  good point. It could well be that it might raise/deepen in many minds the notion of all Irish people on this island voting for other representatives, not just the president. In short, it might hasten the demise of the border, a consummation devoutly to be wished in the humble opinion of this scribbler. On the other hand, it might be the southern political parties throwing a bone to northerners in the hope they'd be more comfortable with the division of Ireland and exclusion from elections where real power was at stake. 

No one, I noticed, mentioned that the next presidential election will be in 2018, by which time there’s a good chance that nationalists/republicans will be in the majority in the north. Which would of course mean a referendum vote that’d make the Irish presential election look fairly mild beer. 

Goodbye, George Best

So. Farewell George Best, hello masked gunman. The mural of Best, who first played for Manchester United just fifty years ago, has been painted over by the figure of a masked gunman. Dr John Kyle,  the former PUP leader was on Raidio Uladh/Radio Ulster last Monday morning, saying how much he objected to this and hoping that somehow, sometime, the process would be reversed. 

Mural paintings in Belfast are an interesting feature of the city, one on which Professor Bill Rolston has written extensively.  They are generally seen as reflecting the mood of the community. The murals to be seen in West Belfast, for example, have changed radically over the past couple of decades and been effectively demilitarised. That’s seen as the community  supporting the peace process in which republicans are engaged. So does the ex-George Best mural show the reverse of this? A community whose mood has swung from acceptance of a more peaceful future to a paralimilitary, aggressive stance? 

It may be. Certainly there seems to have been no lack of man - and woman - power in the massed ranks of those who attacked the police at various points over the last six months. This would suggest that the flag protests, which are widely believed to be supported by the UVF,  are also supported by the people of East Belfast. Then again, it could simply be that there is a substantial and aggressive group engaged in flag violence whom most people in East Belfast would disown but they are too busy going about their daily lives to feel the need to adopt a public position.

There’s a third possibility: that the people of East Belfast, like Dr John Kyle, are opposed both to the flag protest and the replacement of the Best mural with a militaristic image, but are cowed by the UVF into keeping their heads down and saying nothing. 

My guess is that the last possibility is unlikely. The notion of a paramilitary organisation holding its community to ransom is one we’ve heard before, and in the past it’s been directed at the IRA. I think it had limited credibility then and it has limited credibility now. Mao Tse-tung spoke of the guerrilla as swimming in the pool of his people; when sympathy for the actions of the guerrilla dried up, militant activities become impossible. I don’t see the UVF as having its boot on the neck of the East Belfast people. 

The first possibility - that the UVF/flag protestors are acting with the unambiguous support of the people of East Belfast - is also unlikely. The people in that part of the city as well as other parts are war-weary. Many of them remember the bitterness of the conflict and the suffering it entailed. Many of them want a new beginning and that’s reflected in the election of Naomi Long of the Alliance Party. 

I suspect the truth is a mixture of two and three. That is, most people are too busy doing the things we all do - earning a living, raising a family, watching TV, planning a holiday - that they have little interest in radical politics. Or any politics. At the same time, those who regret the movement backwards towards armed violence may well be nervous about what might happen next if they were to speak out. So the combination of a lack of interest and a modicum of fear means the way is open for the elimination of Ireland’s most gifted soccer player in favour of a masked gunman. 

It’s a regrettable situation but it could be worse. Imagine this: Belfast wakens up one day to find republicans have blanked out a peace wall and replaced it with an armed volunteer, ready for action. Can you imagine the reaction?  The air would be thick with the voices of unionist politicians condemning the mural and declaring it as proof-positive the IRA hasn’t gone away. The very foundations of power-sharing would tremble before such a re-painting. 

But since it’s unionist paramilitaries, the mural will remain and nobody - certainly not our mainstream media, certainly not unionist politicians - will ask the obvious questions: isn’t the UVF supposed to be a proscribed organisation? And weren't they supposed to have disbanded ages ago? If I'm wrong and they are calling for answers to these two questions,  their microphone appears to be not working. 

Crisis? What crisis?

Crisis - what crisis? People would want to cool their jets a bit. That’s the view of this cleverly-carved little statelet’s First Minister.  He’s familiar with this sort of thing, he says, and people have to keep a sense of proportion.

Is he right? Wrong? It depends on how you see things. If you see that Castlederg republican commemorative march as deliberately provocative, you may well agree with the First Minister and feel that it was intended to be offensive to victims.  On the other hand  if you see the Castlederg parade as one commemoration of those who died on the republican side, as opposed to about twenty  marches which progress through the heart of  Castlederg each year commemorating those on the British side, if you believe you’re entitled to hold a march that’s been sanctioned by the Parades Commission and which altered its route so as to avoid excessive offence to victims or their families,  you may think that the unionist reaction to Castlederg is a bit like a man with food all over his face and in his hair  berating a family member for having a crumb on his chin. 

Then there’s the whole question of trust. The fact is, the DUP agreed to the construction of a peace centre on the Long Kesh/Maze site. Then a year or so down the line, they decided all bets were off. When they said they were firmly committed to the notion, that was just conditional really: they could pull out at any point they wanted. 

Unionists like to think of themselves and are often portrayed as hard-headed: no fancy words, no faking it, what you see is what you get, my word is my bond. Yet here we have the First Minister making it perfectly clear that doubling back on his word means little or nothing to him. Crisis? What crisis?  Can you imagine going into business with someone like that? Who on any given morning is likely to call you and tell you the document they signed up to yesterday no longer holds, they’ve changed their mind?  It’s my guess no hard-headed or even semi-soft-headed unionist would tolerate such conduct in a partner. Their association would end  on the spot. 

And do you know what? I think they’d be right. Either the DUP understands to the marrow of its bones that double-talk like this spells the end of shared government, or Sinn Féin folds its Stormont tent and lets the British and Irish government move in to run the show. Didn’t somebody once say it’s deeds that count, not words? Too true, too sadly true. 

Learning to stay apart

I don’t always agree with Fionola Meredith but she has a worthwhile article in today’s Irish Times.  Her son has just started his studies at Trinity College and she notes that the number of students from the north going south to study and vice versa is shrinking. 

It’s an issue that hasn’t been addressed and should be. The Scottish government with one stroke of the pen did what seemed impossible: it had sixth-formers at Protestant schools here (and please don’t start telling me they’re not Protestant schools - if they’re largely attended by Protestants they’re Protestant schools) lining up to get an Irish passport. For why? Because as EU passport holders they were entitled to skip paying fees but as as British passport holders they were not. Simples. 

But it goes beyond getting a cheaper deal. Before the flag thugs ruined everything, we used to do a house-swap with families from different countries. Living embedded in a district in San Francisco or Toulouse or southern Italy, you got a sense of people and their lives that was impossible as a normal tourist to those countries. And having both taught and studied in the south, I know how valuable the experience can be in understanding my country south of the border. 

And yes, Virginia, there is a need for it. Ignore if you can the increasingly-partitionist tone of the southern media. Instead do the math(s).  As Meredith notes,  southern students constitute just 4% of students in higher education in the north; northern students make up 2% of those in the south. If you’re someone who regards the south as a foreign country you should still be appalled by these figures: they do little towards fostering good neighbourly relations. If you believe that south of the border is part of your country, you should be leppin’ mad - not just at the pathetically small figures of transfer but at the need for two separate education systems at any level. 

John O’Dowd: please note. 

Peter's red herring

The Assembly the other day was a fine place for an irony-collector to be. Anxious to get off the hook of his U-turn over the Long Kesh/Maze peace centre, Peter Robinson produced from his pocket a very red herring ...What’s that, Virginia? Was he ashamed of his U-turn? No, no, no. Jim Allister was attacking him, not for his U-turn, but because a U-turn was ever necessary. He was chiding Robinson for ever having been in favour of a peace centre. 

That was the first irony.  The second irony was that Robinson’s red herring consisted of the charge that Jim Allister had ‘done business’ with republicans. Eh? Yes indeed, Robinson alleged - he’d been somehow involved in a will which had meant he was doing business with republicans. To wit, he’d been involved in selling them land. Pot calling the kettle black and all that. How did Jim Allister respond? He denounced the charge as a scurrilous untruth. In short, he agreed with Robinson - to do business and especially to sell land to republicans would be a shameful act. And he hadn’t done it.

The irony wasn’t over. The BBC filled in the background for viewers by explaining that in some border areas, the sale of land from Protestants to Catholics is a contentious issue. No, Virginia, there’s no point in your swooning. That’s what they said. Without once bursting out laughing. 

When my father in the 1930s bought the farm on which I was raised - and it was miles away from the border - he had to get a decent Protestant neighbour to put in his bid for him. Had it been known that a Catholic wanted to buy the farm which was owned at the time by a Protestant family, he wouldn’t have had a chance. I used to think this was one of those family myths that gained credence by the telling. Only then I found when I mentioned it to other Catholics, as often as not they had a similar tale to tell. In other words, the BBC was telling its viewers something a considerable number of them knew already. And had known for decades.

Agreeing to a peace centre seen as a retrograde step; ‘Doing business’ with republicans seen as a shameful act, especially if land is involved; the BBC discovering that this kind of thing has been going on for decades. Does irony come any thicker and faster?

Fresh thinking? Or...

John Coulter in the Irish Daily Star  yesterday was urging the Shinners to pull a master-stroke. What they should do, John says, is concede on the flag-flying issue. Let ‘the butcher’s apron’ (his words, not mine) fly 365 days a year and in return have Peter Robinson do yet another U-turn and agree to a peace centre at the Long Kesh/Maze site. Oh, and the Shinners should let unionists have their Ardoyne and Drumcree parades, in return for IRA volunteer commemoration marches in religiously mixed areas. 

Well, you can’t fault the man for fresh thinking. He sees IRA volunteer commemorations taking place in such areas as North Down and Ballymena. As to victims, he believes  “the people killed in the Monaghan and Dublin no-warning loyalist car bombs are the same as the people murdered in the Real IRA’s no warning car bomb in Omagh”.

Verb change there, you’ll notice. The people in Omagh were ‘murdered‘ while the people in Monaghan and Dublin were ‘killed’. You’ll also note that it was ‘loyalist car bombs‘ which did the damage in Dublin and Monaghan - no mention of collusion with the British forces, which many people are convinced took place. And of course there was a warning  on the Real IRA’s Omagh bomb. Unfortunately it was  garbled and actually ended in heavier casualties. Oh, and John makes no mention of the growing belief that the authorities could have prevented the Omagh bomb.

But it’s the proposed solution to the flag problem that bounces off the wall at the craziest of angles. Sinn Féin, John says, should allow the reversal of a Belfast City Council decision in return for being allowed to hold IRA commemorations in ‘religiously mixed areas’. Bad, John. Very bad. Proposed resolution of problem by pulling the plug on a democratic vote. Not to mention the Mad Hatter’s vision of an IRA commemoration marching through Ballymena. Not to mention rewarding Peter Robinson for his hand-brake turn on the peace centre.

That kite of yours, John. Hate to say it but with all those holes it’s just not going to fly. 

How 'Northern Irish' can you get?

There’s an interesting article by Paul Gillespie in today’s Irish Times  in which he uses the word ‘through-other’ as a kicking-off point for consideration of the need to break down barriers between people here in the north. He talks about the need for a Bill of Rights and a Civic Forum:

‘Their potential is heralded by the gradual if hesitant emergence of a Northern Ireland identity claimed by up to one third of respondents in recent surveys, distinct from unionist or nationalist ones and drawing on all traditions”.

I wonder who was the clever dick who suggested including  ‘Northern Irish’ as a category in the last census form here? Could it have had anything to do with the increase in the proportion of the population which is of Catholic background?  By opening a third door, distinct from the usual British/Irish identification,  the possibility of frightening the unionist horses was minimized. 

At the same time there’s no doubt that people north of the border do have a distinct identity from those living in the twenty-six counties. How could you live under British rule for a near-century without developing characteristics different to the rest of the people of Ireland?  

That granted, have you ever met a Mayo man or woman that didn’t have a different view of the world from a Meath person? Or a Kerry man or woman who wasn’t strikingly different from a Dublin man or woman? Or do you think Cork people see themselves as the same as Kerry people?  Like England, like Scotland, like most countries,  different parts of our country shape people in different ways. The northerner is different,  just as every other section of Ireland is different; but s/he has an extra layer of difference that’s been shaped by British rule.

This extra dimension of difference has been seized upon by commentators to declare that we here north of the border have an identity we share only with each other. Well yes. Except that some of us enjoy/embrace this difference from the rest of Ireland; these we call unionists. Some dislike/resent the difference from the rest of Ireland; these we call nationalists/republicans. 

We have it on the authority of no less a figure than Margaret Thatcher: it’s not what happens to you that counts most, it’s how you react to it. So please, Paul Gillespie and others. Because a lot of people here recognise that we live in the six counties doesn’t mean we’re about to abandon our British/Irish identity.