John McAllister gives Sinn Féin a lecture

OK, confession time: I like Basil McCrea and John McAllister. I've met both of them and there's something innately and genuinely charming about both of them. Basil has a boyish air of innocence  ('Who, me sir? Scoff the cake??') and John has a rural solidity and quiet friendliness. Granted, it doesn't always come across on TV but that's how I found them. They've also shown the good sense to leave the Ulster Unionist party which is struggling to be hard-line and look liberal at the same time. So I'm well-disposed towards both men.

Maybe that's why I admire John's comments at a Sinn Féin conference in London. The fact that he attended and spoke are both good. It's what he said that is a wee bit harder to swallow.

He asks Sinn Féin to embrace the constitutional position of Northern Ireland, just as 175,000 Irish people have embraced the UK's capital city.  That injunction has two stumbling points. The first is that republicanism by its nature is opposed to the constitutional position of Northern Ireland. Any action it takes is motivated by a desire to free itself and the people of the north from Mother Britain's embrace. The second is that of the 175,000 people in London, it's a safe bet that if economic circumstances in Ireland allowed them to live and work at home, they would be on the nearest plane. They don't so much embrace London as accept it as a fact of life when you come from a divided country.

John also urges Sinn Féin to drop this nonsense about a referendum on Irish unity - sure the polls show only 3.8% of people want constitutional change. Right. That'd be like the polls said that Fine Gael would sweep home with its referendum to abolish the Seanad. Saying stuff to a man or woman with a clipboard is one thing; being in a ballot-cubicle where you can affect historic change sought for centuries is quite another. And even if constitutional change were rejected, wouldn't that clear the air about present positions on the border?

John also says Sinn Féin should start talking about 'Northern Ireland', not 'The North' or worse still, 'the north'. Mmm. Maybe if there was less talk among unionists of The Province, and if the local BBC didn't see fit to call itself Radio Ulster, not to mention the University of Ulster, such a request might find more receptive ears. But even it didn't, using 'the North' or alternatives to 'Northern Ireland' is simply to say that you don't believe a state carved out along strictly sectarian lines, run by a system of gerrymandering and discrimination until the roof came in, and maintained even now by Britain's claim to legislate for its next-door neighbour, is a desirable state of affairs.  There are worse things this state could be called than 'the North'.

John says he wants to create “a Northern Ireland for all, in the new Ireland and in a new era in the history of these islands”. Has a ring to it, doesn't it?  But it'd take a bit of parsing before you knew what it meant. Especially that bit about 'a Northern Ireland in the new Ireland'.  So is that constitutional change you have in mind, John?  

I said at the start that I liked Basil and John. Actually they can be very annoying in the views they have. But to be honest, that contradictory element in people is less than rare. Sometimes the people you disagree with politically can be genuinely nice people. And vice versa. So nothing personal, John, but we can only do business when we all know what we're talking about. 

Need some money? Sorry, no go.

Another instance this morning of the dog being paralysed by its own tail. Steven McCaffery in the Detail.ie and Radio Ulster/Raidio Uladh both cover the story of £80 million that’s in the Social Development Fund and that can’t be released to help people in need. For why? Because the DUP and Sinn Féin can’t agree over how it should be spent. Typical, eh? The two big parties, stubborn and dead-locked, one’s intransigence matched by the other’s bull-headedness. But hold. What would the two parties do with the money? Let’s look a little closer. 

Sinn Féin says it thinks the money should be allocated on the basis of need. The DUP says ‘No comment’. EH? Did I hear aright? The DUP don’t think distributing money on the basis of need is a good idea? Well they don’t actually say that. Just ‘No comment’. However, in the past they have talked about pockets of need in Protestant areas that should be addressed. Jim Wilson of East Belfast believes the money should be split 50-50. What could be fairer than that?

Give us a break, Jim. Nobody in their right mind would disagree that there are  Protestant areas that are up against it - high unemployment, low educational attainment, all the bad stuff. But hey - official figures - that’s official  figures, not Sinn Féin figures - show that in this state, 16 out of 20 of the most deprived wards  are in Catholic areas.  

Which is where that paralysed dog came in. The DUP feels it daren’t respond to that need because if it does, it’ll look like they’re giving all the goodies to themuns and virtually ignoring arens.  What they should do, of course, is pluck up their courage and distribute the money according to need as officially defined. Having done that and provided money that’s vitally needed, they should turn with Sinn Féin to look at these pockets of Protestant deprivation and see if something radical can be done that will turn them around. In the meantime the DUP should show that it’s in charge, not some sectarian tail that’s making the DUP dog look as if it's sectarian as well.  Which of course it's not. 

It's him again - hold the front page!

I've been thinking about Joe Brolly and I have a job in mind for him. Yes I know - you've been thinking about him too. But I've been thinking not so much about what he's said but the attention it has got. In the past few months Joe has been on everybody's lips.

The first one - so famous even Peter Robinson made a glancing reference to it in his speech at that GAA dinner - was that rant he went into at half-time, where he damned the 'cynicism' of the Tyrone Gaelic football team, their manager and everyone involved with them, because one of their players had fouled an opposition player. Suspend the rightness or wrongness of his comments and reflect on the attention his words got. When who won and who lost are buried in the tip-heap of time, Joe's words will go on resonating.

The second, of course, was that "They can like it or lump it" comment. Amazing.  He didn't do a rant this time - in fact he was quite quiet-spoken on Radio Foyle. But in no time the social media as well as  mainstream media were stuffed with Joe  reports, Joe comments, Joe Joe Joe. So much so that Peter Robinson's speech got lost in the heavy traffic.

Then there's that kidney donation to a colleague. A heroically selfless act - and there can't be a person in Ireland that hasn't thought and/or talked about it.

Joe is by profession a barrister as well as a Gaelic football pundit.  The job I think he should consider is setting up his own PR company. "But lots of people hate what he says!" Yes, Virginia. But nobody ignores it. Which is the holy grail of PR work.

Joe Brolly has a go; Tanaiste says "Me too"

Sometimes reality breaks through the mesh of the media and the results are refreshing. They can also be embarrassing or infuriating or revelatory but they are always refreshing, because they’re the voice of real life, not the media’s version of real life, and that in itself is refreshing. 

Such a rare moment came yesterday when Joe Brolly spoke about the fact that Dungiven’s GAA club is named after Kevin Lynch, a local man who was a member of both the local hurling team and  the Derry county hurling team. He was also a member of the INLA and one of the ten men who died on hunger-strike in 1981. Joe said that he was proud that the club was named after Kevin Lynch and that it was nobody else’s business what name the club chose. “If they don’t like it, they can lump it”.

You don’t hear that kind of blunt language on air as a rule. To be fair to him, when the Tanaiste Eamon Gilmore spoke at a function in Derry last night he tiptoed delicately towards endorsing Joe’s stand: “I think these are issues that the GAA decides. What we have to work at here is how we build bridges, how we move beyond the difficulties of the past”.

Joe’s remarks have been greeted with outrage from the TUV’s Jim Allister. And I’d feel fairly safe in suggesting people like Gregory Campbell would be equally aghast. In which case  I sugggest Jim  and Gregory  be taken by the hand and brought on a guided tour of Belfast. They could start at Windsor Park. Maybe view the Queen's Bridge, check out the King’s Hall,  look up at Windsor House, make their way down Royal Avenue,drive out to Carnmoney and zip along Prince Charles Way. Lots of people, it’s true,  think this royal naming is a very good idea. Others, like nearly half the population of the state, think it’s a pretty imperialist idea. But the bridges and buildings and roads have been named and I haven’t heard anyone from the nationalist or republican community saying they were outraged or demanding a name-change. 

Joe Brolly says the Dungiven club was named after Kevin Lynch because he played for the club and for the Derry Senior hurling team. I expect that’s true. But I also expect that part of the reason the club was named after him was that he was one of ten men who died on hunger-strike rather than accept that republicans were common criminals.  You have to believe very firmly in an idea if you’re prepared to die for it, in this case very slowly and very painfully.  So that kind of heroic resolve may well have been part of what the club admired in this local man.  Unionists of course will argue that the INLA and the IRA were groups of common criminals. Republicans, nationalists and most GAA members, I’d venture to suggest, see things rather differently.

The part of Joe’s remark that strikes home with sharp-edged truth is “It’s none of their business”.  The ‘they’ he’s referring to are those who would presume to tell the GAA, Sinn Féin, the Catholic Church, Catholic schools, the southern government - all sort of organisations and institutions to which they do not now  belong, never have belonged, and have no intention of ever belonging to - that they would presume to tell  these groupings how to manage their affairs.  

Fact: Gaelic games are not played on a competitive basis in any State/Protestant school, except you include Integrated schools. No unionist politician I can think of plays Gaelic games, no unionist that I know of attends Gaelic games. And yet unionist politicians would presume to tell the GAA how they should act, what names they should or should not use, what rules should govern their organisation. What next -  the proposed names of children born into republican/nationalist families  to be submitted to the likes of Jim and Gregory for approval, before proceeding with the infant’s birth registration?  

There comes a point where, if you dance to the piper’s every tune, the piper begins to feel contempt for you. Joe Brolly has just called time on the dancing.  

Roy Hodgson and the space monkey

Sometimes the politically correct lot  give me a pain in the butt. There is the coterie that thinks it would be a good idea to take Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn  and remove the many references to Nigger Jim.  A sort of posthumous reproof to a great writer, using today’s customs and standards. Stupid, stupid, stupid. And there was the minor furore the other day in the House of Commons when Scots MP Jo Swinson, who is pregnant, wasn’t offered a seat by any male colleagues during Prime Minister’s Question Time. Not to mention the danger that offering  a seat might have been seen as sexist as well. 

But the thing that really gets my goat (and I’d like here to make it clear that I once had a pet goat) is the inconsistency of the PC Police. When Ron Atkinson, not knowing his microphone was open, called Chelsea star Marcel Desailly a “lazy, thick nigger”,  he was bundled off his TV pundit slot quicker than a Robbie Keane penalty. When Richard Keys and Andy Gray thought their microphones were off and made derogatory comments on the woman assistant referee at a game, that was the end of Richard and Andy in the big-time TV commentating. 

Now Roy Hodgson, still flushed from his success in squeezing England into the World Cup finals next summer, has been caught with his verbal pants down. It seems he made a half-time joke about a space monkey - I’d never heard it before, had you? - and some mild criticism of it was made, in that the space monkey was paralleled with Andros Townsend. So is Roy going to get the boot? Er, um - look, everybody knows Roy hasn’t a racist bone in his body. But isn’t that what they said about Big Ron? He still got the boot. I’ll bet Richard and Andy would argue that they have nothing but respect for women in sport, as linesman or anything else. But they still got the boot.  Roy though - Roy's different. 

England needs him. Badly. So the PC brigade will swallow hard and say of course Roy’s anti-racist, look at all the different countries he’s coached in, there was no insult intended, in fact Roy is raging  that this is taking the gloss off his team’s masterly display in beating Poland. How dare they interpret his monkey joke as racist. 

My own view is that we’re far, far too quick to detect and denounce non-PC language. But if we’re going to dish out sauce to the Ron, Richard and Andy goose, consistency demands that we dole out sauce to the Roy Hodgson gander. And I would like to stress that I say that as someone who numbers geese of both genders among his best friends.  

Peter Robinson and the GAA

Good news. Peter Robinson is to attend a big dinner at Queen’s University tonight. It’s organised by Co-operation Ireland and it’s to give public recognition to the GAA’s efforts to forge better community relations.(The EU beat them to the punch, so to speak, when they yesterday recognised the exemplary role of the GAA in Irish society). Last Friday Martin McGuinness and Robinson sat together at Ravenhill to watch Ulster defeat Leicester in rugby.  So you could say tonight is a tit for tat.

But is there any point to these tittings and tattings, these shoulder-to-shoulders? Not in practical terms. They don’t change the fact that Peter Robinson weaseled out of his agreement regarding a peace centre at the Maze/Long Kesh. It doesn’t change that Gregory Campbell is using the cover of the House of Commons to make all sorts of unsubstantiated charges about sexual abuse and what was it, a hundred republicans?  It doesn’t provide jobs for those who are jobless or help those struggling to find the money to pay the mortgage. 

But it’s better than a  sneer and a turned back. That’s what the DUP used to offer, when it refused to sit in the same studio as Sinn Féin, let alone meet with them or converse. So to that extent tonight is highly desirable.

 Unfortunately, for a people who pride themselves on being practical and hard-headed, we seem to attach more importance to meetings and symbols and gestures than we do to building on those in practical ways to effect real change. Just one personal example: I took part in a debate last summer with some Young Unionists from the UUP. It was good for them and me to see that we actually were human beings rather than some sort of two-horned, cloven-hoofed anti-Christ. But the unhappy truth is that neither party left the discussion with any shift in their thinking - and yes, Virginia, I do include myself in that.  Let’s not dismiss the importance of the symbolic but for God’s sake let’s not kid ourselves that it’s worthwhile in the absence of substance. As a wise unionist once said: “It’s deeds, not words, that count”. 

Caitriona takes a kicking

Caitriona Ruane is taking a pummelling, this time from the SDLP and the unionist representatives on the Assembly Commission. It seems Ms Ruane wanted to provide answers to MLAs’ questions in both Irish and English. The Assembly Commission voted her down, the SDLP representative voting with the unionists on the Commission and only the Alliance member siding with Ms Ruane.

I find myself mildly conflicted by this. On the one hand, Caitriona Ruane will have to accept that the ruling has been made by a democratic vote - just like the flags issue in Belfast City Council. On the other hand, the Assembly Commission is wrong.

If you check the St Andrew’s Agreement  of 2006 you’ll find that it committed the British government to work with the incoming Executive to protect and enhance the development of the Irish and Ulster-Scots languages.

If you check the Good Friday Agreement, you’ll find that amendments to it commit  all hands to ‘recognise the importance, respect, understanding and tolerance in relation to linguistic diversity, including in Northern Ireland the Irish language, Ulster Scots and the languages of the various ethnic minority communities, all of which are part of the cultural wealth of the island of Ireland’.

I wonder how those in the Assembly Commission who voted down Caitriona Ruane’s wish to speak in Irish as well as English square that with their commitment to the Good Friday Agreement?  I suspect they can’t. When Caitriona Ruane wanted to get her complaint included in the Assembly Commission’s annual report to the Equality Commission, she got another thumb’s-down. 

Maybe the Assembly Committee, as well as re-reading the Good Friday Agreement, might want to check out the system in a place like Canada. There, the English-speaking majority make a genuine effort, in terms of public documents, speeches and the like to support the minority French language.  They might also want to remember the late Monsignor Denis Faul’s contention: ‘There’s nothing like a touch persecution to energize the faithful’.