The Unionist Gap

In a previous post I wrote about 'The political orphaning of moderate unionism'. And here I wrote about Catholic Unionists.

I also wrote about the Unionist Gap here.

Ireland's “Big, Mad Children” politicians

Roy Foster wrote in ‘Luck and the Irish - A Brief History of Change’:

"After one debate between suspicious DUP representatives and unbending northern nationalists the current BIA chairman (a businessman with links in North and South) expostulated, ‘It’s like dealing with children. Big, Mad Children.’ In this he probably reflected opinions that the mandarins in London and Dublin held in private, and that brought them closer together."

Ian Paisley was a proud Irishman

Ian paisley wrote:

"Edward Carson was a life-long Irishman, as well as being a life-long unionist,and that made all the difference… On this 28th day of September [2012], 100 years after his pen touched parchment, we salute the man who taught us all how to be true Irishmen and women."

Would Unionism allow a Sinn Fein First Minister?

Cartoon by Ian Knox

Alex Kane said on BBC Hearts and Minds:

"And what happens when unionism is in trouble? It harks back to the mantra of united we stand, divided we allow McGuinness to become First Minister. 

So up pops Nigel Dodds to insist that unity is the answer to unionist prayers, then up springs David McNarry to say that unity must embrace the TUV, Orange Order, Conservatives and anyone who has a red, white or blue shirt in their wardrobe. 

The reality, of course, is that unionist unity won’t work, because unionist unity is merely a euphemism for a sectarian headcount: and sectarian headcounts will, sooner rather than later, kill off devolution. 

What unionism needs to do is promote a coherent and attractive argument in favour of the Union: an argument that presents the Union as valuable in its own right rather than as merely the next-best-option to Irish unity."

#NorthernIreland2016 Interview Series - Kyle Paisley

Kyle Paisley was born in Belfast in 1966. He was educated at Greenwood and Strandtown Primary schools and Shaftesbury House. Then later educated at Whitefield College of the Bible, Lawrencetown. Kyle now lives in Oulton, Suffolk. He is the minister of Oulton Broad Free Presbyterian Church.

The Calvinist Ulsterman is more of a Catholic Irishman than is commonly realised

Cartoon by Ian Knox

G.K. Chesterton wrote in his book 'Irish Inpressions':

"The Calvinist Ulsterman may be more of a Catholic Irishman than is commonly realised, especially by himself."

Grayson Perry - If loyalists want to remain loyal to Britain they’ve got to move on too

A banner by Grayson Perry, in the mould of an Orange Lodge standard, following a visit to British loyalists in Belfast 

The cross-dressing potter and artist Grayson Perry said during a 2014 trip to Northern Ireland:

"[Loyalism is] rooted in a vision of Britain that perhaps doesn’t completely gel with the modern 21st century idea of Britain we have nowadays."

And continued:

"If they want to remain loyal to it they’ve got to move on too and it’s all about embracing what Britain stands for today as much as what Britain stood for in the 1950s."

My previous posts on loyalism can be read here. Previous Tumblr notes on loyalism here. 

Andrew Sullivan and the conscience clause

My illustrated tribute to Andrew Sullivan I drew for the Huffington Post.

Paul Givan, theo-unionism and the ecumenical religious right regard gay people as the greatest threat to religion.

Jack Kyle on Ian Paisley

Jack Kyle, rugby player and surgeon, born on February 10 1926. Aged 88 he passed away on November 28 2014.

[UPDATE - Read my essay on Jack Kyle and free speech in Northern Ireland published by Eamonn Mallie here]

We know him as the rugby great and for his work as a doctor. But Jack Kyle was also a man of letters and ideas. Throughout his life he shared comments on the Irish Question that were lucid, forceful and profound. 

On rugby in Ireland he said, "There was never any religious business about rugby. That was the wonderful thing about it." At more length, he said about Irish rugby:

"That was the wonderful thing about [Irish rugby, the absence of religion]. When the various unions were splitting up, the Irish Rugby Union said: “we play as one country”. Those of us from Ulster were very fortunate that happened. It was also a much greater honour for us to play for the whole country. I think it says a lot that during all the Troubles, never once did a southern side fail to come north or a northern side fail to go south."

Unionism won

Cartoon by Ian Knox (@ianknoxcartoon), see more here.

Peter Taylor said:

"Who really did win the war? Viewed through the prism of the present, it’s clear that the British and the unionists won, because the Union is secure and the IRA is no more… I wouldn’t be surprised if at some stage in the long years ahead a United Ireland did emerge."

Five years post-Irisgate

Cartoon of Iris and Peter Robinson by Ian Knox

Five years after the Iris Robinson scandal it is worth looking back on what the Irish-descended, English born, American blogger Andrew Sullivan wrote about the scandal: 

"The fusion of religion and politics and the use of Biblical authority to strip other people of civil rights is not, of course, unique to America. In Northern Ireland, for example, sectarian conflict was accompanied by incredibly repressive attitudes toward sexual minorities and women. When I went on Ulster television for "Virtually Normal" in 1995, it was the first ever broadcast across Northern Ireland dealing specifically with the homosexual question. They invited ten openly gay people to be in the studio audience, and only three had the balls to show up. And so it is not that surprising that a leading politician in Ulster would respond to a brutal gay-bashing by criticizing the attack but adding that she nonetheless believed that homosexuality was an "abomination" and made her feel "sick" and "nauseous". She believed that sexual orientation could be cured by psychiatry. She argued that:

The "Troubles" is a term for the conflict that began in 1916, ended with an ambiguous armistice in 1998 and rumbles on to this day

Cartoon of David Trimble and Gerry Adams by Steve Bell

[UPDATE - "Unfortunately, the "terrible beauty" they [Pearse and Connolly] spawned is even now to be seen in action in the blazing streets of Belfast" wrote John Banville]

Philip Bobbitt said that "Long War" is a term for the conflict that began in 1914 and concluded in 1990. Christopher Hitchens said the identical, that the global conflict that began in August 1914 did not conclusively end until the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union.

My argument is that the Troubles should be a term for the conflict that began in 1916 and quasi-concluded in 1998 with an ambiguous armistice, embedded a little further in 2005 but continues to this day with an uneasy truce.

He's a quick overview of history.

Vivisected Northern Ireland - Hugh Muir, be Intolerant of intolerance

I've written before about the vanity of small differences and the vivisection of Northern Ireland and the baleful effects of these egregious habits. In the face of such deleterious habits, I have called upon the need for civil intolerance. We can also learn from a parralel experience. In response to the flying of a jihadist-style flag in a London housing estate Hugh Muir wrote in the Guardian that we must resist those who would Balkanise public space. He wrote:

The vivisected Northern Ireland

Cartoon if Isaiah Berlin

For the committed anti-sectarian and anti-tribalist in Northern Ireland, I give you Isaiah Berlin and his explanation on monism and why the belief in one unalloyed, fixed, unchangeable doctrine leads, inevitability, to the vivisection of society:

"There is little need to stress the fact that monism, and faith in a single criterion, has always proved a source of deep satisfaction both to the intellect and to the emotions… [However] it is bound, provided it is inflexible enough, to encounter some unforeseen and unforeseeable human development, which it will not fit; and will then be used to justify the a priori barbarities of Procrustes - the vivisection of actual human societies into some fixed pattern dictated by our fallible understanding of a largely imaginary past or a wholly imaginary future."

Also read Kenan Malik on multiculturalism here. Newton Emerson on a vivisected Northern Ireland, he said:

"Census figures for the Upper Ormeau Road… is 57% Catholic and 27% Protestant, yet just 36% describe themselves as "Irish", with the remainder evenly split between British and Northern Irish. So what can explain the DUP’s betrayal of an area that epitomises Peter Robinson’s stated vision of a Northern Ireland "at peace with itself" and "for all of us, not them and us".

 

Cowardice in the face of loyalism must be a partial explanation, and it is quite some cowardice, as the upper Ormeau Road are believed to barely number into double figures. Electoral calculations in Belfast and more widely against the TUV will also be a factor. However, this retreat from its own policy and constitutional objective implies so much short-sightedness, spinelessness and stupidity that there has to be a deeper explanation.

 

Is the DUP really envisaging a Northern Ireland that depends on Catholic support which would in turn depend on tolerance, neutrality and equality? The fact that the party sees no value whatsoever in protecting places like the upper Ormeau Road suggests its true vision is a retreat into a patchwork of ethnic laagers, with Northern Ireland becoming a Catholic Bosnia overlaid with a Protestant Republika Srpska. What other explanation can there be when ten loyalists with a ladder outweigh the 40% of Catholics in upper Ormeau who, even now, have made their peace with partition. 

What the DUP wants or fears is not necessarily what will come to pass. Council reorganisation still points more to a “Belgium on the Bann” scenario, with an Irish west, a British east and an uneasily shared capital. But that less-than-ideal future is the best we can hope for and every step the DUP takes to the right brings the Balkans closer into view."

Read more about the divided Bosnian city of Sarajevo here:

"Nineteen years after the war ended, Bosnia operates as two "entities", the predominantly Muslim and Croat Federation, and the overwhelmingly Serb-dominated Serb Republic (RS). The highly autonomous RS was recognised by the peace settlement. Many Muslims regard it as the product of ethnic cleansing, while for Serbs its existence is a guarantor of peace."

Ian Knox - Unionist politics are much funnier, Republicans make more ideas and less jokes

A typical cartoon on unionism by Northern Ireland cartoonist Ian Knox

Satirists like Loyalists Against Democracy (@LADFLEG) are regularly inveighed against for being too one sided, overly and unfairly shining a light on loyalist misbehaviour. Legacy media is often admonished with demonising loyalism. I have continually rejected these charges as unfounded and baseless.

And to best back up my position I defer simply to Ian Knox, long time Northern Ireland cartoonist. In 1999 he wrote that Unionist politics are simply much, much funnier:

"I’ve got a section [in my book Culture Vultures] on unionist politics but no equivalent one on nationalist politics, because, well… Unionist politics are much funnier. You might feel that a group of people grimly opposed to change would be less amusing than another group who feel that history is on their side, but it doesn’t seem to work like that. Aside from all the horrors of the last thirty-odd years - the slogans, the debates, the atrocities - it seems to me that while nationalism/republicanism might throw out more ideas, unionism generates more jokes."

He reiterated this self-evident situation, when he said in 2014:

"The whole world of unionism is much wilder and wackier."

And below is a typical Ian Knox cartoon of the republican tribe:

Being Irish is not about being anti-British, Ctd

For too many people in Ireland, Irishness is defined by their anti-Britishness. In a piece in The Irish Times, 'An inclusive Ireland can surely find a place for the Union flag - Limits on flying flag do not enhance Irishness but succeed in diminishing Britishness,' Richard Irvine said here:

"Surely Irish nationalism should have more to offer than this [restrict Union flag and campaign against Orange parades]? An inclusive Ireland must have room for Britishness; it must recognise it, even embrace it. To strike at the symbols of unionist survival, to demand after 30 years of war they pull down their flag, is not just to demand too much too soon, it is to fail to recognise unionists’ suffering, their history, their identity."

He continued:

"Just as unionists must learn to accept an Irish identity – and an Irish language Bill would be a good start – so those interested in true Irish unity must realise their task should not be to attack unionist identity but to recognise it and build an Irish identity that can include it. As the late PUP leader David Ervine used to say: “The British presence in Ireland is not the army, it is us.” Until Irish nationalism recognises that, the flags of north Antriwill keep flying."

Richard Irvine is a history teacher and lecturer in Belfast, and an independent commentator. In full here. My previous post in the series with Fintan O'Toole here. My earlier post with Conor Cruise O'Brien, Michael Kirke and Brian O'Connor is here. My long form essay on the issue of being a Protestant and Irish in the Huffington Post can be read here.

See my previous posts on Irish racism here, here and here.

Stop Appeasing Fanatacism, Ctd

I wrote a piece on the Loyalists Against Democracy blog here, saying that we need to stop appeasing fanatics. And it is they, who say the DUP are appeasing terrorists, who have got it fantastically wrong. It is they who are being appeased. As Sinéad O'Shea wrote in The Irish Times here:

"Bryson has been at the forefront of the flag protests and has become a spokesperson for working class Protestants. It is he and his followers that the unionist leadership now feel they have to appease."

Her sentiments were backed by a Belfast taxi driver. She recounted her encounter with the Protestant driver here:

"On my way to Stormont on Monday, I spoke to my taxi driver, a protestant. It’s become a cliché of journalism but it was his words which were to be the most portentous. We laughed at how friendly everybody is in Belfast when you talk to them and how unbelievable it is that so much trouble can have occurred in one small place. My driver said he thought that was the problem, that everybody was too nice, too nice especially to the “nutters.”"

She concluded by saying: "The question of how to undo the evolution of extremist tendencies remains unanswered." The Irish Times article in full here. My previous post on appeasing fanatacism is here.

UUP - Somewhere between the DUP and TUV

In electoral terms the UUP seems to be trying to slot in between TUV and DUP. That's going to be a hard sell.
— Alex.Kane (@AlexKane221b) January 7, 2014

The two worlds of Northern Ireland, Ctd

Jamie Pow (@jamiepow) wrote on the Northern Slant (@NorthernSlant) here that:

"The Haass talks may not have produced conclusive agreement among our leaders, but they have taught us something about our society. The most significant division in Northern Irish politics today is not between Nationalist and Unionist. Rather, it is a division between those who still want to see politics as such, and those who want to strive beyond it." 

Read my The Two Worlds of Northern Ireland series from here. My post on professor John Brewer who said that the silent majority needs to reclaim the peace process here. My blog post on Fionualla Meredith who said that the moderate needs to speak up and pound the streets here. Analysis from Pete Shirlow here. My blog following Richard Haass comment that a majority want peace is here. Brian Feeney and the Unionist who has utterly divorced himself and herself from the political process, the 'internal emigre' here. My previous posts in 'The Two Worlds of Northern Ireland' series here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

The two world's of Northern Ireland, Ctd internal émigrés

Brian Feeney wrote in The Irish News of January 1 2014:

In April 1982 Sir Peter Frogatt, vice-Chancellor of Queen's, told Sir Ewart Bell, head of the Northern Ireland Civil service, that there was "a considerable exodus to British universities especially on the part of the Protestant community."

Ewart Bell reported this to the then proconsul Jim Prior and said he regarded it as "another step towards the extent to which the Protestant community is 'opting out' of Northern Ireland."

Brian Feeney said:

"None of these internal émigrés participates in or endorses the antics of the yahoos waving flags or hammering big drums outside Catholic Churches... Yesterday's [Haass talks] failure will simply reinforce the majority of unionists in their opinion that, in the words of Alex Kane, they prefer to go to the garden centre that bother voting."

Brian Feeney concluded:

"It seems the out-working of Ewart Bell's 1982 warning about students will be extrapolated to society in general so that as the nationalist vote increases Sinn Fein will take ownership of the north. The DUP can still change but they can't stop it. If they weren't so pig-headed and bigoted they could influence it before they become a minority."

Read me blog post on professor John Brewer who said that the silent majority needs to reclaim the peace process here. My blog post on Fionualla Meredith who said people need to speak up and pound the streets here. With contributions from Pete Shirlow here. My blog following Richard Haass comment that a majority want peace is here. My previous posts in 'The Two Worlds of Northern Ireland' series here, here, here, here, here, here and here.