The political orphaning of moderate unionism

NI Life And Times 2015

The unionist people are far ahead of unionist politics. I've written here that for all the madness there is much normality in Northern Ireland - there are Two Worlds in Northern Ireland. Alex Kane wrote that "people in Northern Ireland are much more liberal, laid back and genuinely cosmopolitan than the main unionist parties realise." Newton Emerson wrote:

"The political orphaning of moderate unionism has been a particular source of wonder and despair. 

What party represents the vast majority of unionists — those who are not Orangemen, bandsmen, gunmen, Bible-bashers, flag-flyers, bonfire-builders or all the other overlapping little constituencies that unionist politicians never dare to disappoint? What party can represent the 400,000 “garden centre” Protestants who refuse to vote, or appeal to any Catholic “economic unionists” who might just accept a British province that treated them with respect? How has such a substantial need for representation not been met for almost a century?"

The new age of "Perked-Up Unionism"

The republican movement may represent an insurgent force in southern politics and present itself as a party of protest even while holding power in Northern Ireland, yet unionism still holds ascendency.

The classic trope of Northern politics is that nationalism represents confidence, which unionism represents demoralisation.

It seems the status quo has inverted. For Fionnuala O'Connor, we are living in the age of "perked-up unionism" and "stale nationalism". Fionnuala O'Connor wrote in the Irish News, February 9 2016, ‘We could be all be into a new political era without noticing’:

Catholic Unionists and the question: Does a functioning Northern Ireland turn soft nationalists into soft unionists?

Denis Stanislaus Henry and Sir John Gorman, Catholic unionists

Andy Pollak wrote:

"Northern Ireland's high-flying Catholics are not necessarily the ones old-fashioned Catholic nationalists would hope for and old-fashioned Protestant unionists would contemplate with dread and terror."

Sinn Fein revisionism

Gerry Adams wrote about the 'Good Old IRA', equating the PIRA to the IRA that brought about partition 

Sinn Fein and IRA were not about attaining human rights but about attaining a united Irish socialist republic at the cost of human rights and human life. Most of the Civil Rights demands Sinn Fein claim the Provisional IRA secured through violence were achieved before the organization was even born at the end of 1969 In 1972 the IRA announced that they would rid Ireland of the British even if they had “to demolish Belfast brick-by-brick”. Martin McGuinness said around 1973:

"It doesn’t matter a fuck what John Hume says, we’ll go on fighting until we get a united Ireland."

Culture Night - A middle class 12th

A cartoon of Belfast's Culture Night by Ian Knox

Newton Emerson wrote that the annual Culture Night shows how many extremely middle-class people there are in Belfast. Culture Night is, in his words, "A sort of middle-class Twelfth." He also wrote:

Stormont is a quango spending a budget

Cartoon by Ian Knox, see full gallery from this Hearts and Minds segment here.

[UPDATE - I've read and written that Stormont is a giant ATM, with no link between what is spent and accountability by the devolved regions for that spend]

Our pocket money parliament has no tax-raising powers. It's hasn't even the fiscal maturity of a county council which do have powers to levy and lift taxes. It's all spend and no tax. It's given a budget and then spends or allocates those monies. A parliament that can spend but cannot tax is not a parliament. Stormont is a giant quango. It's the inverted legislative reality of no-taxation with representation.

Northern Ireland is like a fiscal theme park where basic factual and legal realities are suspended. It has fiscal freedom and no responsibility. But without the power to tax it's hard to govern. Newton Emerson said: 

"Stormont is often mocked as a glorified country council but even councils raise most of their income through the rates, all the rates Stormont collects comes to just 5% of its income. So it's really more of a quango spending a budget."

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:

100 years of trying to explain the difference between good and bad IRA men

By Martyn Turner (here)

Mike Burke, a lecturer in Politics in Canada, wrote on Anthony McIntyre's blog, the Pensive Quill:

"How could the Irish state… both celebrate its insurrectionary origins and conduct a counter-insurgency campaign against the Provisional IRA, which claimed to be the direct lineal descendant of the insurrectionary impulse that had given birth to the state?"

This is the southern state’s current and constant dilemma.

"So take it down from the mast, Irish traitors,
/It’s the flag we Republicans claim.
It can never belong to Free Staters,
For you’ve brought on it nothing but shame. Then leave it to those who are willing/
To uphold it in war and in peace,
/To those men who intend to do killing
 Until England’s tyranny cease."

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."

Irish racism, Ctd "incredibly dehumanising"

Implying Northern Ireland is a colony is incredibly dangerous rhetoric, usually restricted to the ethno-fascist fringes of republicanism.
— Newton Emerson (@NewtonEmerson) March 20, 2014

@ChristopherOCon @AlexKane221b If every transfer of population in the past 500 years makes a place a colony, almost every place is a colony
— Newton Emerson (@NewtonEmerson) March 20, 2014

'Colonists' get de-colonised. That's clearly still the dream for some.
— Newton Emerson (@NewtonEmerson) March 20, 2014

 As I said:

""[Britain]" is not in Ireland. There is no occupation. This language of "England Out" and British occupation is incredibly dehumanising. There are people, like me, who wish to remain in the Union with great Britain. As John McCallister said: "I am no settler. No colonist." I am one of 800,000 citizens who want "England [in]". This language is tremendously dehumanising. This the sort of debasing language which allowed the IRA to murder innocent civilians and serving officers. As Tom  

Hartley, Sinn Féin strategist, said:

"In a way we made them [Unionists] a non-people... We didn't even see them as part of the problem, never mind as being part of the solution."

#WhitePaper - Salmondite as Redmondite politics

Newton Emerson wrote in the Sunday Times of February 16 2014:

"The parallels between Redmond and SNP leader Alex Salmond are remarkable, as the Scottish press has noted. In his long, democratic fight for Home Rule, Redmond played down identity politics, spurned cultural nationalism and focused on debating the practicalities, until he could portray the debate as negotiating the inevitable. Salmond has done the same and the results are transformative. Meanwhile, Adams remains an anti-Redmondite two decades after the IRA-ceasefire. His vision of a United Ireland is high on symbolism and low on detail, invoking all the alarm of change with none of the assurance of fact."

Newton Emerson - Ian Paisley, Ulster nationalist

Ahead of tonight's screening of Eamonn Mallie's documentary on Ian Paisley, it's worthwhile to look back at what Newton Emerson said of Paisley's Ulster nationalism on BBC Hearts and Minds in June 2007 here:

"In an interview with last Saturday's Irish News, he blamed the Troubles on British government betrayal, complained that English politicians know nothing about Irish politics, claimed that Dublin is more generous than London. Ian Paisley appears more matey with Bertie than Blair. Furthermore, he lauded his relationship with Bertie Ahern because, and I quote, "I am an Ulsterman and he is a southern Irishman. We know how to talk to one another." 

The simplest explanation for Paisley's ambivalent Britishness is that he is really an Ulster nationalist. He's certainly flirted with advocates of an independent Northern Ireland throughout his political career - but these flirtations have never gone further than fond kiss goodnight.

When are we going to have an honest conversation about the conduct of PUL parades?

In response to the failure of the Haass talks, Alliance Leader David Ford said: "The real issue with parades was never about structures - the problem was behavior." This is interesting since the Belfast City Centre Management report here on the 12th July parades delivered a stinging indictment against the bands and Orange lodges that march through the capital city. It found tourists who complained of an "intimidatory atmosphere", "louts roaming around drunk" and an untidy public realm.

In my earlier post here I cited a 1925 essay by the Ulster MP W.D. Allen on an Orange demonstration in Tyrone.

"Silently, humorously, doggedly, they mass around a dripping platform, a remarkable feudal, patriarchal, tribal, historical anachronism in these days of moderation, toleration – whine, don’t fight – enlightenment."

I also looked at John Hewitt's 1970 poem, 'Conversations in Hungary' here:

"Our friends in Budapest
days later also, puzzled, queried why,
when the time's vibrant with technology,
Such violence should still be manifest.

Between two factions, in religion's name.
It is 300 years since, they declared,
divergent sects put claim and
counterclaim to arbitration of the torch
and sword."

Conor Cruise O'Brien said in 1996:

"I have, in an Orange context at an Orange House, urged them to see that marching through areas that don't want them is not good policy for the Orange Order itself or for the unionist community."

The first "Orange riot" on record was in 1824, in Abingdon, New York. The 'Orange Riots' of 1870 and 1871 in New York here were infamous. After this, the Congregationalist minister Merrill Richardson from the pulpit of his Madison Avenue church said that the time had come to take back New York City, for if "the higher classes will not govern, the lower classes will."

Newton Emerson on the right to protest

Newton Emerson explains three points of law in the Sunday Times here:

Two weeks ago, the Apartment Bar opposite Belfast City Hall received a letter from Stormont’s Department of the Environment. An advertising banner inside the bar’s front window constituted illegal signage under the Planning (Northern Ireland) Order 1991, the letter warned. Failure to remove it within 14 days would incur a fine of £2,500 (€3,000) plus £250 for each day thereafter. 

Meanwhile on the internet, plans were being laid for a flag protest at the front of City Hall that would involve 1,000 people illegally obstructing the road, before illegally marching into east Belfast, and sparking a riot. None of the organisers, who can be readily identified through their Facebook pages, have so far been threatened with fines for breaching the Public Processions (Northern Ireland) Act 1998 or the Roads (Northern Ireland) Order 1993, which ironically bans “obstruction” and “unauthorised advertisements” in the same section. 

When flag protesters began blocking Northern Ireland’s roads seven weeks ago many complaints about the policing response focused on the difference between loyalist and republican demonstrations, specifically the contrast with North Belfast last summer when republicans sat down in the road to block an Orange Order parade and the PSNI promptly dragged them off. 

In fact, there is no right to protest in either domestic or European law. The concept is inferred from the rights to free assembly and free expression — which are secondary to public safety, the prevention of disorder or crime, the protection of the rights and freedoms of others and the preservation of a democratic society. 

Flag protesters have rode roughshod over all these concerns and it is irresponsible to indulge any notion of their “right” to do so. The intimidating daily pickets of Alliance party offices in east Belfast, for example, are breaking the Human Rights Act rather than exercising it. They are also breaking the Protection from Harassment (Northern Ireland) Order 1997."

In full here.

Paramilitary murals are criminal damage

In the Irish News Newton Emerson explained the law governing the painting of gable walls. He said:

"There is certainly a case to be made that the mural glorifies terrorism under the Terrorism Act 2006 or encourages crime under the Serious Crime Act 2007. But really there is no need to resort to the kind of New Labour anti-terror legislation that has Willie Frazer threatening to dress up as Abu Hamza. Defacing a wall without the owner's permission is a good old fashioned offence of criminal damage, punishable by up to 14 years in jail. 

The law on criminal damage includes an interesting twist. Damaging property with a "reckless" disregard to endangering others is punishable by life imprisonment, even if you are the property owner or have the property owner's permission. This part of the law is intended to cover arson but may apply to anything. Is it mortally reckless to paint a UVF gunman on a wall in east Belfast under present circumstances? A good barrister should be able to make a case for it 

However we are straying back into New Labour territory. A simple charge of criminal damage should suffice, helped by the fact that defaced walls are generally owned by the Housing Executive or Housing Association, so "permission" to paint them cannot be obtained as easily as it would from an intimidated householder. Failing that, there are the planning regulations to consider."

Newton Emerson on Larkin's de facto amnesty

Newton Emerson wrote in the Sunday Times of November 24 2013 an article in response to the John Larkin's call for a de facto amnesty. He said:

"Larkin also proposes that the warehouse of files and evidence held by the PSNI's HET should be made available to victims and relatives on a non-disclosure "freedom of information plus" basis, having first been redacted to protect the right to life of anyone named. Managing that without lawyers would be quite an achievement.   

There are 3,000 unsolved murders from the Troubles. Would it be legally possible to deny all those families the justice they have a right to expect, both from the state (criminal) and to pursue by civil action themselves?"

Newton Emerson addressed the issue of the civil law:

"Preventing civil claims and prosecutions should be relatively straightforward. Larkin suggests passing legislation in London and Dublin setting a statute of limitations on murders prior to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. Most civil offences already have a stature of limitations of 3 to 6 years."

He then addressed the criminal law:

"Preventing criminal prosecutions would be another matter. Article 2 of the ECHR, enshrined in British and Irish law, requires the state to investigate fully all suspicious deaths. This is generally interpreted to rule out blanket amnesties. 

Larkin points out that the ECHR has granted Article 2 exemptions to facilitate amnesties elsewhere, while elements of an amnesty have been implicitly accepted in several peace-process deals, most notably on arms decommissioning and locating the bodies of the Disappeared."

If the press is accountable to Peter Robinson, then Peter Robinson is no longer accountable to the press

Andrew Sullivan at the Harvard University JFK School of Government here

Is there far too much criticism of Stormont? So says Peter Robinson. Arlene Foster & commentator Ale... http://t.co/JtxF47czwB via @audioboo
— Stephen Nolan (@StephenNolan) November 25, 2013

Peter Robinson has got this very wrong. The role of the press, the media and journalists is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. The newspapers are not the government's pet to control, or in any way influence. The newspaper is there to hold government to account. Not the other way around. Andrew Sullivan said of the role of the journalist in his Theodore H. White lecture to Harvard's JFK School of Government here:

"I think our job is to say things that no-one else will say and to find out things that make people very uncomfortable. The powerful and the powerless. I think our job is not to worry about the impact of what we find out and say but to say what we think and to report what we see."

George Orwell famously said:

"Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations." 

Mick Fealty wrote of the Stormont all-party, power-sharing coalition here:

"This also goes some way to explain why the Stormont administration has, even after six years, failed to produce anything (beyond copious amounts of PR) resembling a partnership government." 

What Peter Robinson is effectively calling for, is for the press to laud and applaud ineffectual government. He wants Orwell's PR. He wants more PR to go on-top of the "coprious amounts of PR" that flows from the sectarian machine. This a perversion of the western, democratic model. His charge and call is an inversion of a healthy, functioning press. As Boris Johnson said in The Telegraph:

"It's a vigorous, voracious press that keeps our country honest."

As the November 3 2013 Sunday Times editorial said:

"It is the job of the press to keep the politicians honest. It is not the job of politicians to to decide what the press can print." 

Newton Emerson spoke in March 2012 on BBC NI's Hearts and Minds on the First Minister's complaint about the predominance of negative publicity in the media here. He said:

"Peter Robinson now sits at the top of a vast and cynical scare-story machine, instead of shooting the messenger, he should take aim at the negativity his government funds and his party humours." 

If the press is accountable to Peter Robinson, then Peter Robinson is no longer accountable to the press. These claims should concern any committed democrat. Peter Robinson has already defended the veto of Northern Ireland's archaic libel regime, see here. A law slammed by British journalists as a “national embarrassment” and by the American media as “repugnant to U.S. constitutional principles.” See also my article on Eamonn Mallie.com, I’ll see you in court – the new DUP war cry here.

I've also posted here on the need for Great Britain to adopt speech laws like those protected in the United States under the First Amendment.

Irish racism, Ctd

Newton Emerson wrote in the Irish Times of Saturday November 16 2013:

"The supposed republican principles of the anti-agreement 1916 Societies are somewhat underaxsmined by the language of their latest recruitment drive, which is replete with sectarian references to "planters", "colonialism" and "occupation"."

Newton Emerson continued, and asked a critical question:

"One of the mysteries of Irish politics is why, unlike in the rest of Europe, people who speak like this are not immediately recognised as ethnic fascists."

See my previous posts on Irish racism here and here.

LAD - Unveiling and Assailing Northern Ireland's Grand Swamp of Backwardness

 

Newton Emerson wrote in the Sunday Times on September 1 2013 a piece on Northern Ireland's satirist group, Loyalists Against Democracy with an article entitled, 'Respect are culture? Not on the internet.'  Here are some of the best extracts (in full here). Newton started with a preface note on recent events:

"It is hardly as serious as the Arab Spring but the chaos of the past year in Northern Ireland has also been an internet phenomenon. The first flag protests last December were organised online, without involvement from political parties or paramilitaries, and brought thousands out onto the streets."

Newton Emerson explained that attempts to counter loyalist anarchy largely failed save for LAD. He said:

"The same cannot be said for the real online wonder of the year. Loyalists Against Democracy (LAD), a satirical Facebook page, took it's name from a loyalist banner at the first flag protest which read: "Democracy doesn't work". "

Newton Emerson on UVF and loyalist paramilitarism