Northern Ireland's Dance

By Ian Knox

I remain very confused about Belfast and Northern Ireland. So much of it is progressive, cultured and astonishingly metropolitan. Yet the politics is feudal and tribal and certain estates are ominous and intimidating.

Irish Rugby unites Ireland

The IRFU flag

Terence O'Neill was asked in an interview in 1965 with Telefís Éireann, 'Prime. Minister, when Ireland is playing England, in a Rugby International for instance, what do you feel, as Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, as somebody from Northern Ireland?' Terence O’Neill responded:

"I think we all feel the same and we all cheer for Ireland and we always have done."

The interviewer John O’Donohue continued: 'You don’t find any awkwardness in questions of allegiances when Rugby is being played?' Terence O’Neill returned:

"No, certainly not."

Jack Kyle said:

"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."

T.K. Whitaker - A United Ireland would pose a "formidable" if not "intolerable" burden (1968)

Jack Lynch and Terence O'Neill, with T.K. Whitaker in the rear-ground, Ireland's rough equivalent to Sir Kenneth Bloomfield

Stormont is like a giant ATM, a quango spending a budget. Ireland has unshackled itself from the worst of Troika rule but stills faces severe fiscal headwinds and uncomfortable belt-tightening. Northern Ireland is an overgrown man child dependent on parental handouts. Southern Ireland is a recently graduated student trying to find a job and a stable footing in the world. Neither is in a position to make matrimony. Not at the moment and not without substantial reforms and rehabilitative measures from Northern Ireland and a more rebalanced economic structure in the south.

Terence O'Neill - The Moderate and Ulster at Cross Roads

Captain Terence O'Neill with his predecessor Lord Brookeborough

David McCann wrote in the News Letter of March 2013 on the 50th anniversary of O'Neill's coming to power in 1963:

"O’Neill was the first unionist Prime Minister who attempted to win over middle class Catholics to support the Union by engaging in symbolic acts of reconciliation such as visiting Catholic schools and extending condolences on the death of the Pope."

On November 20 1964 the News Letter wrote an editorial urging Terence O’Neill to meet his southern counterpart Sean Lemass, arguing that:

"No danger to the unionist cause would be involved in the meeting [with Sean Lemass], in agreeing Captain O’Neill would show the strength of his position." 

As David McCann said:

Combinatorial creativity, Ctd Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln delivered the famous The House Divided Speech  on June 16, 1858. In that speech he said:

"A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become lawful in all the States, old as well as new — North as well as South."

Captain Terence O'Neill said in 'Ulster at Cross Roads', December 9 1968:

"I could not see how an Ulster divided against itself could hope to stand." 

This epigram did not spring from nowhere or was it simply clutched from the air. This was the product of the collective readings and experience of Lincoln.