Gary Mitchell - When it's cool to be dumb, Ctd

Gary Mitchell spoke with the belfast Telegraph and shared his experience of school:

"I left with nothing. It's strange because in primary school I excelled. I passed the 11-plus. I didn't go to grammar school but went to Rathcoole Secondary School. We did mid-term exams and I was first in almost every subject. But people wouldn't play with me. I wasn't allowed on the football team. I was on my own. 

I got this idea in my head that I could be bottom of the class in every subject if I really tried hard, and believe me coming bottom in some of the subjects was very difficult because they got really low scores. But I managed it, and I became popular."

Let's repeat what Gary Mitchell just said: "I managed it - [to be bottom of the class in every subject] - and I became popular." This is horrendous. Then he said:

"I realised that learning things was a bad idea, and being dumb was a good idea. Being stupid was the smart thing to do."

He explained here his journey from chronic worklessness to famous playwright. He then explained his life after becoming famous:

"Things were going great – I had a family, plenty of money, plenty of opportunities and plenty of work. Everything seemed perfect. In fact, I remember standing outside our house one day with my wife, and she told me it was like heaven. Nothing ever went wrong – just before everything did go wrong.

VIDEO - Plato's [Loyalist] cave, Ctd

"He who does not move does not notice his chains." 

— Rosa Luxemburg

My earlier post in the series with full analysis here.

Loyalist violence weakens the argument for Northern Ireland remaining in the Union, Ctd

Former editor of the Belfast Telegraph Jack Sayers

(Updated below)

Alf McCreary recalled what his editor at the Belfast Telegraph Jack Sayers said of Unionist extremism in a leading article in that paper on 5 November 1968: Jack Sayers said:

"The threat to Northern Ireland’s future is not… the IRA or even Nationalism. It comes from Protestant Ulstermen who will not allow themselves to be liberated from the delusion that every Roman Catholic is their enemy."

Alf McCreary himself said in 1976: "I want a society where we will have politics & not a sectarian pantomime."

My previous post in the series here. On loyalism's phantom fear here.

UPDATE:

Ian Paisley's son, Kyle Paisley said in an interview with the News Letter:

"However, neither should loyalists use the flag issue as an excuse to stir up sectarian strife, or to attack the PSNI, to the delight of dissident republicans."

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:

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.

George Orwell - [Loyalists] and the English Language

Loyalists Against Democracy (@LadFleg), myself and others in the public sphere are regularly reproached for making fun of illiteracy, bad spelling and broad accents. I'm regularly rebuffed as a "snob". A charge I reject, refrain and responded to directly here and here.

Those are made fun of for bad spelling and for poor grammar have committed unpardonable and intolerable acts. They are not beyond criticism. When they commit gratuitous and promiscuous criminality they inflict social and economic misery across the whole of Belfast and the whole of Northern Ireland.

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."

Loyalist violence weakens the argument for Northern Ireland remaining in the Union

John Major previously spoke of loyalism's "phantom fear" here.  Hugo MacNeill has since written a piece by the title, 'Young People Have a New Vision for Northern Ireland', in The Irish Times here:

"Loyalist violence around parades and flags has created little solidarity from the rest of the UK. Perhaps no matter for now. However, with (a) possible Scottish independence, and (b) Britain’s place in Europe being debated, potentially significant changes to the UK could follow. These could have huge and potentially negative implications for Northern Ireland. Violent attacks on security forces do little for Ulster unionism in the wider UK."

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.

A tiny minority makes us all look like loosers

A commenter from Northern Ireland, now living in America responded to a guest blog I produced for the Loyalists Against Democracy blog here. He said of the flag protests:

"I am currently studying Politics in The United States as part of a BA international from University College Dublin. An American Student asked me this question the other day. 'The guys in Belfast marching about the flag are Protestants ya?' I said yes they are. He then asked me 'Why do those people always behave like such freaks?' I said its only a tiny minority, he replied, 'well that tiny minority makes them all look like a bunch of losers dude' - This conversation sparked a discussion in my class (I am studying in California, where the majority of the students are American or of European decent, only one with any Irish connection) I was genuinely shocked by the discussion. They all had such a terrible view of Unionism, undeserved in my view. But the point is that unionism is being destroyed at home and abroad by these idiots."

Richard Haass has said here that the riots and instability has scared off international investors.

Let Me Tell You (with David McCann)

Little experiment with David McCann (@dmcbfs), building on the inimitable and esteemed If You Ask Me feature that ran for 16 years on BBC Hearts and Minds. Check out the cartoons featured in the video below. See the full compilation with audio from David McCann here. See the feature on Slugger O'Toole here.

Dilberate, offensive, stupid

Loyalist rioters on Friday in Belfast. IRA celebrants in Castlederg on Sunday. Both stupid. Both offensive. And both deliberate. Depressing.
— Alex.Kane (@AlexKane221b) August 11, 2013

Enlightening Loyalism

 

Before starting a discussion on loyalism, the below quote bears note:

“Periclean Greeks employed the term idiotis, without any connotation of stupidity or subnormality, to mean simply 'a person indifferent to public affairs'."

Veteran Loyalist activist Raymond lavery said here:

"I remember gun battles in my street in 1970 when we had to hide under the stairs to be safe. These young people out here today didn't live though any of that; they can't imagine what it was really like. 

The worst danger is that one of these young people out demonstrating or rioting gets run down by a police Land Rover and is killed or injured. What is important here is that this generation not only get a better formal education but they get a political education too, which there is a serious lack of. Sinn Féin are putting into people's heads that because a flag comes down there is a march towards a united Ireland.