Unionists and nationalists write to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson

Oil on canvas By Sidney Edward Dickinson

U.S. President Woodrow Wilson coined the expression "self-determination", a catch-penny cry in Ireland. Dated August 1 1918, Edward Carson and other unionists sent a letter to the U.S. President which responded to the Nationalist Manifesto sent to Wilson in June 1918 and openly circulated. Mr Carson and his co-signatories wrote:

James Joyce on Fenianism (1907)

Doodles by Samuel Beckett, including a scribble of James Joyce

In 1907, aged 25, James Joyce wrote 'The Last Fenian'  and remarked upon the enduring struggle between violent and constitutional nationalism: 

"Anyone who studies the history of the Irish revolution during the nineteenth century finds himself faced with a double struggle — the struggle of the Irish nation against the English government, and the struggle, perhaps no less bitter, between the moderate patriots and the so-called party of physical force. This party under different names: ‘White Boys’, ‘Men of ‘98’, ‘United Irishmen’, ‘Invincibles’, ‘Fenians’, has always refused to be connected with either the English political parties or the Nationalist parliamentarians. They maintain (and in this assertion history fully supports them) that any concessions that have been granted to Ireland, England has granted unwillingly, and, as it is usually put, at the point of a bayonet."

The authoritarian terror of Lundyism

Cartoon by Ian Knox of Alliance leader and NI Justice Minister, David Ford MLA

Any unionist opinion that deviates from the hardline, reactionary fringe is immediately and unavoidably smeared "Lundy." The colloquial curse word for the moderate member of the Unionist community. And you see it with the PSNI - An eire-phobia - where the slightest criticism of or incursion against loyalist promiscuity is labelled IRA. (Yet the irony is that in calling PSNI the PSNI-IRA, loyalists sound like republicans who call PSNI the PSNI-RUC.) A plurality and diversity of unionist opinion isn't just disapproved, but effectively outlawed. A total prohibition on anything not outwardly and chauvinistically Protestant.

The Lundy is the kuffar. The traitor. The heretic and apostate who has gone prostrate before the enemy. Only the deep and double-dyed sectarians and tribalists are the true and authentic holders and representatives of the community.

Of course this is nonsense. By their hysterical reactionism - the deep and double-dyed sectarian, so sure of themselves, so self-loving, so unbending - becomes a parody and caricature of the tradition they purport to represent. They don't seem to have any mechanism to question or analyse their own method and direction. This is not only incredibly self-satisfied but self-destructive. He who doesn't have the ability to adapt and and mould with the changing of events is doomed.

I want to live in a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-confessional society and live with a multi-confessional unionism. It's only through argument and dissent and the constant challenging of ideas that you can refine and develop political ideology and practice.

I've variously been called a "Unionists my arse". A "condescending appeaser" by Jamie Bryson. Nick Garbutt being called a "snob" by Willie Frazer

The other colloquial swear word and pjejorative term for the unionist that deviates from the hardline, is "guilty prod". Glenn Bradley explained being called a "guilty prod" here.

My previous post on the authoritarianism of fringe unionism against the moderate, here. See all my posts on Ian Knox, who did the cartoon above, here.

An epistolary response to David McCann (@dmcbfs) and Barton Creeth (@bartoncreeth)

Woke up with a sore throat-interesting debate last night on republicanism and unionism plus newspapers @bartoncreeth @brianjohnspencr
— David McCann (@dmcbfs) March 2, 2014

On Saturday March 1 2014 David McCann (@dmcbfs), Barton Creeth (@bartoncreeth) and I had a few drinks in a well known Belfast pub. The evening began with David and Barton discussing American politics and when I arrived later, we turned to Irish politics.

It was firey but good-mannered. I said I would respond in full. I'm not sure if this was heeded. But here it is. I've looked at a few things:

- Irish identity and being Irish.
- The sense of community.
- Pearse and how religion can no more be separated from Pearse than Pearse the person could be separated from religion.
- Catholic State for a Catholic people.
- Deport protestant unionists.

Identity

There is no single definition or model of what it is to be Irish. As I have tried to show in my blog series on Irish and British identity - 'Being Irish is not about being not British' - and - 'Being British is not about being not Irish' - too many people hold and push recklessly idiosyncratic, exclusivist, racist (my blog series on 'Irish racism' here) and ethnicist notions of what it is to be Irish. No man has a monopoly on what it is to be Irish. Being Irish is what you want it to be and make it to be. As George Bernard Shaw said:

The two worlds of Northern Ireland, Ctd Ian James Parsley

Ian James Parsley wrote in the Compromise After Conflict blog here:

"Northern Ireland is increasingly pillarised three ways – in addition to “Catholic/Nationalist/Republican” and “Protestant/Unionist/Loyalist” we now have a growing “Secular/Progressive/Liberal” pillar, to some extent at least. That latter pillar tends to be built on the growing professional, suburban class and is marked by its tendency to be internationalist, to reject old categories, and (demonstrated indisputably in polling) to regard itself predominantly as “Northern Irish” (rather than “Irish” or “British”)."

Alex Massie - It's about remembering not celebrating

Scotland's Alex Massie wrote on wearing the poppy in The Spectator blog here. He said:

"Consider the photograph at the top of this post. It was taken on Armistice Day in 1924. In Dublin.Yes, Dublin. The Union Flag is flown. The National Anthem – ie, God Save the King – is sung. A Celtic Cross is erected on College Green prior to its transportation to France where it would serve as a memorial to the 16th Irish Division. Some reports estimate as many as 50,000 Irishmen attended the commemoration. (There is British Pathe footage of it here). The Irish Times proudly reported that “the display of Flanders poppies was not equalled by any city in the British isles”. 

He continued: 

"Commemorations on this scale were not unusual in the 1920s. Two years later some 40,000 Irishmen marched to the Phoenix Park for a service of commemoration beneath the imposing Wellington Monument... The poppy and remembrance fell from favour in Ireland, elbowed aside by the rival story of the Easter Rising. A rebellion thought contemptible by most Dubliners became the national epic (in large part thanks to the British government’s obtuse reaction to the events of Easter 1916, a reaction that remains obtuse even if considered within the context of the First World War). But we can see more clearly now even if, paradoxically, also more darkly. This is Ireland, after all.

He continued:

"[The] enthusiasm was not restricted to Unionists. In 1919 Joe Devlin, the nationalist MP for West Belfast, declared that the 16th Irish Division’s dead “died not as cowards died, but as soldiers of freedom, with their faces toward the fire, and in the belief that their life-blood was poured out in defence of liberty for the world”. If England’s difficulty was, for some, Ireland’s opportunity there remained many others who saw the struggle for Ireland as a small part of a wider struggle to establish the rights of all small nations. Fighting for Belgium or for Serbia was a proxy for fighting for Ireland."

He concluded:

"No-one celebrates the First World War. How could you? But remembering it, in all its complexity, is one way of helping to understand who we are and how we came to be who we are, wherever we happen to be."

Read Alex Massie in full here. Read my previous blog post on the Irish in WWI featuring historian Diarmaid Ferriter and John Redmond here. 

George Orwell on Celtic Nationalism

George Orwell writes here on Celtic nationalism:

"Its motive force is a belief in the past and future greatness of the Celtic peoples, and it has a strong tinge of racialism. The Celt is supposed to be spiritually superior to the Saxon — simpler, more creative, less vulgar, less snobbish, etc. — but the usual power hunger is there under the surface. One symptom of it is the delusion that Eire, Scotland or even Wales could preserve its independence unaided and owes nothing to British protection. Among writers, good examples of this school of thought are Hugh McDiarmid and Sean O'Casey. No modern Irish writer, even of the stature of Yeats or Joyce, is completely free from traces of nationalism."

A protestant party for a protestant people

In a previous post here ('A catholic party for a catholic people') we covered Patrick Murphy's critique of Sinn Fein in The Irish News - a party that operates to the exclusion of the protestant people of Northern Ireland. The DUP are the opposite side of the same medieval coin. As Alex Kane said:

"The DUP (along with the UUP) regards its primary task as the protection, promotion and preservation of unionist interests. Put bluntly, that means doing everything possible to undermine the republican, united-Ireland agenda. Meanwhile, Sinn Fein (with the SDLP) sees its primary task as continuing to erase, or at least blur, the signs, symbols, touchstones and benchmarks which sharply define Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom."

And as we said in the previous post here, the Assembly cannot stand if parties cannot come to realize that they owe a duty and responsibility to those people who are perceived to be on the other side.

Gore Vidal on narrow nationalism

In an interview with BBC Hardtalk Gore Vidal was asked if he loved his country, in his response he said of narrow nationalism:

"Anyone who loves thier country is in such trouble. That is nonsense. Out of that has come every war, every famine and everything that is wrong in the western world."

Roger Scruton - Europe's shared culture tackles narrow nationalism

Roger Scruton explained the role of a common culture in tackling narrow nationalism:

"The high culture that we've been talking about hasn't really been nationalistic. Brought up on the scared Hebrew book, Latin Greek, literature and the Greek epic. No particular national inheritance and that's the great achievement of Europe - thta is has erected a high culture as a critical aparatus that allows us to put our national culture into question if we need to."