#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.

Ireland's social revolution

John Stuart Mill wrote in ‘Chapters and speeches on the Irish land question’ that while Britain ruled cruelly in Ireland, today's generation cannot be held responsible or atone for past misconduct. He wrote in his publication from 1870:

"The Irish were taught that feeling [disaffection] by Englishmen. England has only even professed to treat the Irish people as part of the same nation with ourselves, since 1800. How did we treat them before that time? I will not go into the subject of the penal laws, because it may be said that those laws affected the Irish not as Irish but as Catholics. I will only mention the manner in which they were treated merely as Irish. I grant that, for these things, no man now living has any share of the blame; we are all ashamed of them; but “the evil that men do lives after them”."

#NorthernIreland2016 Interview Series - A 57 year old male

Edward Pearse works as an independent consultant. He has lived happily in both jurisdictions. His name is a pseudonym due to the nature of his work, his insights are informative nonetheless.

The two worlds of Northern Ireland, Ctd

Gerald Dawe said:

"I come from a Protestant background, but as a young fellow I had lots of Catholic and Jewish friends, and non-religious friends. We all used to hang out together, and we used to go to dances together, we used to party together, we used to go on holidays together. It was a very mixed group. But by the early ’70s all that changed. I used to walk girls home over to west Belfast and it never was a problem, but when The Troubles really started to dig in, that kind of freedom disappeared. I mean you’d take your life in your hands… Belfast became a very dark and dangerous city. People didn’t go out after 7 or 8 o’clock at night. It was pretty grim … It wasn’t the same city that I had known growing up."

#NorthernIreland2016 Interview Series - Gerry McCullough

Gerry McCullough considers herself to be Irish, British and Northern Irish. She was born and brought up in Belfast and now lives in Conlig, just outside Bangor. She went to Belfast High School and then to Queen’s University where she took an honours degree in English Literature and Philosophy, followed by an MA in Eng Lit. She is married to singer-songwriter, writer, radio presenter and publisher Raymond McCullough, and has four children.

The south of Ireland is no longer backward

David McWilliams said in 2014 at the Xchange Summer School:

"If you look back 150 years, Northern Ireland was the Silicon Valley of the world."

He wrote in a 2006 article, ‘North a ‘junkie economy’ reliant upon state handouts’:

"Sometime in the past century, [Northern Ireland’s] Protestant majority swapped Max Weber for Karl Marx."

#NorthernIreland2016 Interview Series - Dr Paul Reilly

Dr Paul Reilly is a Senior Lecturer in Social Media & Digital Society at the University of Sheffield. He was born and spent his child and youth in Northern Ireland.

#NorthernIreland2016 Interview Series - 28 year old exile in London

Our latest interviewee is an exile from East Belfast now domiciled in London. He is 28 and works in finance. For the purposes of this interview he will have a synonym, Lewis Strandtown.

Unhappy when working. Unhappy when workless.

Fritz Kreisler by Paolo Garretto, which looks remarkably like George Orwell

George Orwell said in an essay on Oscar Wilde:

"Even in the most highly-mechanised countries, an enormous amount of dull and exhausting work has to be done by unwilling human muscles."

#NorthernIreland2016 Interview Series - Matt Johnston

Matt is 43 and is a dad among other things. While his parents would have a long history with Northern Ireland they met in England and Matt was born there. They returned to Northern Ireland with little Matt in 1974 believing that the growing Troubles would blow over soon. Matt inherited such optimism.

Matt is confidently Northern Irish, "I don’t pretend to be English or Irish."

The poppy question

Conor McGregor, as other resolute Irish republicans have done, wears a poppy in 2013

Historian Niall Ferguson reminded us that Remembrance Day and the poppy, while a British tradition, is not just done by Britain. This brings a difficulty to the table of unbending republicans. Ferguson wrote:

#NorthernIreland2016 Interview Series - Tina Calder

Tina Calder is 37 and is Belfast. She is a journalist.

The execution of the rebel leaders of 1916

Chief Secretary for Ireland in 1916 Augustine Birrell, by Mary Olive Edis

Garrett Fitzgerald wrote:

"My father… Always believed that it was the threat of conscription rather than the 1916 executions that finally swung opinion decisively towards Sinn Fein."

#NorthernIreland2016 Interview Series - Al Millar

Al Millar hales from east Donegal. He was educated in Raphoe and went afterwards to Trinity College Dublin. He currently living and working in north Antrim.

V.S. Pritchett on living and writing in Ireland

V.S. Pritchett by André Carrilho

At twenty Pritchett went to Paris (1920/1921), where he "lived an abysmal bohemian life and wrote a terribly pretentious and mannered prose." Later he was a correspondent on the Irish rebellion for The Christian Science Monitor. Later again, a journalist in Spain.  When he joined the Christian Science Monitor the editor sent him to Ireland to write a series of articles. It was during the troubles of 1921–1924 he was asked to travel all over the country and write, not about the war, but about how ordinary Irish people lived and coped with the situation.

#NorthernIreland2016 Interview Series - Dawn Purvis

Dawn was a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly from March 2007-May 2011, representing the East Belfast constituency, first PUP then as an independent.  Dawn is 49 and was born in Belfast. She joined the PUP in 1994 and first stood for the party in the elections to the Northern Ireland Forum in 1996.  Dawn was involved with various rounds of peace process negotiations before, during and after the Good Friday Agreement.

Sinn Fein revisionism, Ctd

Eamonn McCann said in an interview with Eamonn Mallie on Irish TV:

"The reforms which emerged allegedly from the armed struggle were in place in the early 1970s."

#NorthernIreland2016 Interview Series - David McDowell

David was born in Belfast in 1970 and lived there and in the Glens of Antrim. He attended Larne Grammar and Belfast Royal Academy, where, like a lot of his peers, he got into politics at the time of the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985. David then read History at Oxford and during the nineties was an active Young Unionist and Unionist Graduate, "an enthusiastic Trimblista". Now David teaches history and politics in Edinburgh but is less active in actual politics.

David Trimble - The Easter Rebellion of 1916

Published in 1992

Click the link to read each chapter: Chapter One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six and Seven.

#NorthernIreland2016 Interview Series - Linda Ervine

Linda Ervine is well known for her activism in East Belfast in the field of the Irish language. In September 2012 she became Irish Language Development Officer with East Belfast Mission. Linda is 54 and was born in Belfast and self-identifies as British, Irish and Northern Irish. She went to Park Parade Secondary School. Becoming a young mum she continued her education in my early 30s. Linda went to QUB and did a degree in English, followed by PGCE, becoming an English teacher in a girls’ secondary school in East Belfast. 

Brian John Spencer: "When did you first learn about the Easter Rising of 1916?" Linda Ervine: 

James Joyce in Vanity Fair (1922)

Joyce by Mina Loy. Also by Djuna Barnes here. 

Djuna Barnes wrote about her meeting with James Joyce at the Deux Megots for Vanity Fair magazine, published in April 1922:

"There are men in Dublin who will tell you that out of Ireland a great voice has gone; and there are a few women, lost to youth, who will add: “One night he was singing and the next he wasn’t, and there’s been no silence the like of it!
 For the singing voice of James Joyce, author of The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and of Ulysses is said to have been second to none.

#NorthernIreland2016 Interview Series - Rev Brian Kennaway

The Reverend Brian Kennaway was brought up in North Belfast. After a time in industry he attended Magee University College Londonderry where he was President of the Students’ Representative Council (1969-1970). He then attended Trinity College Dublin where he graduated in 1972.  

Syriza imposed austerity shows that Sinn Fein would impose austerity

Above is a letter to Portuguese Finance Minister Mário Centeno co-signed by European Commission Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis and EU Economic Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici, asking for explanations as to why the Portuguese government is planning to cut structural deficit by only 0.2% of GDP in 2016 – which, the Commission notes, is “well below” the recommended target of 0.6% of GDP. More below. 

#NorthernIreland2016 Interview Series - Shane Davey

Shane Davey is a 28 year old exile originally from Kilrea, a small town in rural County Derry. Shane ventured away slightly and went to secondary school in St Mary’s Magherafelt, followed by university in NYC, where he currently resides. He is a full time trader based in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. 

#NorthernIreland2016 Interview Series - Ian James Parsley

Ian is 38 and his home village is Groomsport, Co Down. Though he grew up and was educated largely in England and Germany due to his father’s work, who himself is a Londoner. Ian's mother is from Belfast. Ian now lives in Co Antrim running a small management consultancy which also offers classes and translation services. Ian is a member of (though holds no position in) the Alliance Party.

Sir James Craig was Irish

Sir James Craig, Viscount Craigavon, by society painter Sir John Lavery

William O'Brien wrote a description of Sir James Craig, the first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland and utterly loyal adjutant to Sir Edward Carson, in ‘The Irish Revolution and how it came about’ (1923):

"Sir James Craig… The Ulster leader was never an incorrigible enemy of a modus vivendi with his Southern countrymen. Like so many of the higher Orange type, if he was an irresponsible being for half a dozen mad “ anniversary ” days, he was for all the rest of the year a kindly neighbour, a fast friend, more honest of heart than complex in the convolutions of his brain matter, but in all things, flattering or otherwise, as irredeemably Irish as the granite ribs of Cave Hill."

TIME Magazine featured Sir James Craig on the May 26 1924 cover of the magazine. Inside it produced a short feature on the first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland:

#NorthernIreland2016 Interview Series - Belfast Barman

The Belfast Barman, or Kris Nixon as he is known to friends and family, was born in Dundonald and went to Braniel Primary School in East Belfast. He is 28. He moved to Brighton, England for High School; them to London for University for a few months but ended up back in Belfast again. He has spent "far too long behind a bar" and now writes for a living. 

Edmund Burke's "political testament to Ireland" (December 1796)

Edmund Burke behind and with hands on Richard B. Sheridan and Charles James Fox who bow before him. Burke says, "Behold the abettors of Revolutions, see the authors of Plots & conspiracies, and take cognisance of the enemies of both Church & State..."

Edmund Burke was called the "ornament of Ireland" by the Irish Magazine in 1808. He called the United Irishmen, as you can read below, "that unwise body". Wolfe Tone said:

#NorthernIreland2016 Interview Series - Colin McCusker

Colin McCusker was born, raised and educated in Portadown, Co Armagh. The son of Ulster Unionist Party grandee Harold McCusksr graduated from UUC in 1992. He is married to Anne-Louise with 2 children at Primary School. After a time in business he moved into politics. Colin is a local Councillor representing the town of Lurgan and is employed full time by the UUP.

Partition in Ireland is strengthened by violence

Cartoon by Ian Knox

George Bernard Shaw portended that partition in the north would lead to "an autonomous political lunatic asylum." J.B. Armour, liberal presbyterian and Home Ruler, said:

"For years they have been yelling against Home Rule, and now they have got a form of Home Rule which the Devil himself could not have devised."

#NorthernIreland2016 Interview Series - RUC Diary

RUC Diary appeared on Twitter in 2014 and came to prominence with its raw and emotive tweets. The Twitter post put to the public the daily diary worries of an RUC officer based out of Donegal Pass. Events ranged from the mundane to the manic and murderous. 

Orwell and Heaney on W.B. Yeats

Heaney by Portuguese cartoonist Andre Carrilho 

W.B. Yeats died in 1939, 9 months before the start of war. Orwell wrote in 1943 (via Kevin Kerrane, 'Orwell's Ireland'):

#NorthernIreland2016 Interview Series - Liam Kennedy

Professor Liam Kennedy was born in Co Tipperary in 1946, he is 69. He was educated at UCC and then University of York. He now lives in Belfast and is currently emeritus professor of economic history at Queen's University Belfast. Liam is a European social democrat. 

The IRA proclaimed itself "the lawful and legal" government of Ireland,why does it reject the standards and responsibilities of a moderngovernment?

The IRA Green Book was in existence while the IRA, (1956 edition), and the PIRA, (1977 edition) waged their armed stuggle. The Green Book said:

"Commitment to the Republican Movement is the firm belief that its struggle both military and political is morally justified, that war is morally justified and that the Army is the direct representative of the 1918 Dail Eireann Parliament, and that as such they are the legal and lawful government of the Irish Republic, which has the moral right to pass laws for, and to claim jurisdiction over the territory, air space, mineral resources, means of production, distribution and exchange and all of its people regardless of creed or loyalty."

#NorthernIreland2016 Interview Series - David Gilmour

David Gilmour is a 27 year old born in Belfast. He studied English and Modern History at Queen's University. Currently David works as a research analyst and runs in the world of freelance journalism. David writes mainly on Irish culture and politics for VICE and contributes to EamonnMallie.com.

Why do people call Northern Ireland Ulster?

Edward Carson and James Craig, the founding fathers of Northern Ireland, who were party to the dismembering not only of Ireland but Ulster also

Nick Laird wrote:

"Under nationality I write Irish/British, though I’d be happier with Ulsterman, since Ulster itself (incorporating Northern Ireland and the Irish counties of Cavan, Monaghan and Donegal) is a province administrated by both Dublin and London."

Ulster is a misnomer, as Mr. Clynes said in 1920, "Ulster is an expression which has misled a great many people." Letter writer, J.H. Nunn, wrote to the Irish times in 1916:

#NorthernIreland2016 Interview Series - Jude Collins

Jude Collins is an Irish writer and broadcaster. He attended primary school in Omagh (Christian Brothers) and boarded at Seamus Heaney's alma mater, St Columb’s College. University was in Dublin (UCD), in Winnipeg (Univ of Manitoba) and in England (University of Newcastle). 

Unionism's anglophobia

[UPDATE - I published a version of this on Slugger O'Toole here]

Hardline Irish-America often declaims, 'England out of Ireland!' There is huge irony in this.
Scott MacMillan, in Slate Magazine, wrote:

"It is a telling irony: Working-class loyalists directed their rage not against their traditional enemies, Catholics who favor unification with the Republic of Ireland, but against the symbols of the United Kingdom to which they are supposedly loyal."

#NorthernIreland2016 Interview Series - Neil Wilson

Neil was born in Cyprus by virtue of his father's occupation at the time. He was educated at Methody and then Liverpool John Moores. He now lives in Bloomfield, East Belfast. By day Neil works in marketing for a tech company. Occasionally he's an NI Conservative candidate in East Belfast.

In revolutionary Ireland Protestants were overwhelmingly unionist and anti-Home Rule

It is quite often said that many protestants filled the republican ranks in revolutionary Ireland. This is true to a degree. There are examples of protestant republicans, however these oft-recounted individuals were outliers. The overwhelming majority of protestants were unionist and anti-Home Rule. Ronald McNeill wrote in 1922, 'Ulster's Stand For the Union':

"An additional cause of offence, moreover, was that he was at that time trying to persuade credulous people in England that there was in Ulster a party of Liberals and Protestant Home Rulers, of which he [Lord Pirrie] posed as leader, although everyone on the spot knew that the “party” would not fill a tramcar."

#NorthernIreland2016 Interview Series - Chris Thackaberry

Chris Thackaberry is a protestant born and bred in Dublin. He is an Orangeman and sits on the Central Committee of the Grand Orange Lodge. He works in Belfast but is regularly in the city of Carson. Thackaberry is on the Central Committee of the Grand Orange Lodge.

Catholic bigotry

An anonymous Irishman is reported to have said via ‘Is Ulster Right?’ (1913):

"Roman Catholics who fled from the tyranny of the penal laws at home [in Ireland] had no scruple, when they reached the Continent, in taking part in persecutions far more terrible than anything they had seen in Ireland. During the dragonnades in Languedoc, Louis XIV’s Irish brigade joined eagerly in the butchery of old men, women and children and the burning of whole villages. The same heroes distinguished themselves by destroying everything they could find in remote Alpine valleys so that the unfortunate Waldenses might die of starvation."

The 2nd Vatican council of 1965 changed protestants from "heretics" to "separated brethren".

Rev. Michael Kennedy, Roman Catholic curate, said in April 1898:

"They are not born from our race… the Irish Unionists have no country…"

#NorthernIreland2016 Interview Series - Garrett McCartney

Garrett McCartney lives and works in London but calls Belfast home. He was educated at RBAI, the alma mater of Longley and Mahon founded by United Irishmen, in Belfast city centre. By day Garrett works as a Production Manager at a digital advertising agency called AKQA.

The remarkability of Irish Rugby

The tricolour and provincial Ulster flag fly as Ireland play Canada at the 2015 Rugby World Cup

In 1986 The New York Times wrote:

"From a social and political perspective, every game the Irish team plays is remarkable indeed.

Arlene Foster said on the Nolan Show, November 5 2015:

"Yes [I consider myself Irish when watching Irish Rugby,] because we have some fantastic Ulster Rugby players playing for them."

The Irish Rugby Football Union was formed in its present form in 1879, so it pre-dates partition by 41 years. Edmund van Esbeck is the veteran and highly respected rugby correspondent of the Dublin-based Irish Times. Speaking in 1997 he shed some light on the great healing and congealing force that the game of rugby has exerted on Ireland: 

#NorthernIreland2016 Interview Series - Rev Lesley Carroll

The Reverend Lesley Carroll is from County Tyrone, educated at Dungannon High School for Girls. Third level vocational studies were at the College of St Mark & St John Plymouth, QUB & TCD. 

Edward Carson, father of the IRA?

In the final lines of the September 1913 poem, Yeats wrote, "Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone. It’s with O’Leary in the grave." The rebel leaders shared these fears and, inspired by the rebellion of Edward Carson, they later emulated Carson's example.

#NorthernIreland2016 Interview Series - Michael Hamilton Coulter McDowell

Michael Hamilton Coulter McDowell is 64. His early childhood was spent on the Holywood Road, East Belfast, then to adulthood he lived on the upper Ormeau Road at Rosetta, South Belfast. 

Michael went to school at Rosetta Primary, then onwards to Methodist College Belfast and Trinity College, Dublin. He worked for the Belfast Telegraph and the BBC, then moving to America became a Harvard Fellow and Lecturer. Michael is now a Senior Fellow of Washington DC/New York international think-tank. Previously Michael worked in Toronto, Canada for over seven years with The Globe and Mail national newspaper of Canada. He also worked for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) mainly as senior foreign affairs producer/editorial executive in Washington, till 1997. Back to international affairs world, think-tanks, foundations, World Bank, etc. Active progressive Episcopalian. University advisory board and non-profit board member. Passion: improving race relations.

Home Rule was loyalty?

John Dillon by Carlo Pellegrini ('APE') 

John Redmond said:

"Let us have national freedom and imperial unity and strength."

Edward Carson - "I am preaching order"

The Irish Unionists blocked the first two Home Rule bills using constitutionalism. Unable to frustrate the third bill by constitutional means, the Irish and Ulster unionists, with Tory backing, devolved to unconstitutionalism - the threat of arms. John Redmond, the Parnellite and resolute Irish constitutionalist, had broken the Lords veto and put Home Rule onto the statute book. Facing a Dublin parliament, an "assembly of cattle drivers in dublin" (Ronald McNeill), Carson formed a provisional government and threatened rebellion.

#NorthernIreland2016 Interview Series - Brendan Harkin

Brendan Harkin is a 23 year old legal assistant, observer and wit from Belfast. His talents are multifarious, including amateur photography, blogging, gaming and many other disciplines. Schooling at Belfast Royal Academy, Brendan studied Law at the University of Wolverhampton. He now lives in South Belfast with a lively curiosity and appetite for engaging in the fluid and ever changing online world. A true avatar of the new and emerging Northern Ireland. 

Brian John Spencer: "When did you first learn about the Easter Rising of 1916?" Brendan Harkin:

Edward Carson was a life long Irish man

Cartoon by Ian Knox

Edward Carson rose in the Lords on December 3 1929 and made a number of points about the Irish Free State and the Privy Council, the legal forum the nascent Irish state sought to do away with. Interestingly he called the Anglo-Irish Treaty the “Treaty of surrender and betrayal”. On the matter of his identity, he said: