William Walker versus James Connolly

William Walker was a self educated shipyard worker from Belfast (apprenticed as a joiner in Harland and Wolff). Born in 1871 he founded and led the Independent Labour Party in that city. He died after a long illness in 1918.

America, land of the planters

A 1914 painting of the first Thanksgiving at Plymouth Colony

I use the title ironically, since for zealous Irish republicans "planter" is the epithet and pejorative of choice for the unpersuadable and defiant unionists in Ireland. Yet, if Ireland's protestants are planters, what of America's white christians?

Christopher Hitchens said in a TV debate:

"It goes back as I said to the initial beginnings of Islamic fundamentalism. The first attack on this country was in 1788 by Muslims who said that, "The koran gives us the right to punish and enslave infidels.” That is Bin Laden’s ideology. Bin Laden wants the restoration of the Caliphate. The Caliphate is an empire, he’s pro-empire, not anti-imperialist… He’s for the banning of all music, all books, all philosophy. And this because he cares about the Palestinians? Any one who believes this is a fool."

The gael's Northern Ireland

A street I passed driving through Monaghan

When American's think of Britain, they think of Monty Python. When Irish republicans think of Britain, they think of the Famine and the Black and Tans.

Ireland's “Big, Mad Children” politicians

Roy Foster wrote in ‘Luck and the Irish - A Brief History of Change’:

"After one debate between suspicious DUP representatives and unbending northern nationalists the current BIA chairman (a businessman with links in North and South) expostulated, ‘It’s like dealing with children. Big, Mad Children.’ In this he probably reflected opinions that the mandarins in London and Dublin held in private, and that brought them closer together."

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?"

Imagining if America and Ireland had stayed British

George Washington crosses the Delaware

John Bruton, former Taoiseach and leader of Fine Gael wrote on his blog and in the Irish Times, 'Home rule could have led peacefully to independence'.

Dylan Matthews wrote on Vox.com, '3 reasons the American Revolution was a mistake'.

The abstentionism of the Catholics from 20th Century Northern Ireland life

Newton Emerson wrote:

"For the first five decades of Northern Ireland’s existence, nationalism’s approach to Stormont was instinctively abstentionist. 

Is that instinct returning? The turnout in this week’s assembly election may be little different to last time’s 54 per cent but it masks a typical 3 per cent rise in unionist constituencies with an offsetting fall in nationalist constituencies."

In this post I wanted to consider the original abstentionist instinct. John Hume wrote in his famous 1964 letter to the Irish Times:

George Orwell on Ireland, Ctd

In a previous post I looked at George Orwell and his views on Ireland. Orwell viewed Ireland negatively - Catholic and authoritarian. George Orwell wrote in ‘Why Socialists Don’t Believe In Fun’, 1943:

"At this moment, for instance, the world is at war and wants peace. Yet the world has no experience of peace, and never has had, unless the Noble Savage once existed."

Henry Cooke and Catholic Emancipation (1825)

Henry Cooke

It is ever the case that Unionism and its avatars are presented as bigoted and regressive, while nationalism and its icons are liberal agents of change. Never has this clash of ideas been better encapsulated than with the Henry Cooke-Daniel O'Connell standoff. Yet O'Connell wasn't necessarily the paragon of enlightenment and liberation that he is automatically projected as. As Mick Hall and others have noted:

"Yet Daniel O’Connell, within five years of achieving Catholic Emancipation, stated that Protestants were “foreigners to us since they are of a different religion”."

Nationalism's failure to allay Unionism's fear of Rome Rule

Rev. Joseph Hocking

In a previous post I wrote that Edwardian Ireland was an apartheid state. I also wrote about the conciliation-omission of nationalism prior to the frustration of Home Rule, and I also wrote about the culpable neglect of republicanism post-partition to understand unionism or communicate to unionism the merits of unity.

Windsor's leadership in Northern Ireland

Steve Bell on the Queen's visit to Ireland, May 18 2011

The great cliché of this post-Saint Andrews age has been that unionism has no leadership. George Bernard Shaw once said that unionism is like a military without an officer class, there remains a degree of truth in this to this day. 

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’:

The RUC - For protestants they were friends, and for many Catholics they were vicious foes

Sir James Bernard Flanagan, a Catholic and Chief Constable of the RUC; and Michael McAtamney a Catholic and Deputy Chief Constable

Declan Kearney recently wrote in 'Uncomfortable Conversations':

"Seeking unionist repudiation of British state forces and the RUC is as unhelpful as demanding republican repudiation of the IRA."

John G. Ervine on Carson and Irish Protestants

John G. Irvine by William Conor. Also see a cartoon of John by David Low here.

As Martin McGuinness morphed from violent separatist into an unswerving constitutionalist, the Irish protestant St. John Greer Irvine journeyed from Home Ruler to a staunch Unionist. 

The Irish republican fight is with with Irish monarchists, not England

The Mad Bull (James Craig, 1st Viscount Craigavon and Michael Collins) by Sir John Bernard Patridge (1922)

I previously looked at the anglophobia of unionism on this blog, and on Slugger O'Toole. Here I look at how republicans misunderstand unionists, as typified by what David McKittrick wrote: "If it weren’t for the unionists, [the British] would leave right away." 

Ian Paisley was a proud Irishman

Ian paisley wrote:

"Edward Carson was a life-long Irishman, as well as being a life-long unionist,and that made all the difference… On this 28th day of September [2012], 100 years after his pen touched parchment, we salute the man who taught us all how to be true Irishmen and women."

John F. Kennedy's Texas speech on the Catholic Religion (1960)

JFK speaking at the Rice Hotel in Houston, Texas, September 12 1960 (speech in full here and at bottom)

Today, American politics is hugely varied religiously. In 1960 it was very different. 

Today Congress is run by a Catholic and a Mormon, the president is a black- Christian, on the Supreme Court sit six Catholics and three Jews.

#NorthernIreland2016 Interview Series - John Kyle

John Kyle is A Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) councillor at Belfast City Council. He is contesting the Stormont Assembly Elections 2016.

A narrative account of the Easter Rising 1916

The seven signatories to the Irish Proclamation

Read my account of Sunday April 23 1916 here. The rebels are thrown into chaos by Eoin MacNeill's countermanding order, which read:

‘Owing to the very critical position, all orders given to Irish Volunteers for tomorrow, Easter Sunday, are hereby rescinded, and no parades, marches, or other movements of Irish Volunteers will take place. Each individual Volunteer will obey this order strictly in every particular.’

#NorthernIreland2016 Interview Series - Thomas "Dixie" Elliott

I was born in Rickmansworth England in 1957. My Mother is a Catholic and my late Father was a Protestant. My Father was working over there at the time and my Mother later joined him. They returned to Derry when I was two years old. I went to Saint Joseph's Secondary School where I was really only ever good at art. I became involved in Republicanism at the age of sixteen and was jailed in 1976 at the age of nineteen. I was sentenced to twelve years in 1977 and went on the Blanket Protest, where I remained for four and a half years until it ended after the second Hunger Strike in 1981. I spent nine years out of the twelve year sentence in jail and was released in 1985. I was married in 1988 and it was around this time that I left Sinn Fein. I'm an artist and I also write. I have finished two children's book's as yet unpublished which I've illustrated myself and I am presently writing an adult novel which could be best described as being a cross between Puckoon and An Beal Bocht by Flann O'Brien.