When John Steinbeck came 'back to Ireland'

The website Steinbeck Now notes that John Steinbeck "returned repeatedly to his family roots in Northern Ireland". Steinbeck's grandfather Samuel Hamilton was a Scots-Irish immigrant who settled as a farmer in California’s Salinas Valley in the 19th century. The 1962 Nobel Prize winner's Irish forebears hailed from Mulkeeragh, an area outside Ballykelly in County Londonderry. His grandfather was born on October 7 1830 and emigrated 17 years later, leaving for New York at the time of the Great Famine.

Northern Ireland's Dance, Ctd

Mandan tribal dance - George Catlin (c. 1835)

I previously wrote about the Northern Ireland dance here. MCB alumnus now in Washington Niall Stanage wrote in the New York Times:

The lost Orange of Ireland

Royal Black Preceptory Parade, Cootehill, Cavan, 1920

In a previous post I noted that Martin McGuinness said in March 2015 that "The orange part of the flag is as important as the green", and Gerry Adams said at his party’s Ard Fheis that same year that "We need reminded again and again that our flag is Orange."

James Connolly's angry nativist language

James Connolly, by  Mick O'Dea

Hate and racism is a universal trait - it isn't specifically a Protestant or unionist thing. Irish travellers in Southern Ireland were in Southern Ireland what Catholics were in Northern Ireland, second-class, and thet continue to be. As Willie Kealy said, “We [Irish] have always been a bit racist about Travellers.”

Protestant, planter and guilt. Catholic, Gael and virtue.

Captain John Smith trading with Virginian Indians. Painting by Sidney E. King, National Park Service.

On Slugger O'Toole I wrote that being protestant is often a byword for outsider and guilt, while being Catholic is shorthand for Erin and virtue. In that I wrote:

The Unionist Gap

In a previous post I wrote about 'The political orphaning of moderate unionism'. And here I wrote about Catholic Unionists.

I also wrote about the Unionist Gap here.

Irish nationalism's xenophobia against long settled Protestants

Sinn Fein MLA Phil Flanagan tweeted:

"Unionists didn't have a problem with immigration when their ancestors descended on Ireland to grab land from the native population..."

While, republicans don't have a problem with immigration, so long as it's not protestant immigration to Ireland of centuries past. As Eoin O'Malley of Dublin City University wrote in the paper 'Populist Nationalists: Sinn Fein and redefining the 'radical right'':

"Nationalism in Ireland cannot sit easily with anti-immigrant bigotry (as long as the immigrants are not long settled Protestants."

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."