Previously: simultaneous progress and retreat

Bill Rolston notes this hybridity, recognising that “loyalist songs come in a range of styles: from folk, through country and western, to pop, and what is termed in the United States ‘adult-oriented rock’.” He might have added that today, trance, rave and other dance-oriented (not to mention recreational-drug-oriented) remixes – albeit often painfully amateurish ones – can also be encountered. In so doing, he raises the possibility which I am exploring here, only summarily to dismiss it:

“It could be argued that such hybridity is a healthy sign, revealing loyalism’s postmodernist credentials or its multiculturalist ideals. However, there would be great difficulty in sustaining such an argument. Instead, the range of styles in loyalist tunes is in fact symptomatic of a more general problem within loyalism: that of defining identity. As a result, there is often great incongruity in loyalist songs.”

The antithesis is surely false: while few would wish to argue that militant Loyalism is “consciously” inspired by postmodernist, let alone multiculturalist, theory, the instability of identity-claims and the internal formal “incongruity” to which Rolston points are often in other contexts thought characteristically, classically postmodernist.

The call came in a ruling in favour of NI Sheet Metal Works Ltd. after the Belfast-based company, whose managing director, Jim Kirkpatrick, is also a DUP councillor, took an action for breach of contract after Firth Rixson Castings Ltd, listed as a Ministry of Defence supplier, were awarded the contract at an extra cost of £350,000.

The BBC report -

High Court judge Sir Liam McCollum said once legal costs had been taken into account, the wasteful loss of public funds was in the region of £1m.

Sir Liam said: "It is difficult to attribute an innocent motive or to absolve any person involved in the decision-making process."

The judge said NI Sheet Metal Works was awarded the three-year contract in June 2001.

He said doubts and reservations were later expressed about the company's ability to carry out the contract for no apparent reason.

The firm was asked to supply further steel samples for testing, which led to an allegation that the second set was not of the same quality as the first, meaning it did not comply with the contract.

Sir Liam said First Rixson Castings was employed instead, "at a greatly increased price".

However, a later test proved that both samples were for all practical purposes the same steel, the judge said.

"There is evidence that the report of this test, which might have saved the contract, may have been suppressed within the PSNI team responsible for the contract," added the judge.

"In addition, it may have been deliberately removed from the list of documents made available for discovery in the action."

The BBC reported yesterday that -

In a statement, the PSNI said it was "apparent that there are issues to be addressed arising from this case".

"We are therefore arranging for the appointment of an independent expert to review and report on all the elements of this process."

That sounds like they'll be reviewing the comparison of the steel.. again.. in spite of the Court judgement?.. and there's to be an independent report?.. not a criminal investigation?

Cosmopolitanism is interpreted by Robin Wilson as -

By cosmopolitanism he [David Held] means a value system in which each individual (not “community”) is treated as of equal moral worth, all individuals recognise their common humanity and the state treats impartially all competing claims. If any government since partition had adopted such a stance, Northern Ireland’s problems would have been on the way to a solution.

Robin Wilson argues that -

But the cosmopolitan vision also has implications for what sort of constitutional accommodation will work. New Labour heavily spun the 1998 Belfast agreement as having “solved” Northern Ireland’s constitutional conflict. It did nothing of the sort – it merely repeated what earlier “breakthroughs” had done (like the Northern Ireland Constitution Act of 1973 which ushered in short-lived “power-sharing”): namely, setting competing unionist and nationalist claims side by side, and creating a method (a simple-majority referendum) for arbitrating between them. The failed border-poll experiment of 1973 should have warned the architects that this was the best formula for a destabilising sectarian headcount.

A cosmopolitan approach - which he suggests the government document A Shared Future implicitly acknowledged - is one that embraces the concept of modernisation -

In a four-dimensional political context – post-1997 devolution across the United Kingdom, prolonged (if contested) European integration, intensified globalisation, allied to the economic take-off and social “liberal agenda” in the Republic of Ireland, it becomes perfectly conceivable to imagine the citizens of Northern Ireland eventually sharing a cosmopolitan political space.

This polity could both be defined as a devolved region of the UK (where its competences, as with Scotland, would be extensive but constrained) and at the same time allocated a power of general competence in its dealings with the republic (where no such constraints would apply). For decades, the student movement in the region – which one would imagine would contain its most volatile political elements – has operated happily on a similar basis.

This would be a settlement, rather than an agreement, with three beneficial effects.

First, it would delegitimise the ethno-nationalist political forces on both sides - whose projects would be thereby rendered literally meaningless – in favour of the more civic-minded and progressive.

Second, it would remove from the scene republican irredentism (rejected as obsolete by most actually existing Irish people, as the small and very tasteless “Make Partition History” march in Dublin on 24 September demonstrated) and the cultivated sense of threat in which loyalists self-pityingly indulge.

Third, it would thus consign to the Ulster Museum, if not to the dustbin of history, the display of memorabilia that Stephen Howe has so carefully curated.

"I'm satisfied at this stage of the investigation that we will show that the money recovered during Operation Phoenix is part of the takings from the robbery of the Northern Bank in Belfast." Asked did he believe the link had now been made, he replied: "I am satisfied, yes." He said comments - made by Sinn Féin - that there was no evidence or definitive proof of a link were wrong. "I think if somebody is saying that they are very much mistaken," he said.

The Washington Post also states that "The indictment was returned May 19 and unsealed following Garland's arrest [on Friday]."

Sean O'Driscoll in the Belfast Telegraph also names all 7 men indicted and reports that the US will be seeking their arrest and extradition. He also reports that -

The indictment names Garland as the leader of the Official IRA, a claim he strongly denies, and claims that North Korean officials introduced counterfeit $100 bills to Ireland in the early 1990s and that Garland obtained more of them in Minsk, Belarus.

The indictment says Garland traded in over $1m in the currency, using his Workers' Party position as a front and that the accused and their associates carried the notes between Britain and Ireland on the ferry, because ferry passengers did not undergo security checks.

Garland is accused of going to great measures to avoid being linked to the scheme. He is also accused of using Official IRA members to run the operation.

The Washington Post, via Mark Sherman of The Associated Press, also has details on the indictment -

Garland, working with the other defendants, purchased, transported and resold up to $1 million worth of the phony currency between 1997 and 2000 and also worked to conceal North Korea's role in the enterprise, the indictment said. The bills were put into circulation in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, it said.

The others charged in the indictment were: Christopher John Corcoran, 57, of Dublin, Ireland; David Levin, 39, of Birmingham and London, England; Hugh Todd, 68, of South Africa; Terence "Terry" Silcock, 50, Mark Adderley, 47, and Alan Jones, 48, all of Birmingham.
Prosecutors are seeking their arrest and extradition, said Kenneth Wainstein, the U.S. Attorney in Washington.

All the defendants face maximum prison sentences of five years and fines of $250,000 if convicted.

pete baker @ 02:02 PM

'Slab' denies any involvement in money laundering
The game goes on. Despite having his name plastered all over the shop last week in relation to an ongoing ARA operation, Tom Murphy has broken his self-imposed silence to deny that he is involved in any money laundering, or indeed that he owns any property, not even his farm which he states he had to sell in order to fight a libel campaign against the Sunday Times in the 1990's.

Mick Fealty @ 01:46 PM

Ireland faces a hard road ahead...
Richard Dunne was visibly 'gutted' after the Republic's exit from the World Cup. Although manager Brian Kerr is reportedly upbeat about the team's future, it seems as though in soccer Ireland (north and south) may have come to the end of an era which has lasted more than twenty years dating from about 1982 when Northern Ireland topped their group by beating Spain in Seville.

The atmosphere around Landsdowne Road before the game was subdued. No one I spoke too seemed to have any real expectation that team was up to the challenge of taking three points off the Swiss. In the event, despite a fluent defensive and midfield performance, they simply didn't have the bite in front of goal to get themselves ahead.

Now they face being downgraded to 'weak' team status, which will mean a hard road ahead with back to back games against strong teams in any future quest to qualify for European and World Cup tournaments. As Niall Quinn mentioned yesterday in an exclusive interview (to be published next week), Irish players are having a tough time getting and keeping their places in Premiership sides with clubs constantly raiding Eastern Europe, America and Africa for new talent. It's going to be tough to pull together players of the top rank experience of O'Neill, Brady, Jennings, Stapleton and Quinn himself.

Whoever comes in after Brian Kerr is going to face a difficulty that Jack Charlton never had: namely a huge and, at times, viciously hostile press corps. If widely tipped favourite David O'Leary does take over, he may first have to lower expectations of what is possible before his squad ever get to put on their boots!

Mick Fealty @ 12:25 PM | Comments (19)

Musical chairs on the Policing Board
The DUP has been lobbying to have the make up of any new Policing Board reflect it's own political priorities. But one Stormont source has told the PA that any shift in balance will not come from the party taking the two seats currently assigned but not taken by Sinn Fein. These will most likely remain with nationalists whilst Sinn Fein keeps to it's opt out.

Mick Fealty @ 12:06 PM

Ssshhh, don't mention the research...
Newton Emerson casts a sceptical eye over serial charges of inequality (subs needed) emanating from both of Northern Ireland's two main parties.

He kicks off by claiming that DUP demands for extra government resources in Loyalist communities are not based on specfic need:

“Based on the survey results we conclude that there is no evidence of Catholic/Protestant differences in social capital,” concluded the consultants Deloitte MCS Limited. Worse still the report found that weak community infrastructure is mainly a feature of affluent suburbs, rendering ridiculous the whole concept of linking it to social deprivation. Not surprisingly, this report was not made public.

He then goes on to argue that Sinn Fein's claim's of inequality in the job market do not stand up either:

This is not the first time that the NIO has been caught fiddling the figures to flatter a sectarian political agenda. In 2003 Stormont commissioned a report into religious bias in the labour market. Consultants DTZ Pieda concluded that Protestants and Catholics no longer face any discrimination when applying for jobs. In response the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency refused to publish the findings for two years, only reluctantly releasing them this February following a Freedom of Information Act request by Ulster Unionist MLA Dermot Nesbitt.

He concludes that:

The peace process now operates by appeasing two extreme sectarian parties whose electoral appeal relies on exaggerating tribal division. That appeasement has clearly grown to include collaborating with the exaggerations themselves. Because it would undermine the DUP project to point out that Protestants aren’t marginalised in the community and because it would undermine the Sinn Fein project to point out that Catholics aren’t discriminated against in the workplace, the NIO chooses to play along and undermine society instead.

Mick Fealty @ 11:38 AM | Comments (0)

Father Reid's Nazi remark...
Father Alec Reid (one of the two churchmen who oversaw the dismantling of the IRA's armoury) has gotten himself into a spot of bother with his comparison of Unionists to Nazis remark. He has apologised for making the remarks in a heated exchange with members of an audience in Fitzroy Presbyterian Church. It's clear Father Reid is not a politician and that he made the remarks in the heat of an argument. But someone really ought to have warned him about Godwin's Law. It remains to be seen whether this incident will damage his repution as an honest broker.

Mick Fealty @ 11:18 AM | Comments (21)

October 12, 2005

Political dimension essential to identity
I noted Stephen Howe's excellent essay Mad Dogs and Ulstermen previously, and Mick will continue to focus on some of the many points it contains. Meanwhile, at the openDemocracy site, Graham Walker responds to Stephen Howe's arguments - Loyalist culture, Unionist politics. Perhaps unsurprisingly for a Professor of Politics at Queen's University, Belfast, Graham Walker argues that Stephen Howe has not given sufficient weight to the debates "around Unionist politics in Northern Ireland (what might be called “capital 'U' Unionism”) and those around the reformed and reforming United Kingdom (“small 'u' unionism”)".

The article contains some pointed criticism of stereotyping and misunderstanding of Loyalism, in scholarly and journalistic writing, and he argues that the amorphousness of the British identity, in part because it is strongly felt by working-class Protestant communities, is both an asset and a problem -

Part of the problem is the amorphousness and “non-specific” quality of the United Kingdom and the very diversity and complexity of British identity (though these qualities can equally be regarded as the identity's strength). There is little that is solid to reflect back the strength of Ulster Unionist loyalty and conviction.

And - in what seems a response to Stephen Howe's identification of Loyalism as "distinctively an Irish culture" - he ends by calling for a greater focus on the east-west relationships, to match that on north-south -

The Protestant working class remains the cutting edge of an identity and an outlook which has to be accommodated on its own terms to a far greater extent than even the new nationalism or new Republicanism seems prepared to accept. The cultural manifestations of working-class Loyalism may be many, various and incongruous but there is still a core of political beliefs which is highly relevant to the ongoing refashioning of the UK and of Britishness. There is a need for more of an east-west focus in “Irish studies” as well as in the contemporary search for peace in Northern Ireland.

pete baker @ 02:53 PM | Comments (0)

Come on in, the water's lovely!
A lot of coverage of the BBC's bid to persuade government to increase the BBC's budget by £5.5bn over seven years from 2007, also here, the proposal would mean a rise in the licence fee from £126.50 to a projected £186.89 in 2013-14 - in the Guardian the figure is reported as £150.50. This follows the cuts announced in December, and an expected 7,000 job cuts over three years, by the new director general, Mark Thompson. Unfortunately, for the BBC, as many have pointed out - including the Chairman of the Commons Media and Sport Select Committee - that's the same Mark Thompson who, when chief executive of Channel 4 accused the BBC of swimming in a jacuzzi of cash.

Interestingly Michael Grade, Chairman of the BBC Board of Governors told the Committee that BBC management had wanted an even higher increase but that the governors had forced the figure down.

There's expected to be a meeting between Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown and the BBC's director general Mark Thompson some time next week.. which will probably result in a smaller increase in the licence fee.. but still an increase. Some maintain that the BBC's a winning combination that is well worth backing for the future.

Hmmm... Meanwhile Steve Hewlett, a former editor of Panorama, also in the Guardian, points out that Government and the BBC both benefit from the increase -

For the government the attraction is obvious - a major policy objective [the switch to digital] achieved at no cost to the hard-pressed chancellor - and if they get away with it they'll be jolly pleased with themselves. For the BBC it looks like a good deal too. The government has rejected the advice of Ofcom and the Burns committee, who, while supporting the licence fee in principle, variously suggested a shorter term - five years as opposed to 10 - and giving other public-service broadcasters access to the money. Instead a new licence fee for the whole 10 years of the next charter is virtually assured.

pete baker @ 12:15 PM

October 11, 2005

Loyalist identity: simultaneous progress and retreat
In the time since the first ceasefires of the early 90's Howe detects a break between the 'post modern heaven' of the rejuvenated (largely middle) Belfast of the "nightclubs or shopping malls", and the self concious pursuit of authentic local cultural norms of the two communities which puts both at odds with the actual pre-occupations of the rest of the UK on one hand and the rest of the island on the other. He comes up with some interesting conclusions.

Previously: demographic retreat is generic

Belfast-born poet Gerald Dawe writes well of how Belfast’s nightlife (and, one could add, its consumption patterns) “is today indistinguishable from Bristol or Birmingham, or, for that matter, Temple Bar. We all live, more or less, in the same postmodern heaven.” But in Belfast, as in Birmingham or Dublin, many people resentfully find they cannot afford a place in postmodern heaven. The syndromes of “Protestant alienation” and defeatism, including their additionally intense, working-class Loyalist versions, are in these senses phenomena of and explicable in terms of Charles Taylor’s and Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar’s “acultural”, socio-economic modernisation processes.

Yet their culturo-political origins and expressions are, of course, more obvious and more widely remarked. These are crises also of collective identity. Dawe’s essay goes on to remark that, simultaneously with the globalised “postmodern heaven” of Belfast nightclubs or shopping malls there flourishes, or festers, “a lifestyle based upon the conscious pursuit of cultural identity; a pursuit, if you like, of authenticity, of ‘Irishness’, or ‘Britishness’, or ‘Ulster-Scots’ which are no longer the preoccupations of the fathering or mothering homelands.”

He argues that as the aspirant Protestant middle classes have moved out of traditional areas the remaining Loyalist working class have been traumatised to a greater degree than similar Catholic communities:

...it is generally agreed that the pursuit of “authenticity” is most fraught, even desperate, among working-class Protestants. As Marianne Elliott summarises the conventional wisdom: “Catholic culture and identity is far more secure and all-embracing than that of Protestants”; while more affluent Protestants, with transferable skills and very often experience of non-local education or employment, can more readily assimilate to contemporary kinds of Britishness.

Ironically, the middle classes have become more attuned to the British norms across the water, "indeed almost three decades of direct rule from London greatly furthered that middle-class assimilation, in a variety of both material and less tangible ways".

Mick Fealty @ 04:43 PM

Causeway Visitors Centre design unveiled announced
Secretary of State Peter Hain fulfilled his role today, of taking a bow for someone else's decision, by unveiling the design for the new Causeway Visitor's Centre at Parliament Buildings in Belfast, from the 200 entries I noted previously. The design selected is by Roisin Heneghan of Heneghan Peng Architects, which relocated to Dublin from NY in 2001. Unfortunately they don't seem to have much of an online presence.. that I can find.

Heneghan Peng Architects have also won International competitions to design the Grand Museum of Egypt, in 2003, and Dublin`s Carlisle Pier in 2004.. although there seems to be some kind of a problem with the Carlisle Pier project.. which, going by their press statement, the NIO doesn't seem to have realised that.

Unfortunately, again, and despite my previous prompting, it seems that for those of us for whom popping into parliament buildings is not convenient *ahem*... we'll just have to wait until the thing is built to get a good look at it. Really, would it be too much to ask to put some representation of the proposed design online?

For example, the Grand Museum of Egypt has a dedicated website [although it doesn't seem to have been updated for a while].. and the Heneghan Peng Architects' winning design for that project is detailed there.

[btw what did the second and third placed entries win? - Ed]

pete baker @ 04:29 PM | Comments (0)

Getting on the wrong side of the bloggers
Excellent analysis from Alan Connor on the very private nature of blogging and how one corporate ad campaign fell flat on its face when it profoundly misunderstood how blogging works.

Mick Fealty @ 04:05 PM | Comments (0)

Loyalist identity: demographic retreat is generic
The demographic trend throughout the western world is towards an ageing population. In Northern Ireland Protestant communities have cohered to this norm much earlier than their Catholic counterparts. This, Professor Howe argues, created a particularly problematic dymnamic for Loyalist working class communities.

Previously: reflecting a modern condition

The working-class Loyalist communities of west and north Belfast are in a probably irreversible territorial, demographic, economic and political retreat – hence, in large part, the rage and fear of those who mobilised in autumn 2001 against the “threat” of Catholic schoolchildren passing through their streets, who repeatedly battled over Drumcree, and who have fought the police and army in recent days. Paramilitary warlords and drug barons fight over the ruins.

De-industrialisation, demographic decline, the tendency of the more enterprising or successful to move out to the suburbs if not further afield, low rates of educational achievement and very high ones of family breakdown, petty crime, domestic violence, drug and alcohol abuse – all these are features which the poorer Protestant districts of Belfast, Portadown or Ballymoney share with those of Liverpool, Glasgow or Swansea, and indeed those of Dresden and Detroit.

On that level, their crisis is generic, a variant on the crisis of socio-economic modernisation which afflicts large sectors of the older industrial economies everywhere. Not only has “globalisation”, in many of its aspects and especially those which enthusiasts hail as positive, enabling, freedom-enhancing, never fully penetrated those sectors, but in a sense it has already been (it was there, for instance, when Belfast could truly claim to be at the centre of worldwide networks of trade and manufacture), offered its tantalising promises, and then gone again.

Mick Fealty @ 03:43 PM | Comments (1)

Time to end involvement of religious orders in health
Alan Ruddock in the Sunday Times argues that it's time to end the situation where hospitals in the Irish Republic are run by religious orders. He deserves great credit for highlighting that the actions of the Catholic-run Mater Hospital's Ethics Committee in suspending trials of a drug for women with cancer as the patients would have to take contraception was not made on religious grounds but as a reaction to a loss of power. The Sunday Business Post broke the original story.

"Patients are being denied treatment not because elements within the hospital are offended by the mention of contraception, but because a secret group within its ownership structure resents the new statutory regime for approving clinical trials, which has removed from it the power of veto.

"Under an EU directive introduced last year, trials can go ahead in any hospital once they have been approved by the state’s Medicines Board and by one hospital ethics committee. That is our public policy, yet the Mater, which is publicly funded, seeks to subvert it."

Professor John Crown, internationally recognised for his progressive research into improving the effects of chemotherapy dosage on cancer patients, cited Ruddock's article on Monday's Questions And Answers programme on RTE.

Crown, who brought the Mater decision to a head by calling it "ultimately sectarian", and who is arguing for impartial representation on the Ethics Committees of the Irish Republic's hospitals, said he was previously unaware of this possible reason for the Mater's decision.

Although not normally a fan, Ruddock's sharp piece of work here has struck a blow for an impartial, independent and progressive Irish health service.

George Burns @ 03:39 PM | Comments (3)

The value of North South co-operation?
El Matador, previously of this parish has moved on to his own group blog. One of their number has a decent post on the recent set of proposals from the SDLP pushing for more attention on North South issues:

I am unapologetic as an advocate of a radical and progressive North South agenda but I am not for whipping up Unionist fears or stirring up Nationalist emotions and I won’t spend too long rehearsing the full range of proposals for all-Ireland actions and cross-border delivery. These include: A new all-Ireland Transport & Infrastructure Body; An all-Ireland Research Alliance Accelerating the all-Ireland energy market, Marketing & Investment Co-operation, A Public Safety Body, A joined-up anti-poverty strategy.

Mick Fealty @ 03:10 PM | Comments (1)

Trillian chosen to represent Belfast's future
The BBC report that Belfast City Council have chosen Trillian, a design by Californian Portland, Oregon based artist Ed Carpenter as the Broadway Junction Public Art Project. [subject to funding - Ed] It's certainly a striking artwork.. and will be even more so when it is illuminated at night. But.. and it's a bugbear of mine.. unfortunately it falls into the time-honoured tradition of literalism in the artworks which civic bodies in Ireland, north and south, have a habit of commissioning.. Belfast's Blooming.. coming to a advertising campaign near you soon.

As the BBC note -

Carpenter said he felt the image of a flower could represent a post-Troubles city.

"It represents germination for the future," he explained.

"It represents growth, transformation, evolution, and these are all subjects which are universal and which we can identify with and particularly in a city which has had some negative press around the world, this can be a very positive symbol both internally and externally."

pete baker @ 02:00 PM | Comments (15)

Loyalist identity: reflecting a modern condition
Howe goes on to examine a thoughtful analysis by Fintan O'Toole in which sees modern loyalists forsaking the ‘For God and Ulster’ of the past for "‘Simply the Best’, the title of Tina's gooey pop hymn to some standard-issue fantasy man. Over this T-shirt, Johnny's sweatshirt proclaims, not the dignity of Protestant Britain, but the virtues of Nike Athletic".

Previously: Reading the runes

However, rather than seeing this as displacement, he argues that it is indicative of a culture which is unambigously open to the multiple cultural influences of the modern world:

...he [O'Toole] is wrong to dismiss the phenomena he discusses as “commercial clichés and meaningless slogans” and counterpose them to “proper” traditions and cultures (though the anger and scorn towards sectarian gangsters which leads him to make those judgments is not, of course, in the slightest wrong.) They are, rather, part of what happens when the decay of one form of cultural modernity (the northern Irish variant of an urban, working-class Britishness) clashes with the rise of another (a north Atlantic, if not global, popular culture) and the resultant hybrid is refracted through an intensely local, territorial, violent and sectarian milieu.

What ensues is truly an “alternative modernity” which, however unattractive it may appear to most observers, almost disconcertingly echoes the cliches about what is supposed to characterise the culture of postmodernity. This is a world marked by the collapse of old certainties and grand narratives: one of marginality, fiercely asserted locality, obsession with identity, difference, otherness; united only in its fragmentation, its assertion of multiple, unstable identities; finding expression via pastiche, bricolage, promiscuous cultural borrowings of all kinds.

Fintan O’Toole thus misses a crucial point. The features of Adair’s, or the lower Shankill’s “culture” which he finds both so feeble and so objectionable are just those which make it contemporary – or even postmodern – from top to bottom. It may be a portent, not a relic, in the terms Tom Nairn once applied to Northern Ireland’s political culture as a whole.

Next: demographic retreat is generic

Mick Fealty @ 02:00 PM | Comments (0)

History of the Nobel Peace Prize..
Martin Walker with a review of some past winners of the Peace Prize. In the last 30 odd years there've been five familiar names amongst the winners.

Mick Fealty @ 01:54 PM | Comments (0)

Thanks...
Can I just thank a small flurry of donors who've contributed to the upkeep of the site last week. Every penny does count and helps to keep the Slugger show on the road.

Mick Fealty @ 01:20 PM | Comments (0)

Loyalist identity: reading the runes
Pete linked to this excellent essay on loyalism and Unionist identity yesterday at Open Democracy. I thought it might worth re-visiting in a series of posts. Professor Stephen Howe's starting point is the Loyalist rioting in Belfast and elsewhere during the summer which contains, he believes, some indications as to where things may be headed in future:

Much media and political comment has “explained” the profundity and rootedness of this feeling in terms of bigotry and criminality, of archaism and atavism. Defensive Unionist politicians speak in terms of Protestant disillusion, even desperation, at a peace process which they think has invariably favoured Catholics. None of those labels is entirely wrong – yet what lies behind the events of recent days goes much deeper. It engages the whole nature of Britishness in Ireland and beyond, and the very ideas of identity and community, modernity and tradition most of us use so routinely. And as I’ll try to show, the songs Loyalists sing, the pictures they paint, even the tattoos and t-shirts they wear, tell us a lot about what’s going on and what might happen next.

Next: reflecting a modern condition

Mick Fealty @ 10:24 AM | Comments (22)

Paisley still locked in the seventeenth century?
Daily Ireland doesn't believe Ian Paisley is serious about striking a deal.

Mick Fealty @ 10:09 AM | Comments (22)

Interminable cost of non government
There's an interesting highlights section on the Belfast Telegraph site. Probably most appropriately in a time when few believe the Assembly will be back up and running within a year, this piece provides a compendium of articles on the cost of devolution outside the archive. The cost for the Assembly free year of 2003-4 were £9.2, compares with "2001/02, when the Assembly was fully functioning, the salaries and expenses paid to members came to £10.1m".

Mick Fealty @ 09:58 AM | Comments (1)

Watching the paint dry...
As Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern meet today, the top of the agenda will be the IRA. However, there is little prospect of anything moving until the Unionists are convinced that the IRA has effectively gone away for good. As Tommie Gorman pointed out on Morning Ireland this morning, the generation of wish lists is something of an art form, compromise isn't. Welcome to the realm of watching paint dry.

Mick Fealty @ 09:45 AM | Comments (1)

Changes a-footie..?
IFA president Jim Boyce has said it's time for a new anthem at Northern Ireland matches. He was voicing his disapproval of the booing of national anthems after the Welsh anthem was booed at Windsor Park on Saturday, an apparent response to the Welsh fans disrespecting the British national anthem when NI played in Cardiff.

Boyce believes it might be better to have a general football anthem.

"I am considering taking this matter up with FIFA," he told PA Sport.

"Perhaps a football anthem should be played at all World Cup and European games, like in the Champions League, instead of the national anthems.

"The time has come when FIFA and UEFA are going to have to look at this very carefully.

"There is nothing as bad as standing in a stadium to hear continuous booing of a national anthem. It is a worrying trend and very disrespectful.

"Because of what happened in Wales when their supporters booed our national anthem, I was hoping our fans would not react to that.

"Unfortunately a minority of them did react. It should not have occurred."

Belfast Gonzo @ 05:12 AM | Comments (43)

October 10, 2005

So, who won then?
Well, I noted the announcement of the long-list.. and the resultant short-list of nominees for the 2005 Man Booker prize, including, notably for us, John Banville and Sebastian Barry.. Sinéad has money on Ishiguro, who seems set for the People's Prize.. and so does the Guardian Culture Vulture's Sarah Crown.. hedging her bets somewhat after her last prediction *ahem*.. half an hour[ish] to go.. and Barnes still seems like a possibility.. but Barry's getting a lot of praise.. I'll update when the result is announced. Update Strike just about all of those comments. The winner of the 2005 Man Booker Prize is John Banville for The Sea. Congratulations!

pete baker @ 10:00 PM | Comments (8)

Time for compromise (rules)
October is compromise season in the GAA, as you probably know. The annual double-header against the Aussie footballers gets the most publicity, but the games against Scotland's shinty players are interesting too. Ireland lost the first game 20-17, but this Scottish report on the game is worth reading if you're a hurling fan.

Aaron Scullion @ 08:15 PM | Comments (29)

Northern Ireland at low risk from avian flu
I'm not quite sure how they worked this one out, but apparently Northern Ireland is only at low risk from a pandemic of Avian Flu. Although the risk of it ever breaking out is incalculable, overall, the UK is one of the best prepared countries in the world, with enough anti viral Tamiflu to treat 25% of the population, compared with 5% of the Canadian and 1% of the US populations. Thanks to David for the figures.

Mick Fealty @ 04:12 PM | Comments (8)

Manchester businessman denies link to Thomas Murphy
As noted previously, The Sunday Times' initial report on the ARA/CAB investigation predicted an absence of a paper trail directly connected to Thomas 'Slab' Murphy. At a press conference today, one of the two businessmen whose homes and offices were raided in Manchester, Dermot Craven, said "I have never met this man, spoken to him or carried out any business dealings with him. There is no connection with Thomas Murphy." However, he admitted he has met, spoken with and done business with Thomas Murphy's brother Frank.

And Mr Craven acknowledged that his business partner, Brian Pepper, is the company secretary of a business owned by Frank Murphy.

From the UTV report of the press conference earlier today -

"We do have a client called Frank Murphy, who we now know is Thomas Murphy`s brother. Frank Murphy owns a company called Sailor Property, which owns seven properties in Manchester.

"The last property Sailor purchased through Craven Group was approximately two years ago."

At a press conference in Manchester today, Mr Craven said he had never met Thomas Murphy but admitted he phoned Frank Murphy after his house was raided by armed police last Thursday.

He said: "I have met Frank Murphy a number of times, he is a really nice guy. At that time I didn`t know Thomas Murphy was Frank Murphy`s brother."

He said he telephoned Frank Murphy after the raid because he had discovered who Frank Murphy`s brother was. He said Mr Murphy advised him to get a solicitor.

He said Mr Pepper, with whom he co-owns Dermot Craven Developments Limited, had the "greater part" of their dealings with Frank Murphy.

Mr Pepper, from Dundalk, was not at the press conference. His solicitor Richard Holliday said he was at work trying to reassure customers.

Mr Holliday said Mr Pepper had not known about Frank Murphy`s brother when he first met him but admitted he had attended a funeral at which both Frank and Thomas Murphy were present.

pete baker @ 02:44 PM | Comments (22)

Southerners not taking northern nationalists seriously
Damien Kiberd with a comprehensive review of comments in the last week from various southern commentators all hanging questions over the political re-unification of the island. But he argues:

The problem for these people is that Northern Catholics and republicans have not gone away. They are becoming increasingly self-confident. And they do not want to live under constant physical threat from the drugged-up unionist lumpenproletariat that thinks it can terrorise Catholic districts on an annual basis, safe in the knowledge that the number of arrests carried out by the PSNI will be minimal.

Mick Fealty @ 02:13 PM | Comments (52)

A postmodernism of despair?
The Guardian carries a heavily contracted version of Stephen Howe's detailed and fascinating essay, Mad Dogs and Ulstermen: the crisis of Loyalism, published in two parts at openDemocracy, [part one here], in which he argues that "the combative cultural and political worldview of Northern Ireland’s working-class Protestant communities is not an atavistic residue but part of a complex response to modern global conditions and national pressures."

His concluding paragraphs emphasise the difficulties facing this distinctively Irish culture -

It could even be said that the story Loyalism now presents is an anti (or non-) foundationalist one; that Loyalism has largely cut loose from the grand narratives of Unionist history (1641, 1689, 1912, 1916…) and offers only very contemporary and very localised “truths” and images. This is a “postmodernist” approach to the past, perhaps, but is an extremely attenuated vision on which to base any positive political programme.

What remains will inevitably seem to most observers increasingly negative. Loyalism is a culture ambivalent about, when not aggressively resisting, Irishness. Yet, whatever else it is, it is distinctively an Irish culture – one that grew in, and exists only on, the island of Ireland (it has offshoots in west-central Scotland, and more tenuously in Canada, but is sustained there largely by those with Ulster origins or family links).

Loyalism is in a sense the most “alternative” of Ireland’s alternative modernities: that sense being not so much “other” (nor, as in much of the international literature on the concept mentioned earlier, “in a different – postcolonial - place”) as “a different choice”, or, in another dictionary meaning, “outside the mainstream, dissident, resisting”.

“Resisting”, though, with few resources and little confidence. The essential cultural difference between Loyalism and its foes is indeed that while Republicans conceive of themselves as having an inherited, densely woven tradition – however thoroughly and recently reinvented that “tradition” may really be - Loyalists have to make it up as they go along. If the result of that heterogenous improvisation is a kind of untheorised postmodernism, it is the postmodernism of despair. These are the fragments they shore up against their ruins.

Read the rest.

Part one here.

Part two here

pete baker @ 10:47 AM | Comments (12)

Nationalists need to learn that no means no...
Dick Geary responds in today's Irish Times to several respondents to his original letter calling on Nationalists to lift the siege on Unionists. This time he takes the tack that Nationalists have a very prejudicial view of what the consent principle means:

While agreeing with my general thesis, Dermot Meleady (October 3rd) still hankers after a "united Ireland" based on genuine consent. Few could argue with this, except that we nationalists don't seem to know the meaning of the word "consent". Usually it means the unconditional right to say Yes or No. Nationalists simply don't accept unionists' unconditional right to say No to a "united Ireland".

Whether you're after consensual sex or "united Ireland" the dynamics are much the same. If the other party says no and you persist in banging on about it, it then becomes harassment and the other party gets more and more alienated, angry and infuriated. In fact the more you bang on about it the more certainty there is that it will never happen. If you use or threaten to use force to get your way, then you are into a whole new rape game.

Mick Fealty @ 09:36 AM | Comments (84)

October 09, 2005

What Muppet are you?

You are Statler or Waldorf

You are Statler or Waldorf. You have a high opinion of yourself, as do others. But only because you are in the balcony seats. ALSO KNOWN AS: Those two old guys in the box. SPECIAL TALENTS: Heckling, complaining, being cantankerous QUOTE: "Get off the stage, you bum!" - What Muppet are you? - Brought to you by Quizilla Via Merk

LAST BOOKS READ:
"The Art of Insult" and "How To Insult Art"

NEVER LEAVE HOME WITHOUT:
Their pacemakers.

Indeed.

Hahaha

pete baker @ 11:47 PM | Comments (39)

Senior Orangeman "unable to condemn" loyalist rioting
The Irish News yesterday carried more detail on the Billy Mawhinney story: the senior Orangeman who was suspended from his job as doorman at Stormont after remarks made on Spotlight last week. It stems from a longer interview with a local tv station:

Last night [Friday], community television station Northern Visions broadcast an interview with Mr Mawhinney in which he appeared to signal that the order would take to the streets to march without first seeking the permission of the Parades Commission.

He said the commission was “a finished item as far as we’re concerned” and members would not “fill in any more forms” for it, but might instead just go ahead and march – “next week, next month or next year”.

He went on to say that he was “unable to condemn” the violence following last month’s Whiterock parade. “The loyalist response was proportionate to the police assault on the loyalist community,” he said. It was not clear last night if the interview had been recorded before or after Mr Mawhinney’s suspension.

Mick Fealty @ 09:53 PM | Comments (64)

Protectionism gone too far..?
LORD Laird has taken up the case of a family from Northern Ireland who have been refused permission to buy a house in the Connemara Gaeltacht (Irish speaking area). It's not because the family don't speak Irish, but apparently don't speak it well enough.

Belfast Gonzo @ 03:14 PM | Comments (213)

A clean bill of health...?
THE next IMC report is due out next week and is expected to point to an 'inactive' IRA. However, this will be seen by unionists as an interim or 'holding' report, with another in January expected to lead to real pressure on unionism to re-enter government with Sinn Fein. Liam Clarke also reports that the reason decommissioning lacked enough transparency for unionists was to avoid a split in the IRA.

Belfast Gonzo @ 02:59 PM | Comments (15)

October 08, 2005

Republic still in the game?
Brian Kerr's team need to win to keep the ball in play for next Wednesday. Half time they are up by one goal against Cyprus.

Mick Fealty @ 06:57 PM | Comments (54)

Irish Workers Party president facing extradition to US
Back in 1996 the US General Accounting Office discussed efforts to combat international counterfeiting of US currency, in particular the high quality counterfeit known as the superdollar. Last year the BBC's Panorama programme alleged that Sean Garland President of the Irish Worker's Party [formerly the Official IRA] was involved in its distribution in an investigation which highlighted North Korea's, and the former Soviet Union's, involvement in the operation. On Friday, at the party's ard fheis in Belfast, he was arrested, and today has been released on bail pending his potential extradition to the US on counterfeiting charges.

pete baker @ 01:43 PM | Comments (40)

Daily Ireland: levelling off or heading back down?
Interesting Daily Ireland figures from ABC. The primary figure shows a slight drop from the last figures. It will be hard news for the newpaper's bid to break into the difficult all Ireland paper market. It won't do the paper's campaign to bring in serious avertising revenues in any good.

Mick Fealty @ 12:32 PM | Comments (35)

the language of how I hear and see those things
Sebastian Barry was short-listed for this year's Man Booker prize for A Long Long Way, winner to be anounced on Monday - You can still vote for the People's Prize here. In today's Guardian [Another Guardian link? - Ed] Lucasta Miller provides a timely, and fascinating, interview with one of Ireland's foremost playwrights and novelists Update Thanks to Feargal, a great Rattlebag interview with Sebastian Barry[RealPlayer File] Other links here -

"There's a sort of despair that comes out of an absolute love of people. This is how things are. Whatever water you throw at the fire, it just turns into steam. But that doesn't mean you should stop throwing it. The dance of it is important."

pete baker @ 11:29 AM | Comments (6)

By George, I think they've got it!
If Martin Kettle (one of the more sober Guardian columnists) is to be believed, it looks like the Tories may finally have worked out exactly what Tony Blair did to them in 1997. Though he makes an important distinction between the forces of conservatism massing on the banks of the Rubicon and actually crossing them, it does look like the UK might be on the verge of having its first serious opposition in eight, if they make the right choice.

Kettle reckons it's got to be David Cameron. He looks a bit on the light side, but then so did Blair when he took over from John Smith. After presentation, the key will lie getting some decent sized kick ass policies.

If Cameron does get the post, he'll need some heavyweights in his corner. Moderation will stop the drift to the right wing looney fringe, but so far as middle England is concerned New Labour do that better than the Tories.

Mick Fealty @ 10:12 AM | Comments (8)

Harry's gone - but where?
One journo expresses his grief (and paranoia?) for the loss of one of the British blogosphere's star bloggers, Harry (formerly known as Hatchett) from Harry's place. Whatever way you look at it, there's some weird stuff going on here!

Update: Pete's worked out what the real scoop is here. Harry's been taken up into liberal heaven: the Guardian that is!

Mick Fealty @ 09:02 AM | Comments (6)

October 07, 2005

The Chronicles cometh
In today's Guardian, Justine Picardie is apprehensive. Why? Because Disney are gearing up for this year's Christmas onslaught on cinema audiences with the release, scheduled for 8th December, of Jack Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Check out the excellent official movie website, there's a trailer and other clips in there if you look closely.. in various formats. Back when the movie was announced, March 2004, the BBC News Online's Greg McKevitt took a look around Belfast for evidence of inspiration. Lord of the Rings??? Pfft.. although that movie's influence does seem evident in the trailer[quicktime file]..

pete baker @ 09:50 PM | Comments (8)

Will the Welsh show respect - and will we..?
OVER at Our Wee Country, thoughts are turning to the national anthems that will be played tomorrow at Windsor Park. Could the Welsh booing of 'God Save the Queen' when NI played them in Cardiff lead to an especially loud 'No Surrender' from fans? Or will anyone take up this NI fan's suggestion that the unofficial addendum to 'the Queen' be replaced simply with 'Northern Ireland'? One Welsh fan on the board suggested the booing at the Millennium stadium was motivated by anti-English sentiment, but will our fans see it that way? All these and other questions to be answered later...

Belfast Gonzo @ 05:29 PM | Comments (177)

Softly, softly, catchy provie..?
ARE thse nasty old securocrats sticking the boot in?! After the indignity of seeing one senior IRA leader (Retd.) splashed all over the papers today, it looks like another - the man believed by some to be the mastermind behind the Northern Bank raid - will be making headlines tomorrow. Did the State wait until they had the IRA in the bag before a crackdown on alleged republican criminality?

Belfast Gonzo @ 04:38 PM | Comments (45)

More hype than hope
Noel Whelan, in yesterday's Irish Examiner, looked at the long history of demands for, and rejections of, speaking rights in the Dáil for northern representatives, and on the recent hype on the issue, and concludes -

More importantly there are considerable constitutional obstacles which could only be resolved by a referendum. There is no prospect of such a referendum being held and less prospect of it passing. Bertie Ahern knows that. I suspect the SF leadership knows that too. The only people who give SF’s campaign on this issue any credence are unionist politicians who, again, have fallen for Sinn Féin hype.

pete baker @ 03:39 PM | Comments (3)

House about that then...
I'VE reached the age where every time I phone home, my mother wants to know if I've bought a house yet - but where I want to be and what I can afford are two different things. In Belfast and elsewhere in NI, first-time buyers are being squeezed by the stratospheric rise in house prices. The Government's move to raise the stamp duty threshold was, let's face it, no more than tokenistic. Here's how Kevin McCauley of the BBC coped.

Belfast Gonzo @ 03:30 PM | Comments (10)

Sinn Fein must back the police...
Dermot Ahern has been speaking at the SDLP's seminar on cross border co-operation. Amongst other things he has called for Sinn Fein to give its support to the police in advance of going to see Dennis Bradley, vice Chair of the Policing Board.

Mick Fealty @ 01:50 PM | Comments (19)

Investigation may put back constitutional re-start
Well it looks like the DUP source who joked about four years till the restart of politics may have been closer to the mark than was previously obvious. David McKittrick wonders that if the current investigations do find the large scale money laundering operations hinted at in the media, what are implications for the process - mandate or no mandate.

Mick Fealty @ 12:49 PM | Comments (40)

Raids took place in Manchester and Dundalk
While Sinn Féin's Conor Murphy defends the reputation of the multi-millionaire farmer from County Louth, the BBC name him, Thomas Murphy, as the UK's richest smuggler on their Underworld Rich List - as running an oil and cigarette smuggling empire - and the Irish Times reports that, in addition to the Assets Recovery Agency raids in Manchester we noted yesterday, the Criminal Assets Bureau raided 7 properties in Dundalk

From the Irish Times report -

The North's Assets Recovery Agency, with support from Manchester police and the Criminal Assets Bureau (Cab) in the South, assisted by gardaí, searched domestic and business premises respectively in Manchester and Dundalk.

Between four and five properties, including a leading Manchester property agency, were searched. A large amount of documentation was seized in the Manchester raids.

Cab raided the offices of seven premises, including legal and financial firms in Dundalk, Co Louth. Detectives took away around 50 boxes of documentation for examination, well-placed sources confirmed.

They also confirmed that the main focus of their inquiries is 56-year-old Thomas "Slab" Murphy, whom senior security sources have identified as IRA chief of staff, and a republican who has allegedly amassed a multi-million pound fortune through cross- border smuggling.

He lives near Hackballscross on a farm straddling the Border between counties Louth and Armagh, which reputedly has facilitated his smuggling operations that are believed to go back to the 1970s.

Meanwhile, as the Guardian also reports, Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams has attacked the timing of the raids -

"I don't think it's any accident and I am not surprised that this is trotted out today [before the Downing Street meeting]. This is obviously a political agenda."

A point picked up on by today's Irish Times editorial -

It is clear following yesterday's raids in Manchester and Dundalk that the Cab and the North's Assets Recovery Agency are co-operating as closely and deeply as possible. This is to be applauded and must continue. Gerry Adams dismissed the operations, accusing Alan McQuillan, the head of the ARA, of being "anti-republican" and politically motivated. There is no evidence to support that accusation. However, it is possible to agree with Mr Adams, though to an extent that he will not appreciate. It is a political imperative that assets obtained illegally, whether by robbery, extortion and racketeering, or fraud and corruption, should be seized from those responsible.

It is an even more pressing political imperative that a movement which is seeking to obtain power throughout this island does not have access to such funds to bankroll its campaign. A still relatively small political party like Sinn Féin must not be allowed gain unfair advantage over other parties by having access to superior financing. That is both a political and democratic imperative.

pete baker @ 12:21 PM | Comments (9)

That David Healy goal

As requested by Gonzo, another contribution from Flickr. This is a series of two 'wallpaper' pics that you can download and save to you desktop, just in case there's any chance you'll forget Northern Ireland's big night in Windsor Park. BTW, Gonzo's on the blag for a ticket for the Welsh game. Can anyone help him? Poor boy doesn't get out much these days! ;-)

Mick Fealty @ 07:34 AM | Comments (39)

Manufacturing consent...
AFTER Ian Paisley's belated-but-welcome stand against the loyalist sectarian campaign of violence against Catholics in his constituency, it should be noted that there have been quite a number of attacks on Orange halls recently too. However, this attack seemed particularly cowardly, and while I know most republicans who detest the Order will nonetheless condemn these attacks, perhaps it goes some way to explaining why the DUP gained the political concession of de-rating for Orange halls, as the insurance is often prohibitive. There is some stick attached to the carrot - the financial incentive is contingent upon the halls being open to all the community. An opportunity for bridge-building?

It could be - even in Paisley's constituency.

Thinking out loud...

It's entirely possible that Orange halls could be used for child day care, for example. For the hall it makes economic sense. I remember clearly (albeit some time ago) the success of the creche in Rasharkin, a largle Catholic village in Paisley country. The creche was in the Presbyterian church, and was well used by all, and probably helped - in some small way - to enhance community relations.

Of course, if others - such as the relatively small AOH - want to avail of the same financial breaks, they have to do the same. But I really think the ball is in the Orange Order's court on this issue...

The whole thing feeds into the argument that the only thing that unites republicans and unionists is self-interest. See water charges and tax incentives for further details - SF and the DUP are virtually singing from the same hymn sheet.

Creating situations where both have a self-interest may be one - pathetically selfish - way to promote common cause between the political extremes here.

But it all else fails...!

Belfast Gonzo @ 02:32 AM | Comments (6)

That Tyrone goal in pictures!

I'm going to bed after this. Check this sequence of digital photos out. Peter Canavan's swansong goal is captured perfectly imperfectly by one Michael McGonagle. Just keep moving on for the next four photos in the sequence. Don't you just love Flickr!

Mick Fealty @ 12:45 AM | Comments (11)

October 06, 2005

Hearts and Minds tonight
Hearts and Minds has Jim Alistair and one of Sinn Fein's coolest performers, Mary Lou McDonald each fielding some of the key issues that will dominate politics over the next six months. Allister lays out some of the keynotes from his party's 64 page dossier handed into Downing Street - "there is no going back to the agreement of December 2004". For her part McDonald plays every screw ball very deftly.

Mick Fealty @ 11:49 PM | Comments (44)

New blog on the block...
Keep an eye on Desolate Row. A new Northern Ireland politico blog of some serious potential.

Mick Fealty @ 06:39 PM | Comments (2)

Why the IRA was wrong to fight the British
Niall Mulholland argues a socialist line on why the IRA was wrong to fight its long war against the British in Northern Ireland.

Mick Fealty @ 06:14 PM | Comments (31)

British in full chase after IRA 'bookkeeper' trail
The BBC News is dominated by the raids taking place in Manchester. It would be foolish not to caution people not to jump to conclusions too early, but they are very prominently tying this into the name of the IRA. Kevin Connolly, BBC London's top man in Ireland: The new front line in the struggle against political violence in Northern Ireland will be the accountant's desk and the lawyer's mobile phone, not the fields of south Armagh. Michael McDowell seems intent on the same line.

Mick Fealty @ 05:59 PM | Comments (20)

Pope given a BMW X5...
You may not believe it, but BMW have given Pope Benedict a brand new SUV!

Adds: Best joke arising gets a free ticket to the next Leviathan in absolutely! It's on next Tuesday week - 18th October - with David McWilliams hosting a panel of TDs including John Gormley, Barry Andrews, Arthur Morgan, Kathleen Lynch and others on who should form the next Government (of the "26 counties" that is!).

And: That's in Dublin BTW. Anyone else want to put up a more flexible prize for those of us who can't make?

Mick Fealty @ 04:42 PM | Comments (28)

Sport now big money in Ireland
A new ESRI survey has found that sport contributes 1.4 billion euros to the Irish economy as well as contributing to social bonding, community involvement and the overall effective functioning of society. The ESRI singled out the GAA for particular praise, saying its culture of volunteering made it one of "great generators of social capital in Ireland".

According to the report, 400,000 people in the Irish Republic (15% of population) volunteer for sport while 20% play sport on a regular basis.

The GAA accounts for 40% of all volunteers followed by soccer on 17%.

The economic value of these volunteers is put at 267 million euros annually while sport club subscriptions are estimated at 200 million.

Revenue generated by attendances is 525 million while the cost of playing sport is put at 413 million.

This gives a combined economic value of sport of 1.4 billion euros.

GAA sports accounted for 57% of all attendances at sporting events in Ireland with 34% going to football and 23% to hurling.
Next came soccer on 16%, followed by rugby on 8% and golf on 3%.

People attending sport outside of Ireland tend to go to soccer (57%) and rugby (14%) matches. Next up is motor racing at 6% and, interestingly, baseball at 2%.

George Burns @ 04:34 PM | Comments (0)

A shared future is your only man...
Bertie Ahern talking to the Seanad today, laid out the long promised framework of participation of Northern Irish voices in the Oireachtas. Hat tip Dave.

In a context where progress is being made and trust and confidence are being restored, there is also an opportunity to address the issue of Oireachtas participation by Northern representatives. As I stated in the Dáil, what I will propose will be sensible but modest. It will be faithful to the recommendations of the All-Party report. There is no question of granting Northern Ireland MPs speaking rights in the Dáil.

Nor will our proposals cut across the architecture of the Good Friday Agreement. It can moreover complement the North-South parliamentary forum under the agreement, which we hope to see established soon.

The British-Irish Inter-Parliamentary Body is already in existence and thriving. There is also a distinguished history of Northern appointees to this House to build on.

He's also pointed out that there is no question of Unionists having simply to comply with the wishlists of their opponents: "They have to be persuaded and convinced that they can trust those who seek their trust".

In an interesting reprise of arguments separately advanced by Michael McDowell and Trevor Ringland he said:

"We cannot just talk past them about what we want. If we are to talk of unity, let us talk of uniting people and not just territory. A shared future will not come easy. Apart from making political progress, we need to make progress in the hearts and minds of all of the people. We need to confront sectarianism and hatred wherever we see it, on all sides".

Mick Fealty @ 04:09 PM | Comments (8)

How will Sinn Fein react to DUP's demands?
Hearts and Minds tonight: the DUP today presented the Prime Minister with a thick dossier of confidence building measures for Unionists, we find out what objections Sinn Fein might have as they press their own case at Downing Street.

Mick Fealty @ 04:06 PM | Comments (3)

Newton's modest proposal
Newton Emerson in excellent form, once again, in today's Irish Times, foolishly bravely running the risk of comparison with a satirical giant of Irish literature with a modest proposal for the Secretary of State, Peter Hain, to consider

Updated Newton's kindly given Slugger permission to reprint the full text. Many thanks, Newton -

What about a generation of generators?

Northern Secretary Peter Hain unveiled two new budget priorities in his speech to the British Labour Party conference: "Boosting our investment in Northern Ireland's children" and "A new drive to promote renewable and other clean energy."

The announcement is not before time. Almost half of Northern Ireland's children leave school with no useful qualifications, while Belfast has the worst air quality in the United Kingdom.

However, as the secretary of state did not announce any new funding for these policies, an imaginative, joined-up government approach to their implementation will have to be found.

That is why this column proposes using disadvantaged children to generate electricity.

Placed in a suitably rewarding environment, such as a treadmill, a child can produce 120 watts of power comfortably over a long period or up to 200 watts of power uncomfortably over an even longer period.

There are 383,300 children aged under 16 in Northern Ireland. If the educationally hopeless half were all placed on treadmills for 12-hour shifts they could generate almost 20 megawatts of electricity on a continuous basis.

This does not include the further 20 megawatts that would be saved by taking all 191,650 underprivileged children away from their £400 Playstations on a continuous basis.

Keeping children interested during repetitive tasks is often difficult, not least because it is no longer permissible to beat them.

A way around this problem is to acknowledge that repetitive tasks are never interesting but sometimes you just have to do them anyway.

However, telling this to an underprivileged child is abusive. Fortunately the problem can be solved by simply telling children that we must give power back to working-class communities. For some reason, underprivileged people never get tired of hearing this.

Like windmills, treadmills will never provide all our electricity needs because they cannot cope with fluctuating demand. In Wales this problem is solved by the Dinorwig hydroelectric power station, which pumps water up to a high reservoir during off-peak periods.

The water is then released down through turbines at 8.15pm every weekday, when all the underprivileged people in Britain switch their kettles on halfway through Coronation Street.

As Peter Hain said in his speech last week: "My vision for Wales is my vision for Northern Ireland" - and that vision is clear. By making underprivileged children climb to the top of Slieve Donard at the end of their 12-hour shift, then lowering them down again in buckets attached to generators as needed, peak demand can be easily met. Thanks to a poor diet the typical underprivileged child weighs around 12 stone so the potential energy stored would be quite considerable.

Raising 191,650 children weighing 76kg each to a height of 849m over 24 hours would add around 1.5 Megawatts of flexible capacity to the system.

Obviously this could be increased by adding a tower to the top of Slieve Donard, or by asking every child to carry up a brick. Northern Ireland's underprivileged children are always willing to pick up a brick for a suitable cause.

Poor diet offers a further possibility for power generation. Thanks to their consumption of fat, sugar, salt and processed meat, all underprivileged children are exceptionally flatulent.

If the resulting methane could be collected, preferably while the children are on their treadmills, it could be fed to a biogas generator of the type currently found on some landfill sites.

An average daily output of 50ml per child would result in 9,582 cubic metres of fuel, delivering around 120 kilowatts of bonus capacity.

There is no doubt that underprivileged children are the clean energy source of tomorrow, especially if we wash them today.

But when the useless half of Northern Ireland's population are finally expected to help keep the lights on, won't society itself be the real winner?

Peter Hain: imaginative, joined-up government approach to the implementation of his policies must be found.

heh.

pete baker @ 01:48 PM | Comments (24)

Ahoghill residents talk to TDs
Residents from Ahoghill have shared their concerns over a prolonged campaign against Catholics in the area to TDs from the Dail.

Mick Fealty @ 01:35 PM | Comments (25)

Beginning with TUS and onwards...?
TUAS is the old acronymn which several people have argued over the precise meaning of. But Brian Walker argues that in the wake of the disarmament of the IRA, has to be understood by a new one, TUS (Totally Unarmed Strategy - also Irish for 'beginning' or 'start'). He goes on trace the specific ground on which negotiations will be played. The policing issue looks like the most substantive, whilst the issue of what's to be done about the on the runs (OTRs) is set to be most controversial.

He notes:

Other parties are naturally worried. One concern is that the State is about to take over from an American charity the funding of Community Restorative Justice Ireland, a body the SDLP believes is too close to the Provos. One of their number, I'm told, tried to persuade Jeff Commander, the friend of the McCartneys, not to report to the police the attack on him a fortnight ago, allegedly by republicans. CRJ should be publicly funded only if publicly and accountably supervised through the police and if the present structure of "community" (that is, paramilitary) control is dismantled.

Mick Fealty @ 01:04 PM | Comments (4)

IRA decomm popular with MEPs
Interesting op ed in Daily Ireland yesterday from the Northern Irish MEP, Bairbre De Brún. Presumably referring to a recent meeting at the European Parliament, she reports that there is widespread support for the IRA's decommissioning act. She notes that outside Sinn Fein and Mayo Sligo based independent Marian Harkin, none of the other Irish MEP have welcomed it.

Mick Fealty @ 12:29 PM | Comments (16)

ARA searches properties in Manchester
The Sunday Times reported the inquiry, by the Criminal Assets Bureau, into a property portfolio in Manchester, at the start of the week, pointing out that there was likely to be an absence of a paper trail back to the suspected target of the inquiry, Thomas [Slab] Murphy - who lost a libel case against the Sunday Times in 1998 after The Sunday Times revealed his involvement in IRA bombing campaigns in Britain. Today the BBC are reporting that raids have taken place in Manchester connected to that inquiry. The Assets Recovery Agency have released a short statement on their inquiry into a property portfolio they estimate is worth £30million.

The ARA statement -

The Assets Recovery Agency has conducted a number of searches in the Manchester area in connection with a property portfolio that has been acquired over a period of time and which is believed to be worth in the region of £30 million. The searches were carried out on domestic and business properties associated with two Manchester-based businessmen. The Agency has so far identified approximately 250 properties held by both persons and a number of property management companies. The equity in the properties appears to be in the region of £9 million.

The operation came about following a successful application to the High Court in London for search and seizure warrants and a disclosure order. During the searches, the Agency seized large amounts of documentation

The Agency has also served disclosure notices permitting compulsory questioning by financial investigators and the handover of legal and other documentation.

At this stage no further comment can be made on this case.

pete baker @ 12:15 PM | Comments (58)

Documentary re-run in Dublin...
Before it disappears out of mind, this piece from Morning Ireland a few days ago is worth a playback. It features a discussion of Peter Lennon's controversial 1967 documentary Rocky Road to Dublin. The Ireland under discription is part of a world that seems to have almost disappeared, although it might be argued that there is still some reluctance to question national orthodoxies. It comes out in DVD version at the end of the month.

Mick Fealty @ 10:12 AM | Comments (2)

Running the church on solar power
If the green movement is looking for local low impact energy champions, then they need look no further than St Oliver Plunkett's Church in West Belfast.

Mick Fealty @ 09:41 AM | Comments (8)

Negotiations: another day one
The horse trading begins with meetings at Downing Street today, between Tony Blair and each of the only two serious players left in the game - Sinn Fein and the DUP. How long will it take. Sinn Fein want the DUP to talk with them face to face now. But the DUP are playing this long. One senior source in the party joked yesterday that it may not take four months, so much as four years to do a deal. But of course, this is politics and things can change, for the better or the worse.

Mick Fealty @ 09:26 AM | Comments (13)

October 05, 2005

David Vance goes west!
David Vance is wowing them over in the States. He now has a spot on Tech Central, on what he calls the Blair doctrine on terrorism.

Mick Fealty @ 08:34 PM | Comments (84)

Is Bush losing the Conservatives..?
Fascinating article on the state of George Bush's relationship with one of his key constituencies - the hard core conservatives. Caroline Daniel reckons he rode out the storm that carried in the wake of Katrina, but his appointment of a 'liberal' (ie insufficiently conservative) to the Supreme Court will test his mettle as a political operator.

Mick Fealty @ 08:26 PM | Comments (65)

You are a guest of Slugger, behave!
Sometimes I think I'm no better than the man who strays down the wrong street in Belfast and runs into an attack he should have seen coming a mile off. In which case, it's probably all my fault for retaining Slugger's open door policy. I'm refering to some of the off-the-wall abuse being thrown at public figures recently and in two threads in particular.

On occasions there has been a whole scale abandonment of the one golden rule of the site - play the ball, not the man! More than once, in the last few days I've had it thrown back in my face with an accusation that the site is biased, as if somehow that would absolve them of the one requirement for posting on here - ie to be civil to your opponent.

This is not a take or leave it. You have to adhere to it, or your post will get wiped, or the thread will be closed, or if you persist, you'll just get banned.

The apotheosis was Ruth Dudley Edwards thread. Now, through the running of this site over the last few years I've come to know Ruth, and I know she doesn't mind a robust exchange. She can give it and take it by turns. But, as the editor of the site, I do mind.

Buried in that thread were some good points. But it was mostly buried in a hail of invective that hid them perfectly from public sight. When I went in to ask people to refrain from the ad hominem attacks, I was simply accused of being biased and (shock, horror) a Unionist.

To which I can only respond, so bloody what! Leaving aside the fact that I've never made it explicitly known what my politics are (though I've no problem with people speculating), at no point is anyone on Slugger asked to agree with anything blogged here. In fact we have always encouraged a people to advocate their own oppositional views.

However, that cannot be done without at least a modicum of civility!

Civility is not a political value. But it is a pre-requisite for people who diametrically oppose each to argue and reason over things they fundamentally disagree on. Without it the comments zone becomes a free for all with the loudest voices taking all prizes.

So, to be blunt, from now on be warned. I'm determined to keep this public dialogue space. But if anti-personal diatribes are more your thing and you wish to ignore the basic rule of the site, you may find yourself sharply back in cyberspace and looking for other lodgings!

Mick Fealty @ 07:51 PM | Comments (34)

DUP determined to tip scale back?
Well, we're entering the phoney war. Phoney, not because there isn't a conflict, but because we'll get no idea of when the real chess game (or is draughts?) begins. The suspicion is that the IRA will hold the line for the next report and a bit of the IMC, and the governments will start transfering pressure on to the DUP. Rumour has it that the 50 page document is now closer to sixty. Peter Robinson was in Blackpool today arguing that governments had already tipped too much in Sinn Fein's direction, in advance of the inevitable round of horse trading.

Mick Fealty @ 07:32 PM | Comments (22)

among the most conservative of men
The Irish Times' Religious Affairs Correspondent, Patsy McGarry, has a interesting article on the views of Pope Benedict XVI in which he argues "The present incumbent of St Peter's chair is among the most conservative of men to become Pope in modern times." The focus is on the expected introduction of new rules on who should be eligible for the priesthood, but other stated views of former-Cardinal Ratzinger, as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, are worth noting.

As Patsy McGarry says in his Irish Times article -

it is hard to see how this man as Pope can escape the straitjacket he created for himself and his papacy through his work as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. He held the position from November 1981 until his election as Pope.

Arising from that legacy, some things are self-evident where this papacy is concerned.

Those self-evident things, according to McGarry, are -

There will be no change in the rule on clerical celibacy. There will be no discussion, even, on the issue of women priests. There will be no tolerance of inquiring/dissident theologians - even if he met Hans Küng recently.

There will be no, more embracing interpretation of scripture on issues of gender, sexuality, justice, relations with other Christian denominations, relations with other religions, and those of no religion at all.

Rather, there will be much emphasis on "respecting and accepting difference". As prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in his Dominus Iesus document of 2000, he made clear just what that involves.

As a Protestant it means you must accept that in the eyes of the Catholic Church you do not belong to a church at all. Yours is an "ecclesial community". Your priests are not real priests, and your communion is not real communion.

His views as Cardinal have resurfaced, according to Patsy McGarry, in his speeches as Pope -

But at an ecumenical meeting in Cologne on August 19th, Benedict began with a greeting to "the representatives of the other churches and ecclesial communities". The "churches" he referred to were the Orthodox, while "the ecclesial communities" were the Protestants.

Either the deep offence this denigration causes to Protestants has not been adequately conveyed to him, or he is indifferent to it.

It is difficult, however, to conclude that he is not aware of it.

And if that causes offence, consider the views of the now-Pope Benedict XVI on other religions -

Where other religions are concerned, this accepting and respecting of difference means living with the Vatican view that as a Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, etc, you are in "a gravely deficient situation", according to Dominus Iesus.

In 1997 Cardinal Ratzinger even described Buddhism an "auto-erotic spirituality". Hinduism, he said then, was based on a "morally cruel" concept of reincarnation resembling "a continuous circle of hell".

You could be worse off. You could be a secularist, of which there is only one rung lower.

In his homily at Mass in St Peter's on April 18th, just before the conclave which elected him Pope began, Benedict warned against the "dictatorship of relativism", which he said recognised nothing as definite and for which the ultimate measure was simply one's own self and its desires.

It was an attack on, and misrepresentation of, secular humanism. Secular humanism does not promote selfishness, which is no more acceptable to the secularist than it is to the religious believer.

Finally, on the expected introduction of new regulations on who should be eligible for the priesthood -

Now it appears he is about to ban gay men - even if celibate - from training for the priesthood.

A Vatican document on the matter is expected to be approved by him at the end of October.

As Patsy McGarry says -

Many would hold that at the root of all of this is a deeply-flawed thinking which strips people of their humanity, reducing them to a "disorder". It seems more barely-masked prejudice than truth.

The Catholic Church should know better. It has had similar experience with another minority.

Up to 1962, and despite the Holocaust, it retained the phase "perfidious (treacherous) Jews" in its Good Friday liturgy.

And he ends by making a prediction -

The day will yet come when a pope will beg forgiveness for the church's treatment of gay people.

A pope may yet remember, at Auschwitz or elsewhere, the gay people who died in Nazi concentration camps, and a pope may acknowledge how the church's teaching on homosexuality down the millennia helped validate the persecution of gay people.

And words such as "disorder" and "evil" will join "perfidious" as exiles from the Vatican's lexicon.

But not during this papacy.

NB I'm leaving comments open for now.. and the thread will remain open as long as the comments play the ball

pete baker @ 03:45 PM | Comments (53)

New room, same Broom
Thanks to the Stray Absent-minded Toaster. The Broom of Anger, who has been MIA from her regular place for some time, is back with a new, and cleanly swept, domain - update your records appropriately.

pete baker @ 03:27 PM | Comments (0)

Giant Public sector lumbering forward
Not the usual gripe about Northern Ireland's employment being sixty per cent reliant on public sector funding. Samizdata picks up a BBC report that says the dymnamic is at work in Britain. A clear opportunity for forward thinking Tories to take on future PM Brown?

Mick Fealty @ 12:36 PM | Comments (48)

Which mobile network to choose when you cross borders
For those of you who are overseas, or just frequent crossers of the border, this may help determine which mobile network you settle with. Let us know what you think of it as a useful guide?!

Mick Fealty @ 12:23 PM | Comments (8)

Six held over Gray's killing...
That's fairly quick for Northern Ireland standards. This discussion on Morning Ireland (sound file) indicates it may have been part of a local fragmentation of the UDA. Jim McDowell points out that in contrast to 1994 when the Loyalists took only six weeks to follow the IRA's ceasefire, the paramilitaries of today are a patchwork quilt of local barons, rather than a coherent movement - an increasingly loose Association in fact.

Mick Fealty @ 12:12 PM | Comments (30)

Republic's precedent for release of prisoners..
An avid reader of histories, Danny Morrison raids the Republic's bloody origins and argues that Fine Gael had leading members of the old IRA within it's ranks well into the forties, that is now being hypocritical in its opposition to having Sinn Fein in government. It's available in today's print version of Daily Ireland

By Danny Morrison

Last March the IRA prisoners in Castlerea (some serving time in relation to the killing of Gárda Jerry McCabe in 1996) issued a statement. They said that they deeply regretted the death of Jerry McCabe and the wounding of Gárda Ben O’Sullivan during an IRA operation in Adare in June 1996.

“We deeply regret and apologise for this and the hurt and grief we have caused to their families.”

They pointed out that they were “qualifying prisoners” under the terms of the 1998 Belfast Agreement, signed and approved after their conviction, that this had been confirmed by the High Court and Supreme Court and that the government had an obligation to release them.

“They [the government] have refused to do so and are now presenting our release as an obstacle to negotiations and agreement.” Consequently, “we do not want our release to be part of any further negotiations with the Irish government.”

Last year when it emerged that the Dublin government was ready to release the prisoners as part of an overall deal it came in for widespread criticism. So when that deal collapsed over Ian Paisley’s demand for decommissioning to be photographed Bertie Ahern quickly announced that their release was “off the table and would never return.”

It was sheer opportunism and it was cowardly.

However, the party which criticised the Irish government the most - particularly warning against the future release of the prisoners as part of a Sinn Fein/Fianna Fail deal over coalition - is a party which had no problem itself with releasing convicted killers so that it could get its hands on coalition power.

I refer to Fine Gael.

Gárda Jerry McCabe left behind a widow and five children.

But so did Gárda Detective George Mordaunt: a widow and one child.

On the night of 29 October 1942 a cordon of detectives surrounded a house in Donnycarney, Dublin. Inside were IRA men Harry White from Belfast and Maurice O’Neill from Kerry who tried to escape. There was a shoot-out. Mordaunt was killed, O’Neill caught and White escaped. Charged and convicted with the murder of Mordaunt O’Neill was executed by firing squad in Mountjoy Jail one month later. White wasn’t captured and charged until October 1946. He was sentenced to hang on 3 January 1947.

His lawyer was Sean MacBride (a former IRA Chief of Staff) who launched a successful appeal campaign which resulted in White’s sentence being commuted. In fact, just as in the case of Gárda McCabe’s killers, the charge was reduced to manslaughter and White was sentenced to 12 years.

A year earlier – Sinn Fein being fairly marginalised – MacBride, with the support of many IRA sympathisers, set up a political party, Clann na Poblachta, opposed to Fianna Fail. It quickly garnered support. In the February 1948 general election one of its slogans was “Release the Prisoners”. It won ten seats and it and several smaller parties held the balance of power.

Fine Gael entered into discussions with MacBride to persuade him to go into coalition with it to oust Fianna Fail. It was about the only thing the two parties had in common.

MacBride’s price was the release of the political prisoners.

Fine Gael agreed.

MacBride became Minister for External Affairs. The new Minister for Justice, General Sean MacEoin - a Fine Gael TD and former member of the IRA who had once been sentenced to death by the British - freed the IRA prisoners within weeks.

Those released included Thomas MacCurtain, who had been sentenced to death for killing Detective Gárda John Roche, a married man, in Cork in January 1940 (the sentence commuted to penal servitude for life, out of deference to his murdered father, the Lord Mayor of Cork); Harry White, who had been sentenced for the killing of Detective Gárda George Mordaunt; and Liam Rice who had been convicted of the attempted murder of several gárdai.

No doubt some smartass revisionist from Fine Gael or a newspaper of record will attempt to explain that there is no parallel between then and now, no comparisons whatsoever. Perhaps they will tell us that the IRA of the 1940s is distinct from the IRA of today and that’s why, for example, Belfast man Harry White, sentenced for the manslaughter of Mordaunt, was given early release by Fine Gael, while Strabane man Pearse McAuley, sentenced for the manslaughter of Gárda McCabe, must remain in jail.

Fine Gael TD General Sean MacEoin, who was also the party’s presidential nominee in 1945 and 1959, came to the Ministry of Justice with a past which Fine Gael honours. In the Tan War the IRA killed almost 500 members of the RIC. When MacEoin was the leader of an IRA Flying Column in Longford in 1920 he had been responsible for killing up to two dozen of his fellow Roman Catholic Irishmen in the RIC. A small sample includes: 23-year-old John Kelleher from Cork who had only been in the RIC four months; 45-year-old Constable Peter Cooney, a married man, shot in the back whilst returning from leave; and 30-year-old District Inspector Thomas McGrath, a single man from County Limerick, shot through the head by MacEoin when he knocked on MacEoin’s door.

Men like MacEoin shot and bombed British soldiers and RIC men, killed them where they could – on holiday, on leave, in bed with their wives, at their dinner tables, on patrol and in the barracks.

Fine Gael is proud of IRA men like MacEoin. After all, he brought them to power. He fought the British in his country – though mistakes were often made and innocent people were killed.

It has happened throughout Irish republican history.

And that is why Fine Gael and any other party opposed to the release of the Castlerea prisoners rightly stand accused of double standards and hypocrisy.

For political gain Fine Gael released those convicted of killing guards in the 1940s. And for perceived political gain today – taking a tough stance against Sinn Fein - it refuses to support the release of prisoners in the same category, prisoners committed to peace and the Belfast Agreement.

First published in Daily Ireland today.

Mick Fealty @ 11:55 AM | Comments (29)

Ronnie Barker
Ronnie Barker's gone. In words of Flann O'Brien, his like will not be there again. Mark Lawson on one of the few performers who retired at the top of his career. The Sun has a bunch of memorable scripts, including this one from Porridge: FLETCH to Godber, who’s going to the canteen: "Can you get me a copy of The Sun . . . oh, and something to read.". The Daily Telegraph has a compendium of tributes and memories from around the world.

Mick Fealty @ 11:28 AM | Comments (2)

Southerners should have right to choose British citizenship
The DUP is pushing for automatic access to British citizenship for people born in the Republic and living in Northern Ireland without having to go through the naturalisation process.

Mick Fealty @ 11:12 AM | Comments (35)

Northern Ireland's culture of caution
Malachi O'Doherty has moved to the Irish Times for an occasional contribuion. He kicks off today with a quote from Slugger (subs needed). Or rather one of our commenters remarks on the assault on Denis Bradley: "I have to say that I condemn the attack, but from a man of Bradley's intelligence, I would ask what was he doing there in the first place."

O'Doherty remarks:

You would almost think that the attacker had a reasonable complaint against a target irresistibly presenting itself. Denis Bradley is not equally safe in every bar in Derry and should know it. More, any demonstration that he lacks the savvy to avert danger compromises the sympathy he is due when he is attacked.

It is universally taken for granted in Northern Ireland that people must take sensible precautions for their safety because the risks are so widespread. Denis Bradley, for instance, is not just at risk from dissident republicans as a member of the policing board; he is also at risk from loyalists, like any Catholic or anyone who looks like a Catholic to a drunken lout. How would he fancy a pint on the Shankill Road?

He recalls:

I don't drink in the Felons club in Belfast because the last time I was there a very large IRA man called Bobby Storey escorted me into a corner and told me that I was a slug, and made a very impressive case in support of that charge.

One thing about the culture of caution within which we live is that it crosses all boundaries.

Bobby Storey couldn't go into some of the bars that I go into. Loyalists and republicans as much as ordinary citizens of Belfast have to restrict their movements for their own safety and have to learn the geography of security.

Finally:

Security is so much assimilated into our thinking and risk is such a normal part of life, that those who flout its elementary rules are thought not to be brave or candid, but simply foolish. "He had it coming to him" can as easily mean that he deserved it or that he was stupidly careless. It is not enough that we should be intimidated; we should anticipate where threats come and intimidate ourselves, and save others the trouble. That is the wisdom of the street.

But Denis Bradley should be able to go into any bar he likes.

Mick Fealty @ 10:35 AM | Comments (12)

Entry price for Ireland?
Well it's about €55,000 according to the front page of the Irish Times.

Mick Fealty @ 10:29 AM | Comments (0)

Far right 'imagination'...
A FAR-right group linked to Combat 18 seems to have taken the inspiration for its name from the alphabet soup of loyalist paramilitarism.

Note to CAIN: You need to update this page.

Belfast Gonzo @ 04:50 AM | Comments (13)

Wilson tackles anthem, Queen leaving Windsor ...
COULD the Queen get the boot from Windsor, worries the News Letter. Robin Wilson of Democratic Dialogue thinks the building of the new Maze stadium could be the "right time for a new song", in the same way that the other regions of the UK have their own distinctive pre-game 'anthems'. Why not get rid of it? It's tediously slow and capable of rousing neither players or fans - apart from those who insist on getting in their obligatory 'No Surrender' just before they 'send her victorious'!

Belfast Gonzo @ 01:59 AM | Comments (77)

Today in the Dail...
IRISH Premier Bertie Ahern has told the Dail that he's been having meetings with loyalist paramilitary groups recently - including the Red Hand Commando, the terrorist group that launched a sectarian hate campaign against Catholics who attend an annual religious ceremony in a Newtownabbey graveyard.

It's likely to be a long drawn-out process, but there's also rumours that the UVF may be about to re-enter the decommissioning process with General de Chastelain this month (with rival faction the LVF likely to stand down, despite denials), and the meetings may have been another Irish confidence-building measure (last three paragraphs) in advance of next week's Anglo-Irish summit. Meanwhile, Paisley has issued his strongest condemnation of loyalist violence and sectarianism in a long time.

Irish President Mary McAleese is also due north soon, and I suspect that it won't be too long before the Queen makes the first official visit to Dublin by the UK head of state since partition.

Although some of this was blogged earlier, it's worth reading what Paisley said, since it is - for once anyway - so unequivocal. PA reported:

[T]he DUP leader called for loyalists who engage in violence to be shunned by the entire community.

"I have no sympathy with them whatsoever," the North Antrim MP said.

"The vast majority of people in Ballymena would have no sympathy with them at all.

"What we have to do now is to see how these people are isolated and that they know that all sections of the community are opposed to what they are doing."

Mr Paisley and Mr Hain also condemned loyalists who picketed a Catholic blessing ceremony at a cemetery in Newtownabbey on the outskirts of Belfast on Sunday.

The DUP leader said they had shown no respect for the dead or their relatives.

"No condemnation could be strong enough," he said.

"And I trust that we will not hear language like that again at any of these meetings."

And, almost simulataneously, the Taoiseach allays Paisley's concerns about speaking rights for members of the British Parliament (such as Gerry Adams) in the Irish Parliament, the Dail.

He is also unequivocal:

Sinn Féin has confirmed that the content of the newspaper article of 5 August by the Sinn Féin leader regarding Oireachtas participation by Northern MPs was exaggerated. I will write to the other party leaders shortly with proposals on this matter and seek their views on these proposals. The proposals, which relate to both Houses, will be faithful to the recommendations of the all-party committee report. This House will ultimately decide for itself how it wishes to proceed. There is no question of granting Northern Ireland MPs any rights and privileges in this House.

Ahern also rules out freeing the killers of Garda McCabe as a concession to Sinn Fein, and reveals that proposals to deal with IRA fugitives will be made at the end of the year - which means that the current plans for 'On The Runs' (OTRs) in the Joint Declaration will be modified.

Already problems are surfacing, if Henry McDonald's recent report is accurate:

The freedom, however, of IRA 'On the Runs' to come home will not be contingent on those exiled at gunpoint by the IRA also being allowed to return to Northern Ireland. A Downing Street spokesman said the two issues were not linked, which means hundreds of people will continue to live in exile until the IRA unilaterally lifts death threats against them.

However, the Tories and the LibDems are opposed to the OTR proposals as they stand, which means getting legislation through the Lords might be difficult for Blair if there is no compromise.

All this is likely to require the Government to row back a bit from what it proposed in the Joint Declaration.

Alliance will not be happy about Jonathan Powell de-linking the issues of IRA exiles being free to return home and the return of IRA fugitives. After all, the British and Irish Governments agreed in the Declaration that the practice of exiling must come to an end and the exiled must feel free to return in safety.

The issue is not just about the IRA (and others, of course) quitting the practice of throwing people out of the country under threat of death, but allowing those already exiled to live here again without interference. For some, it will prove impossible.

However, on OTRs, Alliance has proposed some suggestions for compromise, such as OTRs having to appear in court. No-one seriously expects suspected terrorists to actually serve a sentence these days in NI.

One curious aside in yesterday's Dail debate was the slight insight the Taoiseach gave into how the talks process works. He tells us that the "Minister for Foreign Affairs, myself and officials on the ground always try to balance whatever we do because it is the best way to make progress".

That 'balance' is what tends to get upset when the two governments spend all their time fixated on dealing with the demands of those least willing to compromise. It has led to the 'Me too' politics of Northern Ireland. Parity of begging bowl, if you like, and when 'themmuns' are getting all the attention, the results can be disastrous.

Unfortunately, democratic parties like the SDLP and Alliance can't resort to shooting the police or blowing up Canary Wharf when they are not getting parity of attention. So when Liz McManus said the SDLP felt left out of the talks (Durkan threw a bit of a wobbly at Leeds Castle), Bertie was almost blase about immediately contradicting his statement on 'balance' made less than 10 minutes beforehand:

They do [feel left out] but I do not accept that. If we talk to Sinn Féin to use its influence to get the IRA to decommission its guns, there is not much point in talking to the SDLP about it. If the DUP has a particular problem, then we talk to the DUP about it. We could not move on in many of these meetings, we had to deal with issues such as decommissioning and criminality, so there was more time spent talking to some of the other parties. That is where the pressure points existed in those talks.

While it may be stating the obvious, this is the lesson the loyalist paramilitaries have learned well - create problems, gain concessions. In essence, those who create barriers to progress benefit the most, mandate or not.

This approach encourages problem-making and was perfectly exemplified by Tony Blair when he told the SDLP when it was the biggest nationalist party that their problem was that they didn't have any guns...

Belfast Gonzo @ 01:37 AM | Comments (8)

Wallowing in victory....
NORTHERN Ireland football fans should keep an eye out for Season Ticket on BBC2 NI tonight (Wed). It's a special programme devoted to NI's magnificent victory over England last month. If you ever wanted to see that goal from no less than 10 different angles, you'll be switched on at 10pm.

Belfast Gonzo @ 01:20 AM | Comments (0)

October 04, 2005

Former UDA leader murdered
Last Wednesday, 28th Sept, Secretary of State Peter Hain, as reported by the BBC said that if loyalists refused to disarm and end their violence they would face a "ruthless" security clampdown. Earlier today, while visiting a Catholic primary school in Ballymena, he said again that loyalist paramilitaries must end their violence. This evening former UDA leader Jim Gray, on bail on money laundering charges, was shot dead in East Belfast by two gunmen.

pete baker @ 09:24 PM | Comments (54)

Window's in Paisley's church smashed?
Buried in this story carrying the remarks of Bertie Ahern on the Carnmoney threats to Catholic graves is a reference to dozens of windows being broken in the Martyr's Memorial church on the Ravenhill Road.

Mick Fealty @ 05:05 PM | Comments (5)

No regrets over Brighton bomb...
PA also reports a minor ruck in Blackpool between David Burnside and Conor Murphy when the latter told the fringe meeting that he had no regrets over the Brighton bomb, but that it was simply part of the IRA's long war.

Mick Fealty @ 03:52 PM | Comments (47)

New chairman for Tha Boord o Ulstèr-Scotch
The BBC are reporting that the government have decided to appoint Mark Thompson as the new Chairman of the Ulster-Scots Agency - the role has been vacant for 18 months since Laird Lord Laird resigned. Thompson, conveniently, is already a member of the board, and "has been actively involved with grassroots Ulster-Scots groups for over 10 years and is a member of the 'Low Country Boyus', an old-time hillbilly/Ulster-Scots gospel group." *ahem* Update And it's been confirmed by Peter Hain.

pete baker @ 03:51 PM | Comments (24)

Journalist under threat from Republicans?

The Newsletter carries a report on a threat from republicans on a journalist with the Sunday World, a paper already under considerable pressure from Loyalist paramilitaries. Republican sources have denied the IRA were involved. Several of the paper's journalists have been attacked throughout the troubles, and one, Martin O'Hagan was killed by the LVF just four years ago.

Mick Fealty @ 03:49 PM | Comments (49)

SDLP: UVF behind the desecration threat
SDLP South Antrim MLA Thomas Burns said he believes the UVF was behind the protest at the Carnmoney Blessing of the Graves and subsequent threats to desecrate Catholic graves.

From Thomas Burns:

“The UVF is flexing its muscles all around Greater Belfast since the Whiterock parade, and it seems this protest gave it just the excuse it needed to win a bit of turf from the UDA.

“Our message to the paramilitaries is simple: get out of business or be put out of business, close down or be closed. The SDLP has produced a document on dealing with the loyalist gangs and the time has now come to put it into action.

“. The police and the Assets Recovery Agency should now target the drug-dealing brigadiers and seize all the assets they grabbed at the expense of hard-working people: their big houses, their jeeps, their stud farms and their yachts, right down to their gold chains.

“We need to show the paramilitaries up for the small-time hoods they really are. Then perhaps misguided people will no longer support cynical protest actions like the one at Carnmoney cemetery.”

Mick Fealty @ 03:21 PM | Comments (4)

Deprivation should be tackled on basis of need
Conor Murphy told Conservatives in Blackpool today that it was time for Unionists to get real: " There is no alternative plan. The Agreement is as good as it gets".

Clearly targeting the DUPs 50 page dossier on Unionist grievances, he went on to remark:

"If unionist communities are voiceless then that is a reflection on those elected to represent them. The figures for poverty and deprivation in the north indicate that the vast majority of areas suffering social exclusion and poverty are nationalist. Deprivation needs to be tackled on the basis of need - not on the basis of perception or to service a particular political agenda."

Mick Fealty @ 02:54 PM | Comments (6)

Vox pop Onion-style
Spotted by the, allegedly, semi-retired Richard Delevan. The announcement of the IRA's final act of decomissioning, perhaps tellingly, merited only a brief mention by the satirical Onion - "I knew that Guns For Guinness trade-in program would work where so many other attempts had failed."

pete baker @ 02:39 PM | Comments (3)

Ulster Unionists should merge with Tories
Speaking in Blackpool today, David Burnside has suggested that his party consider merging with the British conservatives:

"It is all very well the DUP talking about restoring confidence within the unionist leadership. It was not very apparent in Brighton last week where only the Ulster Unionist Party had any sizeable presence at the Labour conference.

"Looking further down the track, unionist influence will never become real power unless there is a possibility of an Ulster MP becoming Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and taking over the reins of executive power and that would only be possible with a tie up with the Conservatives."

It'll be interesting to see how this idea might fly with some of the 'red' delegates at the party's annual conference in a few week's time.

Mick Fealty @ 02:37 PM | Comments (14)

Do the Tories actually like the electorate
There's no doubt that this week's conference in Blackpool is the most important of the big three in Britain. As Phillip Stevens points out in the FT (subs needed): "British democracy has suffered grievously these past few years from the lack of an effective opposition. Try as it may, the BBC’s Today programme is insufficient substitute. So we must hope the Tories are serious".

However he concludes that the big question facing them is fundamentally whether the Tory party can actually find it within themselves to like the voters.

...is whether the activists who make the final choice have understood the lessons of three election defeats. The organising emotion of Conservatives during the past decade has been one of rising anger at modern Britain. It is hardly surprising that the feeling has been mutual. The Tory party will win back the nation’s confidence only when it has a leader who can convince voters it actually quite likes them. It would help too if he did.

Mick Fealty @ 01:51 PM | Comments (0)

Tories will oppose deal on OTRs
Conor Murphy is the first member of Sinn Fein to take part in a Conservative party conference almost 21 years after the IRA attempted to kill large numbers of the then Tory government Cabinet. Nevertheless, the Tories remain implacably opposed to any concessions towards the OTRs. David Liddington:

Shadow Secretary of State, David Liddington:

"First, on-the-runs. If the legislation you bring forward this autumn does not contain a proper judicial process that involves those returning to Northern Ireland appearing in court and being held accountable for their crimes in the normal way - we will oppose the legislation.

"Second, policing. We will not be party to any arrangement that effectively hands over the policing of republican or loyalist areas to those who have been active in paramilitary organisations."

Although it seems likely that any deal concerning these two sensitive issues will likely have been concluded long before his party regain government power.

Mick Fealty @ 01:18 PM | Comments (6)

Paisley: loyalist attackers must be isolated
Ian Paisley visited one of the Catholic schools that recently came under attack from Loyalists, St Louis Primary School in Ballymena this morning. Of the attackers he said, "What we have to do now is to see how these people are isolated and that they know that all sections of the community are opposed to what they are doing."

Mick Fealty @ 01:02 PM | Comments (19)

Europe: nationalism is at odds with national interest
This jointly written piece from Ulrich Beck and Anthony Gidden (all round genius and progenitor of the Third Way) reads more like a power memo than an argument. In it they place generic nationalism at odds the cosmopolitan project of the EU:

Thye put the case for the EU as positive, liberalising agent in the post Cold War era:

It has influenced political change as far away as Ukraine and Turkey - not, as in the past, by military, but by peaceful means. Through its economic innovations, it has played a part in bringing prosperity to millions, even if its recent level of growth has been disappointing. It has helped one of the very poorest countries in Europe, Ireland, to become one of the richest. It has been instrumental in bringing democracy to Spain, Portugal and Greece, countries that had previously been dictatorships.

However by its size and the 'felt' remoteness from its centres of power, there has been an accompanying sense of alienation:

But even in the new member states people ask: "Where does all this stop?" Even for those who profit most, the EU can feel like an agent of globalisation rather than a means of adapting to and reshaping it.

These feelings tend to stimulate an emotional return to the apparent safe haven of the nation. Yet if the EU were abolished overnight people would feel less rather than more secure in their national and cultural identities. Let's say, for example, that the Eurosceptics in Britain got their way and the United Kingdom quit the EU altogether. Would the British then have a clearer sense of identity? Would they have more sovereignty to run their own affairs?

They go on to argue that the key to understanding the success of the EU in the teeth of sustained scepticism, is understanding an important paradox:

The persistence of the nation is the condition of a cosmopolitan Europe; and today, for reasons just given, the reverse is true too. For a long time the process of European integration took place mainly by means of eliminating difference. But unity is not the same as uniformity. From a cosmopolitan point of view, diversity is not the problem; it is the solution.

They argue in favour of expansion particular of the accession of Turkey, but argue that this pushes another imperative on current member, the committment to further change:

Europe simply must gear up for change. But along with reform we must preserve, and indeed deepen, our concern with social justice. Tony Blair has recently called for a Europe-wide debate on this issue. We believe he is right to do so. Some countries have been remarkably successful in combining economic growth with high levels of social protection and equality - especially the Nordic countries. Let's see what the rest of Europe can learn from them, as well as from other successful countries around the world.

We write as supporters of the constitution, lengthy and inelegant though it was. But its rejection does allow - let's hope it forces - Europeans to face up to some basic realities and respond to them. The European Union can be a, if not the, major influence on the global scene in the current century. It is what pro-Europeans should want to happen. Let's make it happen.

Mick Fealty @ 11:53 AM | Comments (4)

Carnmoney: the lost souls of the DUP?
There is certainly a theological argument in protests against Cemetary Sunday, the day when Catholics remember their loved ones by visiting their graves and praying for them. Although, on All Souls Night, protestants the length and breadth of Sweden make a similar visit to light the graves with candles in the darkest of Nordic nights. What is decidedly not theological, is the threat by some of the protesters to dig up the graves of individual Catholics in revenge. Susan McKay draws a fairly powerful literary comparison (subs needed).

In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the monster appeals to its creator not to denounce it: 'Remember that I am thy creature.' There is no point in the DUP claiming it doesn't know the rabble descending on the graveyard at Carnmoney. These lost souls are its people.

Alex Maskey:

"I do not believe that the majority of unionists support what happened at Carnmoney cemetery. I have no doubt that many would reject these scenes of squalid sectarianism allegedly being carried out in their name.

"There is a huge job of work required by those with influence within the broader unionist community to tackle sectarianism. Certainly I believe that we all need to show positive leadership and challenge the demonisation of each other.

"We need an open and honest debate about the nature, causes and extent of sectarianism within our communities.

Mick Fealty @ 09:47 AM | Comments (46)

City Council censure of Loyalist violence
Belfast City Council at its first plenary of the autumn has urged people to support the PSNI and called on all elected representatives to disassociate themselves from the violence of the summer.

Mick Fealty @ 09:18 AM | Comments (5)

Derry most europhile city in the UK?
According to last night BBC2 programme 'How euro are you?', Derry has the highest proportion of europhiles in the UK.

Thomas Lefebvre @ 07:37 AM | Comments (4)

October 03, 2005

On other celestial bodies
The team that discovered 'Xena', as they are still insisting on calling the so-called "10th planet" *ahem*, have announced that it has an orbiting companion, called Gabrielle, of course. According to Professor Brown - "Having a moon is just inherently cool - and it is something that most self-respecting planets have, so it is good to see that this one does, too." Ignoring the implied slight to Mercury.. and Venus.. I'll just point out that Prof Brown's other recent discovery, the less glamorously named 2003 EL61 also has a moon.. and is also not a planet.

pete baker @ 05:25 PM | Comments (2)

Ahern: no speaking rights for Northerners...
According to the Irish Independent today, Sinn Fein will not be getting speaking rights for Northern Irish public representatives in the Dail that they've been pressing for - well not from Bertie at least!

Mick Fealty @ 03:42 PM | Comments (70)

a derogation for 5 years renewable
Ciarán, at Neither Indifferent Nor Sceptical, picks up on a recent post at the EU Law blog on the occasionally controversial subject of official EU language status for Irish. As Ciarán points out the reports at the time of the announcement neglected to mention the newly introduced conditions of that amended regulation[pdf file], as stated by the EU Law blog - "there is a derogation for 5 years renewable according to which the institutions are not bound to draft all acts and publish them in Irish. The Council can review that derogation every five years and decide unanimously to end it."

The text of the amended regulation[pdf] states -

Article 2

By way of derogation from Regulation No 1 and for a renewable period of five years beginning on the day on which this Regulation applies, the institutions of the European Union shall not be bound by the obligation to draft all acts in Irish and to publish them in that language in the Official Journal of the European Union.

The amended regulation, and in particular the derogation, is described as being "for practical reasons and on a transitional basis" and comes into effect from 2007.

pete baker @ 03:14 PM | Comments (4)

How the Tories might just win next time..
Written for the eve of the Conservative Party conference in Blackpool, Simon Kuper has written an outstanding analysis of the challenges facing them. Worth reading by anyone involved in politics. Especially if you're a member of any of Northern Ireland's former 'big fish' parties!

Worrying signs of disconnection:

Before the last election on May 5, candidate Nicholas Boles had thought he would at least win Hove for the Tories. He didn’t. Boles later realised that his sums had been wrong. One of the reasons, he says, was that “a couple of thousand local Tories had died since 2001. It’s a worrying result, and actually it’s been repeated in lots of other places”.

And the world has moved on from the Thatcherite heyday:

It’s dawning on the party just how much Britain has changed since Thatcher was driven out of Downing Street in tears, 15 years ago. The average Briton has 50 per cent more income now than then. They are much more likely to have been to university, they don’t believe a woman’s place is in the home, they work longer hours, travel abroad on budget airlines, are as likely to be single or divorced as married, and are not obsessed with the second world war.

One of the key blocks to future prosperity is the party's tendency to look backward in nostalgia:

Stealing from Blair starts with stealing the way he sees the world. To Blair, the way Britain did things in the past is irrelevant. He has never got sentimental about the second world war, Clause 4 of Labour’s constitution, grammar schools, mines or old maids cycling through the morning mist to Holy Communion. He rarely even mentions the past. What he usually talks about is adopting best practice for the future.

Boles also criticises “our belief that the past was better than the present, our scepticism about the promise of the future”. Populus found that two-thirds of Tory voters believed that “Britain was a better country to live in 20 or 30 years ago.” In an economic boom, with far more people than ever educated for a good career, they are probably wrong. Most Britons tell pollsters that the present is better than the past. Nostalgia, in modern parlance, is “so over”.

Hence, as Ashcroft writes, Tory voters in May were disproportionately people “aged 55 or over, who were retired or not working, who owned their home outright, and who read the Daily Mail or The Daily Telegraph”. As one defeated Tory candidate grumbled way back in 2001, every day a Tory voter dies and a Labour voter turns 18.

And 'whinging' doesn't help either:

Ancestor-worship is one Tory sin. Another is berating everything the government does: attacking the present, if you like. Last autumn, 70 per cent of voters thought “the Conservatives just attack the government over whatever happens to be in the news, but never say anything positive.” On the first day of the election campaign, after Blair had proclaimed his “driving mission for a third term”, Howard responded that voters could “reward Mr Blair for eight years of broken promises and vote for another five years of talk, or they can vote Conservative”. Undecided voters in Ashcroft’s focus groups didn’t like Blair’s rhetoric, but they liked Howard’s negativity even less.

Mick Fealty @ 03:11 PM | Comments (4)

Profile: Reverend Harold Good
Exclusively on Slugger the Rev Harold Good, one of the two indenpendent witnesses overseeing the decommissioning of IRA talks to journalist John O'Farrell and about his life and his committment to his ministry of reconciliation.

By John O'Farrell

Last Monday, two shy men stepped forward into the cruel glare of mass publicity, and from the DUP, instant opprobrium, who accused Fr Alec Reid and Rev Harold Good of being appointed by the IRA, and by implication, dupes.

At Monday’s press conference announcing the complete disarmament of the IRA, the two clerical witnesses sat at a separate table from General John de Chastelain and his colleagues. With studious deliberateness, Rev Good did not take his eyes of the prescripted statement, and read it slowly, carefully and word perfect.

While the role of Fr Reid in weaning the IRA off ‘armed struggle’ is widely known, Rev Good is less well known outside of Ireland’s 70,000 Methodists and the brave souls who have been involved in promoting dialogue and understanding across the sectarian chasm during what he calls ‘those dark nights.’

He was born to the Manse in Derry in 1937, where his father was the Methodist minister at the City Mission. When he decided to follow his father’s foorsteps, he served as a probationary minister in the Dublin City Mission in the late 50s. Being in the Republic at the peak of the power of the catholic church was ‘less of a culture shock to me than most protestants from the North, as my father was from Skibbereen and we took many family holidays there.’

Working with the poor in the Coombe made him aware of the comparative comfort of his upbringing. ‘It gave me a genuine feel for people and was an important part of my formation.’ He ‘wanted to see more of this island home of ours’, and transferred to Waterford, where he met his wife Clodagh, also the offspring of a Methodist minister.

He was radically changed while ministering in Ohio in 1964, where his pastor was vary active in the Civil Rights movement. Later, he was ministering in a mostly black Methodist church in Indianapolis, and was there at the time of the murder of Martin Luther King. ‘I began to understand my own situation in a whole new way’, as he instinctively compared the New World with his old town. ‘It was the same thing in a different context, racism was the same thing as sectarianism.’

He visibly winces as he recalls the day that Dr King was assassinated. He offered to find a black pastor to take that following Sunday’s service, but his congregation insisted that he stayed. ‘They had lost their leader, they had lost hope, and I found that they trusted in me, sharing their grief and pain.’ It was useful training.

He returned to NI in late 1968, ‘looking for somewhere quiet’, and was installed into a chapel in Agnes Street in the Shankill. ‘Things were beginning to rumble.’ In October 1969, he kept his church open during huge loyalist riots in protest at the disbanding of the B Specials, in which Constable Victor Arbuckle became the first RUC man to be killed in the troubles. Two wounded loyalists were taken to his church hall, and died there. Then Good and his congregation ‘had to rearrange the room for Sunday School.’

His Church hall remained open during ‘those dark days and nights’, sheltering families that had been intimidated out of their homes. ‘This community needed a safe place, with the doors open and the lights on.’ He recalls the attempts of north Belfast’s small Jewish community to facilitate dialogue in the Somerton Road synagogue, laughing at the irony of ‘jews bringing christians together.’

Just before Christmas 1971, the IRA bombed a furniture showroom. Good recalls ‘digging babies out of the wreckage.’ Two-year-old Tracey Munn and her 17-month-old cousin, Colin Nicholl, were crushed to death. ‘I wasn’t isolated in an ivory tower. I know the pain inflicted by terrorists.’ Part of his ministry included terrorists. He was a part-time chaplain in Crumlin Road prison, and ministered to two of the Shankill butchers.

A move to Ballynahinch was controversial among some of his new congregation. ‘There was hostility from evangelicals’ who felt he was ‘too ecumanist.’ Although some left, his congregation doubled, becvause ‘people wanted openness and reconciliation.’ His philosophy is that of the Methodist founder, John Wesley, who exhorted his followers to be ‘friends of all and enemies of none.’

He later ministered in East Belfast to many police families, and has told many RUC wives that they had become widows. Although among ‘some very influential people’ – the protestant professional classes ‘who kept this place going and from going over the edge’, he felt he ‘had pulled away from the cutting edge.’ Late in the 70s, he started his involvement with republicans, in a discreet dialogue experiment that continued for two decades. He was also heavily involved in the reconciliation work of the Corrymeela community.

He worked with prisoners and their families (loyalist and republican), and the strong personal relationships and trust he developed helped him get the IRA to apologise on the 30th anniversary of Bloody Friday.

The apology came after Good was approached by Tom Donnolly, whose sister, Margaret O’Hare, was among the nine people killed during a 20-bomb spree on 21 July 1972. Good insisted that Donnolly accompany him to meet ‘highly placed republicans, who were clearly impressed by the way Tom asked for the apology.’ But, like this week, some onlookers were unimpressed. ‘Sadly, some people felt it was partial, because they apologised for civilian deaths, or that they thought it was attached to some political initiative.’

The key, according to Good, ‘is the basis of trust.’ Soon after, such trust was used by Good to persuade the IRA to remove a memorial to three Provos who had died near Belleek. ‘The memorial caused huge offence to the families of victims.’ It took time, but the IRA relented. ‘The lesson I learnt from the years is this; patience, patience.’

He also has learnt that ‘there is a time for aggressiveness, political activity and aggressive demands. Honest relationships much have both, patience and aggressiveness, for the building of trust.’

He brought people involved in the South African Truth Commission to NI in 1999, and is part of Healing Through Remembering, a project that is about getting victims and perpetrators to tell their stories. This projact is presently working to recommendations for a truth commission for NI, and thorny issues such as memorialising the conflict.

Good is also aware that every act of reconciliation, acknowledgement and forgiveness can feel like a slap in the face to some of the survivors of real trauma. He refuses to dismiss that hurt, as being part of the ‘past’, as some republicans are wont to do. And imagining being in those shoes is not difficult.

Good was in Germany on Bloody Friday, and heard on the news that a teenage son of a clergyman had been killed on the Cavehill Road, the same bomb that killed Margaret O’Hare. ‘We lived near there and my son used to go to those shops.’ He spent five frantic hours trying to ring home, before discovering that the murdered boy was Stephen Parker, son of the peace campaigner the Rev Joe Parker. ‘I honestly don’t know how I would have responded. So there’s no way I could dismiss those who are angry and bitter.’

His brother Peter was the Methodist minister in Omagh in 1998. Due to retire that autumn, he stayed on an extra year to help with the aftermath of suffering, and died three weeks before his postponed retirement. Good says that the bomb killed his brother, explaining that 'ministers have to absorb grief and pain.'

Harold Good is determined to ‘continue with my reconciling ministry’ and in the only reference he could make to his witnessing of the IRA’s weapons being scrapped, said ‘I was asked. What else could my answer be?'

Mick Fealty @ 03:02 PM | Comments (22)

should have gone to Madrid..
Just about all the news networks have reports on this morning's solar eclipse, here, here, here, and here.. oh, and here. A highlight movie is promised from Madrid.. and there are some good images online already, also from Spain. I would have checked it out here.. if it hadn't been completely overcast this morning. The next time a total solar eclipse will be visible here, UK and Ireland, will be 2090.. I guess I'll just have to book a trip to see one sometime before then.

pete baker @ 01:57 PM | Comments (7)

October 02, 2005

They're quare and cocky and confident...
Ruth Dudley Edwards has been travelling in Northern Ireland and finds the Protestant inhabitants west of the Bann subdued and wary of some the younger generation amongst their Catholic neighbours. In an area where RTE is no stranger to local protestants, she detects some shift in attitudes around the GAA:

"Once," said a woman from a loyalist enclave, "we'd have wanted Tyrone to beat Kerry in the Gaelic football final. Now, because of the way their supporters carry on these days, we were mad keen for Kerry to win last weekend. We begrudged Tyrone their victory."

GAA followers from the south are reported to be civil, but locals to have moved from being unfriendly to downright abusive and sometimes violent.

After last Sunday's match and the noisy cavalcades with their blaring horns and people beating their fists on the tops of cars caught in traffic jams, in Cookstown, Dungannon and Omagh, there were fights between loyalist and republican youths until well into the small hours.

Mick Fealty @ 08:11 PM | Comments (159)

Have we the mindset required bring peace?
Eric Waugh, now a columnist for the Belfast Telegraph, was a BBC correspondent for most of the troubles. He recalls two gruesome episodes from the early stages of the 'war' with great (and disturbing) clarity, the IRA's firebombing of the La Mon House Hotel in which twelve people were incinerated. And one of the earliest atrocities, the UVF bombing of McGurk's Bar in which 15 perished in the run up to Christmas 1971. He wonders whether in decommissioning military materiel the mindsets have also changed sufficiently to bring a lasting settlement and peace.

Mick Fealty @ 08:04 PM | Comments (20)

IRA passing baton back to Sinn Féin?
Martin Mansergh in the Irish Times (subs needed) argues that IRA decomissioning, following the statement that it was committing itself to a peaceful, democratic path is a major landmark for this island and finally redresses the "dreadful act of responsibility" by the surving members of the Second Dáil.

"For more than 80 years, since the war of independence, successive Irish governments have wanted the IRA to go away. Eamon de Valera, in the 1930s worried about the guns still in their hands. In 1938, in a dreadful act of irresponsibility, surviving members of the Second Dáil, then no longer in Leinster House, abdicated such political legitimacy as they possessed to the IRA," he says.

While not expecting DUP leader Ian Paisley to accept such a "radical step" as enough, Mansergh believes "it is best to let the new reality, in which the IRA has, in an astonishing reversal from 1938, handed back the baton to Sinn Féin, gradually sink in".

George Burns @ 05:01 PM | Comments (4)

Was decommissioning really that difficult?
Ed Moloney with one or two pertinent questions that arise from last week's events

He asks:

...was IRA decommissioning really such a difficult nut to crack? After all, it began when the peace process itself was well advanced and the floor was already littered with the cadavers of republican holy cows. The IRA ceasefires were seven years old and the Provisional leadership had long since conceded the sacred tenet of post-Treaty republicanism, the principle of consent, when General de Chastelain put his first IRA gun beyond use. The ground had been well prepared before it happened.

He then argues the politics of Sinn Fein's core support was considerably more flexible that the party's own apparently fundamentalist roots:

But what really enabled Adams and his colleagues to complete decommissioning was the shallowness of their supporters' politics, nourished as they were not by the writings of Connolly and Pearse or Marx and Fanon but by fear and hatred of the Protestants who would burn them in their beds.

The truth is that the Provisionals were mostly in the defenderist not the republican tradition, and in their world the sectarian imperative ruled. All that mattered to them was that, politically-speaking, Celtic beat Rangers on New Year's Day; the Champions League could take a running jump. Ceasefires could be called, unionist consent conceded and leadership promises broken just so long as the Prods didn't like it.

Mick Fealty @ 03:00 PM | Comments (18)

Arms decommissioning over, what next?
Despite reports that the IRA have held on to a small number of personal firearms, Mark Devenport pronounces the decommissioning question now extinct. But that's clearly not the end of the story.

Mick Fealty @ 02:55 PM | Comments (23)

Unionists and Republicans must fight productively!
In a response to Michael McDowell's call for Republicans to reclaim the Orange heritage implicit in the Irish flag, Trevor Ringland argues that there is now the opportunity for Unionists and Republican to engage each otehr in a democratic struggle for hearts and minds. But, he notes, in order to be productive that struggle will need to be fought in terms of delivery rather than philosophy.

Minister McDowell's call to republicans and nationalists to build relationships with those of us in the unionist tradition is a welcome development. It will mean that republicans and nationalists will also engage unionists in battle for those same hearts and minds. To prove that a united Ireland would be a viable option for the people who live here, then first of all they will have to make Northern Ireland work. They may then prove to their unionist neighbours, who make up around one fifth of the population on this island, that they can work in harmony with them.

Even if, as is likely, we remain two separate countries, there is no reason why we cannot build co-operation, identifying areas where we can work together for mutual benefit. But it will also require all of us to move from a politics of philosophy to one of delivery. In doing so we will have to focus on Northern Ireland's economic and social bottom line, so enabling us to attract new industries and begin to compete in the global economy.

So the 1998 Agreement mandated by the people on this island creates a whole new basis by which we build relationships. There is now reasonable evidence that there are now two communities on this island. One is largely made up of those that want to share it in a peaceful way in which we all prosper. The other wants to continue the battles of causing further division and hurt.

True republicanism and true unionism must live out their core principles by creating an inclusive vision of Irishness and Britishness, leaving behind those exclusive visions that brought so much tragedy to the people who live here. It requires us all to be competitive, but constructively so in a manner that increases the benefits of all.

Mick Fealty @ 02:40 PM | Comments (0)

In sport and politics, the Northerners are coming!
Interesting southern take on how Kerry's footballing genius has been eclipsed by Tyrone's northern (Protestant?) virtues of hard work and discipline. Although on the day, I counted at least two blows to the face landed by frustrated 'Brazilians' of Kerry, its the eye gouging of Colm Cooper that features up front analysis of 'hard' northern football. Check out last week's sports call programme before it's lifted from the site tomorrow evening.

Mick Fealty @ 02:29 PM | Comments (10)

October 01, 2005

The battle of Saintfield
An interesting documentary and re-enactment of the battle of Saintfield will be screened later this year. It follows the battle between largely Presbyterian United Irishmen of County Down and the York Fencible Regiment who had founded their own Orange Lodge in 1796. It also delves into the complexity of the era showing brothers, fathers and sons on opposing sides of the battle.

The cast for the re-enactment was comprised of various re-enactment groups, cross-community living history groups, the North Irish Dragoon Society and several Orange Lodges. LOL 688 Cross of Saint Patrick being one such lodge who participated and have covered their activities in their monthly newsletter (you will need to download the DNL reader to read the newsletter). If you look closely at the pictures you will notice the "Union Jack" in the court room does not contain the Saint Patrick`s Cross as the Act of Union did not occur until 2 years later.

Aughavey @ 07:06 PM | Comments (3)

Unionist self-pity and supremacy
David Adams, writing in the Irish Times (subs needed), believes it is time for unionism to "jettison the self-pity" and "accept the heavy responsibilities that come with public office" or suspicions will remain that "supremacy within unionism matters a lot more to many unionist politicians than trying to establish a peaceful and settled Northern Ireland".

Adams begins by noting how former Ulster Unionist Party leader James Molyneaux remarked in 1994 that a prolonged IRA ceasefire could be the "most destabilising thing to happen to unionism since partition".

"In fact, destabilising goes nowhere near adequately describing the condition unionism now finds itself in; turned on its head and seemingly rudderless would be nearer the mark," he says, pointing out that we are now living in a world where unionists are resisting pressure from the Irish and British governments, SDLP and Sinn Fein for a devolved assembly while nationalists are now defending heavy-handedness of the local police and unionist politicians are defending violent attacks on them and are threatening to withdraw their support.

While saying senior Ulster Unionists have been more welcoming of the recent decommissiong move, the reaction of the DUP (the largest party) is what matters and is the "main reason unionism is in the state it is in".

"Throughout the peace process, rather than seeking to make any real contribution, both the UUP and DUP have opted for a negative and entirely reactive approach," he says.

"Both the DUP and UUP seem devoid of anything that bears even passing resemblance to a coherent and realistic plan for delivering political and communal stability to Northern Ireland. And that, after all, should be the primary objective of all unionists.

"Worse still, neither party seems the slightest bit interested in developing such a plan. Given all that has happened over the past decade, unionist leaders should, long ago, have stopped playing on the base fears and concerns of their constituency and began celebrating the many positive developments there have been."

By positive developments, Adams means the acceptance by republicans of Northern Ireland's constitutional status within the UK, an ending of the IRA campaign, the handing over of weaponry ("as close as ever could be accurately assessed") and an end to the Republic's territorial claim.

"But, still, unionist leaders continue to talk and act as though the IRA had been victorious. Where they are correct is in claiming there is a widespread sense of despair and alienation within unionism, particularly the working class.

"But they pointedly neglect to mention their own role in helping to create the situation," he says.

Adams concludes by saying politicians who present every victory as a defeat can hardly feign surprise when their voters lose faith in politics, become defeatist and enter into a collective state of paranoia, depression and fear of the future.

"It is time political unionism moved beyond the comfort zone of self-pity and began to accept the heavy responsibilities that come with public office.

"Until they do that, it will be hard to quell the suspicion that supremacy within unionism matters a lot more to many unionist politicians than trying to establish a peaceful and settled Northern Ireland."

George Burns @ 06:03 PM | Comments (2)

The long goodbye to follow the farewell to arms
The Economist, calls this week's developments the only way you can. Not by reading into the clarity (or rather the lack thereof) around the act itself, but into the political frame around the act (subs needed). In particular the DUP:

...after recent rioting by Protestant paramilitaries who have killed scores in the past ten years, Mr Paisley's scepticism sounded like a substitute for political engagement. The armies in whose weaponry Mr Paisley has shown least interest are the illegal Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and Ulster Defence Association (UDA). One UDA spokesman, calling the IRA move irrelevant, said loyalists would keep their guns while the Union was in danger, a favourite Paisley phrase.

An international monitoring body set up at unionist insistence to detect paramilitary activity will report on the IRA in October and January. If it finds no criminal or paramilitary activity, the governments will press the DUP to negotiate power-sharing with Sinn Fein. The only internal pressure on Mr Paisley may be his own party's ambition, and perhaps the desire at the age of 80 to hold power at last, even if it must be shared with the enemy.

The chess game has begun. The IRA and Sinn Fein have made a strong first move. But the DUP will not be hurried into making its next move either now, or when the second IMC report comes in January next year.

Mick Fealty @ 03:27 PM | Comments (9)

The challenge to Unionists over the next four months
Alex Kane ruminates on the innate challenges of the next four months in the interrim before the two IMC reorts delegated to adjudicate on the integrity of the IRA ceasefire are published. The DUP has to seriously consider the political choices that face it: namely an imperfect situation with devolution; or ongoing powerlessness under direct rule. The UUP must invest the time in re-connecting with the party's grass roots.

By Alex Kane

Being an atheist I tend to the view that clergy have a professional obligation to believe in something that they can’t easily prove to non-believers. So in that sense they strike me as ideal witnesses for an act of decommissioning. I don’t doubt their integrity, but I do question their credibility. Their mission last Monday was simply to bear witness to the fact that an act of decommissioning took place; but they certainly can’t confirm that the act represented total decommissioning and nor can they affirm that the act should be interpreted as a final and absolute renunciation of the IRA’s “armed struggle.”

But truth told it wasn’t the integrity or credibility of the witnesses that really concerned the DUP. It was the fact that an obviously substantial---and possibly total---act of decommissioning took place at all. Remember this comment from Peter Robinson; “It is very clear that they have no intention of decommissioning. The people realise it and we realise it in this House.”? Or this from Nigel Dodds; “Will the First Minister accept that the IRA/Sinn Fein movement has no intention of decommissioning. Will he now apologise to the Assembly and to the people of Northern Ireland for so grossly deceiving them”? Or even this from Ian Paisley; “The IRA will never decommission.”?

The DUP has found it impossible to welcome the decommissioning, because the DUP hasn’t got a clue how to behave in a political environment in which the rest of the world believes that the IRA really has gone away. Let’s be honest, this is nightmare territory for the DUP. Sinn Fein has bought into partition and the IRA has crossed its decommissioning Rubicon. The pressure on the party to recognise “this new attitude within republicanism,” and cut a quick deal to restore devolution, will be relentless and intense.

That pressure started ten days ago, with a speech from Peter Hain (which I wrote about last week), and continued with a follow-up performance at the Labour Party Conference, where he announced that his NIO team, in the continuing absence of devolution, will introduce a “radical agenda.” In essence both speeches were a clear threat to the DUP; take power into your own hands at local level and provide your own solutions, or the NIO will do it for you.

So what does the DUP do? A significant section of its core vote doesn’t want to share power with Sinn Fein under any circumstances and the party must avoid the sort of internal showdown between the pragmatists and the fundamentalists, which almost destroyed the Ulster Unionists. Yet it also has to be seen to start delivering for a unionist community it now claims to lead. Some DUP strategists argue that its voters would prefer Direct Rule to Sinn Fein in government; but I suspect that those voters will feel differently if Direct Rule now brings water tax, school closures, an overhaul of local government and higher rates all round. The DUP cannot afford to be seen to be abdicating its devolutionist responsibilities in those circumstances.

Messrs Paisley and Robinson have a simple calculation to make: how much do they need devolution, what price will they pay for it and what will the consequences be if they refuse to negotiate with Sinn Fein? My instinct is that the party will move into direct talks much more quickly than most people imagine. They have already prepared their agenda for negotiations (over fifty pages of concerns and issues they want addressed) and will seek the promise of an Assembly election to ratify the new deal. Put bluntly, the DUP will pay the required price to kickstart the Assembly.

The UUP, in turn, has to play a canny game. It needs the DUP to cut a deal with Sinn Fein, because if it doesn’t, then I don’t believe that a deal will be cut by anyone. So the UUP needs to be cautious. Since nothing much will happen before an IMC report next January, it should use the time to re-energise its grassroots and shore-up its internal structures; whilst maintaining a watching brief on the bigger political picture and bringing fresh faces and new thinking to the talks table.

Unionism, all of it, faces its greatest challenge ever. An editorial in Tuesday’s Times noted; “Unionism will seem implausible if it fails to react rationally. It will also render itself irrelevant…It has to deal with reality. It must now come in from a very bitter cold.” The two unionist parties must display courage, radicalism, vision and statesmanship. The DUP has failed to display any of those qualities in the last few days. In its first real test as the majority voice of unionism it has reacted irrationally and returned to its negative and bombastic roots.

The political landscape has been overturned in this past week and unionism, particularly that wing represented by the DUP, has been seriously wrong-footed. The endgame of this process will be determined by who wins the propaganda war. The unionist parties really have to get their act together, for their electorate is looking for action, as opposed to mere and entirely predictable reaction.

First published in The Newsletter on Saturday 30th September

Mick Fealty @ 08:49 AM | Comments (12)