Andy Pollak

Catherine Pollock (no relation – different spelling) from Derry is an unusual and remarkable woman. From a working class unionist background, she now works for the Irish language and cultural organisation Cultúrlann. She says of herself: “I’m not a unionist, but I’m not a nationalist or a republican either. I am British, and also Irish. My politics are left of centre – very left of centre for some people. I’m a socialist.” Is the British element in her culture and …

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I have just returned from a holiday in Spain. The main news story while I was there was an argument between the central government in Madrid and the regional government in the Canary Islands about who should take responsibility for the daily stream of refugees and economic migrants arriving on those islands on flimsy small boats from West Africa. Over 22,000 have arrived so far this year, and some charities are warning that there may be another 150,000 – many …

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Young people chanting ‘Oh, ah, up the Ra’ is becoming commonplace in nationalist – and not-so-nationalist – Ireland. Primary age children were at it during the big homecoming parade for the Olympic team in Dublin earlier this month. And it drew arguably the biggest crowd of the day for those ancient IRA fellow-travellers, the Wolfe Tones, at the Electric Picnic music festival in Stradbally, County Laois. “People are going to sing that chant anyway. It’s like the Jackie’s Army song,” …

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In all the wonderful hype about Ireland’s four Olympic gold medallists, there was one aspect that went relatively unreported – at least here in the republic. The fact that two of them – Daniel Wiffen in the 800 metres swimming final and gymnast Rhys McClenaghan on the pommel horse – were from Northern Ireland was, of course, widely highlighted. What was missing from most of the coverage I saw was that these Olympic champions were two rather atypical Northerners wearing …

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July is the month I take a break from political commentary and go cycling around Ireland. Two years ago – with my friend David Ward – I cycled from Mizen Head in west Cork to Fair Head in north Antrim. In contrast, this year we decided to cycle from north-west to south-east: from Derry city to Rosslare in Wexford. That involved putting the bicycles on the train to Belfast and Derry and back from Rosslare. I have often wondered why …

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The results of the British general election in Northern Ireland confirmed what we already know. The DUP is in deep trouble: the loss of three of its heartland seats in Lagan Valley (the constituency of its former leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, now charged with historical sexual offences), North and South Antrim is a further body blow. It is good to see the back of Ian Paisley junior, whose career, in Belfast Telegraph columnist Sam McBride’s words, was characterised by “swagger, hubris and greed.” …

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I was at the big Ireland’s Future rally in Belfast earlier this month. The line-up of speakers was impressively broad and sometimes not obviously nationalist: from former Taoiseach Leo Varadkar to former Alliance leader Lord John Alderdice, from the SDLP’s Claire Hanna to DUP founder member Wallace Thompson, from Irish Labour Party leader Ivana Bacik to GAA president Jarlath Burns. However the most powerful speech I heard was not from a politician about Irish unity, but from a doctor about …

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Regular readers of this blog will not be surprised when I say that I am glad to see the Sinn Féin vote cratering in the local and European elections in the Republic. Under 12% in those elections is some dive downwards from the mid-30s high of opinion polls in recent years. I do not see this development through the eyes of the Dublin resident that I am, but from the viewpoint of a non-republican Northerner. I have never believed that …

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There is something happening in Ireland (the Republic) and it is not pretty. It is the mobilisation by far-right actors of anti-immigration sentiment in response to a sharp increase (from a low base) in the number of asylum seekers arriving in the country. 5,160 asylum seekers came to Ireland in the first three months of this year, up nearly 78% on the same period last year. This compares with 4,780 in the whole of 2019, 3,670 in the whole of 2018 and …

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This post is about football: not Gaelic football, but football as it is played by many millions of men and women around the world, the ‘beautiful game’ as it is played by Brazil and France and Argentina, at Real Madrid and Paris St Germain and Bayern Munich. I have been a passionate Irish football fan since I was 10 years old, when I followed the great Northern Ireland team of Danny Blanchflower, Peter McParland, Jimmy McIlroy, Billy Bingham and Harry …

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Regular readers of this blog will know that I like new ideas which go beyond the binary unionist-nationalist straitjacket which has dominated (and constrained) debate about the future of this island for most of the past hundred years. Thus over the past few years I have published the heterodox ideas of people like political scientist Padraig O’Malley, reconciliation activist Duncan Morrow, social researcher Paul Nolan, socialist writer Daniel Finn, Derry Protestant community worker Brian Dougherty, and Newry business and community …

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I wouldn’t have said this seven years ago, when he first became Taoiseach, but I am sorry to see Leo Varadkar stepping down from that post. I do not agree with many of his right-of-centre policies on economic and social issues. But this straight half-Czech Irishman liked having a leader who was a gay half-Indian Irishman, a symbol of the new openness and multiculturalism of the country. More importantly, as someone from a Northern Protestant background who would one day …

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Maybe because St Patrick’s Day is coming up and we’re in the middle of Seachtain na Gaeilge, I’m feeling a bit patriotic – so am going to write about why I think the Republic of Ireland is a rather good country now, despite the many begrudgers.  Firstly, there are the well-known demographic and economic indicators: in the 50 years of EU membership, life expectancy has risen from 71 to 81.5 years; incomes per head have increased fourfold; the number of …

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With the death earlier this month of former Taoiseach John Bruton, we have lost an important and courageous voice in the Republic of Ireland. We will need a new John Bruton to appear from somewhere: a nationalist leader who will not allow people to forget Sinn Fein’s continuing support for the murderous violence of the Provisional IRA and who goes out of his way to try to understand the concerns of unionism. Bruton bravely went even further: he criticised this …

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Over the Christmas holidays I read The Long Game: Inside Sinn Fein, by the former Irish Examiner journalist Aoife Moore. I was looking forward to reading this book enormously, since good books on this “strange, secretive party that stands on the brink of taking power” are few and far between. I thought that somebody like Moore, from a working class nationalist background in Derry, whose family had been “touched by British state violence” (her uncle was killed on Bloody Sunday), and Irish Journalist …

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What is it about passionate nationalists that when they get less than a third of people in favour of their nationalist project, they still insist they are driving on to victory? That was the situation according to the second big Irish Times/Analysing and Researching Ireland North and South(ARINS) poll on Irish unity earlier this month, which showed 51% of those polled in Northern Ireland in favour of remaining in the UK (up 1% from last year) against 30% in favour of …

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Last Thursday morning I sat down to write a blog in which I was aiming to argue that Ireland (the Republic) had been hugely successful in integrating a large number of immigrants over the past 20-25 years, and that this tolerant, multicultural – and economically dynamic – society was one which open-minded Unionists should not be afraid of, and might even (in the fullness of time) consider joining. But early that afternoon a man with a knife attacked and stabbed …

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One of the recurrent themes of these blogs is that if we are going to welcome 600,000-800,000 Unionists (possibly an over-estimate) into a ‘new Ireland’, we are going to have to accept and respect their passionate Britishness. And that is going to be a hard task for a society that fought a war of independence against Britain a hundred years ago, and has adopted a political and popular ethos which has been largely anti-British ever since. Occasionally that anti-Britishness has …

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I am an Irishman from a half-Jewish background – the other half is Presbyterian, so I am utterly untypical of people in this republic. However as a person with such unusual antecedents, I feel reluctantly impelled to add my two ha’apence worth to the millions of words on the terrible disaster unfolding in the Middle East. As with so many of these blogs, I am going to borrow unashamedly from journalists and commentators who are much better-informed than me. My …

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There have been some interesting straws in the autumn wind in recent weeks as politicians get ready for the new political term and general elections in both Irish jurisdictions in the near future. Leo Varadkar doesn’t very often talk about Irish unity, but when he does he often says sensible things. He reiterated his belief earlier this month that he expected to see Irish unity in his lifetime (he is 44). More importantly, he stressed that the success of such …

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