Brian Walker – Page 3 – Slugger O'Toole

There’s more to life than the Census returns on nationality

Brian Walker on September 22, 2022, 2:18 pm | Readers 3302

Photo Liz Truss UK Prime Minister. Gov.UK The one topic that will completely overshadow all others, like the latest on the Protocol and even the energy crisis, is of course the invitation to another bout of identity wrangling over the Census returns. You could write it in your sleep. The figures on religion are yesterday’s story and the day before that. So I’ll deal with the Protocol first. Good news from New York according to the FT after Liz …

After the funeral of the age, back to the reality of today

Brian Walker on September 20, 2022, 11:39 am | Readers 5634

The greatest public obsequies in history are over. The hangover begins now. The death of the Queen allowed millions to think of the nation as a big family which could unite at such a time. Every nation or a distinct component of it needs an identity to survive. For a large majority, the Queen was at the heart of it. Whether the unity survives both for the nation and- come to think of it- even the royal family- are quite …

The monarchy and its rituals may be valued and even enjoyed. But do not exaggerate their impact or confuse them with harsher realities

Brian Walker on September 14, 2022, 1:19 pm | Readers 5212

Marking the evolution of the British state has long been planned as part of the great festival of mourning now under way; but into what precisely is far from clear. The new King’s hectic tour of Edinburgh, Belfast and Cardiff punishingly close to his mother’s death,can only be seen as a conscious act to uphold the Union by popular consent. The accident of the Queen’s death at Balmoral allowed for the staging of powerfully affecting ceremonies in the matchless theatre …

The enduring question about politics from the start of the Troubles: why has the middle class been so ineffective?

Brian Walker on August 27, 2022, 12:01 pm | Readers 3747

I’m using my privilege as a poster here to try to sum up a couple of posts by Frank Schnittger and myself which are about struggling to find meaning in the chaotic and long draw out course of the Troubles. I’d better be careful as this could lead to endless exchanges but I’ll draw the line here. Eventually we all have more urgent topics to cope with like a rudderless government during an economic convulsion. I suppose I was …

Imagining the moments when Northern Ireland might have avoided the Troubles. If Unionists had conceded freely what they were later forced to do under pressure.

Brian Walker on August 25, 2022, 5:56 pm | Readers 3832

After returning to the real world in my last post, I can’t resist entering the dream world again to accept Malachi’ O Doherty’s invitation to imagine a world without the Troubles. I do so more or less off the top of my head, recalling my own teenage memories of the 1960s when it seemed to coin a phrase, “ things could only get better “. I use the terms Catholic and Protestant, the social signifiers more generally used at the …

The real world is about the energy crisis, galloping inflation and strikes

Brian Walker on August 22, 2022, 1:45 pm | Readers 2574

Welcome to the real world, far away from Irish identity neuroses and the Tory leadership race. The world of spreading strikes, galloping inflation and energy prices. The situation is changing so fast even the tabloids haven’t caught up with it yet. On the Today programme this morning covered by The Times, energy industry bosses are calling for the endless political battle to close early and emergency action to be taken before the next energy price cap kicks in – on …

Leave futile arguments about equivalence aside. We all need to come clean about why the Troubles lasted so unforgivably long.

Brian Walker on August 20, 2022, 9:50 pm | Readers 3147

clock, alarm clock, watch

Belatedly I want to pick up from Mick’s treatment of Fionnuala O’ Connor’s interesting question about origins, prompted by the inevitable controversy surrounding Michelle O’Neill. At the outset, I’m reconciled to the fact that my brief analysis, partly based like Fionnuala’s on contemporary observation, will be disputed. I want to be as fair as I can. There’s nothing more pointless than one sided polemic. Her question relates to the present and future. To make ‘reconciliation’ possible do republicans have to …

Politics is becoming the new religion, with all the militancy of old. But in Ireland….

Brian Walker on August 19, 2022, 6:47 pm | Readers 2205

A sign displayed outside McQuiston Memorial Presbyterian Church in East Belfast in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Again, the mythological symbol of the rainbow is used.

Well meaning people in Ireland often like to claim that politics and religion are separate and that religion is all about love, reconciliation and goodness. We know what they mean but of course they’re wrong. From time immemorial politics has been about power and religion about controlling people’s minds, “the opium of the masses” But Marx’s line underestimated the powers of its ideas to create an alternative social bond against an oppressive state and finally an identity. And so religion …

An example of leadership to follow

Brian Walker on July 28, 2022, 1:28 pm | Readers 4316

Electricity bills set to soar to £500 a month in October, in my own area West London the electricity grid has hit capacity and a ban on building new homes is in prospect to 2035, rail strikes with no end in sight, with nurses and teachers to follow and the possibility of a general strike to come… Health and social care services in England face “the greatest workforce crisis in their history” and the government has no credible strategy to make the situation …

By public demand, a new Belfast Agreement is needed to transform our deadlocked politics

Brian Walker on July 26, 2022, 2:25 pm | Readers 7206

As sure as night followed day, the sonorous tributes to David Trimble flowed from those who in their day had stabbed him front and back. Some were no doubt observing the Irish habit of never speaking ill of the recently dead. Perhaps some rose above hypocrisy. For behind the traditional political rhetoric lies latent acceptance that they are all inheritors of his legacy. As Trimble himself put it: In 2005 I came a cropper but, in the seven years between …

David Trimble, the unlikely architect of peace who broke the mould of unionist politics for the common good

Brian Walker on July 26, 2022, 1:24 am | Readers 4447

I never got to know David Trimble well but when I first met him in the early 1970s he was a bright young thing in Bill Craig’s Vanguard secession from the crumbling Ulster Unionist party. Vanguard held quasi- fascist rallies, flirted with the idea of loyal rebellion to take on the IRA and was passionately opposed to power sharing. Trimble was one of those who tried gave Vanguard intellectual gloss over the sinister threats of Craig and the foam flecked …

The voice of sanity over the Protocol is drowned in Tory leadership Brexit frenzy

Brian Walker on July 24, 2022, 7:58 pm | Readers 2757

Although by instinct I prefer to hunt for the substance behind political attitudes however perverse they seem, I’m reduced to calling the latest on the Protocol – bonkers, plain and not so simple. The Tory leadership fight has tipped it into the surreal. First in a dash to complete his legacy, Johnson rushed to complete the Protocol Bill’s early Commons stages on the last full day on Thursday. Then it’s over to Lords in September and a new government. …

If they choose anybody but Sunak, they’ll get a worse PM than Johnson

Brian Walker on July 16, 2022, 12:12 pm | Readers 4211

Photo courtesy ITV News Mick may be aiming at higher things but I’m stuck down low and dirty in the Tory leadership contest. I can’t take my eyes off it. Unusually the written press are ahead of TV thanks to social media with lots of talk about black propaganda, stalking horses and dirty dealing behind the scenes. So the first leadership debate on Channel 4 last night came as a welcome relief. Despite overheated claims in the press that the …

There are major implications for the N Ireland Legacy Bill in Panorama’s report on SAS killings in Afghanistan

Brian Walker on July 13, 2022, 7:53 am | Readers 2052

A practice of unlawful killings which are possibly war crimes. Faked evidence and cover ups, followed by a decision not to proceed for lack of evidence. That was the story confidently and relentlessly told by BBC Panorama about the conduct of British special forces in Afghanistan over a decade ago, in a special programme produced above the BBC Northern Ireland label. The claims were made by former soldiers on camera with identities withheld or off camera, and by follow up …

C’mon guys, the culture wars are over. Let’s make a proper peace.

Brian Walker on July 2, 2022, 5:26 pm | Readers 2767

The phrases “culture wars” and “identity politics ” are comparatively recent imports from America but people are using them as if they’ve been around forever. On the whole they are pejoratives, used by rightwing politicians to denigrate or “gaslight “ the slow march to freedom of women however described, and ethnic and social minorities, by creating “wedge issues” to stir up alarm and so divide and rule. Ireland as a whole was ahead of the game long ago. The rise …

On one thing MPs are agreed: the EU need to show greater flexibility. So is the Protocol Bill only “displacement activity?”

Brian Walker on June 28, 2022, 4:08 pm | Readers 7825

The mouse didn’t roar as the House of Commons sent the Protocol Bill on its way yesterday. “Only if enacted” said an uncharacteristically strident Jeffrey Donaldson, would the DUP go back to Stormont, advancing the curious argument that the Protocol Bill would “give back to the elected representatives in Northern Ireland the power to take the decisions that they have not been able to take.”(It would give them to Westminster not Stormont). Most MPs including the Conservatives who spoke, were …

Now we’ve got into an even bigger mess over human rights, courtesy of guess who?

Brian Walker on June 24, 2022, 12:59 pm | Readers 2454

If ever it needed reminding, the importance of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and its court in Strasbourg was underlined by the comments of the former Lord Chief Justice to MPs the other day. As it stands Sir Declan Morgan feared that Westminster’s latest attempt at a Legacy Bill would be struck down by the Court as in basic violation of human rights. But there is an even more fundamental dimension to this. ECHR rights are embedded in …

Former chief justice’s frustrations boil over at deadlock over the Legacy Bill. He tells MPs : “people need a kick up the bottom.”

Brian Walker on June 23, 2022, 2:10 pm | Readers 2191

The former Lord Chief Justice Sir Declan Morgan allowed his frustrations to boil over at a hearing of the Commons NI Committee yesterday examining the government’s Legacy bill. The earlier draft Bill dating back 12 years for a with a powerful Historical Investigations Unit at its core which had been finally endorsed by most local parties was abruptly scrapped by the British government and replaced by a radical new version for a de facto amnesty. Not that they admit to …

The spirit of “Derry Girls” lives in Jamie-Lee O’Donnell’s “The Real Derry”

Brian Walker on June 18, 2022, 2:37 pm | Readers 6329

Photograph Courtesy Channel 4 The Real Derry. Really? The first thing, Brian, is not to get too intense. The second is to resist abandoning all critical faculties. Jamie Lee is a great kid- sorry, young woman, as good a talker as her fictional self Michelle and a little less foul mouthed. That didn’t stop her old teacher greeting her warmly. The third is to admit I know very little about the very different home town of today. In Derry Girls …

There are great dangers in Northern Ireland’s entanglement in the Tory Brexit mess. They must extricate themselves fast

Brian Walker on June 15, 2022, 1:25 pm | Readers 6547

From his analysis of the Protocol bill, I want to pull out Rafael Behr’s comments on how little Northern Ireland registers in the wider media as itself, on merit . You can almost hear the groans from TV viewers,” Not Northern Ireland again” in a situation even more incomprehensible to them than the Troubles It isn’t every day that former prime ministers set old party enmities aside to deliver a unified message on a matter of national urgency. When John …