flags

The Commission on Flags, Identity, Culture and Tradition report now available…

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Commissions have a formula in Northern Ireland. They gather together the great and the good to analyse a problem in great detail. The commission spends several years and lots of cash engaging with all the key stakeholders, a final report is created and a series of recommendations are given, the report is discussed in-depth on the Nolan Show and Talkback before being ignored by the politicians. A few years go by and some crisis emerges. The solution proposed by politicians …

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Shared Space not Neutral Space: Looking Again at the Flag Issue

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Just when you think the flag issue has been done and dusted for another year, here it is back again – thanks to a Belfast City Council motion from the Alliance Party. The motion emerged at committee level at Belfast City Council and called for a public consultation on the flags. The flags issue has been predictably toxic this year, and has been marked by fairly dogmatic positions from a number of local parties. I took note of the Alliance …

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‘Transformative decisions on Northern Ireland have not been taken’, laments Peter Osborne

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Northern Ireland is more than 20 years into a 50 year peace process, which is being held back because government here has failed to take the radical transformative steps that are required.  This is the view of Peter Osborne, the former chair of the Community Relations Council, in the latest Forward Together podcast. Peter explains: “We are in a process that will last at least 50 years. Some people thought when the [Good Friday] agreement was signed, we had peace. …

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What should I tell my kids about the 12th July?

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My kids always ask me what the flags are about. They find the black ones scary. But this year they were very impressed by the bunting and fresh Union Jacks in our area. ‘It’s making me feel very British’, said my five year old. ‘Me too, it makes me proud to be British’, added the seven year old. ‘That’s interesting,’ I said, thinking about their Irish passports in the drawer. And the fact that they tried to turn bath water …

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I don’t want a shared future, I want a shared now

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You know summer is on the way in Northern Ireland, when we get 3 straight days of sunshine, prompting an outbreak of ‘taps aff’. Anyone unfortunate to witness the sight of some local men wandering the streets half naked, knows that a row about flags is just around the corner. A few weeks ago, just off the Ravenhill Road, a part of the world I call my home, four loyalist paramilitary flags went up on lampposts overnight, near a shared …

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There is nothing republican about tying identity to a tricolour

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“This decision will put back community relations…people are telling me their culture is being eroded, people are angry!” While this quote is reminiscent of the infamous flag protests of 2012, the main result of which being the increase in Jamie Bryson’s Twitter followers, the above comments are actually only weeks old and refer to a Councillor’s response to rumours that a Strabane St. Patrick’s Day parade would not allow the Irish tricolour to be flown. While Derry and Strabane District …

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Soapbox: Respecting the constitutional position endorsed by all the people 1998 is fundamental

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Trevor Ringland responds to Chris Donnelly’s proposal to co-opt the Irish Tricolour as the only way of resolving the raft of flag disputes. He argues that the issues left unresolved by the longest period of sustained political violence in Irish history cannot be addressed by returning to old arguments, but by creatively breaking new ground within the terms of the historic Belfast Agreement.

Recognising the Tricolour in NI is central to resolving flags dispute

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There will be no resolution to our vexed flags dispute unless and until the Irish National flag is afforded formal recognition within Northern Ireland. Three years ago today, I posted about a Platform for Change public discussion on the theme of Flags and Identity. Three years later and, apart from the loyalist flags protest dying out, nothing has really changed in northern Irish society in relation to the wider flags stand-off.

A history lesson from Ruth Patterson

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During this week’s Belfast City Council debate on the placing of the Union Flag on driving licences (something that the council has absolutely no control over), firebrand DUP Councillor Ruth Patterson decided to enlighten all those present with her interpretation of history and how it relates to the vexed subject of ‘flegs’. Scholars may be somewhat alarmed by Councillor Patterson’s interpretation of history as indeed may some of her creationist colleagues in the DUP who subscribe to the view that …

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The Flag Dispute – Anatomy of a Protest seminar – what, who, where, how and why? +audio +video

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The researchers from QUB’s Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation and Social Justice behind The Flag Dispute: Anatomy of a Protest report [PDF] held a seminar in Queen’s University this morning. [Gladys Ganiel blogged in detail about the report when it was published in December.] Two of the six researchers behind the report introduced the main findings. Paul Nolan quickly revisited the background to the protest (the “archaeology”). The PSNI gave researchers open access to operational logs from the …

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Ownership of leaflet that provided ‘catalyst’ for flag protests confirmed by DUP councillor

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Today on BBC Talkback, DUP councillor Lee Reynolds finally publicly confirmed that the DUP and UUP had paid for and distributed leaflets described by authors of the QUB report as having a ‘catalytic effect’ in the run-up to the city hall vote,” The report states “It was this, more than anything else, which inflamed the mood at that point” listen to ‘Ownership of leaflet that provided ‘catalyst’ for flag protests confirmed by DUP councillor’ on audioBoom // The protests as …

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Friday thread: Flags make a difference to how we think and feel…

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Via Peter Curran with a h/t to Phil Mac Giolla Bhain. Fascinating piece of quick and dirty research on the Scottish Sunday Politics Show regarding the effect of flag displays during a detailed online questionnaire from last week… It’s well worth watching the whole way through, but the findings themselves are at the beginning and are interesting enough on their own. They provide, I suspect some very important cues for a very complex soup of identities in modern Britain. Not …

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Kennaway: Resolving the Parading Conflict

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Brian Kennaway served on the Parades Commission from 2011-13-an essay similar to this has also been published in the Newsletter POLITICS Politics in Northern Ireland does not reflect any real understanding of what it means to be a political representative in a democratic society. When any politician is elected to represent a particular parliamentary constituency they are to represent the totality of that constituency, not a sectional interest within it and certainly not only those who may have voted for …

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McCann meets…@LADFLEG Part 2

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Pints nicely topped up, we began round two of our interview. I began by putting to them the criticism they get most that they are one sided and only go after Loyalists. Ron responded that there are plenty of occasions where LAD has criticised Sinn Fein citing the imagery they created when Gerry Kelly stepped in front a PSNI land rover last year. I followed up by asking them if they feel that they have ever stepped over the mark …

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Haass – Larkin unrepentant, Allister is on the attack, but where oh where is the DUP critique?

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Now hold on, the fat lady hasn’t sung yet.  Inevitably most early reaction to Haaas is about the overall political verdict without going  much into detail. And you know how we can’t be bothered  to go into detail if we can stick  it into them instead. But hush!  Jim Allister QC has spoken. People tend to overawed by Jim’s legal expertise. But lawyers are advocates – even when they’re not self -interested  politicians –  and so should be taken with …

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He’s back! Haass is returning to NI

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Who said Haassmas comes but once a year? Our very own international problem solver Dr Richard Haass will be returning to get a deal that eluded him earlier in the week. Question for our posters-if you were Richard Haass how would you approach these talks and what concessions would you seek to get from the parties? If I were him, I would get the British and Irish governments more involved, Haass enters the talks with no carrots and no sticks. …

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Cartoon – ChristmHaass carve-up

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Enjoy the cartoon and have a Merry Christmas and happy new year. Full acknowledgements to James Gillray and his infamous piece, ‘The Plumb Pudding in Danger’. Martin Rowson also gaves his take on it recently here. Morten Morland has his take on it with Cameron and Osborne here. Brian SpencerBrian is a writer, artist, political cartoonist and legal blogger. Actively tweeting from @brianjohnspencr. More information here: http://www.brianjohnspencer.com/ www.brianjohnspencer.com/