The Flag Issue/Cheist an Bratach/The Fleg Prooblum

[BonnieShels]

Nearly 2 years lads. It's been great craic all the same.

[DannyInvincible]

Thought I'd post this here rather than start a new topic (or put it in the eligibility thread) as it relates to the matter of identity and also looks quite closely at the Protestant Ulster-Scots community of the Laggan district in Donegal, who have already been mentioned earlier in this thread. It's a project called Border Lives (http://borderlives.eu/films-2/) that documents the lives, experiences and stories of people who live and have lived by the border between the two jurisdictions on the island of Ireland. I'd known of the project but only yesterday did I come across their 'Other Laggan (http://borderlives.eu/laggan/)' video, which happens to cover the area along the Donegal-Derry border where I grew up and call home. It looks at community relations, the traditions of the area's significant Ulster-Scots minority and also has some discussion on the common practice of smuggling back in the day.


http://vimeo.com/104510928


16 interviewees participate in the film, with some interviews from representatives of the Monreagh Ulster Scots Heritage Centre. This area also talks about the economic impact and customs. They talk a lot about Derry-Londonderry and the difference between where they lived compared to the violence and fear they saw in the city. Several people spoke of crossing the border to work in Derry, of bombscares, & of hijackings. Donegal Protestants talk about their attitudes towards the border and the troubles as well as representatives of the local clergy in terms of their hope for the future.


Some of the soundest, most respectable and God-fearing people were involved in smuggling. And if you lived near the border it was almost mandatory.

There are five other videos besides 'The Other Laggan', each looking at a different locality along the border, including those areas between Tyrone, Fermanagh and Armagh and the south. Just thought I'd post it here anyway as it might be of interest to any others whose lives were shaped by living by the border.

[DannyInvincible]

Willie Frazer has another Dublin march in the pipeline, assuming gardaí allow it to go ahead: http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/willie-frazer-plans-loyalist-dublin-march-during-february-1.2092936


Loyalist campaigner Willie Frazer will meet gardaí on Monday to discuss a planned march in Dublin.

Loyalists are planning a march through Dublin city centre this month to “demand justice” from the Government for people killed by the IRA in Border areas during the Troubles.

Mr Frazer will meet gardaí to discuss the route of the parade and any potential trouble that might arise from it.

He said the parade will take place on a Saturday and will go from O’Connell street to Leinster House, on Kildare Street.

Mr Frazer said “numbers is not a problem”, and expects a couple of hundred people will attend.

“I don’t think the majority of people in Dublin would be happy enough with us coming down. They’re not interested one way or the other. Unfortunately there will be a section there who will try to stir it up,” he said.

[DannyInvincible]

I'd already mentioned I watched it here (http://foot.ie/threads/126263-Photo-Thread?p=1809276#post1809276), but there's an interesting three-part documentary series on BBC iPlayer at the minute called 'Imagining Ulster' (http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b054yhkz/imagining-ulster-episode-1) in which William Crawley explores the diverse history of the Ulster(-Scots) identity. (It was shown on BBC 2 over the past couple of weeks.) Just thought I'd post a few words and thoughts on it and some related stuff here.

It puts the unionist/loyalist and Ulster Protestant community's popular dismissal of their shared sense of Irishness primarily down to the IRA's northern campaign in the latter half of the twentieth century. They sought to strongly disassociate themselves from it and so their identification as British strengthened as Ulster society became more polarised. Obviously, this wasn't the only factor that had an influence on the changing of self-perceptions; the northern and southern states both played up socio-cultural/religious differences to serve their respective political goals from the outset of partition.

Prior to this, however, cross-identification was more frequent; Protestant Ulster-Scots men like James Orr (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Orr_%28poet%29) at one time made up the membership of the United Irishmen, whilst the nineteenth century poet Thomas Beggs (http://www.newulsterbiography.co.uk/index.php/home/viewPerson/75), in summing up the dual nationality felt by the Ulster-Scots, wrote:


I love my native land no doubt,
Attached to her through thick and thin,
Yet though I'm Irish all without,
I'm every item Scotch within.

Even the staunchly-unionist Newsletter greeted Queen Victoria upon her 1849 visit to Belfast with a hearty "Céad míle fáilte!" It's a great shame the two "sides" later became so entrenched in their perceived differences, thus making finding common ground so difficult.

From a personal/local perspective, some intriguing footage of an unnamed and unidentified border crossing in the 1920s featured:

http://i218.photobucket.com/albums/cc12/poguemahone85/border_zpsc8rtj7l1.png

http://i218.photobucket.com/albums/cc12/poguemahone85/border2_zpslenjgeil.png

It's pure guesswork here, but the terrain and form of the road and surroundings looks remarkably familiar to me from (if my suspicion is correct) having passed over it hundreds, if not thousands, of times throughout my life. I'm pretty sure it's the Donegal-Derry border crossing on the Letterkenny Road after the Mullennan Road/Nixon's Corner intersection (if going towards Donegal, as the camera is pointing) and before Killea, which is up a hill at the end of the long straight. This is how that section of road looks in the modern-day for comparison: https://goo.gl/maps/8R9pO

http://i218.photobucket.com/albums/cc12/poguemahone85/border3_zpst4yxjn7n.png

The house on the right has received a bit of a face-lift since, by the looks of things, but, otherwise, the shape of the gate and walls, trees and hedges all look almost identical. Down the road slightly, on the behind-side of the camera, was the site of a fairly major British army checkpoint/barricade installation during the Troubles that remained in place up until such border structures were dismantled as part of the peace process.

I had mentioned in my other post how Crawley spoke of Britain's secret offer to agree to a united Ireland in principle during the Second World War on the condition that the neutral south joined up with the Allies. De Valera rejected the offer, however, on the basis that there was no guarantee of unity and due to the fact that the practical reality would still have to have been agreed by the "representatives of the government of Éire and the government of Northern Ireland". I came across the following Wikipedia page whilst doing some further reading around this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_neutrality_during_World_War_II

Finding out about the "Donegal Corridor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donegal_Corridor)" from this subsequent reading was something completely new to me. Indeed, its existence was also kept secret at the time.


The Donegal Corridor (Irish: Muinchinn Dúin na nGall) was a narrow strip of Irish airspace linking Lough Erne to the international waters of the Atlantic Ocean through which the Irish Government permitted flights by British military aircraft during World War II. This was a contravention of Irish neutrality and was not publicised at the time.

Fascinating stuff.

[DannyInvincible]

With thoughts of the border in mind, for some reason the notion of territorial ownership of Lough Foyle crossed my mind; I had a vague recollection that possession of Lough Foyle might have been under dispute between Ireland and the UK at some point in time, but had assumed that the Good Friday Agreement had cleared up outstanding matters on that front as far as the two states were concerned. I decided to investigate further, but, to my surprise, it transpires that the maritime boundaries in both Lough Foyle and Carlingford Lough are still officially "under dispute". The general debate over the territorial ownership of the waters around the north was actually very interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Ireland%E2%80%93United_Kingdom_border# Waters_around_Northern_Ireland


The exact division of territorial waters between Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland ('Southern Ireland' being coterminous with the territory of the modern-day Irish state) was a matter of some controversy from the outset. Section 1(2) of the Government of Ireland Act 1920 defined the respective territories of Northern Ireland and the then Southern Ireland as follows:


...Northern Ireland shall consist of the parliamentary counties of Antrim, Armagh, Down, Fermanagh, Londonderry and Tyrone, and the parliamentary boroughs of Belfast and Londonderry, and Southern Ireland shall consist of so much of Ireland as is not comprised within the said parliamentary counties and boroughs.

At the time of that Act, both Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland were to remain parts of the United Kingdom. Perhaps because of this, the Act did not explicitly address the position of territorial waters although Section 11(4) provided that neither Southern Ireland nor Northern Ireland would have any competence to make laws in respect of "Lighthouses, buoys, or beacons (except so far as they can consistently with any general Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom be constructed or maintained by a local harbour authority)”.

When the territory that initially was Southern Ireland ultimately became a separate self-governing dominion outside the United Kingdom known as the Irish Free State, the status of the territorial waters naturally took on a significance it had not had before. Northern Ireland's Unionists were conscious of this matter from an early stage. They were keen to put it beyond doubt that the territorial waters around Northern Ireland would not belong to the Irish Free State. In this regard, James Craig, the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland put the following question in the British House of Commons on 27 November 1922 (the month before the establishment of the Irish Free State):


Another important matter on which I should like a statement of the Government's intentions, is with regard to the territorial waters surrounding Ulster. Under the Act of 1920, the areas handed over to the Governments of Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland respectively, were defined as the six Parliamentary counties of Northern Ireland and the twenty-six Parliamentary counties of Southern Ireland. I understand there is considerable doubt in the minds of lawyers and others as to whether these Parliamentary counties carry with them the ordinary territorial waters, extending three miles out from the shore. It has been asserted in some quarters that the Parliamentary counties only extend to low water mark. That has been exercising the minds of a good many people in Ulster, and I shall be glad if the Government in due course will inform the House what is their opinion on the subject and what steps they are taking to make it clear..... Am I to understand that the Law Officers have actually considered this question, and that they have given a decision in favour of the theory that the territorial waters go with the counties that were included in the six counties of Northern Ireland?

In response the Attorney General, Sir Douglas Hogg, said that "I have considered the question, and I have given an opinion that that is so [i.e. the territorial waters do go with the counties]".

However, this interpretation that the territorial waters went with the counties was later disputed by Irish Governments. A good summary of the Irish position was given by the then Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, during a Dáil debate on 29 February 1972:


...[W]e claim that the territorial waters around the whole island of Ireland are ours and our claim to the territorial waters around Northern Ireland is based on the Government of Ireland Act of 1920. This Act is so referred to in the 1921 Treaty that the Northern Ireland which withdrew from the Irish Free State is identical with the Northern Ireland defined in the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, and defined as consisting of named counties and boroughs. It is, I think, common case between us that in English law the counties do not include adjacent territorial waters and, therefore, according to our claim these territorial waters were retained by the Irish Free State.

A particular dispute arose between the Government of the Irish Free State of the one part and the Northern Ireland and UK governments of the other part over territorial waters in Lough Foyle. Lough Foyle lies between County Londonderry in Northern Ireland and County Donegal in the then Irish Free State. A court case in the Free State in 1923 relating to fishing rights in Lough Foyle held that the Free State's territorial waters ran right up to the shore of County Londonderry. In 1927, illegal fishing on Lough Foyle had become so grave that Northern Ireland Prime Minister James Craig entered into correspondence with his Free State counterpart, W. T. Cosgrave. Craig indicated to Cosgrave that he proposed to introduce a Bill giving the Royal Ulster Constabulary powers to stop and search vessels on Lough Foyle. Cosgrave asserted all of Lough Foyle was Free State territory and that as such a Bill of that nature would be rejected by the Free State and its introduction would create "a very serious situation". Cosgrave then raised the matter with the British government.

It appears that the territorial waters generally are no longer disputed between the two states but the maritime boundary dispute between Ireland and the United Kingdom concerning Lough Foyle (and similarly Carlingford Lough) may still not have been settled. As recently as 2005, when asked to list those areas of EU member states where border definition is in dispute, a British Government minister responding for the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs stated: "Border definition (ie the demarcation of borders between two internationally recognised sovereign states with an adjoining territorial or maritime border) is politically disputed [between] Ireland [and the] UK (Lough Foyle, Carlingford Lough—quiescent)" It appears moves have been made on the Irish side to settle the issue. During Dáil debates on the Carlingford Fisheries Bill, a contributor to the debate stated that he welcomed "the Bill's aim of defining the area of jurisdiction over the Foyle." However, it appears that the Carlingford Fisheries Act 2007 ultimately remained silent on the point.

Lough Foyle's Wikipedia page contains the following info:


Lough Foyle is a disputed territory between the Republic of Ireland and the UK After the Partition of Ireland in 1922 both sides claimed that it was in their own territory. Although this dispute is still on going there are currently no negotiations as to its ownership. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office underlined its view on 2 June 2009 that all of Lough Foyle is in the United Kingdom, a spokesperson stating: 'The UK position is that the whole of Lough Foyle is within the UK. We recognise that the Irish Government does not accept this position...There are no negotiations currently in progress on this issue. The regulation of activities in the Lough is now the responsibility of the Loughs Agency, a cross-border body established under the Belfast Agreement of 1998.'

[Gather round]

I saw episodes one and three. Watchable enough but does he get a biscuit for every mention of the absurd Ulster-Scots? It's not a language, just Brendan Rodgers projected back into history ;)

Ye can have Lough Foyle and both its shorelines.

Etc etc.

[BonnieShels]

Not quite a flag issue but clearly another example of the apartheid and cultural erasure of Unionists:


A decision by Derry City and Strabane District Council to change the official name of Londonderry to Derry has been described as "sectarian" and "disgusting" by unionists.

The new move by the council was voted upon at the Guildhall yesterday evening.

It passed with the full support of Sinn Féin, the SDLP and the Independent councillors, despite opposition from the minority unionist block.

The council will now write to the Environment Minister Mark H Durkan of the SDLP, who is from the city itself, on how to go about the change.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2015/0724/716882-derry/

And summat from BBC:

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-foyle-west-33647867

[Charlie Darwin]

Nationalists can't sneeze without being accused of sectarianism by some in the unionist community.

[DannyInvincible]

I always understood that only the queen could authorise an official city name-change, which is why the city has a different official name from the city council; the council can democratically vote on its own name.

[Gather round]

Not quite a flag issue but clearly another example of the apartheid and cultural erasure of Unionists

Stop, man: take a breath of life and show a little respect :disdain:

It's a predictable overblown response to a predictable cliched stunt.

Either legislation (from WM or Stormont) or 'royal prerogative' (ie a Windsor reads out a speech written by a Tory minister) are needed to rename the city. Or we could redraw the border around it, I suppose.

I'd reclassify it as a biggish town personally.

[BonnieShels]

Ignoring the poster and of course ALL the comments underneath:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbiW0yrnsLY

Unionism would never stoop so low surely?

---

Stop, man: take a breath of life and show a little respect :disdain:

It's a predictable overblown response to a predictable cliched stunt.

Either legislation (from WM or Stormont) or 'royal prerogative' (ie a Windsor reads out a speech written by a Tory minister) are needed to rename the city. Or we could redraw the border around it, I suppose.

I'd reclassify it as a biggish town personally.

You have to admit regardless of the reasoning behind the call for the vote and change, the Unionust reaction is rather brilliant. Always measured and calculated. How in Gods name did they ever have the wherewithal to be "the People"?

[Gather round]

You have to admit regardless of the reasoning behind the call for the vote and change, the Unionist reaction is rather brilliant. Always measured and calculated. How in Gods name did they ever have the wherewithal to be "the People"?

1 Two sides of a predictable coin, as I said. Of course both camps' strategy is measured and calculated, with the intent of using a futile dispute to distract attention from more pressing issues.

2 They keep winning elections?

[BonnieShels]

1 Two sides of a predictable coin, as I said. Of course both camps' strategy is measured and calculated, with the intent of using a futile dispute to distract attention from more pressing issues.

2 They keep winning elections?

Yes. Winning.

One man, one vote and all that.

[Gather round]

Mopery alert Bonita.

OMOV has applied in all NI elections for decades.

[Eminence Grise]

Apart from the Europeans, of course. And the assembly. Other than that, you're one hundred and ten percent correct (adjusting the percentages for the obligatory historical gerrymander!)

[Wolfman]

Stop, man: take a breath of life and show a little respect :disdain:

It's a predictable overblown response to a predictable cliched stunt.

Either legislation (from WM or Stormont) or 'royal prerogative' (ie a Windsor reads out a speech written by a Tory minister) are needed to rename the city. Or we could redraw the border around it, I suppose.

I'd reclassify it as a biggish town personally.


1 Two sides of a predictable coin, as I said. Of course both camps' strategy is measured and calculated, with the intent of using a futile dispute to distract attention from more pressing issues.

2 They keep winning elections?


Mopery alert Bonita.

OMOV has applied in all NI elections for decades.

Based on gerrymandering and your patronising view.

[Gather round]

Apart from the Europeans, of course. And the assembly. Other than that, you're one hundred and ten percent correct (adjusting the percentages for the obligatory historical gerrymander!)

is that a gag, or do you nor understand how single transferrable vote systems work?

If the latter, the clue's in the name.

Standard practice for NI elections ≠ Gerrymandering

[Eminence Grise]

You said OMOV (one man one vote) applied in all NI elections - it doesn't. So, you were factually wrong.

And, yes, it was all couched in a gag - nothing gets past your eagle eyes!:rolleyes:

[Gather round]

Just think of me as your sub-editor.

NI elections featured plural voting (ie some people mainly business premise owners or university graduates had two or more) until the start of the Troubles in 1969. So 21 years after the practice was abandoned elsewhere in Britain.

So basically what everyone locally understands OMOV to mean.

[Eminence Grise]

I'd hate you to think that 'sub' was the first prefix anybody here would usually apply to you.

What part of the Assembly and European parliament elections using PR-STV are you mixing up with plurality/one man, one vote/first past the post? BTW, plural voting isn't plurality.

[Wolfman]

File under Ignore, EG.

[BonnieShels]

Ah come on GR, surely as a loyal man who had the wherewithal to leave his island you can see just how idiotic it all is from the PUL leaders [sic].