Discussion on a United or re-partitioned Ireland

[DannyInvincible]

I've just finished reading Kevin Meagher's book 'Why a United Ireland is inevitable'. It's well-argued on British disinterest and NI's structural economic weaknesses, less so on how scrapping the border will end the latter, and most significantly of all how you sell the idea to Unionists and others prepared to tolerate staying in the UK. He does point out that the NI party keenest on equal business tax rates across Ireland is actually the DUP, before describing Arlene Foster as an 'archpragmatist' ;)

Meagher wrote the following complementary piece a few days ago; 'Northern Ireland is leaving the union - it's only a question of when': http://www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2017/03/17/it-s-now-clear-northern-ireland-is-leaving-the-union


There was a telling exchange in the House of Commons recently. The Democratic Unionists' Nigel Dodds blamed Sinn Fein's call for a border poll for "uncertainty and division" in Northern Ireland. But it was Theresa May’s response and the manner in which she delivered it that was revealing. Tentative, hesitant even, she agreed that it was not right to have a referendum "at this stage".

There was no hearty commitment to the Union. No flourish thanking Dodds for his remarks, confirming how she cherishes Northern Ireland among our family of nations. No attempt at something perfunctory, even if just to butter-up the DUP and its eight crucial Westminster votes.

All Dodds received was a homily about the importance of "bringing the parties together" to restore power-sharing.

Welcome to Northern Ireland's endgame.

A perfect storm of interconnected issues is gathering: Brexit. The possibility of Scottish independence. Population change in Northern Ireland itself. All this is heaped over decades of British indifference about the place. It is a matter of when, not if, Northern Ireland leaves the Union.

We already do our best to pretend it doesn't exist. Team GB is the name given to our home Olympians. But it's the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Team GB&NI doesn't have the same ring, I guess. But all this is now starting to matter.

The pace of change in Northern Ireland is quickening. The implications of Brexit are already showing-up all its grisly flaws. The £600 million the province will lose when we quit the EU is bad enough. Never mind the existential drama about future border arrangements between Northern and Southern Ireland, one of those esoteric issues that is managing to outfox Whitehall's best brains.

It is simply no longer tenable for Westminster to maintain a self-denying ordinance about what all this now means. British parties need a policy on Northern Ireland's long-term future.

Let me help.

Northern Ireland doesn't have one. The recent assembly elections and the decline of the unionist vote serve to remind us that population change will deliver a majority for Irish unity in a few years' time anyway.

Sinn Fein was 1,100 votes off beating the Democratic Unionists into second place. When you add up the votes for parties supporting the Union and those who want a united Ireland, the gap was just 37,000 votes.

The last census showed 45% of the population is now Catholic (and, given the symbiotic connection with political allegiance, nationalist). Catholic children outnumber Protestants at every level of the education (http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/martina-devlin/radical-change-needed-as-protestants-play-catchup-to-catholics-in-education-34389606.html) system. This is a waiting game.

Northern Ireland was, notoriously, created as a Protestant-Unionist fief. Discrimination against Catholic-Nationalists was hard-wired into the settlement. Borders were gerrymandered to keep Unionists in control. The electoral franchise for local elections was contingent on property and business ownership. Poorer Catholics were second-class citizens.

Northern Ireland was Britain's dirty little secret. MPs in the House of Commons could not ask questions about what went on there. Northern Ireland was a 'reserved matter'.

Then the civil rights movement sprung up, demanding equality and fair treatment. They were literally beaten off the streets by the Royal Ulster Constabulary and their notorious reservists, the so-called 'B-Specials'.

The really unlucky ones were shot dead by the paras on 'Bloody Sunday'.

Then came the Troubles, that terrible euphemism for a secessionist guerrilla war between armed republicans, the British state and its loyalist lackeys.

So much British decency was squandered in the process.

We let 'securocrats' and the post-colonial military run rampant. Assassinations. Water-boarding. Indiscriminate killings. Collusion with loyalist death gangs. We went off a cliff edge in terms of what a democratic state should ever be allowed to do and keep the description.

That's why there will never be a reconciliation process in Northern Ireland. Britain's legacy is too black-hearted. The truth seeps out in long-forgotten official documents, or through the myriad of smaller enquiries that have taken place. It serves to eviscerate our sense of ourselves as a nation that upholds the rule of law and fair play.

So for the past two decades, British politicians have been mightily relieved to mouth platitudes about supporting the Good Friday Agreement, wallowing in the sheer relief that the bombings have stopped.

But that same agreement ensured Northern Ireland's very existence is time-limited. It placed Northern Ireland in an ante-chamber. Once there is majority support for Irish reunification, then the British government will facilitate that desire.

In reality, it has been government policy for much longer. As far back as 1989 when Margaret Thatcher's Northern Ireland secretary, Peter Brooke, proclaimed that Britain had no "selfish strategic or economic interest" in Northern Ireland.

What are unionists supposed to make of this? Britain is just marking time until that 51% of voters who want a united Ireland resolves the problem for us. It is simply not fair to leave them unprepared for this eventuality. It is a shaming abdication of political leadership.

The question of Irish reunification has become too big to ignore any longer. It is time for Westminster to be honest with unionists.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0_erqE47RA

We might be prepared to die in a ditch keeping Scotland, but MPs will not be changing their holiday plans to trudge the highways and byways of North Antrim of South Armagh making the case for Northern Ireland to remain. There will be an audible sigh of relief when it is gone.

Moreover, Irish reunification is now on the table as a realistic scenario for the first time since partition. It is now an evidence-based proposition, not an emotional spasm. A major international study (http://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/unification-of-ireland-could-bring-in-36-5bn-in-eight-years-1.2435505) shows the clear economic benefits of unity. The Irish media is currently abuzz (http://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/chris-johns-irish-reunification-the-logical-option-after-brexit-1.3005274) with commentary about the question of reunification. The main Irish opposition party, Fianna Fail, is even preparing a white paper (https://www.rte.ie/news/politics/2017/0313/859320-fianna-fail-united-ireland/) on the mechanics of achieving it.

This debate is taking place. We cannot let our peculiarly British hypocrisy continue.

We're just not that into Northern Ireland. Perhaps it's time we said so.

Kevin Meagher was special adviser to former Labour Northern Ireland secretary, Shaun Woodward. He is author of A United Ireland: Why unification is inevitable and how it will come about (https://www.bitebackpublishing.com/books/a-united-ireland) published by Biteback.

[backstothewall]

It's sure to be quite the week. No end of questions which will be answered on way or the other. first and foremost over the funeral

Will there be any IRA symbols? Beret and gloves on the coffin?
Is he to be buried in the republican plot?
Do the unionists go? Ian Paisley almost certainly will which puts his colleagues under pressure.
Does the British govt send someone. It would be unthinkable that the Theresa May wouldn't go to the funeral of a Scottish or Welsh FM.

The IFA have a big problem on their hands. How do they not have a minutes silence/applause on Sunday? But how likely is it to be respected...

And there is surely no possibility of getting a deal all Stormont this week with all this going on. Between them they will have to come up with a mechanism to buy more time

All bumps on the road between now and starting again next Monday morning

[CraftyToePoke]

Ruth Dudley-Edwards on BBC saying unity had never been further away due to him and his ilk and that unity would have to have grown organically through business links etc. Also she fully expects SF to now dwindle away particularly south of the border.

Of course, yes RDE, the Unionists would have coughed up gerrymandered supremacy after a few more civil rights marches, and SF vote share is evaporating election on election.

Jesus Christ, BBC finally give some time to NI and that's who they wheel out, absolutely woejus. Some dude from the Uni of Manchester or Liverpool (can't remember which) absolutely put her to shame.

[Charlie Darwin]

What show was that on, CTP?

Ruth Dudley-Edwards is a special class of troll. Her brand of nonsense will always have a receptive audience on both sides of the Irish Sea, unfortunately, and there'll always be people outraged enough to keep clicking.

[DannyInvincible]

She was on Newsnight (http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b08k9lpd/newsnight-21032017).

Ruth is as partisan as they come; a charlatan professing to be an historian. It is disappointing that she was given such a prominent platform and was presented to a British audience - who, as you say, CTP, get very little serious or in-depth insight into Irish affairs through their media - as a neutral or reasonable voice representing the Irish journalistic realm, but, of course, it's not as if she was chosen by the BBC at random.

Most serious pundits acknowledge that Sinn Féin are a growing force in the south and will be in government in the near future. Upper-class anglophiles like Ruth may find it a bitter pill to swallow, but Sinn Féin are increasingly the party of the younger voting generations. To suggest Sinn Féin's rise will just peter out in the south because Martin McGuinness has passed away is genuinely outlandish and lacks coherence as a point. Why would his death negatively affect Sinn Féin's southern momentum? What's the supposed link?

She also claimed there was no desire for unity in Ireland, north or south, right now. Where has she been? Recent polls in the south indicate majority support for unity.

Analyse controversial aspects of McGuinness' past, certainly - there's plenty in his more distant past that is worthy of critical reflection and the Coshquin "human proxy bomb" (https://ansionnachfionn.com/2015/10/24/the-long-shadow-of-the-human-proxy-bomb/) was a particularly troubling incident that occurred within hearing distance of my house and for which Martin almost certainly gave the go-ahead (or at least would have had the authority to stop, yet didn't) - but when, say, Tony Blair passes, I wonder will the BBC be interviewing surviving family members of Iraqis killed by the bombs and military actions sanctioned by Blair? Hardly. The hypocrisy and rank double standards of the British establishment media are hard to stomach.

Also, any analysis of McGuinness' life and past that omits mention of the repressive and impoverished circumstances that directly moulded him and led to him joining the IRA in the first place - unionist oppression and discrimination buttressed by the jackboots and guns of the British army - is sorely lacking in credibility. The primary motivating factor for most IRA volunteers joining up was simply a wish - in desperate circumstances - to defend and protect their families, friends, streets and communities against violent intrusions by sectarian state forces and against pogroms by belligerent loyalist mobs as the state stood idly by. As Eamonn McCann put it (http://indiamond6.ulib.iupui.edu:81/mccannreview.html):


Most who joined or came to support the IRA did so not out of a sacred duty to “free Ireland” or in pursuit of a historic mission to vindicate the Republic but because they wanted the bigot’s boot off their necks and the British Army off their backs. If these grievances could be remedied short of the achievement of the Republic, then there was the basis of a settlement within existing constitutional structures.

The appeal and sense of purpose, belonging, protection and solution presented by joining the IRA was greater for hundreds of young men and women in nationalist communities than what an inhospitable statelet and bent status quo had to offer them, which was poverty, alienation, insecurity, vulnerability, pain, frustration, anger, paranoia and panic. Joining the IRA was a rational response to their immediate material and structural conditions; it was a symptom of lived experience within a system that was, at best, neglectful or suspicious of the nationalist community and, at worst, hostile towards it on account of contrasting political, social, cultural and national outlooks.

Norman Tebbit made the claim earlier (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08hysx8) that the only reason the British army decided to pay the north of Ireland a visit was in order to protect people from the IRA. This was utter baloney. The British army were sent in with what Fintan O'Toole described (http://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/the-blunt-instrument-of-war-1.952132) as a "colonial mentality" to buttress the unionist status quo after the nationalist community revolted (through civil disobedience and rioting) against their condition en masse in the Bogside and elsewhere around the north in 1969. Operation Banner commenced in August of 1969 to quell the Battle of the Bogside. There was no seriously organised IRA at the time; just a few lads, organised in a ramshackle fashion, manning barricades around areas like Free Derry for defensive purposes. The Provos emerged months later in December of 1969 as an organisation initially focused on the more concerted defence of nationalist areas and only went on a higher-intensity offensive against what they and many within the nationalist community regarded as the occupying British army after 1971 and 1972 when incidents like the Ballymurphy massacre and Bloody Sunday, along with the British state's failed policy of internment without trial, considerably boosted support for and recruitment into the organisation. Norman Tebbit could do with some reading up on his history.

By the way, the other guest on Newsnight with Dudley-Edwards was Jonathan Tonge (https://twitter.com/jontonge?lang=en) from the University of Liverpool. He provided a welcome antidote to Dudley-Edwards' drivel.

[Gather round]

Meagher wrote the following complementary piece a few days ago; 'Northern Ireland is leaving the union - it's only a question of when': http://www.politics.co.uk/comment-an...ving-the-union


Which largely ignores the same big issues that the book does. To be fair to Meagher, he says in the introduction that it's a polemic more than a work of political science. He sees unionists largely as ciphers and grotesques and uses that as justification to avoid talking to them.

To be less fair, he isn't just a jobbing journo but ex-SPAD to Shaun Woodward as NI SoS. Potentially quite influential, but in practice the pair of them did basically nothing to achieve what KM says is inevitable. As I mentioned upthread, it's 100% certain in the same way as Labour leading a majority government or Liverpool (who KM supports) winning the EPL ;)



Why would his death negatively affect Sinn Féin's southern momentum?

Agreed, that doesn't make much sense. In a separate BBC interview this morning, RDE claimed that MMG was the brains of the outfit and with Adams as main/ sole front guy it will flounder. As if SF was just the two of them ;)


Also, any analysis of McGuinness' life that omits mention of the repressive and impoverished circumstances that directly moulded him and led to him joining the IRA in the first place

This is pretty overblown, history as Hovis advert. Violent protest against discrimination and intimidation was rational; a shooting war for 25 years after specific grievances (housing, electoral etc.) were addressed clearly something else.


The IFA have a big problem on their hands. How do they not have a minutes silence/applause on Sunday? But how likely is it to be respected...

There'll be a minute for Ryan McBride. They should justify not extending it to Marty because quite clearly it wouldn't be respected . I will probably be in the toilets or concourse at the time; my grudging respect for ex-paramilitaries doesn't extend to applauding them.

I expect P O'Neill will manage more shots than M O'Neill junior does on Sunday.


Also she fully expects SF to now dwindle away particularly south of the border

Wishful thinking probably. I suppose it depends largely on when/ whether they join or lead a government and then start getting blamed for running the country


SF vote share is evaporating election on election

It fell successively in the 2014, 2015 and 2016 NI elections...

[Wolfman]

Hmm, more factual inaccuracies. There's a surprise.

[Gather round]

Hmm, more factual inaccuracies. There's a surprise

Name them.

[DannyInvincible]

Do the unionists go? Ian Paisley almost certainly will which puts his colleagues under pressure.

Foster is reported to be "undecided" on attending: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/arlene-foster-should-go-to-martin-mcguinness-funeral-says-ira-victims-sister-ann-travers-35554737.html

It would be exceptionally poor form if she refused to attend the funeral of her deputy and it would rightly be perceived as another snub of the nationalist/republican community. It's unfortunate that she appears more concerned by losing some votes to hardliners than paying respect to a colleague - her deputy - and seems completely oblivious to the massive amount of respect that a gesture such as her mere attendance at the funeral would win in return from broader society. It might actually help the DUP blossom into a party that is seen as fit for dealing with the realities of the modern day. Clearly, she has learned very little from the election if she has to mull over whether or not it would be right for her to attend.


The IFA have a big problem on their hands. How do they not have a minutes silence/applause on Sunday? But how likely is it to be respected...

But I thought Windsor Park was now supposed to be a model beacon for this shared future they keep telling us about...

[DannyInvincible]

[Meagher] sees unionists largely as ciphers and grotesques and uses that as justification to avoid talking to them.

He actually used those words?


This is pretty overblown, history as Hovis advert. Violent protest against discrimination and intimidation was rational; a shooting war for 25 years after specific grievances (housing, electoral etc.) were addressed clearly something else.

The two-tiered unionist statelet was explicitly discriminatory of nationalists for decades. You can't change prejudiced mindsets and corresponding senses of grievance overnight. Besides, unionism later rejected (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulster_Workers%27_Council_strike) the possibility of power-sharing. The statelet's infrastructure was effectively discriminatory up until the Good Friday Agreement was agreed and safeguards against potential discrimination became enshrined in law. Even still, the concept of parity of esteem isn't being properly implemented. Sadly, the deep-rooted hostility of unreconstructed unionism towards Irish nationalism remains even today.

Addressing housing and electoral grievances didn't make life rosy for nationalists all of a sudden, and especially not for those in impoverished working-class areas like west Belfast and Derry's Bogside. There was still much to endure and resist. Throughout that quarter of a decade you mention, the British state and its agents were still killing and massacring innocent civilians. There was extensive state collusion with supposedly-illegal loyalist paramilitaries, there were extra-judicial killings emanating from a shoot-to-kill policy. Legalised death-squads (http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/11/21/ira-british-army_n_4314960.html) were operating from within the British army in the form of the the Military Reaction Force (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Reaction_Force), the Special Reconnaissance Unit (https://ansionnachfionn.com/2016/12/19/britains-acronyms-of-terror-general-frank-kitson-and-the-mrf-sru-and-fru/) and the Force Research Unit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_Research_Unit). There were false-flag operations (http://aldeilis.net/english/british-false-flag-terrorism-in-northern-ireland/), there was torture (https://twitter.com/PatrickCorrigan/status/722152432269135872) and abuse (https://ansionnachfionn.com/2017/01/27/former-british-army-commander-turned-politician-i-was-a-torturer-in-ireland/) (including waterboarding (https://ansionnachfionn.com/2017/02/02/waterboarding-and-electric-shock-torture-britains-dirty-war-in-ireland/)) of detainees, there was mass internment (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Demetrius) of "suspects" (who ended up being overwhelmingly nationalist by an approximate ratio of 19:1) without trial, curfew (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falls_Curfew) tactics were employed against the nationalist community, there was widespread use (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_bullet#Use_in_Northern_Ireland) of potentially-lethal (http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/issues/violence/rubberplasticbullet.htm) rubber and plastic bullets (such use would never ever have been tolerated by the powers that be upon communities in Britain), there was the (ab)use of civilians (https://twitter.com/DanielCollins85/status/766655010792935425) and communities (http://www.apnewsarchive.com/1992/Catholics-Say-British-Army-Uses-Them-as-Human-Shields-/id-9c372fb10f3306798a8ee8cbfba9c441) as "human shields", we had widespread intimidation (https://libcom.org/files/low-intensity%20operations.pdf) and harassment (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ4iMXfxCEw) of nationalist individuals and communities and there was the blowing up (https://twitter.com/DanielCollins85/status/715564117294260224) of border roads (https://twitter.com/DanielCollins85/status/716477264792264704) and bridges (http://www.borderroadmemories.com/) (thus depriving many communities of their social and economic potential). Weirdly, even black propaganda was utilised by the British state as a weapon (https://ansionnachfionn.com/2015/10/05/satanic-masses-devil-worshippers-and-british-dirty-war-propaganda/) against the local population. And so on (http://thegreatrefusal.tumblr.com/post/131217896155/corbyn-the-ira-mock-outrage-faux-concern)... And all this within a supposed modern liberal democracy. :rolleyes:

The mutually-agreed compromises negotiated and secured via a long and hard-won peace-process culminating in the 1998 Agreement included power-sharing and all-island institutions, equality, inclusivity, human and minority rights protections, recognition for the differing cultural identities and of the validity of the contrasting political aspirations of the people in the north of Ireland, parity-of-esteem, the demilitarisation of the region, the release of paramilitary prisoners, a constitutional blue-print for Irish unity whilst recognising the principle of consent and a new 50-50 cross-community police force. It's of little surprise that only then did armed resistance cease.


There'll be a minute for Ryan McBride. They should justify not extending it to Marty because quite clearly it wouldn't be respected . I will probably be in the toilets or concourse at the time; my grudging respect for ex-paramilitaries doesn't extend to applauding them.

No time for reconciliation?

[DannyInvincible]

I'll post this here seeing as we've been discussing McGuinness and the circumstances that made him who he was. It's a really excellent piece by Philip O'Connor (https://twitter.com/philipoconnor) looking at the Irish media's response to his death: http://ourmaninstockholm.com/2017/03/21/there-was-only-ever-one-martin-mcguinness/


In the rush to eulogise Martin McGuinness on his passing, it is fascinating to observe the discomfort as Ireland’s media outlets wrestle with how to remember a man they despised for the most part, but who ultimately brought peace to our island.

The laziest, yet most common knee-jerk reaction is to suggest that there were two Martin McGuinnesses – the post-ceasefire peacemaker and politician on one side, and the IRA leader on the other.

It is the conclusion drawn by those who still, almost 20 years after the Good Friday Agreement, cannot even begin to understand why a young man like McGuinness would become a high-ranking IRA man and wage a guerrilla war against the British for so long and in such a bloody fashion.

It says more about the writer than it does about their subject.

It says that they have never really addressed the root cause of violent republicanism – that is, the state violence perpetrated on a minority whose human rights were constantly suspended, ignored and denied.

It says that they haven’t looked into the Bogside – or, for that matter, The Diamond – and tried to understand the political forces that spilt the community in Derry and turned them against one another.

It says that what they want is a clinical, road-to-Damascus-style conversion where the savage learns to speak and thus realises his potential, becoming acceptable to polite society in the process.

Because in Ireland, that makes us feel better about how we abandoned our brothers and sisters in the North – Catholic and Protestant, unionist and Nationalist – for so long.

In Britain, it allows our neighbours to ignore their role in the disaster of their rule.

McGuinness was undoubtedly a violent man in command of a group of violent men.

His opponents on the battlefield – the streets of Derry – were equally violent, but their violence was backed by the Crown and made them all but immune from prosecution or consequence.

When both sides had enough, much was made of the conversion of the “men of violence”, a term exclusively employed to describe the IRA, the INLA, the LVF, the UVF and other armed groups.

Little or nothing was said about the complicity of the state forces of the United Kingdom (and to a lesser extent the Republic of Ireland), and their role in the tragedy of those decades.

In our islands we wish to consign the Troubles to history, blithely ignoring that we continue to visit injustices – sometimes violently – on sections of our populations.

Whether it be the economic violence of austerity or the physical violence of state brutality, we still divide into “us” and “them”.

The reason we try to make this distinction is that we cannot countenance the fact that the “men of violence” were exactly like us – mostly fathers, brothers and sons, but also mothers, sisters and daughters who reached a point where they believed that peaceful protest was no longer effective.

We abhor their actions, but then we turn on the news to hear of a wedding bombed in Afghanistan and we feel nothing.

Beware the commentary that would simplify and attempt to remove Martin McGuinness from his context, and that would somehow suggest that he had a monopoly on violence, or that the violence of the state is automatically justified and justifiable.

There was never two Martin McGuinnesses – he was both a violent man and a skilled political operator.

So too was Nelson Mandela, another man once considered a terrorist only to be all but absolved of his sins in peace and, ultimately, in death.

Eventually the time came when both of them realised that the ballot box was indeed more useful than the Armalite.

But it is probably fair to say that, if either of them were ever again faced with the same level of cruelty or injustice being visited on their people, they would not have hesitated for one second to take up their arms again.

Nelson Mandela didn’t change.

Martin McGuinness didn’t change.

We did.

[Wolfman]

Name them.
Re-read your last post!

Two glaring errors.

[DannyInvincible]

Will there be any IRA symbols? Beret and gloves on the coffin?

It seems not: http://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/no-paramilitary-trappings-at-mcguinness-funeral-1-7879517


A church spokesman said that while a flag draped coffin was to be expected, there would be no other visual reminders of the senior Sinn Fein figure’s IRA past.

The service is due to take place at St Columba’s, Long Tower at 2pm. It is expected to be one of the biggest funerals ever held in the city.

...

However, the church spokesman said on Wednesday that assurances had been sought by the church and had been given by those organising the funeral.

“I can assure you there are no paramilitary trappings,” he told the News Letter.

“I am told that if there is a guard of honour it will be MLAs and there are no other trappings that I am aware of.

“We have asked about that and have been assured.”

[BonnieShels]

A church spokesman said that while a flag draped coffin was to be expected, there would be no other visual reminders of the senior Sinn Fein figure’s IRA past.

Hmmmm...

[DannyInvincible]

Hmmmm...

The Irish tricolour is a paramilitary trapping, don't you know?... :rolleyes:

Subtle; it hadn't even struck me when I first scanned through the piece, but hardly surprising considering it's the Newsletter.

[BonnieShels]

I saw it instantly. I have a sixth (county) sense for unionist underhandedness.

[Gather round]

The Irish tricolour is a paramilitary trapping, don't you know?... :rolleyes:

Subtle; it hadn't even struck me when I first scanned through the piece, but hardly surprising considering it's the Newsletter

If I didn't know better I'd say you boys were a wee bit paranoid ;)

[gastric]

Loving the discussion on here even respecting gather round's opinions!. I have been living away from Ireland a long time, so I am not always au fait with present sentiments on Northern Ireland. Whilst polls suggest a majority in the ROI would support a united Ireland, would that not drop dramatically due to economic factors and potential violence? I ask because if I had the opportunity to vote, whilst emotionally committed to a united Ireland, practically I could not vote for something that might derail the south and economically compromise my family's future and safety. Am I completely out of touch or is this a sentiment shared by others?

[DannyInvincible]

Loving the discussion on here even respecting gather round's opinions!. I have been living away from Ireland a long time, so I am not always au fait with present sentiments on Northern Ireland. Whilst polls suggest a majority in the ROI would support a united Ireland, would that not drop dramatically due to economic factors and potential violence? I ask because if I had the opportunity to vote, whilst emotionally committed to a united Ireland, practically I could not vote for something that might derail the south and economically compromise my family's future and safety. Am I completely out of touch or is this a sentiment shared by others?

Your fears are valid, sure, and don't be afraid to express them because it's good and important to have the debate. Unity-proponents have to be prepared for challenges and criticisms. Nevertheless, I'm confident that proponents can win the economic argument convincingly (http://foot.ie/threads/178393-Discussion-on-a-United-or-re-partitioned-Ireland?p=1879265&viewfull=1#post1879265). I posted the following up-thread, which may be of interest:


David McWilliams soundly dismantled the economic case for partition/unionism in a prospective piece he wrote just before the Brexit referendum: http://www.davidmcwilliams.ie/2016/05/16/daily-note-a-nation-once-again-dont-write-it-off

An in-depth analysis by another economist, Michael Burke*, found that unity could benefit the island by €35.6 billion over eight years: http://prcg.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Modeling-Irish-Unification-Report.pdf

(*The study in the second link there, which was peer-reviewed, was actually by Professor Kurt Huebner from Vancouver University; not Michael Burke. My mistake.)

In a recent poll, a slight majority of those who gave either a positive or negative response to the proposal posed still said they'd back unity even if it cost €9 billion a year: http://foot.ie/threads/219060-2017-NI-Assembly-Election?p=1910038&viewfull=1#post1910038

NeverFeltBetter also posted the following a while back, which is relevant:


I recall that cross-border survey done in 2015 asked the "Do you support Irish unification?" question and then "Do you support Irish unification if it would result in increased taxation?" and there was a noticeable drop between answers that's telling. When dealing with reunification as a distant abstract ideas Irish people take a romantic course and are all for it, but if it every was seriously put to a vote, it wouldn't take all that much for many people to be put off, especially if fears of an economic horror show or violent Unionist resistance became part of the narrative.

I still think it would pass in the south, and wouldn't even be especially close. The SSM vote showed the electorate can decisively ignore negative campaigning on occasion. But I doubt it would be a 60+% landslide affair.

I suspect he was referring to these surveys: http://www.rte.ie/news/primetime/2015/1104/739633-prime-time-cross-border-poll-test-page/

I posted details up-thread a while back of another interesting poll conducted in the south post-Brexit that saw two thirds of those surveyed say they'd back unity tomorrow:


I'd imagine most people in the south are knowledgeable and well-educated enough to know that unity will entail merging with another two million or so people presently residing in another jurisdiction, just over half of whom would identify as British/unionist and may not be too keen on the idea of unity right now. That's just basic Irish history/knowledge, no?

For what it's worth, there's further info on the poll and the question posed here: http://www.redcresearch.ie/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Paddy-Power-29th-July-2016-Poll-Report.pdf

http://i218.photobucket.com/albums/cc12/poguemahone85/redc_zps5exkrux8.png

I think the significant thing about this poll is that a very considerable majority would support unity right now; usually when people express positive sentiment for unity in these types of polls, it's a distant desire for a vague emotional or romantic concept. That's why I think Brexit is a game-changer. The above poll was conducted shortly after the Brexit referendum and people in the south have clearly reacted to the abrupt change of situation and mood in the north. Southerners and nationalists in the north are now taking the idea of unity in the short-term, as an antidote to Brexit, very seriously.

With regard to potential violence arising from loyalist objection, unity will also likely entail making constitutional changes that will hopefully reassure unionists/loyalists and help them feel at home in the new Ireland rather than have them feel like aliens in a nationalist-centric state.

Interestingly, the UK's Brexit decision has actually led to some unionists in the north of Ireland feeling a bit alienated now within a UK that is set to leave the EU (within which they wish to remain); some are now openly discussing and genuinely considering potential Irish unity (and remaining within the EU that way) as a solution (http://foot.ie/threads/178393-Discussion-on-a-United-or-re-partitioned-Ireland?p=1877622&viewfull=1#post1877622) to their woes. See:


This was an email sent by a (former?) unionist to Ian Paisley: https://twitter.com/LyraMcKee/status/746821465601900545

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cl0-J3-XEAA7rYR.jpg

Some other examples of unionists declaring themselves open to a border poll:
https://twitter.com/minxycats/status/746268093379403776
https://twitter.com/mauricerkelly/status/746322113926205440
https://twitter.com/belfastbarman/status/746207972477403139
https://twitter.com/ihiccupalot/status/746205738524020736
http://sluggerotoole.com/2016/06/25/did-brexit-just-solve-the-irish-question/#comment-2749803344
http://sluggerotoole.com/2016/06/25/did-brexit-just-solve-the-irish-question/#comment-2750382612

The prospect of Scotland leaving the UK has also increased unionist uncertainty within the present arrangement. Unionists' strongest cultural ties are to Scotland really - they're Ulster-Scots (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulster_Scots_people), after all - rather than to England and/or Wales.

[DannyInvincible]

Sam McBride (https://twitter.com/SJAMcBride), political editor of the Newsletter, attempts to explain why Arlene has been unsure about attending Martin's funeral: https://twitter.com/SJAMcBride/status/844632379557863437 and https://twitter.com/SJAMcBride/status/844633247992762368


Arlene Foster's uncertainty is likely due to both political & theological debate. Politically, many DUP supporters loathe McGuinness (1/2)

Theologically, a swathe of DUP oppose any attendance at Mass. For that reason, Mrs Foster paid respect to Cardinal Daly before funeral (2/2)

As another tweeter says there, a leader's gotta lead though, right?

Meanwhile, McBride's article on how unionist leaders may soon experience nostalgia for McGuinness makes for interesting reading: http://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/sam-mcbride-having-despised-him-some-unionists-may-soon-be-nostalgic-for-mcguinness-1-7876915


It once would have been unthinkable, and even today virtually no unionist politician will publicly say it, but there may very soon come a time when unionism’s political leaders look back on Martin McGuinness’s final years with something approaching nostalgia.

Just as such a suggestion about Ian Paisley would have seemed absurd for most of his life, yet Sinn Fein now holds up his time in office as a model of harmonious government, so an IRA commander who for most of his life embodied what unionists feared and hated may in death be remembered more fondly.

IRA victims will certainly feel no warmth for what went before – McGuinness’s time on the IRA Army Council coincided with some of the Troubles’ worst atrocities.

And even after they accepted that Mr McGuinness was no longer involved in terrorism, unionists profoundly disagreed with his republican politics which in later years attempted to take Northern Ireland out of the UK via a political route.

But over almost a decade in Stormont Castle the former IRA commander demonstrated a commitment to devolution which is not shared by everyone in Sinn Fein.

His sudden illness has coincided with an abandonment of the strategy over which he presided.

That McGuinness philosophy viewed the institutions of the 1998 Agreement as sacrosanct; they were not a bargaining chip, no matter how great the political crisis.

It was the clarity of that stance, at least in part, which caused Arlene Foster to so confidently, yet so disastrously, misread the republican mood three months ago when she suggested that Mr McGuinness may be “playing a game of chicken” with his calls for her to step aside over the RHI scandal.

Within hours of Mrs Foster’s comment, a gaunt and visibly ill Mr McGuinness announced his resignation.

With that decision to collapse Stormont – made while battling terminal illness and at a time when Gerry Adams (who had earlier allegedly overruled Mr McGuinness when he struck a deal with the DUP on welfare reform) was increasingly involving himself in the minutiae of the situation – the decade-long McGuinness strategy was abandoned overnight.

Electorally, the move was spectacularly vindicated, with Sinn Fein coming within a seat of the DUP and depriving unionism of its Stormont majority for the first time in the history of the state.

That election, along with Brexit and the push for an independence referendum in Scotland, have awakened dormant nationalists and made the Union appear less secure than it did a year ago.

Struggling to react to the new reality, a complacent unionism – and in particular Arlene Foster – has struck the wrong tone, contributing to the growth of Sinn Fein’s vote.

Having played a key role in stabilising Northern Ireland over the last decade, suddenly Mr McGuinness’s final political act has contributed to the sort of political and constitutional uncertainty for which he strove during his earlier years in the IRA.

On the day of Mr McGuinness’s death, Sinn Fein was negotiating over whether it will even return to Stormont. If it does not, then a return to direct rule from Westminster appears inevitable.

While that may build resentment within nationalism and thus increase support for Irish unity, it is an abandonment of Sinn Fein’s 20-year-old strategy of transferring as much power as possible back from London to the island of Ireland.

In having placed such store in Stormont and skilfully worked the system, Mr McGuinness became a lynchpin of the new Northern Ireland establishment.

That is an extraordinary thing for a man born into a working-class Catholic family in the Bogside in 1950.

...

[Wolfman]

Cue meltdown from GR & his ilk.

And Danny, you are wasted on here, you really are.
Republicanism is calling out literally to replace its old, less 'sophisticated' guard...
You should be standing for The Dail, or even in the Gerry Fitts Parliament...
Not sure how well you'd communicate this level of knowledge or detail, but you could educate so many people, on both sides of the fence!

[DannyInvincible]

So, I see Foster will attend the funeral, after all: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-39356365

It's the right decision, but it's a pity she either had to genuinely mull over it or had to give the impression of indecision so as to reassure DUP hardliners.


And Danny, you are wasted on here, you really are.
Republicanism is calling out literally to replace its old, less 'sophisticated' guard...
You should be standing for The Dail, or even in the Gerry Fitts Parliament...
Not sure how well you'd communicate this level of knowledge or detail, but you could educate so many people, on both sides of the fence!

Heh, thanks, Wolfie. I appreciate your words and I've considered getting into politics, but I'm just not sure I could toe a party line. :)

[Gather round]

Thanks to Gastric and BacksToThe Wall for the welcome above, returned in kind :lashes:

I'll respond/ meltdown later but in the meantime here are some possible Indy role models for Danny's foray into politics:

http://www.irishnews.com/picturesarchive/irishnews/irishnews/2016/05/25/174305035-c7caea8c-3e3d-44d9-9ac1-4afe061fffa6.jpg

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/article31207123.ece/ALTERNATES/h342/2015-05-09_new_9371452_I1.JPG

[Gather round]

.....

[Gather round]

And of course Jonny Bell (here just about to do something inappropriate on the Nolan show:

http://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/660/cpsprodpb/8169/production/_92992133_1bell.jpg

[Wolfman]

I'll respond/ meltdown later but in the meantime here are some possible Indy role models for Danny's foray into politics


Please Don't.
They were just being 'polite', humouring you!!

[backstothewall]

Please Don't.
They were just being 'polite', humouring you!!


https://youtu.be/NfbQDW2HvrY

[BonnieShels]

More discussion in the "Paper of Record"...


There is a hint of the 1970s about the Republic’s new debate on a united Ireland – specifically the years from 1974, when loyalism and unionism came together to wreck experiments in powersharing with a cross-Border dimension, then scratched their heads over what to do next.
All sorts of notions were given serious consideration, from reuniting ancient Ulster to doomsday scenarios of repartition. But the main theme to emerge was an independent Northern Ireland, in forms ranging from dominion status to a unilateral declaration of independence (what today would be called a hard Nirexit.)
For a brief moment in 1975 this pan-unionist movement captured the ballot box and the street. But it could not be sustained, because the unionist population found all these ideas implausible, undesirable or ridiculous.
Now it is the South’s turn for constitutional over-creativity. An independent Northern Ireland has been mentioned, as has joint authority, but the main theme to emerge is of Northern Ireland surviving in some sort of federal or quasi-federal united Ireland.
Gerry Adams has said this could be transitional or a permanent arrangement. Micheál Martin says it would be “a reverse to where we are now”, with London and Dublin swapping roles.
Autonomous region
It is not unusual for a country to have one special autonomous region, although calling it a federation might be rather grand. What makes the idea of Northern Ireland’s continued existence implausible is that, as a region, it would have no purpose.
A federal Ireland is generally proposed as a concession to unionists, but as it can only come about through unionists being outvoted in the North, what autonomy would they have?


No consideration is being given to how Northern nationalists might feel, having finally reached the promised land only to find themselves still stuck in a regional stalemate. Presumably they would just walk away from Stormont, as Sinn Féin has already done. What then?
Neither community has been asked for their view – at least not since the mid-1980s, when Adams ditched Sinn Féin’s policy for a four-province federation because it had no electoral appeal.
If nobody in the North really wants a federal Ireland, its attraction to the South is clearly the preservation of a cordon sanitaire around a lunatic asylum.
Loyalist violence
Concerns have been raised about the threat of loyalist violence, although Southerners should note this is barely an issue for Northern nationalists. Sinn Féin has persuaded its supporters that Britain directed every act of loyalist violence throughout the Troubles, so an end to British rule means no more loyalism – all rather convenient, to put it mildly.
A better reason for optimism is the example of the 1970s, when loyalists considered then abandoned every scenario they could think of for resisting Irish unity by force – and that was when they were at their strongest, with tacit support from the unionist electorate.
All loyalists do now is wreck their own neighbourhoods and shoot each other, while unionism looks the other way. Their likeliest future in a united Ireland mirrors Dublin’s criminal gangs.
Southerners need to accept that if unity happens, the asylum wall comes down. Northern Ireland was created to encompass a British majority inside the UK. This is no more of a “sectarian gerrymander” than any nation drawing a border around itself.
Nevertheless, if the majority evaporates, the Border becomes unsustainable. Nationalists will want it gone and unionists will see no point to it. The Northern Ireland identity is associated with centrist voters, and although they will be the decisive demographic in a Border poll, there are not numerous enough for their identity to prevail.
The likeliest outcome of this will be a unitary state, with a national minority that looks to the neighbouring state – a common scenario across the world. In the proportions applicable to a united Ireland, which would have a 15 per cent British minority, a standard political system emerges: the bulk of the population votes along conventional left-right lines, while the minority elects a purely ethnic party or bloc and hopes to hold the balance of power.
Unless Ireland wants to deal with the DUP forever, one detail that might be considered is a Scottish-style top-up list in elections, which should encourage unionists to vote for multiple parties. Chances are all these parties would still be unionist, however, and at some point they will be in a position to make demands.
Last December, in a snap election, Macedonia’s conservative and social democrat parties won 51 and 49 seats respectively. Neither can form a government without the Albanian ethnic bloc, whose three parties represent a 20 per cent national minority.
The Albanian price for coalition is nationwide recognition of their language - an argument Northern Ireland will find familiar.
The social democrats have agreed, so the conservatives have brought protesters onto the streets, while the ex-conservative president has refused to summon a government, causing a constitutional crisis.
This is the test Irish unity presents: when the Macedonian moment arrives, will the British minority get its way?

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/united-ireland-most-likely-option-if-unionists-outvoted-1.3020376

[osarusan]

It's the right decision, but it's a pity she either had to genuinely mull over it or had to give the impression of indecision so as to reassure DUP hardliners.

Politically she had no option really, especially with people like Blair going too.

Personally, given the IRA shot and wounded her father, and bombed a schoolbus while she was on it, I can see why it isn't something that appeals to her, quite apart from what DUP hardliners might think.

But a large part of politics is doing stuff and meeting people you'd much rather not.

[Gather round]

Politically she had no option really, especially with people like Blair going too

Agreed. I don't like reducing everything to soundbite, but you feel the hand of history on Arlene's shoulders. Or somesuch shi*te


You can't change prejudiced mindsets and corresponding senses of grievance overnight

You can expect those changes in rather less than 25 years...


Besides, unionism later rejected the possibility of power-sharing. The statelet's infrastructure was effectively discriminatory up until the Good Friday Agreement was agreed and safeguards against potential discrimination became enshrined in law

Whataboutery. The lack of forced coalition local government doesn't justify a generation-long shooting war.


Sadly, the deep-rooted hostility of unreconstructed unionism towards Irish nationalism remains even today

Agreed. That's why nationalism needs to look to the future and be imaginative.


Addressing housing and electoral grievances didn't make life rosy for nationalists all of a sudden

I know. Who said otherwise? Enduring poverty etc. doesn't justify a generation-long shooting war etc.

I'm not blaming nationalism alone, just judging it (given the standards of the time) by the same low standards as the unionists and the Brits. None of them were an advert for liberal democracy.


It's of little surprise that only [in the late 90s] did armed resistance cease

Lack of inclusivity, validity, parity and other largely vague abstracts doesn't justify a generation-long shooting war. We probably won't agree on this...

[Wolfman]

So essentially you're saying nothing new.
Quelle surprise.

[backstothewall]

Lack of inclusivity, validity, parity and other largely vague abstracts doesn't justify a generation-long shooting war. We probably won't agree on this...

The problems in 1960s NI weren't vague or abstract. They were pronounced and intolerable.

Nationalism didn't start with the intention of violence. There were 40 years when nationalists did nothing about the conditions there were living in. Despite those conditions the border campaign got no support and fizzled out, and in 1962 the IRA had to abandon military operations.

Another 5 years passed before the NICRA was set up by Nationalists and Unionists, and following the example of Dr. King began using exclusively peaceful and democratic means to try to bring change. The old republicans from the War of Independence days were reduced to muttering in the corners of pubs that these young fools are living in a dream world, that the Unionist establishment would never give in to their (very reasonable) demands, that if this place was to have any change it would have to be forced at the business end of a rifle. And how right they were.

NICRA went on their marches, they brought Ulster to the crossroads, and they got their heads stoved in by the RUC and B Specials. Peaceful protest was met at every turn with violence from the state forces. By 1969, with entire nationalist districts defenceless against attacks from mobs of loyalists, B Specials and RUC, with refugees streaming over the border, with the NICRA being met with batons and water cannon everywhere they went, with "I Ran Away" being painted on the gable ends of houses, and with the old lads in the corners of the pubs being proven entirely correct, turning to violence was easily justified.

Just as in South Africa, just as in any number of places before that, just as in Palestine today, and just, unfortunately, as in many places yet to come, communities have a right to defend themselves. Hackneyed platitudes about violence never being the answer to any problem only work until a mob is preparing to burn your house down. Or until someone is ploughing a car through pedestrians on a bridge. Or until you are being lined up to be shot by Serbian soldiers. For some problems violence is an answer. For others it is the only answer.

And of course awful things happened on all sides, but people like Martin McGuinness picked up the gun at a time when the circumstances he was living in made it an answer to a problem which peaceful action had failed to resolve. Thankfully once those circumstances could reasonably hope to be changed we had people like McGuinness to convince others to put it back down again.

[DannyInvincible]

A very moving day in Derry today. I've never before seen the Bogside so thronged with people. There were tricolours draped from house windows throughout the area. It was probably the closest thing that Derry has ever had to a state funeral.

http://i218.photobucket.com/albums/cc12/poguemahone85/IMG_20170323_134358_zps1j260q7l.jpg
Looking up Westland Street from the Bogside and towards the approaching funeral cortège. The famous Bogside Inn is to the left and the Bogside Artists' Annette McGavigan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annette_McGavigan) mural - 'The Death of Innocence' - is on the right. The Bloody Sunday commemorative mural (http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/bogsideartists/mural4/) is also visible at an angle.

http://i218.photobucket.com/albums/cc12/poguemahone85/IMG_20170323_135205_zpsnkbohof5.jpg
The cortège approaches the junction at Free Derry Corner with the 'Battle of the Bogside Petrol Bomber' mural (http://irishstudies.sunygeneseoenglish.org/the-petrol-bomber/) in the background.

http://i218.photobucket.com/albums/cc12/poguemahone85/IMG_20170323_140029_zpsrazvedk2.jpg
The procession passes the back of Free Derry Corner (on the left), which has a tricolour flying from it at half-mast. A giant screen, on which the funeral procession and ceremony were broadcast live to the crowd, was erected on the front-side of Free Derry Corner.

And yet there wasn't a PSNI officer in sight. There was probably a concern that such a presence would provoke more trouble than it might possibly prevent. Anyhow, the whole procession was marshalled entirely by volunteers. In fact, the only police presence I saw in the city all day were uniformed gardaí on marked motorbikes waiting outside the City Hotel and Guildhall to escort southern dignitaries in black D-reg SUVs with tinted-glass windows. Rather extraordinary to see active gardaí on duty north of the border. I had to take two looks to be sure my eyes weren't deceiving me. Maybe unity is closer than we think! ;-D


Politically she had no option really, especially with people like Blair going too.

Personally, given the IRA shot and wounded her father, and bombed a schoolbus while she was on it, I can see why it isn't something that appeals to her, quite apart from what DUP hardliners might think.

But a large part of politics is doing stuff and meeting people you'd much rather not.

Blair didn't actually attend in the end and had apparently never planned to: http://www.derryjournal.com/news/tony-blair-to-miss-funeral-of-martin-mcguinness-1-7881106


Former British prime minister Tony Blair will definitely not be attending the funeral of the Sinn Fein leader he considers vital to realising one of his own “greatest achievements”.

A number of media reports have suggested the ex-Labour leader would be in Derry today to pay his respects to Martin McGuinness – the pair having worked closely during the peace process and negotiations leading to the Good Friday Agreement.

However, a spokeswoman for Mr Blair said those reports were compiled “without asking us first whether he would be”.

The spokeswoman said Mr Blair’s staff would have been happy to clarify that he would not be attending if requested to do so, and said that media outlets had “erroneously reported that he would be attending without bothering to check the facts first”.

Foster's eventual decision to attend was warmly welcomed, and indeed applauded (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-39369960), by those inside the church (I didn't make it inside myself given the fact the church and grounds were enveloped by literally thousands of people) and I think she does deserve credit on account of her own past experiences. Better to decide to go late than to never go at all. It was a progressive gesture and thousands of people - including myself - will have acknowledged and appreciated it as such.

[DannyInvincible]

...doesn't justify a generation-long shooting war.

I've not even entered into the realm of discussing or evaluating justifications. I've been dealing with understanding why and discussing cause and effect.

[backstothewall]

Danny. It was obviously a massive crowd (some lunatic on the bbc today said the biggest in Ireland since Dev - odd how the BBC can't remember any funerals from the 1980s). But was your impression that it mainly locals on the streets or was it people from all over?

[DannyInvincible]

Danny. It was obviously a massive crowd (some lunatic on the bbc today said the biggest in Ireland since Dev - odd how the BBC can't remember any funerals from the 1980s). But was your impression that it mainly locals on the streets or was it people from all over?

I got the impression - simply from hearing accents and observing local school uniforms and Derry City scarves - that most of those lining the streets along the route in front of the cortège were locals. I would imagine most people who came from elsewhere initially congregated at the McGuinness family home on Westland Avenue and followed the carrying of the coffin from there.

[backstothewall]

Mark Durkan will be having sleepless nights about Theresa May going for an election if that's the case

[DannyInvincible]

In a weird way, I think this was my favourite Martin moment in recent times: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-politics-34787029

Check out the video within the link for a reminder if you get a chance. It was a humiliating test of character launched at him like a grenade by a bigoted, myopic, coat-trailing nincompoop - the TUV's Sammy Morrison - who decided to act contrary to prior-agreed protocol by singing 'God Save the Queen' as a weapon to embarrass the nationalist/republican attendees at what was supposed to be an inclusive, cross-community Remembrance Day event that nationalists and republicans had agreed to attend for the first time in Stormont as a gesture of reconciliation and good will. Such events are already controversial enough as it is within the nationalist/republican community for obvious reasons, but Martin came through the whole affair with such admirable grace, composure and dignity as the other British-identifying attendees around him got up and stood for the impromptu rendition of their anthem.

When I first saw the footage, I felt for him, my blood boiled for him, I shed a tear for him - why did he have to put up with that? - and I respected him for his poise and leadership.

[BonnieShels]

I have never seen anything like it. Whatever about a State funeral for someone. But it was absolutely remarkable scenes.

[DannyInvincible]

I just caught this week's Question Time from Bangor in Wales (http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b08kfrlf/question-time-23032017) and, to my surprise, it featured a question (at 28m45s) relating to Irish affairs. This is a very rare occurrence, but it seems the death of Martin McGuinness was deemed a significant enough political event to have the panel cast their attention and thoughts westward for a couple of minutes.

Anyway, an audience member asked: "Is it fair to families of victims murdered by Martin McGuinness and the IRA to heap so much praise on him?"

What followed was ten minutes of platitudes and ignorance. Not one panellist mentioned the conditions which led to the IRA emerging or to the circumstances that led to Martin McGuinness joining the IRA. In fact, one panellist - Hugo Rifkind (https://twitter.com/hugorifkind) - actually went as far as claiming that "Martin McGuinness brought war to Northern Ireland"...

Once again, it was rather frustrating that that was the level of debate being beamed out to millions throughout the UK by the BBC under the guise of expert and informed political opinion. At the same time though, I suppose it is another reminder of just how far removed the minds of those in Britain are from Ireland and Irish affairs. They reside in a different political universe.

[CraftyToePoke]

I suppose it is another reminder of just how far removed the minds of those in Britain are from Ireland and Irish affairs. They reside in a different political universe.

It's an aching great chasm isn't it ? I mean if someone is furious with you, isn't your first port of call in dealing with that situation to identify what's triggered it ? This lot can watch families support their sons starving themselves to death and it never enters their sphere of thought to examine what might have gotten these people this pi**ed off to begin with. Remarkable.

[BonnieShels]

The Irish times has been running a series called "Ireland's Call".

Here's one on Crossmaglen from the day after Paddy's.


Ireland's Call: From ‘Bandit country’ to Brexit’s frontier

During the dark years of the Troubles, the border village of Crossmaglen in south Armagh was famous for its resistance to British rule, from the “Sniper At Work” sign on the village square to GAA players defiantly playing as helicopters descended above them at the army barracks next door.
Locals recall the “ring of steel” that once circled Cross and the political divisions that it brought to the area known as bandit country. Now, local people are apprehensive about a new emerging struggle – against the fall-out from Brexit. They fear a return to that kind of besieged outpost the village once was, given its location a few miles from the only land border between the UK and the EU.
Since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and the disappearance of the army checkpoints on the border roads and watchtowers on the surrounding drumlins, the only giveaways that you have crossed the 499-kilometre border are the signs switching from kilometres to miles and the occasional sign informing customers that local businesses accept both euro and sterling.
Now, roadside signs erected by the Border Communities Against Brexit leave motorists in no doubt that they have entered a new and changing jurisdiction, with warnings about a return to a hard border, customs checkpoints and “economic devastation”.
“I grew up in that era. I would definitely not like to go back to checkpoints, and the new generation that is coming through have never seen that before,” said Gerard McMonagle, owner of the Cross Square Hotel, which is a hub of activity on what was once a deserted O’Fiach Square during the Troubles.
“Anywhere you will have any sort of checkpoint, it is going to create tension,” he added, sipping a coffee in his hotel on Tuesday. “Leave it the way it is. We don’t want it to change.”

In business for just 15 months, Mr McMonagle’s hotel enjoys a vibrant passing trade from cross-border shoppers or visitors to football tournaments at the nearby grounds of Crossmaglen Rangers, whose victories in All-Ireland Senior Club Football Championships since 1997 have restored the reputation of the village.
Upcoming divorce
The concern here is that the UK’s upcoming divorce from the EU could put the people here into the forced custody of an unwanted parent and disruptive permanent arrangements that would hurt all facets of everyday life and could threaten to unwind almost two decades of peace.
Four of the 18 staff at the Cross Square Hotel cross the border every day from the Republic, while 40 per cent of Mr McMonagle’s suppliers come from the south. “If there is a hard border there do we have to try to get suppliers from the north of Ireland?” he pondered.
Locals scratch their heads at how the cross-border ties in the community might be untangled in a post-Brexit world. They are equally frustrated at UK prime minister Theresa May and her government’s lack of consultation with the devolved Northern Irish government on what might happen beyond pulling the Article 50 trigger to leave the EU.
To all intents and purposes, the border hardly exists to the people of Crossmaglen. Re-establishing a hard frontier would be like trying to unscramble an egg. Few knew how many times they cross the border every day and locals keep two currencies in their pockets.


A 12-minute drive from Crossmaglen to Junction 17 of the M1 motorway, there are rows of parked cars on either side of the road, belonging to commuters who have travelled on to Dublin or Belfast by bus or in a car pool for work.
Immediate family members live within miles of each other, but on opposite sides of the border. Some households draw social welfare and family benefits from both north and south. At least 20 local children cross the border twice a day to attend a local secondary school, while church-goers cross back and forth to attend Mass in different churches within the border-straddling Upper Creggan Parish.
Life-saving arrangement
McMonagle, through his work for the Crossmaglen Fire and Rescue Service, has seen first-hand cooperation north and south. Ambulances are sent across the border from Dundalk when paramedics in Newry are busy, to attend road-traffic accidents on Concession Road, the aptly named thoroughfare running from Louth to Monaghan through a sliver of Armagh. This can cut an ambulance’s journey to an accident by 15 to 20 minutes. A hard border might jeopardise this life-saving arrangement.
“We can’t have one part of the parish in and one part of the parish out,” said Terry Hearty, a local farmer and Sinn Féin councillor representing south Armagh. “People voted here to remain [in the EU] and of course there would have to be a special status for us. It is the only way we could survive.”
Mr Hearty fears the impact of customs checks on tourism in this picturesque Slieve Gullion area, a popular place for hill walkers, and how inspections of tour buses might stop tourists from returning.
The imposition of post-Brexit tariffs on farm produce would deprive local farmers north of the border of the competition among dairies in the south that brings them better prices for their milk.
EU rural development funding has transformed nearby sparsely populated villages such as Creggan and Culloville, with community centres hosting events from morning fitness classes to bingo in the evenings. “It was a real lifeline to the area,” said Mr Hearty. Brexit will spell the end of that funding.

While locals in the predominantly Catholic village of Crossmaglen are sensitive to stirring political tensions within their border communities, they recognise that the damaging consequences of Brexit to the region makes the economic arguments for a united Ireland more compelling than ever before.
“It has to be questioned, economically, for both the Republic and Northern Ireland, ” said Robbie McAllister, who runs an interior design business in the area. He has been in business for a decade and employs 10 staff, including several who live in the south. Forty per cent of his business comes from the Republic. Brexit has forced the Crossmaglen native to put a planned expansion of his business on hold.
“It is going to segregate us even more. It is very hard to get away from the political debate, but the economic and political debate run side by side. You cannot break up the country,” he said.
Irish unification
Plans unveiled this week by Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin to publish a 12-point White Paper that could pave the way for Irish reunification were warmly welcomed in Crossmaglen this week.
“Brexit is obviously going to accelerate talks for a united Ireland and of course it should,” said Pete Byrne, a local SDLP councillor whose family have a fourth-generation headstone business that carved many of the monuments and plaques in and around the village to Irish freedom and slain republicans.
“It’s going to allow parties to put meat on the bones about the economic case for a united Ireland because you will have buy-in from the south, which you haven’t had in the last number of years.”
Estate agent Michael McArdle runs a third-generation business in Crossmaglen that predates any border. The large proportion of Northern Irish exports heading to the Republic, amounting to two-thirds of all EU-bound exports, supports the case for an economic union, he says.
“It would make sense for the whole lot to be an economic entity on its own. How that is going to work is up to the politicians,” he said.
The situation might require innovative thinking on the part of politicians, both north and south, and many of the locals in south Armagh who spoke to The Irish Times believe that one compromise would involve the creation of a special designation or exemption for Northern Ireland, effectively pushing the EU-UK border to the Irish Sea, leaving customs checkpoints at the ports and airports.
“The issue of a united Ireland and where that goes, we will leave that to the politicians. We do not want to stir up fears,” said Declan Fearon, spokesman for Border Communities Against Brexit and the owner of Fearon Brothers, a local kitchen maker established in 1979.
“If the will is there, there should certainly be a way that the six counties can remain part of the European Union without diluting Unionists’ wishes to remain part of the Union.”
Years of conflict
Sitting in his Jonesborough office, about 20 kilometres east along the border from Crossmaglen, Fearon points out his back window to Faughill Mountain where an army border watchtower once stood. He recalls running his business during the bleak years of conflict: five-hour waits at customs in Dundalk for his staff heading south to do business, soldiers blowing craters on local border roads, army helicopters flying over the patchwork farmlands below his office, gun battles in the fields.
“This border corridor is without doubt the eye of the storm with regards Brexit, not only in Ireland but in Europe. What people are very fearful of here is a slow border by stealth, even a soft border,” he said.

“Who knows where that will end up. That can end up in the very worst of circumstances, back to where we were 25 years ago.”

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/ireland-s-call-from-bandit-country-to-brexit-s-frontier-1.3014496

Incidentally I know Concession Road pretty well and I've double-checked the odd time seeing an ambulance on it. And I'm certain I've seen a Garda car on it (or near it enough in any case that it had to traverse Armagh to get to where it was to pass me).

[DannyInvincible]

'British government confirm that NI would retain EU membership as part of United Ireland': https://www.derrynow.com/news/british-government-confirm-ni-retain-eu-membership-part-united-ireland/153146


SDLP Leader Colum Eastwood has welcomed confirmation from the British Brexit Secretary David Davis that Northern Ireland would retain EU membership as part of a united Ireland under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.

He said that SDLP negotiators have been pressing the British Government to concede this argument over the course of the last number of weeks.

Mr Eastwood said: “In successive referenda, the people of Ireland have voted for a constitutional settlement in the North based on common membership of the European Union across this island. That was the basis of securing the consent and confidence of nationalism for the Good Friday Agreement.

“The current British Government’s Brexit juggernaut threatens to smash through the fragile complexities of the Irish political dispensation.

“Over the course of the last number of weeks, SDLP MPs and negotiators have pressed the British Government to concede that unlike any other part of these islands, we have an automatic route back into the European Union. The Principle of Consent and provisions for a Unity Referendum in the Good Friday Agreement allow people here to make the decision to join a sovereign united Ireland and, in doing so, rejoin the European Union.

“It is welcome that the Brexit Secretary has now conceded that argument.

“Brexit has shaken the tectonic plates of our constitutional landscape. People in Northern Ireland voted to remain in the EU. The people of Ireland voted for the Good Friday Agreement underpinned by Europe. If that context is to be ripped apart and our political foundations thrown into flux, then the time will be right for people here to begin to explore our constitutional future.”

Technically, wouldn't a decision on this be the EU's prerogative? An apparent admission from UK ministers doesn't mean a huge deal.

Also, the potential smooth transition (for a post-Brexit north of Ireland back into the EU) of which Eastwood speaks would rest upon Irish re-unification entailing the north being subsumed by the already-existing 26-county republic. If, on the other hand, a new all-island state was born out of a new constitution, I assume that new entity would have to apply for EU membership as a whole as the prior 26-county republic would no longer constitutionally exist. This is a potential practical problem as I'm not convinced that unionists would feel content with being subsumed by the current 26-county state. I feel a new constitutional arrangement (with new governing bodies and symbols) would be required to ensure they feel as welcome and equal participants in any all-island state.

[BonnieShels]

'British government confirm that NI would retain EU membership as part of United Ireland': https://www.derrynow.com/news/british-government-confirm-ni-retain-eu-membership-part-united-ireland/153146

Technically, wouldn't a decision on this be the EU's prerogative? An apparent admission from UK ministers doesn't mean a huge deal.

Also, the potential smooth transition (for a post-Brexit north of Ireland back into the EU) of which Eastwood speaks would entail Irish re-unification meaning the north being subsumed by the already-existing 26-county republic. If, on the other hand, a new all-island state was born out of a new constitution, I assume that new entity would have to apply for EU membership as a whole as the prior 26-county republic would no longer constitutionally exist. This is a problem as I'm not convinced that unionists would feel content with being subsumed by the current 26-county state. I feel a new constitutional arrangement would be required to ensure they feel as welcome and equal participants in any all-island state.

I've discussed somewhere on here about the technicalities of that. The north would join the south in a similar fashion as east Germany joined west.
There is absolutely no way in hell that an succeeding reunified nation will not be considered a "successor nation" to the current EU-member republic. It's barely worth discussing at this stage.

A new constitutional arrangement can be created in tandem with EU membership. There is absolutely no reason that reunification would mean we would actually kick us out of the club.

The examples alone that exist (off the top of my head):

Germany- West German and the eastern Lander joining together into the EC.

France- The French Fourth Republic ceased to exist in 1958 and was replaced by the Fifth. The ECSC came into being in 1950 and was replaced by the EEC etc with the Treaty of Rome in 1957.

Netherlands- This is complicated: but the Dutch Kingdom enlarged to include parts of the Netherlands Antilles as Municipalities of the Dutch State and other Antilles states and Aruba as constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Also there's the example of Suriname becoming a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1954 and then "achieving" independence in 1975.


---

There are ways and means to effect this change and Unionist objection to any such reunification arrangement is a bit premature. Whatever constitutional arrangement comes out of reunification will not come to the detriment of our EU membership and is in fact a rather silly discussion in the context of where we're at at present.

If we were to change our constitution before reunification would you consider us a different State to the one that currently exists? hardly.

[DannyInvincible]

In light of the ANC statement expressing sympathy to SF (https://ansionnachfionn.com/2017/03/25/the-anc-statement-on-the-passing-of-martin-mcguinness/) upon McGuinness' death, this provides fascinating insight into the anti-Apartheid struggle's Irish link: https://ansionnachfionn.com/2017/03/27/irish-resistance-to-apartheid-sinn-fein-and-the-anc-the-ira-and-mk/


A number of readers have asked for some background details explaining the close relationship between the African National Congress and Sinn Féin following on from the ANC’s sympathetic statement last week noting the passing of “comrade” Martin McGuinness. While the political wings of the two movements have long professed public support for each other, particularly during the transition from White minority rule on the one hand and the development of the peace process on the other, the co-operation between their respective military wings was at times equally as close. By the late 1970s and early ‘80s selected members of uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the ANC’s armed grouping, were receiving guerrilla training in Ireland, Angola and South Africa from experienced volunteers of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). This resulted in a number of attacks against the apartheid regime in Pretoria, at least one involving the active participation of the IRA. These operations are described in several sources, notably the unfinished autobiography of Kader Asmal, founder of the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement (IAAM) and a senior minister from 1992 to 2004 in the first ANC-led democratic government.

An extract from “Kader Asmal: Politics in My Blood: a Memoir” by Kader Asmal and Adrian Hadland, with Moira Levy (Jacana Media, 2011).


In the late 1970s, I was asked if it was possible to arrange military training for some MK combatants. I wanted very much to undertake this task, but it was a delicate one because it would of necessity involve the IRA. None of us wished to place the ANC office in London in any jeopardy nor fuel the allegations of connivance between the ANC and IRA.

I went to see the general secretary of the Communist Party of Ireland, Michael O’Riordan, who was a man of great integrity and whom I trusted to keep secret the information at his disposal. He in turn contacted Gerry Adams of Sinn Féin, and it was arranged that two military experts would come to Dublin to meet two MK personnel and take them to a safe place for two weeks of intensive training. On the date arranged I was to be away, so I instructed Louise [Asmal’s wife and an active anti-apartheid activist] as to what she was to say when the MK men rang. In standard secret-service style, nothing was to be written down, and everything had to be remembered.

…we did arrange a successful meeting, the training was conducted, and I believe the expertise the MK cadres obtained was duly imparted to others in the ANC camps in Angola.

Then, on 1 June 1980, South Africa was shocked by one of the most daring and audacious acts of military insurgency in the struggle against apartheid. On that day the country’s major oil refinery plant in the town of Sasolburg was bombed by explosives. Black smoke billowed over the Highveld. Every newspaper and television station carried pictures, footage and stories of the attack. And, while the damage to the refinery was, according to the apartheid regime, relatively superficial, the propaganda value and its effect on the morale of the liberation movement were inestimable.

Yet only Louise and I knew that the attack on Sasolburg was the result of reconnaissance carried out by members of the IRA. I had again been approached by the MK High Command, who wanted us to find two people to conduct a reconnaissance operation and report back on the feasibility of attacking Sasol, South Africa’s major oil refinery, vital to the maintenance of the apartheid state. Located on the Vaal River, Sasol was a perfect target. It was highly strategic but relatively undefended. There were also few people wandering about the plant at night, so the chances of inflicting civilian casualties were small.

I undertook this task quite separately from the IAAM [Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement]. This was partly to protect the organisation and partly for reasons of security. We knew too that right-wing British intelligence services and right-wing British media would use the information to undermine the ANC and the broad Anti-Apartheid Movement. Once again I arranged the task with Gerry Adams of Sinn Féin, through the intermediation of Michael O’Riordan. Though I no longer recall the names of the persons who volunteered, if indeed I ever knew them, they laid the ground for one of the most dramatic operations carried out by MK personnel.

It was evident to all of us that the regime had suffered a demonstrable loss and embarrassment. Yet only Louise and I knew that the attack on Sasolburg was the result of reconnaissance carried out by members of the IRA. At the time the ANC accepted responsibility for the coup and much later the three active participants, all MK cadres, applied for and obtained amnesty from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Below is one of the earliest academic mentions of the MK and IRA connection by professor Stephen Ellis in “Comrades Against Apartheid. The ANC and the South African Communist Party in Exile”, with with Tsepo Sechaba (Indiana University Press, 1992):


Some of those trained at Fundo were also taken for further specialised instruction by members of the Irish Republican Army working out of an anonymous apartment building in Luanda [capital of Angola]. The IRA men were experts in the construction of bombs and booby-traps, and passed on their know-how to ANC specialists, including Obadi.

The IRA connection, which began in late 1978, has always been one of the ANC’s most closely-guarded secrets. It is not clear what later cooperation there may have been between the two organisations, although some British sources’ were to claim in the late 1980s that it continued, and that officials of the ANC’s Military Intelligence department had visited the IRA in Northern Ireland.

This follow-up publication gives more detail in “External Mission: The ANC in Exile, 1960-1990” by Stephen Ellis (Oxford University Press, 2013)


The bulk of the ANC’S army now being based in Angola, in 1979 Ronnie Kasrils [later Chief of MK Intelligence] signed a secret agreement on behalf of the ANC with the chief of military counterintelligence of the Cuban forces in Angola on intelligence sharing and on provision for training by Cuban personnel In Maputo. The ANC was able to establish facilities from which it could organise infiltrations directly into South Africa. The city was home to the elite special operations unit led by Slovo [Joe Slovo, senior MK commander]. Having previously specialised in running operations from London, using white cadres especially, Slovo was now closer to his target and able to send people in by land. For work of this type, the ANC enlisted the help of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), at that time perhaps the world’s most sophisticated urban guerrilla force. The ANC’s representative in Ireland made contact with the IRA via the Irish Communist Party which put him in touch with the Sinn Fein politician Gerry Adams, an extraordinary development in view of the Irish Communist Party’s distrust of the Provisional IRA.

In due course, IRA men set up a bomb-making school at a safe house in Luanda. The IRA connection was one of the ANC’s most closely guarded secrets, although rumours reached the ears of the South African Broadcasting Corporation, which in 1977 reported that ANC guerrillas were being trained ‘by a powerful group of IRA experts who have made their appearance in Tanzania since the middle of March in order to direct a training programme’. This information apparently originated with a Rhodesian source – oddly enough since the ANC/IRA collaboration actually started only in 1978.

On 1 June 1980, the MK special operations unit launched a spectacular attack on a Sasol facility in South Africa that caused millions of rands in damage and underlined South Africa’s dependence on imported oil, then a matter of great sensitivity due to the recent revolution in Iran, the country’s leading supplier. The sabotage team was led by Motso Mokqabudi, who had trained in rocketry in the USSR before honing his bomb-making skills with the IRA men Luanda. South African intelligence soon learned the identities of Sasol saboteurs…

During this same period, and for many years thereafter, the United Kingdom strongly opposed international sanctions against South Africa, particularly under the administration of the right-wing prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, and did much to undermine the UN-led boycott. The Conservative leader was deeply hostile to the ANC, as was her party more generally, dismissing it as late as 1987 as a “a typical terrorist organisation“. Meanwhile, from 1986 onward the British intelligence services, notably the Intelligence Corps (Int Corps) and Security Service (SS or MI5), coordinated contacts between pro-British or loyalist terrorist factions in the UK-administered north-east of Ireland and agents for the National Intelligence Service (NIS) under P. W. Botha’s apartheid government in South Africa. This resulted in at least one large consignment of weapons and explosives being smuggled into the Six Counties from the Lebanon, the operation overseen by Brian Nelson, a British Army agent and a senior member of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), the legal British terror grouping.

And here's Gerry Adams participating in the 8-man guard of honour (http://www.thejournal.ie/gerry-adams-guard-of-honour-nelson-mandela-1222286-Dec2013/) at Mandela's funeral:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkFAeruvv4s

[DannyInvincible]

Tommy McKearney (https://twitter.com/Tommymckearney)'s analysis of Martin McGuinness' legacy for Jacobin makes for an interesting read; it explores the oppressive context of McGuinness' early life and actions whilst criticising the "bourgeois" direction of his later politics: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/03/martin-mcguinness-ireland-ira-sinn-fein-republican/


...

Martin McGuinness was born into an Ireland partitioned a mere three decades earlier by the British Empire. In order to retain what was effectively a garrison on its neighboring island, governments in London turned a blind eye to the reactionary and undemocratic practices of its allies in Northern Ireland. Few places experienced the effects of this cynical arrangement more acutely than Derry, the city in which McGuinness grew up.

Local government in his hometown was run by the Unionist-controlled Londonderry Corporation, which secured majorities by shamelessly gerrymandering council wards. The corporation gave priority to unionist communities when allocating housing and public-sector employment, and flaunted its power with provocative pageantry.

The Belfast-based parliament in Stormont worsened this situation further still: pursuing a discriminatory agenda which deprived Derry of Northern Ireland’s second university, it steered investment away from what was an unemployment black hole and even refused to extend the cross-country dual carriageway to the city.

After decades of structural discrimination maintained by an authoritarian police state, Martin McGuinness was among those who stood up to the regime and demanded reform. The movement he joined employed campaign tactics inspired by American civil rights activists — and was met with similar repression.

It was in his hometown of Derry that the sectarian police force, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), violently attacked a peaceful civil rights march on October 5, 1968, injuring many demonstrators, including a number of elected representatives. A few months later, following a civil rights demonstration, an RUC riot squad invaded a private house and bludgeoned to death a Catholic man as he sat watching TV. This raw brutality set the tone for the state’s response to a peaceful campaign for democratic rights.

The Northern Irish government made it clear from the outset that it was determined to use its heavily armed police force to retain control rather than embark on a program of fundamental reform that might have averted much of the subsequent violence. In the crucially important year of 1969, RUC officers were responsible for eight of the sixteen deaths arising from the political conflict. None of the victims were armed, and one — a nine-year-old boy — was asleep in his bed when struck by a police bullet.

As so often happens when repression is substituted for democratic consent, the response was violent resistance. The state created the conditions for a confrontation that would last for over two decades. Like many young people of his generation in the north of Ireland, Martin McGuinness was moved by these circumstances to resist and joined the Irish Republican Army (IRA).

Historians and academics will long debate whether it would have been possible to avoid the years of bloodshed that afflicted the northern part of Ireland through the final twenty-five years of the twentieth century. Even many opponents of British state involvement in Northern Ireland have raised questions over the efficacy of the IRA campaign.

However, no substantive evidence exists to suggest that northern Irish unionism, a product of colonial expansion and an heir to the arrogance of British imperialism, would have succumbed to enlightenment. It remained stubborn in its refusal to grant reforms, even the kind achieved in recent years, for decades when concessions could have prevented escalations.

...

Due to his stature within the IRA, McGuinness’s support for the organization’s ceasefire in 1994 was crucial in persuading many Irish republicans to endorse the “new departure” from military to political strategy. The Irish and British establishment have often framed this decision as a Pauline conversion, spinning it as a shift from anti–state violence to a state-approved peace.

This narrative is one left-wingers should avoid. It overlooks the fact that Martin McGuinness was part of a leadership that took a conscious decision to change tactics. Tactical shifts are the prerogative of all political movements. To paraphrase von Clausewitz, politics for Sinn Féin was the continuation of the war by other means.

In the years following the IRA ceasefire, McGuinness played a leading role during Good Friday Agreement negotiations. Thereafter, he figured prominently in the bartering that brought about the decommissioning of weapons, support for a new police force, and the dissolution of the IRA. By doing so, he facilitated the convening of a local devolved administration in 2007, when to the astonishment of many, he became Ian Paisley’s deputy first minister, a position he held until his resignation earlier this year.

Bringing to an end an armed conflict that had reached a stalemate undoubtedly brought benefits not only to the IRA’s political wing, Sinn Féin, but also to the northern Irish people. It is beyond question that Martin McGuinness played a significant part in facilitating this transformation. Nevertheless — and contrary to the glowing commendations heaped upon him by such dubious characters as Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, and Theresa May — his role in the politics of the peace settlement deserves analysis.

When, earlier this year, Martin McGuinness resigned his position as Northern Ireland’s deputy first minister, he didn’t just precipitate an end to devolved government in the region. His departure also highlighted many of his party’s failings. Ten years after entering an administrative arrangement that was virtually a coalition with the reactionary Democratic Unionist Party, it is difficult to identify any meaningful change to the underlying politics of the six counties.

As leader of Sinn Féin in Northern Ireland, Martin McGuinness epitomized the centrist and oftentimes opportunistic policies of a party that has leaned on soundbites to mask its lack of program. In the north, Sinn Féin has abandoned pretenses to be socialist and failed to analyze the structures and class composition of the state.

Sinn Féin has pursued a contradictory twin-track approach of expanding its electoral base while simultaneously straining in an attempt to improve community relations. The aim was, it seemed, to make the political institutions work as if in a normal parliamentary democracy. McGuinness took the lead in this process and broke with prominent Irish republican traditions — attending ceremonies commemorating British Army war dead, publicly condemning dissenting republicans, and, most strikingly, shaking hands with Britain’s Queen Elizabeth.

But Sinn Féin’s politics in the north often appeared to draw on the influences of Bill Clinton’s Third Way: reorienting to the Catholic middle class from the party’s traditional working-class base. To achieve this, it was forced to adopt policies in keeping with bourgeois aspirations. This meant accepting the expansion of the private rented sector rather than insisting on a public housing program, tolerating anti-union legislation, promoting free-market initiatives, and, latterly, voicing strong support for the European Union.

Even in areas such as secular education, which has long been deemed within the remit of civic republicanism, the party backpedaled rather than confront the Catholic Church.

While this moderate strategy has reaped rewards for Sinn Féin in terms of political power, its Achilles heel was something that, in reality, should have been obvious to the party hierarchy: the intransigence of the unionist political class. Not even such a prolonged period of peace has produced a conciliatory attitude from political unionism. Consequently, despite their olive branches, debate in Northern Ireland has not moved beyond community division. Unfortunately, this must rank as a major failing of McGuinness’s leadership.

...

While it is unwise to act as a prophet of doom, Northern Ireland has a poor record of handling fundamental change. As the Unionist majority declines, questions will inevitably arise as to what the future can hold for that community. At that point in time, the poverty of the McGuinness legacy in government will be most obvious. Standing on a nebulous manifesto of equality, respect, and integrity (in the United States this type of politics would be described as promoting motherhood and apple pie), his party offered little by way of security in their working lives or material conditions to a disoriented unionist community.

In many ways it would be unfortunate if this were to be how Martin McGuinness was remembered. He took a leading role in a generation of Irish republicans that courageously engaged with the forces of the British state and by doing so, irreversibly altered the political dynamic not only in the north of Ireland but across the entire island.

Nevertheless, as time goes by and the heroic memories of the most recent insurrection fade, it will be for his period as deputy first minister that he will be remembered. Martin McGuinness was a fighter against injustice, a man who contributed enormously to peace in Northern Ireland. But in the final analysis he failed to steer that peace in the direction of more fundamental change, and that reality will remain with us after his passing.

[BonnieShels]

PMQs live and I turned on when Danny Kinahan had his Question:

http://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/6373f9ec-bcca-4419-a848-41946fc07f4a?in=12:00:00&out=12:03:00

"Can I ask the PM, that in the extremely improbable event that a Border Poll does take place during her premiership, that her Govt will fully support any 'Remain' campaign, just as the Govt have done both in regard of the EU and Scotland?" [paraphrased]
12:00

"...we are of course within that, fully committed that the unique interests of NI are protected and advanced as we establish are negotiating position; and our position has always been clear that we support the Belfast Agreement including the principle of consent, that NI's constitutional position is a matter for the people of NI to determine. But as our manifesto made clear, we have a preference that NI should remain part of the UK and we will never be neutral in expressing our support for that. And that's because I believe fundamentally in the strength of our Union..."
12:02

---

"No selfish self-interest yadda yadda..."

[DannyInvincible]

This afternoon's 'Saturday with Claire Byrne' on RTÉ Radio One (http://www.rte.ie/radio1/saturday-with-claire-byrne/programmes/2017/0401/864419-saturday-with-claire-byrne-saturday-1-april-2017/#2447288) was broadcast live from the Oriel Centre Gaol in Dundalk and featured a discussion between Jeffrey Donaldson, Gerry Adams, Charlie Flanagan, Stephen Donnelly, George Lee (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Lee_(journalist)) and Verona Murphy (of the Irish Road Haulage Association) on whether Brexit will lead to a united Ireland and how it will impact upon the border, trade and the economic and political future of the country.

The Spanish government's prospective veto (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-39453535) over any UK-EU deal if it isn't satisfied with Gibraltar's future status also came up in discussion and Flanagan was rightly asked why the Irish government hasn't similarly demanded and secured a veto so as to ensure it will have decisive influence over the post-Brexit status of the north of Ireland.

[Gather round]

Evening all, sorry for delay in reply to points below.

I was at the Global Green Parties Conference in Liverpool this weekend. One of the highlights of which was a fringe comparing the peace processes in NI and Cyprus. You lot would have enjoyed it


Claire Byrne's RTE Show...on whether Brexit will lead to a united Ireland and how it will impact upon the border, trade and the economic and political future of the country...Flanagan was rightly asked why the Irish government hasn't similarly demanded and secured a veto so as to ensure it will have decisive influence over the post-Brexit status of the north of Ireland

Will listen to that, thanks. Meantime whatever CF said I suspect his Government doesn't see advantage in putting the boot into the Brits at this stage?


[will] her Govt will fully support any 'Remain' campaign, just as the Govt have done both in regard of the EU and Scotland?

It's all a bit moot because there won't be a single-question referendum (as opposed to an election) for years yet.


Tommy McKearney... explores the oppressive context of McGuinness' early life and actions whilst criticising the "bourgeois" direction of his later politics

Unsurprisingly, I don't recognise the late Marty as some sort of cross between Gandhi and Oliver Twist. I was at primary school in An Loiste Nua (one of the poorest areas in NI) in the late 60s. While it quite tough, nobody starved and not everyone became a gunman...although I vaguely remember getting those half-pint bottles of chocomilk as we were a deprived area


Whatever constitutional arrangement comes out of reunification will not come to the detriment of our EU membership and is in fact a rather silly discussion in the context of where we're at at present

It's a premature discussion because (as I mentioned above), we can be confident that Unionists won't support Irish Unity, if at all, for years yet. But we can't necessarily be confident about what form the EU will take at that point.


If, on the other hand, a new all-island state was born out of a new constitution, I assume that new entity would have to apply for EU membership as a whole as the prior 26-county republic would no longer constitutionally exist. This is a potential practical problem as I'm not convinced that unionists would feel content with being subsumed by the current 26-county state. I feel a new constitutional arrangement (with new governing bodies and symbols) would be required to ensure they feel as welcome and equal participants in any all-island state

I doubt you need you worry too much about this. Unionists who are prepared to vote for a UI won't be that bothered if it's in a second, third or umpteenth Republic. While those who aren't will remain implacably anti regardless of what symbols you use.

My own suggested UI flag is available on a fair use basis


another reminder of just how far removed the minds of those in Britain are from Ireland and Irish affairs. They reside in a different political universe

Sorry, little sympathy if you choose to watch inane bearpit sh*te that is BBC Question Time

Why on Earth would you expect people in rural north Wales to have more than a passing interest in Marty's career as either paramilitary hardman 30 years ago or latterly joining running the equivalent of Glamorgan County Council? Most people in Caernarfon couldn't name their own Council leaders, let alone ours.


The problems in 1960s NI weren't vague or abstract. They were pronounced and intolerable...Nationalism didn't start with the intention of violence

I specified that the vague abstracts referred to lack of inclusivity, validity, parity and the like. I just don't believe that the lack of an Irish Language Act, say, is intolerable for anyone bar a few obsessive Shinners.

Nationalism (OK, Nationalist paramilitarism) CONTINUED with violence for 30 years despite the addressing of specific grienvances and the acceptance by anybody half-wise that the Brits and Unionists weren't going to give in. They acted the cnut for a generation, in other words. Of course so did others, but Nationalism needs to recognise its own big role.


A UI is inevitable

In briefly reviewing KM's book I said that he treated Unionism as a whole as bogeyman, ciphers etc. My words rather than his, but I think fair (even if it's an equally fair criticism given that they keep electing Foster, Allister etc. and allow the Orange Order and UDA to speak for them). The thing is though that if Meagher's grandiose claim is to come true somebody will have to change their attitudes. Just talking to grotesques won't help.

[DannyInvincible]

Will listen to that, thanks. Meantime whatever CF said I suspect his Government doesn't see advantage in putting the boot into the Brits at this stage?

Probably not; kowtowing is hardly novel conduct for the likes of Flanagan. He just waffled on about the peace process being of "paramount importance" (No sh*t, Sherlock!) and being confident that he has "understanding, appreciation and acknowledgement of the peace process" from his foreign ministerial colleagues, but that's nowhere near the same thing as having any formal guarantees on anything, never mind having a prospective veto over the future status of the north or the form the border may take.

Donaldson was discernibly on the ropes throughout and deflected accordingly.


Sorry, little sympathy if you choose to watch inane bearpit sh*te that is BBC Question Time

Heh, I gave up on expecting much from 'Question Time' a good while ago. My brother told me that my sister had mentioned to him that they'd devoted a question to McGuinness, so I was merely curious to see the direction the discussion took. I was underwhelmed, but not surprised. :)


Why on Earth would you expect people in rural north Wales to have more than a passing interest in Marty's career as either paramilitary hardman 30 years ago or latterly joining running the equivalent of Glamorgan County Council? Most people in Caernarfon couldn't name their own Council leaders, let alone ours.

Exactly, so why select it as a topic for discussion between the ignorant and ill/half-informed?


Nationalism (OK, Nationalist paramilitarism) CONTINUED with violence for 30 years despite the addressing of specific grienvances and the acceptance by anybody half-wise that the Brits and Unionists weren't going to give in. They acted the cnut for a generation, in other words. Of course so did others, but Nationalism needs to recognise its own big role.

I think (former) physical force republicans have always acknowledged their role in the conflict. You may well disagree, but, in my opinion, it's the British state and proponents of the discriminatory unionist regime (that provoked and actively participated in conflict, using both "lawful" and unlawful methods of engagement) who remain in denial of their (very significant) roles and responsibilities.