The British People’s Alliance insists that the Union simply is not the Union, nor is the Commonwealth the Commonwealth, without a very strong Irish dimension. It therefore works towards the Irish Republic's accession to the Commonwealth while re-enfranchising all those disenfranchised by the decline of the UUP and the Alliance Party, by the emerging takeover of the SDLP by Fianna Fail, and by the scandalous failure hitherto to provide a pro-Union party acceptable to Catholics and to social democrats, all the while emphasising that fidelity to any of the Gaelic-Irish, Anglo-Irish and Scots-Irish traditions has long (arguably, has always) called for the closest possible ties across the Irish Sea.
The British People's Alliance will certainly contest every seat in the United Kingdom at any General Election from 2009 onwards, if we can find the candidates. Where are they, not least in Northern Ireland?
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So many days of hubris!!!!!
ReplyDeleteOne question. You tend to have a bee in your bonnet about UK minority languages. What do you make of the use of Irish and Scots in Northern Ireland, particuarly the introduction of Scots signs in the likes of Antrim?
I think it's absolutely ridiculous, and is just a sort of revenge for the almost as ridiculous introduction of Irish in Northern Ireland.
ReplyDeleteIrish Republicanism has always had a schizophrenic relationship with Irish, with at least as strong a sub-tradition regarding it as a barrier to progress as regarding it as the soul of the nation.
Hardly anyone even who votes Sinn Fein speaks it, every single one of them is a fluent English-speaker, and the attempts by Gerry Adams and Martin Maguiness famously sound like a toddler who is just starting to talk (I have now heard this several times).
Yet it has been imposed in Northern Ireland, so the sort of people who always (quite rightly) included "English is our language" in their stock list of proofs of their Britishness have reacted by demanding (publicly funded) recognition of what is in fact merely a phonetic transcription of English as spoken with a heavy Antrim accent and many dialect words.
There have been advertisements for the likes of an Equality Officer termed an "Eeeksy Peeksy Heed Yin". I kid you not. We pay for this.
I don't see why there should be Welsh street signs in Newport. I don't see why there should be Gaelic street signs in Caithness. I don't see why there should be street signs anywhere in a language which nobody speaks. And I certainly don't see why there should be street signs in a language which does not in fact exist. Those last might as well be in Elvish.
Furthermore, I expect that people in Newport (who have no remaining reason to vote Labour), people in Caithness (who never really did have much reason to vote Lib Dem - I will be returning to the matter of the North of Scotland soon enough) and people in Northern Ireland (who otherwise now have the "choice" of the DUP, Sinn Fein, and three rump parties bankrupt in every sense) will be more than happy to vote, and to stand, for a real voice instead.
It's all about class. You can't get anywhere in Wales if you can't speak Welsh, unlike four fifths of the population. You can't get anywhere in the professions in Eire if you can't speak Irish, unlike well over ninety per cent of the population. Northern Ireland is going the same way.
ReplyDeleteBut all Welsh-speakers speak English and so do all Irish-speakers. Northern Scotland seems to be going the same way, too. How many people actually speak Gaelic? But you'll be confined to the worst jobs if you don't, if the Nats of all parties get their way.
Exactly so, Anonymous. Leo Abse predicted the rise of the Welsh-speaking elite way back during the devolution debates of the Seveneties, and it has certainly come to pass.
ReplyDeleteIn Wales, as in the Irish Republic and increasingly in Northern Ireland, the language is a means of keeping out and keeping down the English-speaking working and lower middle classes.
The North of Scotland will doubtless be next, to the delight of the super-posh SNP, whose class interest this would suit down to the ground (in practice, what doesn't?).
More people in Scotland have Urdu as their first language than have Gaelic. It is not spoken at all in the very far North: Caithness, Orkney and Shetland. It is really the language of the Western Isles and of a series of mainland villages facing those Isles.
And let them get on with it. Good luck to them, and to speakers of Welsh and Irish. Where one of these really is the main language, then by all means let it have parity with English.
But there are very, very few places like that. Those who want these languages elsewhere have their own economic, social, cultural and political agenda. And very nasty agenda they are, too.
And Anonymous, there is now at least one party not full of Nats. Come and join us.
Darling has just taken away non-dom status from those who were saying that their domicile was the Irish Republic, which does rather back up your point about just how many Gaelic-Irish people there are in Britain, so that close British-Irish links are now as much a part of that tradition as of the Anglo-Irish or Scots-Irish one.
ReplyDeleteWhen you add in the Queen's Realms of Canada, Australia (especially) and New Zealand, it must dwarf "Irish America", for example. And yes, there are a lot of Scots-Irish in America. But the Americans don't want to know.
If Scotland did become independent, David, then would you claim it as your domicile for tax purposes, since it is where your father's family comes from? Brown and Darling have probably seen that one coming. But since they themselves would probably stay in London, you never know.