Allegedly the greatest Irish statesman since independence, in fact he was the man who convinced, not so much his own country's people (who are mostly somewhere between indifferent and downright hostile where Northern Ireland's Nationalists are concerned), as the ridiculous and pernicious Irish-American lobby, that it was a good idea to bypass the norm within each community in Northern Ireland until politically it just went away, in order to hand over the place to a permanent carve-up between two lunatic fringes.
So Northern Ireland is now run by, on the one hand, Marxist guerrillas who believe the Provisional Army Council of the IRA to be the sovereign body throughout Ireland, and, on the other hand, people who think of themselves as Unionists merely because they want the British taxpayer to foot the bill for their weird little statelet.
The former are busily excluding the mainstream Anglican, Presbyterian and Methodist bodies from Northern Ireland's schools, as the prelude to excluding the Catholic Church from the schools throughout Ireland. And the latter couldn't care less, because (beyond the odd semi-detached clergyman and a handful of semi-detached laypeople) they have no cultural roots in or ties to those bodies, just as they have few to the Apprentice Boys, fewer to the Orange Order, and even fewer (if any) to the Royal Black Institution.
Broadly Nationalist, Gaelic-Irish Catholics need not bother heading south these days, as the Republic now defines itself very forcefully against everything that they hold dear. Nor have they their old options of going to America or Australia, where the people like them have been convinced that what they were trying to escape is the best thing ever.
Still, they can always come over here. If they can bear it, so far removed are we now from the country is which so many broadly Nationalist, Gaelic-Irish Catholics happily made their homes.
The same is of course true of the substantial number of Northern Ireland's Catholics in favour of the Union in principle. And the Anglo-Irish and Scots-Irish Protestants have the same option (although they would find it particularly painful to see what has become of England, Scotland and Wales), as well as that of joining their substantial communities in Canada (or British North America, as the Royal Black still calls it) and New Zealand.
Leaving whom in Northern Ireland? Only, on the one hand, Marxist guerrillas who believe the Provisional Army Council of the IRA to be the sovereign body throughout Ireland, and, on the other hand, people who think of themselves as Unionists merely because they want the British taxpayer to foot the bill for their weird little statelet.
Well done, Bertie. Well done, Bill. And well done, Tony.
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"And the latter couldn't care less, because (beyond the odd semi-detached clergyman and a handful of semi-detached laypeople) it has no cultural roots in or ties to those bodies, just as it has few to the Apprentice Boys, fewer to the Orange Order, and even fewer (if any) to Royal Black Institution."
ReplyDeleteThe DUP (I presume that is who you mean) is stongly linked to loyalist groups. Paisley is an Apprentice Boy and Willie McRea is an Orangeman. Indeed he was the main speaker at the main Glasgow Orange March a few years back where he said the Scottish Parliament was the work of Satan and compared it to the snake in the Garden of Eden. Scottish press pilloried him as "Whistling Willie" - he has sold many records of gospel music.
Yes, but that's about as far as it goes. A lot of members of the marching orders, and of the mainstream Protestant churches to which they are so closely tied, must now vote for the DUP. But other than the Apprentice Boys (bottom of the pecking order anyway), they are very rarely members of it, and almost never senior members.
ReplyDeleteFree Presbyterian ministers cannot even be Orange Order Lodge Chaplains. They are literally not allowed by the Order itself, the root of a feud with Paisley which was pursued vigorously for 50 years and has still never really been resolved (at least from his point of view, in that the ban is still in place).
Paisley has addressed many Independent Orange Order events in his time, and marched with it on numerous occasions, but even of that he has never actually been a member.
You assert that the Marxist guerillas now represented by the Provisional Army Council are "are busily excluding the mainstream Anglican, Presbyterian and Methodist bodies from Northern Ireland's schools, as the prelude to excluding the Catholic Church from the schools throughout Ireland." That to me seems a trifle exaggerated. Sure the Chinese communists weren't able to extirpate christian, buddhist and muslim religion from Chine between 1950 and c.1980, and in fact religious adherence throughout China is growing in leaps and bounds. What do the marxist provo army council have that the systematic Chinese are lacking?
ReplyDeleteBut the Chinese gave it a good go, didn't they? So would Sinn Fein. So will Sinn Fein. And so is Sinn Fein doing.
ReplyDeleteIt hates the Catholic Church far more than that Maoists ever hated religion in general. And as for the Protestant bodies in Ireland, it hates the people who belong happen to belong to them.
"So Northern Ireland is now run by, on the one hand, Marxist guerrillas who believe the Provisional Army Council of the IRA to be the sovereign body throughout Ireland, and, on the other hand, people who think of themselves as Unionists merely because they want the British taxpayer to foot the bill for their weird little statelet."
ReplyDeleteThis statement I would have to agree with. It succinctly describes the situation of NI's government in a post-Belfast-Agreement era: divided between two groups of rather conflicted, though throroughly self-absorbed & self-interested, fanatics.