Having kindly linked to yesterday's post about the Act of Settlement, Martin Kelly writes:
"Destroy the Act of Settlement, and you are over two-thirds of the way to destroying the Union. Whether independence would be a good thing for Scotland's Catholics is a matter over which I have grave reservations."
We have not yet seen it fully in England, although we will soon enough, but it has long, perhaps always, been the case in Scotland and Wales that Catholics are at least as Unionist in relation to their own parts of the Kingdom as Ulster Protestants are in relation to theirs. And for the same reason: Catholics have no more desire to go down the road of who is or is not "really" English, Scots or Welsh than Ulster Protestants have to go down the road of who is or is not "really" Irish.
When it comes to the Union, the Protestant Succession is part of the deal, simply as a matter of fact. It is a price we pay for other things, things that we value and on which we depend.
Even in Northern Ireland, voting for candidates and parties is one thing, as is voting for something that you know is not going to go through. But who on the Falls Road is ever really going to risk casting the vote that brings about their own transfer out of the United Kingdom and into a country where you have to pay to visit the doctor? No one.
Unless, that is, the people of the Shankill Road are incited to some sort of retaliation for the repeal of the Act of Settlement.
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I cant seriously imagine that Protestants on the Shankill Road are actually going to work themselves into a riotous frenzy about the latest news re the Act of Settlement. Id prefer to leave that to Edward Leigh.
ReplyDeleteWhat goes round comes round.
People agonising about 300 year old constitutional issues.
Amusing and bemusing.
George Galloway has argued that Scottish independence would bring out the latent sectarianism in Scottish society in a way that the "United Kingdom" sanitises or perhaps draws the "sting".
Interesting how people always second guess Falls Road voters.
What they want and what they REALLY want.....held to be different things....usually by observing from a distance.
Curious how Leigh and others believe so much in their own superiority that they will actually prefer a second class role in Society to equality.
Not of course my concern...I am merely observing from a distance.
By the way the most fundamental of Protestant sects in my neck of the woods dont actually vote and are a bit "iffy" about Ian Paisley being involved in politics as they believe politics compromises them.
Indeed I have written extensively on the "God and Mammon" issue. But my observations would be too long for a comment without your expressed approval
"I cant seriously imagine that Protestants on the Shankill Road are actually going to work themselves into a riotous frenzy"
ReplyDeleteIt only takes one. And somewhere in Protestant Ulster, there will be one. He doesn't need to riot. He just needs to set off a bomb.
"Curious how Leigh and others believe so much in their own superiority that they will actually prefer a second class role in Society to equality"
They know that it pays to be a careful as a minority.
"By the way the most fundamental of Protestant sects in my neck of the woods dont actually vote and are a bit "iffy" about Ian Paisley being involved in politics as they believe politics compromises them"
Exclusive Brethren?
"Indeed I have written extensively on the "God and Mammon" issue. But my observations would be too long for a comment without your expressed approval"
Any chance of that blog address?