There are many reasons why I wish that Andy Burnham were better than he is. Quite a good summary is provided by the fact that he has been nominated by the Labour Party in Northern Ireland (yes, it exists). He may be a liberal Catholic, and that may be all we need; give me an atheist, if those are the options. But he is clearly the man favoured by those who would cement the Union by having the more Catholic working-class Catholics, plus some Protestants, vote Labour while middle-class Protestants, and some Catholics, voted Conservative.
The Welfare State, workers’ rights, full employment, a strong Parliament, trade unions, co-operatives, credit unions, mutual guarantee societies, mutual building societies, and nationalised industries (often with the word “British” in their names) were historically successful in creating communities of interest among the several parts of the United Kingdom, including between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, thus safeguarding and strengthening the Union.
If you believe in these things, the fruits of Catholic Social Teaching, then you cannot be in favour of excluding people from them by means of incorporation into the Irish Republic, which could never afford them and in which the two indistinguishable parties - Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael - are, whatever else may be said about either or both of them, in no sense part of the Labour Movement. A key reason, among several more, why next to no one in the Republic really wants a United Ireland, and most of them never even think about it.
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You really do speak some crap. You totally forget the sponsorship of sectarianism by the British state, particularly the Conservative Party.
ReplyDeleteMcDonald, Atlee and Wilson merrily presided over the abuses committed by the Stormont regime. So much for your romantic view of unionist socialism!
You are an ignorant, bumptious fool!
Ah, the hysteria of the Irish Republican lobby when anyone points out ... well, more than anything that no one in the Republic wants them, as has been the case for almost the whole of living memory.
ReplyDeleteI am of course aware of the Parliamentary Labour Party that voted against the partition of the United Kingdom, which was also the partition of the Irish Catholic ethnic group in these Islands. Of the first Labour Government’s resistance of any independent role for the Irish Free State at the League of Nations, and upholding of the ban on the issuing of passports that did not include the words “British Subject”.
I am of course aware of the Attlee Government’s first ever acceptance of the principle of consent with regard to the constitutional status of Northern Ireland, opposed by a handful of Labour MPs, mostly Soviet agents or sympathisers, and resulting in no negative reaction from unions and local parties, numerous of which were dominated by Irish Catholics at that time. Of the Wilson Government’s deployment of British troops to protect Northern Ireland’s grateful Catholics precisely as British subjects.
I am of course aware of the Callaghan Government’s administration of Northern Ireland exactly as if it were any other part of the United Kingdom. Of the two Ulster Unionist MPs who voted to save the Callaghan Government (both the fact that they did so and the reason why) when both Irish Nationalists abstained. Of the last integrationist MP to date elected specifically as such, the Labour-minded Robert McCartney.
ReplyDeleteI am of course aware of the continuing importance of the British State in protecting Northern Ireland’s Catholic interest against Protestant domination, whether under devolution pursuant to the Good Friday Agreement, or within such federal Irish structures as may ever be acceptable to a Dublin Establishment at once profoundly unconcerned about Northern Ireland’s Catholics and profoundly influenced by the theory of two nations with an equal right to self-determination.
I am of course awarethat even in the 1940s, Sinn Féin worried that social democracy was eroding its support. That she who led the assault on these things remains a Unionist hate figure. That the Civil Rights Movement was explicitly for equal British citizenship, with even the old Nationalist Party, never mind Sinn Féin, permitted no part in it. That it was classically British Labour in identifying education, health care, decent homes and proper wages as the rights of citizens, who are demeaned precisely as citizens when they are denied those rights; the fruits of Catholic Social Teaching, indeed.
I am of course aware that Britain set up Fianna Fáil, since no one else could have engineered that 1926 secession from Sinn Féin, which duly went on to hang the IRA. That only Britain could have engineered the 1933 merger of the Blueshirts, Cumann na nGaedheal and the National Centre Party, complete with a commitment to Commonwealth membership (which in those days necessitated retention of the monarchy, and a very high degree of integration in foreign policy and defence), albeit for a United Ireland as the ultimate aim. That the Irish Labour Party has always been funded by trade unions which exist throughout these Islands and are headquartered in Britain. That in the run-up to the 2011 State Visit, at least one Fianna Fáil branch is raising funds, both for itself and for its local hurling team, by raffling tickets to meet the Queen.
And I am of course aware that Sinn Féin has accepted that the constitutional status of Northern Ireland cannot be changed without the consent, not only of the majority of voters there, but also of the majority of those who define themselves by their opposition to any such change; in other words, the majority of those voting No would have to vote Yes, so that change is impossible. That no “dissident Republican” contested the 2010 General Election, and the Workers’ Party failed to contest West Belfast for the first time in living memory. That Northern Nationalism as a political, rather than a cultural, phenomenon is now manifestly minimal. That any statement of such aspiration is, on any objective criterion, the very last thing made by means of a vote for Sinn Féin. And that no one in the Republic wants Northern Ireland, anyway.
Are you aware of these facts? If not, why not?
They really do believe that they are the Most Oppressed People Ever. But imagine a referendum in which the question was "Do you wnat to be charged for hospital stays or visits to the doctor?" That would be what the question meant in a referendum on a united Ireland, so we all know how the Bogside and the Falls Road would vote. As you say the Republic would never take them anyway.
ReplyDeleteThere is no desire in the Republic, either for the much higher taxes necessary to maintain British levels of public spending in “the Six Counties”, or for the incorporation of a large minority into a country which has developed on the presupposition of a near-monoculture.
ReplyDeleteIf anything, the Republic would find it even harder to assimilate Northern Nationalists, who would be rather like hopelessly unrealistic third, fourth or fifth generation colonial returnees to Britain from Africa or India. One need only read Peppermint Paddy to see what I mean.