As a Minister from Dublin was attending the annual conference of the Democratic Unionist Party (frankly, what else does he any longer have to do?), and as Peter Robinson was telling it almost banally that most Catholics in Northern Ireland were now happy inside the Union, the Editor of the Irish Daily Star was being sacked for having printed risqué photographs of the Duchess of Cambridge.
"She's not the future Queen of Ireland," he had previously told the BBC. Really? Manifestly, she already has more power in Dublin than she has in London. And when it comes to her becoming the Queen of anywhere, we are talking about the middle of the century.
Enjoy the NHS. You have had to wait long enough for it. But may we enjoy the return of proper controls on abortion and divorce? Let that be the deal.
Too much is being made of it. We must never re-produce classic TV, movies or music from the 1960s. We must not produce Political Events.
ReplyDeleteBack in the 1960s there was a monlithic unionist party headed by Terence O'Neill (a liberal who couldnt understand why Catholics were nationalist) but he was treated with some suspicion by his own Party (Craig, Faulkner) among them but he won a lot of praise from the Belfast Telegraph who produced little cut out coupons "Im backing O'Neill". He inviteda Dublin minister Sean Lemass North.
And a firebrand unionist called Ian Paisley pelted the car with snowballs.
The 2012 remake....Robinson is no O'Neill Coveney is no Lemass and Jim Allister is no Paisley...he didnt even show up.
And there was no snow.
Lucid Talk (look them up on my Blog.....the Magnificent Seven Per Cent) the polling company are produced by....Belfast Tele.
And strangely they conduct their polls by phone.
So 7% of people want a United Ireland and 93% thought they were talking to Double Glazing salesmen.
Even if true, Im not actually bothered about it. Fifty years ago Unionists held three aces ......Benefits, Education, NHS.....and they played the hand badly.
And even with jobs & Housing legislated....they will still mess it up.
What you totally underestimate is that fundamental protestantism is too much in the DNA of DUP .....and virulent anti-Catholicism and hatred of Irish ethnicity is too deep to really make progress.
The sincerity of O'Neill is much doubted (I am neutral on that) but just impossible for DUP to make taht breakthru.
Thru my lifetime....indeed long before my lifetime unionism/nationalism has ebbed and flowed and I suspect it will be see long after Im gone.