Quid, indeed...
The demonstrators, if such they still be, on the streets of Belfast have no more nor less British a culture than, in order of their existence within the present boundaries of the United Kingdom, the Quakers, or the Sephardic Jews, or the Hebridean Catholics whose Islands the Reformation simply never reached, or the native speakers of the language that is now called Welsh.
But neither the Quakers, nor the Sephardic Jews, nor the Hebridean Catholics, nor the native speakers of Welsh, imagine that everyone else in the United Kingdom is like them, or at the very least that they sit well within the British cultural mainstream. Nor do either the Friends or the Sephardim imagine that such has ever been the case. Ever.
Therein lies the difference.
Whats your point?
ReplyDeleteLike the Queen's other far-flung loyal subjects in Gibraltar and the Falklands they feel British, which is all that matters.
Their protests are nothing to do with a claim to be more British than the Welsh etc; they are protesting against what Peter Hitchens rightly called a "surrender to gangsterism", the introduction of a disgraceful law that makes Northern Ireland the only part of Britain where the national flag is officially banned from display on a public building for most of the year.
Thats not just a surrender to gangsterism. Its a surrender to the European Union and the powerful anti-British faction both here and abroad
I cannot imagine that the EU gives two hoots. No one on the Continent understands why the United Kingdom has four international football teams, and this is very much in that same vein when viewed from the outside, I'm sure. They don't quite understand Irish independence, either. Scots, take note.
ReplyDeleteMy point is that - and if you meet people from, especially, working-class Protestant backgrounds in Northern Ireland, then they really are like this - they think that their version of Britishness is universal, or at least the norm, or at the very least the historical norm.
Thus, it is, for example, truly beyond them that city halls in Great Britain do not fly the Red, White and Blue every day, and that in fact people would regard such behaviour as French or American in a civilian context.
It is still going to be flown in Belfast on every day that it is over here, and that has already begun on the Duchess of Cambridge's Birthday. Making them what they have always insisted that they were: exactly as British as the rest of us. The question, then, is whether they really want to be any such thing. Or whether they even understand what it means.
Oh, the EU certainly cares: it likes to break up strong multi-ethnic nation states, as it did in Yugoslavia, the better to dissolve them into the EU (hence devolution, hence Labour's failed plan for regional assemblies...the EU's official maps divide Britain into European "regions").
ReplyDeleteThat is why, as P.Hitchens astutely observed, any part of Britain is allowed a referendum on reducing the powers of London, but the one thing no part of Britain is ever allowed, is a referendum on reducing the powers of Brussels.
I take your point about not being "more British than the British". I believe the issue is that it shouldnt be ILLEGAL to fly the British flag on any day of the year. It should simply be a matter of preference.
This is, as everyone knows, a sop to the IRA, who don't wish Northern Ireland to be British at all. That's the root of their objection to it.
Nothing has been made illegal. A public body has merely resolved to behave in a normal rather than in what might very politely be termed an eccentric way; in a way characteristic of a civil context rather that of a military one, including a military occupation; and in a way characteristic of the Home Country rather than of the Colonies.
ReplyDeleteWhen, in the near future, there is a Nationalist majority in Belfast, then the reaction to what was in fact integration with the Mainland, as ostensibly demanded by the Ulster People's Forum, will not be forgotten.
No one bemoans the passing of Yugoslavia more than I do. And no one was more opposed than I to the regional assembly. But while the former was bound up with the EU, and therefore also with the US and NATO that you probably believed could do no wrong until Obama came along, the latter had absolutely nothing to do with the EU outside the imaginations of faintly unhinged pub bores. Mercifully, hardly anyone in the North East pays any attention to them, so we still got a massive No vote.
A United Ireland would in fact be the creation of a new, and thoroughly unstable, multinational state. The Ulster Protestants are more manageable within the United Kingdom because they are such a small proportion of the population and because they inhabit such a tiny, out of the way corner of the territory.
Its officially illegal to fly the flag on those days of the year, since the councillors decision.
ReplyDeleteRegional Assemblies had everything to do with the EU-it was originally called a "Europe of regions" not a "Europe of nations".
You people often forget that.
Anything with the term "Regional" in it (including Regional Development Agencies, which dole out EU development grants) has an EU connection.
A United Ireland will mean the North joining the euro-Ireland, unlike Britain, is too small and weak to survive outside the EU.
The same is true of Scotland-its being pushed towards independence, the better to dissolve it into Europe.
A local authority does not have the power to make something like this illegal. Don't be so ridiculous.
ReplyDeleteYou people had to be kept away from the No campaign in the regional assembly referendum. That was how we won it. The same thing is already happening in Scotland.
Well, they've just done so, perhaps you need to tell them that.
ReplyDeleteNo answer to my point-I suspect you haven't even seen the EU map of Britain which shows us divided into precisely the regions that the Regional Assemblies would have divided us into, or read the EU's official term "Europe of regions" to describe its superstate. No connection, eh?
Coincidentally (or not)Nick Clegg's plan for an elected Lords, (defeated by the Tory backbenches, as Cameron himself admitted) included plans for each Peer to be elected to represent a "region".
The Lib Dems were, obviously, resurrecting EU Regional Assemblies by the back door.
Glad we defeated that plan too.
Again, nothing to do with the EU. People like you only harm the causes that you think that you are helping. The effort that has to be made in order to keep you away from opposition to regional assemblies, opposition to the EU, and so on.
ReplyDeleteAnd no, it hasn't. It can't. Just give the thing a moment's thought.
Regional party lists are the only hope of ever electing a Ukip MP from anywhere.
ReplyDeleteArguably a very good reason for not having them.
ReplyDeleteBut as part of a mix to ensure the oddly fetishised "constituencies with the same number of voters" while also retaining the genuinely important county representation as such, then they would provide an opportunity to bring in parties that therefore undertook not to contest either constituency seat or county seat elections.
For example, UKIP, which would have much to gain from such an arrangement, and nothing to lose.
A small number of nationally elected Independents would also require certain newspaper columnists to put up or shut up.
What do you mean the effort to keep us away from opposition to the EU?
ReplyDeleteWe're the only ones opposing the EU!
Miliband's appearance on The Andrew Marr show confirmed he's a bought-and-paid-for member of the pro-EU political class.
Even Cameron's referendum (which you rightly denounce as a fudge) is a "sleepwalking towards the exit", according to Miliband.
What an awful thought.
No, you are certainly not "the only ones opposed to the EU." You haven't been opposed to it at all for very long, and you are still not the predominant part of the people who are.
ReplyDeleteLike Trotskyist students, whom you resemble in a whole host of ways, you are useful footsoldiers. But that is all.
"you are not the only ones"
ReplyDeleteReally?
Pray tell us, in that case, which other mainstream party (apart from UKIP) openly advocates withdrawal?
Ed "leaving is not in our national interest" Miliband?
Please don't make us laugh.
"Mainstream" meaning "allowed on the BBC". Of which UKIP is therefore entirely a creature.
ReplyDeleteOh yea, the BBC are all for UKIP's policy of withdrawing from the EU.
ReplyDeleteI've noticed that anti-EU bias at the BBC, its really terrible.
Again, pray tell us which other mainstream party advocates withdrawal?
Oh, so we ARE the only ones opposed to the EU.
I'll take that as tacit acknowledgement. Thanks, sir.
The BBC is all for UKIP. Can't get enough of you. Making you "mainstream".
ReplyDeleteParties with hundreds of thousands of voters and I don't mean the BNP, oppose the EU. Like UKIP, which does not have a million voters.
But Auntie does not allow them on. She does, however, have UKIP on morning, noon and night. What does that tell you about UKIP?
Excuse me, UKIP got 2.5 million votes even back in 2009, and drove Labour to third place in the euro elections.
ReplyDeleteBut Europe is now centre-stage as an issue (which it wasn't then) and we're now well ahead of the Lib Dems (which we weren't then) so we're on course for far, far more votes this time.
The BBC NOW pays attention to UKIP, because it's moved into third place and pushed out the Lib Dems in the polls-however, in the 2005 Elections, it relentlessly portrayed them as swivel-eyed loons.
No, you are now in that position (not the same thing as having seats) because the BBC is so obsessed with you. And that comes at a price.
ReplyDelete