Irish Political News

Over at Comment is Free I’ve noted some intial thoughts on the unexpected announcement of the substantial foreshortening of the Taoiseach’s retirement. If his party didn’t expect it yesterday, it also reveals that they never quite understood the man, even if they loved him truly, madly and deeply.

Before heading over to Mark Devenport’s blog to see the draft Bill of Rights, delivered by Chris Sidoti for discussion at the Bill of Rights Forum, it is worth reminding people what the remit given the Forum was in the first place:

“To advise on the scope for defining, in Westminster legislation, rights supplementary to those in the European Convention on Human Rights, to reflect the particular circumstances of Northern Ireland, drawing as appropriate on international instruments and experience. These additional rights to reflect the principles of mutual respect for the identity and ethos of both communities and parity of esteem, and – taken together with the ECHR – to constitute a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland.”

Now, before anyone panics, there is still most of a weekend of discussions (and presumably a lot of horse trading) before this gets passed on to the Human Rights Commission. Thence, it will pass through various hands (the most brutal of which is likely to be the NIO) before showing up at Stormont. But some of the stuff that’s in there bears little relationship to enactable law. More importantly, much of seems to have flagrantly ignored the remit and/or has gone way beyond matters that are under the control of the devolved institutions.

One slightly bemused delegate told Slugger:

The Unionists are largely opposed as most new rights are outwith the remit, excepted (UK) matters, programmatic, party political issues or uncosted as well as frequently repeating what is in the ECHR and thus the Human Rights Act.

The ‘voluntary’ sector has no concept of compromise and are almost religious in their certainties. Zealotry is one description or silent solidarity. CoSO could be described as the mute sector.

Most of its proposals are worthy but to the left of the left of the Labour Party. The SDLP is in favour of anything and everything except abortion and won’t oppose any SF proposal. DUP were somewhat intermittent in their attendance but have become more rigorous of late.

Another source agreed to an extent there was an air of unreality to some of the proposals coming from the voluntary sectors, but that some of the critical players, like the Unions, had experience of bargaining and was confident that the final draft can be whittled down to something more likely to get enacted.

There has been no voting mechanism agreed, so the Forum is in for an intense weekend of horse trading bit by bit until it’s offering due to be delivered on Monday at 2pm at the Hilton Hotel. A rally called by the Human Rights Consortium for Monday afternoon has been cancelled due to “ongoing workloads and time restrictions in the build up to the end of the Forum’s work”.

Mick Hall has an interesting quote from a Northern Irish member of éirígí, a relatively recent phenomenon in Republican politics, which seems to have surfaced in Dublin much before organising in Belfast:

“The party defends the right of any people who are subjected to imperialist occupation to use whatever means they deem necessary to remove that occupation. However, we do believe that the elevation of military struggle to a principle as opposed to a revolutionary tactic has retarded the development of the republican project. The policy of militarism encourages elitism and stifles the initiative of our communities. Pursuing a military strategy at all costs also divorces the struggle from ever-changing contexts and hence, our ability to capitalize on them.”

It’s probably true that the main flow of people and commercial traffic within and between these islands has been for some time on an east west, rather than a north/south axis. Dublin London and Belfast London account for substantially thicker traffic flows than Belfast Dublin. In a survey conducted a few years back 84% of people in the Republic had visited London, whereas only 50% had been to Northern Ireland. Fionnuala O’Connor gets to the heart of a rather awkward matter: despite the pretensions of nationalists north and south, the quality of cultural relations between the two parts of the island is poor (subs needed):

The two jurisdictions have much in common: they are also strange to each other. What are VHI and the Mahon tribunal to scratchily peaceful Northern Ireland? Who in the Republic can sympathise with northerners insisting RTÉ Radio One keeps its time-honoured wavelength? Alienation, that’s the word. But mutual, and lack of passion can be a good thing.

Wishful thinking is not going to mend the tear of partition:

The two cannot be made one without a cost that nobody wants to pay, even without consideration of revived, potentially murderous, loyalist reaction, even if the Tiger gets its stripy legs under it again. The GAA is the only unifying agency on the island, though a mystery to most northern Protestants - and a few Catholics, it must be said. It is the experience the Irish in the North have traditionally craved, the feeling of oneness with the separated brethren down the road, ever harder to sustain. Sentiment rarely trumps economic self-interest, and the sentiment has been fading for a long time.

And the last year delivered yet another sobering reality check for Republicans:

Sinn Féin’s gunk in last year’s Dáil election was the sharpest revelation of distance for them to date, the nastiest contrast with Northern success. It does not really matter that the contest between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael relegated the smaller parties. Effect was more important than causes. Republicans are still struggling with the death of the “transitional” dream, of gradual reunification via North/Southery with SF ministers on both sides of the table.

Unionists may not know what to make of modern “Ireland”, the name most use for the neighbouring state. But then Northern nationalism is equally at a loss - and what is Irish nationalism today?

The first was the delivery of the results of the 2001 Census, in which, as Henry McDonald so memorably put it at the time: “...the straight-talking statisticians at the census office metaphorically ripped off Santa’s beard last Thursday and exposed the ‘Count the Catholics’ theory as a fake.” Or as Graham Gudgin put it back then (December 2002), “Sooner or later, though, there will have to be a re-assessment.”

Tom McGurk was more sanguine: “Partition in everything except as a line on a map was thereby [the Belfast Agreement] ended. Importantly, this was not by territorial acquisition, but by the creation of a new political superstructure whose very purpose was to eliminate the crisis originally created by the territorial imperative.”

In truth, much attention in the intervening period has been taken up in the management of various crises, so that there seems to have been little time or space given, publicly at least, to the questions thrown up by the census figures, or the sense of drift that has continued between proponents of Northern Irish nationalism and their counterparts in the Republic. Even the much speculated upon (and always prospective) merger between Fianna Fail and the SDLP, one suspects, is not likely to offer, of itself, any kind of magical formula. 

Just to prove Pete isn’t the only blogger with a half decent ear for a line of poetry, here’s a piece by Fred Johnston, that I first read in South Magazine in April 2006, and which I finally got permission from the author to ‘reprint’ on Slugger, just when my copy of the magazine disappeared in the morass of bookshelves here at Slugger Central. It has finally re-emerged. And I am very grateful for the author’s permission!

MAO-ING

At Carnsore Point there was a young man
Shouting at the crowd, preaching, passionate
In his way. Was this for show?

I carried a copy of the Little Red Book
In the back pocket of my jeans. I marched
In Newry. What was it about?

We differ in distance from what we were:
Miles and miles, a drip of years-
You recall the gesture, I remember cars on fire.

Both of us were what we would become
Even then. Now we accuse each other
On the air of selling out this, buying that.

Mao is dead. Ireland’s still hooked up
To familiar grids, parish wells of thought:
What we sold cost more than what we bought.

Fred Johnston

Mick mentioned this clip of Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams at Milltown cemetery on Sunday, but the footage, and the speech, is worth putting on the frontpage.  Not least as a comparison to his attempt to ride a different horse last week at his party’s televised Ard Fheis. And, while we don’t have the actual text to check against, the reference to attracting US investors is missing from the clip we have.  What is there though is some selective memory in action, and another attempt at picking a “sham and phoney fight” with a previous government of the Republic of Ireland. Perhaps it was raised at today’s meeting..

We also have a photo of the ‘colour party’ in attendance yesterday.

And on the “volunteers” Adams knew he had this to say

“They had calculated that they wanted to change the order of things.  That there was no other option but to join the Irish Republican Army and to meet armed agression and terrorism with armed resistance.”

What he neglected to tell this particular audience was his view of that armed resistance..

It’s hard to know what Gerry Adams really thinks about Ian Paisley. Last week, he refered to the First Minister as a fascinating and respectful in his dealings. Yesterday, at a Republican commemoration in Milltown Cemetary, he suggested in his address that the DUP had been ‘careless’ to lose, not one but two Paisleys. Anthony McIntyre thinks the Big Man has had the last laugh:

Ultimately, history might be unkind to Ian Paisley, judging him as the man who abandoned all his beliefs for a slice of power, only to fall on the extremist sword he had fashioned to perfection. A more astute assessment might well conclude that, in essence, the old theocrat never really changed. In government, he secured what had long eluded him outside of it—Sinn Fein’s acceptance of second-class citizenship. His perpetual dismissal of Martin McGuinness as ‘the deputy’ was par for the Paisley course. That the Derry Catholic should prove so deferential to the ‘big man’ negated a lifetime spent insisting that God made Catholics but the armalite rifle made them equal.

Ian Paisley can step into retirement chuckling at his achievements: partition into perpetuity and the union with Britain as secure as it has ever been. His has been one political odyssey that defies Enoch Powell’s dictum “all political careers end in failure”.

In the wake of the Mairead Farrell commemoration event at Stormont on Friday, which seems to have drawn all hands on deck (to the point of stretching the party’s full time staffers extremely thinly on Friday), there have been protests and counter protests. The Assembly imposed a ban on filming within Parliament buildings to prevent the proceedings there being filmed and have inadvertently banned BBC cameras from Monday’s Assembly plenary. Gerry Adams has is not impressed:

As we work during the next few months to persuade US investors and others to attend an investment conference in May, which is about creating jobs for people, picking sham fights will only serve to dissuade business people to come here”

Garrett FitzGerald had an interest and informed perspective on this angle in his Irish Times column this weekend. It was highly critical of Unionists too, but for entirely different reasons:

I can recall meetings with parties in the North at which I endeavoured to alert members of different parties to the catastrophic decline in that area’s share of our island economy - but evoked only blank looks from both sides. I had hoped that when the time came in the mid-1990s for these parties to sit down together to seek a settlement of their differences, they might at last consider addressing crucial economic issues.

Perhaps it was too much to hope that Sinn Féin/IRA, which had spent a quarter of a century seeking to destroy the Northern Ireland economy, would at that stage start to reflect on the extent to which their activities had succeeded in throwing up a huge new obstacle to progress towards Irish political unity. But, unhappily, in that negotiation unionists of both varieties appeared equally uninterested in serious economic issues.

It’s a familiar theme from FitzGerald. Last year he laid out in great detail just how badly the IRA’s war against economic targets debilitated the potential for political union with the Republic. Meantime, the ‘sham fight’ seems to be turning into a game of reactive aggression, with the first play being negative, and spiralling downwards.

Adams may be right in essence, but as FitzGerald notes there have been two players at this mutually self destructive game for some years.

Another day, another rippling quote from a Sinn Féin TD. This time, as noted in the Irish Times - “SF back to basics..” [subs req], it’s Louth TD, Arthur Morgan, and he’s not referring to the Assembly nor to Northern Ireland.  From the Dáil record.

“Why would I expect any different from a Tánaiste and a Government over this partial Parliament in this little semi-statelet over which he is presiding?”

And, as the Irish Times also noted, Fianna Fáil TD, Martin Mansergh, provided the response.

Very crude criticisms were made of the Government’s economic policy by a party which does not have any coherent economic policy that I am aware of. I was shocked, although not surprised, to hear any Deputy refer to this as a partial parliament in a semi-statelet. I have always had great difficulty understanding so called republicans who do not recognise this Republic. It throws into context the party in question’s presenting itself as the champion of sovereignty and democracy when it is clear that the Deputy opposite does not recognise the sovereignty of either this State or its people. The European Union in the past 35 years has had much more respect for sovereignty and democracy in this country than the party opposite.

So says the Guardian’s Michael White of the lame duck first minister. Not even Sinn Féin’s Gerry Adams.  His whimisical “carefree” childhood apparently changed utterly by Ian Paisley Snr - no mention in the article, though, of the “seminal political influence” of Gerry Adams Snr.. nor of others in his immediate family. ANYhoo.. perhaps the most appropriate response comes from Trevor Ringland in the Irish Times [subs req]

I have very, very strong views on his influence on this island in the past. But what happened, happened, and we have to try to work through the consequences of that, and seize the opportunity that we have created to make sure we don’t repeat the past. In that respect, and in focusing on the future I have to welcome Ian Paisley’s action in the past 12 months. I believe that Ian Paisley in stepping away from politics frees up the future for unionism. And some individuals or organisations in nationalism and unionism might want to consider doing the same thing.

Setting aside all polls and forecasts, and even the party’s reverse in its electoral fortunes last year, the Irish Examiner believes it is the party’s preoccupation with Northern Irish politics that poses it’s biggest difficulty in making headway in the southern polity. 

Mr Adams was strongest when talking about northern issues — the proposed transfer of policing and justice powers, the campaign by some unionists to force out Ian Paisley, the commitment to establish a “high-powered taskforce” to drive forward “the roadmap to Irish unity”.

By contrast, when he delved into the issues dominating the agenda in the south right now, there was little of substance.

He had a couple of good moments — a soundbite about how Dustin the Turkey could have done better than the Government when negotiating the Lisbon Treaty, and a call for the highest standards in public life. “Public office should never be used for private gain or personal advantage.”

But even that statement’s impact was lessened by Mr Adams’ reluctance to criticise Bertie Ahern directly — perhaps because Sinn Féin still needs the Taoiseach’s support on northern issues. And the rest of the speech lacked specifics. He said prosperity and job creation were “key priorities” for Sinn Féin, but didn’t really spell out how the party might improve matters.

He said it was unacceptable that a large number of people still lived in poverty and children still went to school on empty stomachs — but again there was little in the way of detailed solutions. He got the obligatory standing ovation — and a hug from Martin McGuinness — but they seemed almost cosmetic to events happening elsewhere.

Elsewhere Chris has argued that Sinn Fein must not shift from its tradionally socialist identity, which given the left is already a fairly small and unprosperous ground in the Republic may not be the easiest way to curry electoral favour with southern voters. But when one of the party’s four TDs suggests that the party still has not got a “credible tax policy”, all the media exposure world is unlikely to be enough to turn the corner.

England Expects throws up an interesting anomaly. It seems that in a recent vote to respect the decision of the Republic’s referendum, the two Unionist MEPs (otherwise known Brussels as ‘the two Jims’) found themselves on opposite sides of the vote.  Sinn Fein’s Ms de Brún does not seem to have registered in the vote at all, which is strange since, presumably. her decision would have been something of a no brainer. The aye’s included Jim Allister, and the noes, Jim Nicholson. What makes it interesting is the degree to which the UUP MEP was critical of Brown when he refused a referendum for the UK:

“The new EU Treaty will have a profound effect on the way the UK is governed taking further powers away from Member States and it is nothing less than an affront to democracy that the Prime Minister will not allow the British people to have their say on it.

In which case, presumably, Jim would expect the rest of the EU to ignore the result of any such referendum?

UPDATE: Checking the figures at the original source, it seems Mc de Brún was there and voted in favour of the amendment. Interestingly, Prionsias de Rossa seems to have voted against respecting the outcome of the Republic’s referendum. Curiouser, and curiouser…

The Minister of Finance in the Republic, Brian Cowen likes a drink and is incurably social… Damien has the pictures...

WorldbyStorm suggests a possible link between the suspicious device found in Fairview Park today, which gardai have described as viable, and the sporting event at Croke Park.

Gardaí have refused to link the device with today’s visit by a British monarch to Croke Park where the Princess Royal is to attend the Ireland v Scotland rugby international.

From Beano, who has the detail of this exchange between the Taoiseach and a FG TD from Ulster…

Sometimes there are things that go on in Stormont that surpass all rational understanding. Slugger hears that the leader of the Sinn Fein party in the Assembly, John O’Dowd, heavily petitioned the Speaker against an SDLP motion on the murder of Paul Quinn because it was not ‘factually based’. Understandable perhaps. But the resulting statement seems less to have addressed that matter, and simply have spun the statement into pettyfogging mush… You can see both below the fold:

The original…

“That this Assembly condemns the brutal murder of Paul Quinn; notes the clarification by the two governments that they do not hold the view that the victim was involved in criminality of any kind; further notes the assessments of Sir Hugh Orde and the International Monitoring Commission that current and former members of the Provisional IRA were involved in this crime; and calls upon everyone to encourage people to come forward and assist the police investigations north and south.”

...and the amended version:

“That this Assembly condemns the murder of Mr Paul Quinn; notes the clarification by the British and Irish Governments that they do not hold the view that the victim was involved in criminality of any kind; further notes the assessments of Sir Hugh Orde and the International Monitoring Commission regarding the involvement in this crime of persons who are current or former members of the Provisional IRA, or who have associations with members or former members of the Provisional IRA; and calls upon everyone to encourage people to come forward and assist the police investigations being carried out by the PSNI and an Garda Síochána.”

As Mick noted in July last year, after a previous British-Irish Council meeting,

The BIC tasked the secretariat, in consultation with member administrations, to undertake a strategic review of the council’s work programmes, working methods and support arrangements, including arrangements for a standing secretariat, and report back with firm proposals as soon as possible.

After today’s BIC meeting in Dublin, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern confirmed that a permanent secretariat is to be established - “He said a date for the introduction would be announced when staffing and the mechanics had been worked out.” Also of interest is the delegating of new Secretary of State for Wales, Paul Murphy, to attend on behalf of Prime Minister Gordon Brown.  Full communiqué here

Meanwhile, Northern Ireland deputy First Minister, Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness, revealed he’s not a fan of Eastenders..

“I am not a fan of EastEnders or Coronation Street, but my wife and my children, particularly the girls, watch the programme. I have to say I am absolutely appalled at the level of concentration around the pub in the programmes.

“I am appalled at the drunkenness that is quite clear for everybody to see and all of that before the nine o’clock watershed when children as young as eight, nine, 10 and 11 are watching.

“Now I regard that as irresponsible broadcasting, and I think something should be done about it,” said Mr McGuinness.

[He could switch over to a different channel.. - Ed]

Hibernia girl unpacks the flaws of ‘multiculturalism’ by citing the ultimate in separate development: Northern Ireland.

The shock that is supposedly going to come out of the Eames Bradley inquiry into the past may be the extent to which British authorities had inflitrated the Provisional IRA, and the number of atrocities that apparently were allowed to go ahead with the full knowledge of those authorities. Still, in peace time each time a fresh revelation hits the public domain, the collateral damage seems only to fall one way. The question for Sinn Fein strategists is how to get beyond its compromised Northern Irish past towards a viable all island future.

The SDLP get a double whammy from Peter and Iris Robinson for the refusal of the Assembly party to back to the budget and the Programme for Govenment. Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness are painting the party as ‘absolutely and totally confused’. And, as commenter J Kelly points out, the often SDLP supporting Derry Journal has a stiff piece of editorial saying that the SDLP, “has to make up its mind if it wants to be a party of government or if they want to be a party of opposition”.  The singular exception seems to be Liam Clarke, who notes that they may have had good teachers:

In politics it pays to be awkward unless you are in control; that has always been the DUP and Sinn Féin’s tactics. A DUP friend once told me that the best philosophy when dealing with Direct Rule ministers was “the crying child is soonest lifted”. It pays to complain loudly and put a high price on your support.

Of course, every market sets its own price. Clarke considers the background:

After the most recent elections everyone wrote off the SDLP and UUP as yesterday’s parties. Margaret Ritchie was dismissed as a minister by most commentators. The general belief was that Catriona Ruane would win the South Down seat in the next Westminster election if Ritchie stood against her.

Things have changed now. Ruane has tried to be awkward about education but hasn’t performed well. Ritchie on the other hand has shown her elbows; she has been a real political operator who has managed to stay on the right side of public opinion even if she strained the rules at times.

She will get the credit for the greatly increased funding which was conceded to her department. Yet her party has positioned itself to escape the blame for any problems on other fronts.

Is it ethical? Not entirely reckons Clarke. But he believes that the precedent is clear enough:

It can be argued that the honourable thing would be to go into opposition, but they would be fools to do that when they can run with the fox and hunt with the hounds. That’s what the DUP and Sinn Féin did in the Trimble/Mallon led administration. That’s one of the reasons they grew to their present size. More recently they left the St Andrews negotiations without signing up to anything and they don’t feel bound to implement everything which was agreed by the two governments.

The question remains: do they have the tenacity and the self will to make it work? FBut for now, Clarke reckons they are ahead:

Everyone knows that a mandatory coalition with all the parties isn’t going to be a permanent form of government and everyone knows there will be elections to Europe and probably Westminster next year. In these circumstances everyone is trying to get the best for themselves, their voters and their constituents out of the present arrangements. When Gerry Adams was wheeled out of semi retirement to hold a press conference specifically to condemn SDLP tactics you could tell the smaller party was ahead on points. They had just wiped his eye.

The thing is, Clarke is as yet on his own in this analysis. For signs that the party’s strategy is working, they’ll need to make a few more converts amongst Northern Ireland’s commentariat. For now, even if the party thinks it knows what it’s doing, the commentators appear confused. And perceptions matter in this game.

Strictly for the record, but worth noting that the decision of the SDLP not to vote with the budget must have forced a degree of unexpected pressure from Sinn Fein whips to have sufficient MLAs in the Chamber for the budget vote. Given it was a cross community vote, it needed a nationalist majority to pass. In the event the Aye vote was just 59.5% (and that’s with the Minister voting against the SDLP line).

Six out of the 28 Sinn Fein MLAs did not make it into the chamber for what was, arguably, the most important vote in the legislative year. I count them as: Alex Maskey; Martina Anderson; Raymond McCartney; Paul Butler; Francie Molloy (Deputy Speaker); and John O’Dowd (leader of the Sinn Fein group in the Assembly.

Alan McBride asks a question that has also intrigued me recently. Has Gerry Adams gone away do you know? Certainly there are members of his kitchen cabinet in critical positions of power at Stormont. But, for the moment, Mr Adams appears to have taken leave of the public scene.