Forming the wrong conclusions?
The BBC has throughout the day been promoting tonight’s ‘State of Minds: The Children’ programme which has been surveying children’s opinions about their identity. All of the children were born in 1997, and the findings, whilst not exactly surprising, once again underline the divisive nature of national identities in the north of Ireland today.
What is surprising, however, is the conclusions being reached by the programme’s researcher, Professor Paul Connolly of Queen’s University. Professor Connolly believes the way forward must involve “[encouraging] children’s sense of being Protestant or Catholic alongside also helping them to recognise that they are all part of a wider and shared identity as Northern Irish.”
Forgive me for being blunt, but describing identity in primarily religious terms here is an entirely bogus premise. Given that the issue of national identity runs to the core of the political problem, proposing we skirt over people’s primary source of identity-as British or Irish- and instead propagate an alternative ‘northern Irish’ identity sounds very Alliance-ish to me.
Surely a better conclusion would be to assert that we must find ways of equally legitimising and respecting the primary national allegiances of British and Irish here as a prerequisite to developing inter-communal trust from which shared identities may evolve. Ignoring primary identities and instead proposing artificial allegiances is more likely to arouse suspicion and mistrust on all sides. Let’s open this one to the floor.
“What, the Northern Ireland football team? Admit it, it’s because they’re a crowd of Jaffas.
Oh, and if that’s your analysis of GFA Mk2, you must be Anto McIntyre and I claim my five pounds.”
I will embarrass myself by admitting I have no idea who that is.
I believe you pointed out on another thread why Westminster still matters, Sammy. It matters because it controls most of the most important functions of government, the purse strings and can overrule us if it really needs to. And I haven’t even started about the lack of written constitution, or the patheticness of the protections. And they are still pushing 90-day detention.
We have a lot of nice shiny blacks cars, but not an awful lot of power. Denying it denying reality.
“What about people who define as Irish and British? Are they suffering from false consciousness then?”
No, but context, as I pointed out, matters.
I believe you pointed out on another thread why Westminster still matters, Sammy. It matters because it controls most of the most important functions of government, the purse strings and can overrule us if it really needs to. And I haven’t even started about the lack of written constitution, or the patheticness of the protections. And they are still pushing 90-day detention.
Oh shit, I agree with you here. End of that argument.
But I still don’t see what that has to do with the Northern Ireland football team.
Anto McIntyre, by the way, is the dude from The Blanket.