How are people ever going to face up to their responsibilities as elected representatives
It’s refreshing to see the Irish Times give some space to the not inconsiderable political intelligence of Stephen Collins to think about the phoney production which may be grinding its way back to a curiously inconclusive end. He points to a Seanad order of business debate in which Northern Ireland comes up. It’s a reflection of how denuded that chamber has become from Northern Irish affairs that the only non platitudinal remarks came from the former PD TD Fionna O’Malley:
Every time there is a crisis, the British and Irish Governments and the Taoiseach and Prime Minister go there to try and sort it out. How are people ever going to face up to their own responsibilities as elected representatives if this continues to happen?
She continued:
“It exposes the inherent problems in the system of governance in the North of Ireland, the D’Hondt system, in that it rewards people from the extremes and does not reward people who bring together communities and serve all of the people within their communities. While we continue to prop up a dysfunctional system, frankly it will never work and there will be crisis after crisis.”
Collins:
That is the nub of the problem. The Belfast Agreement enshrined a dysfunctional society’s sectarian divisions into governmental institutions. To be fair, there wasn’t any obvious alternative around at the time and the hope was that normal political activity would gradually evolve as the political representatives of unionism and nationalism shared power and developed some basis of trust in each other.
Instead, however, the opposite happened as suspicions grew and festered in the years after 1998. For that, Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair must take a large share of the blame. Having put an enormous amount of work into constructing the hugely complex agreement, they then proceeded to abandon the SDLP and the Ulster Unionists to appease their more extreme rivals.
Although, I think, this account exaggerates the importance of the switch in external patronage to the misfortunes of the two centre parties (they were eaten by other more internal contradictions, not least in the case of the SDLP its possibly erroneous sense of ownership of the Belfast Agreement), the addiction to it is clear enough from the way this dumb show (all picture and no sound) farce at Hillsborough played out.
As I pointed out in the Comment is Free piece yesterday, this is a piece of business OFMdFM were given extra resources to deal with. Having consumed those resources to zero effect (rent seeking behaviour par excellence), the two have drawn in Gordon Brown and the Taoiseach who has more pressing matters of national interest to attend to, after Sinn Fein insisted on externalising their domestic problems.
Judging by the lack of content in the briefings being given to the mainstream media, this has been less a matter of formal rounds of negotiation with their attendant paper trails (which at least create some cohesive sense on what has been achieved and what has not), and more in the nature of relationship management, with the main purpose of the rounds being more allowing tempers to cool rather than creating space for progress.
Collins makes this observation:
In the years after 1998, Sinn Féin perfected the art of spinning out the process time after time in order to get what it wanted, while marginalising the SDLP. It succeeded magnificently in those two objectives but the tinkering with the process became an end in itself. The party has not been nearly as successful in exercising power as it was in art of peace-processing. A byproduct of its interminable negotiating strategy was that the electorate in the Republic simply lost interest in its activities.
Another unintended consequence of its strategy has been that the DUP learned the lessons only too well and proceeded to copy the Sinn Féin tactic of putting process before real politics. Each party has got what it deserved in the other but the people who live in Northern Ireland have to put up with the consequences.
Collins, rather too darkly IHMO, concludes that cutting the whole system off might give the politicians pause for thought, and give the British and Irish governments moment to to listen to the Northern Irish people. But no democratic institution can afford to drift this far from the concerns of its people…
At some point, there may be a need to rip it up and start again…
Marlaghman
So the south will go hungry when Britian leaves the six counties? I know they are going through a bad patch but catch yourself on. Does the pound really look that much better than the Euro? Did that 0.1% growth do the trick? Is everything fine now? Or are you attacking the euro because the south are part of the eurozone? Starting to think its the latter which would be quite sad and ignorant indeed.
tacapall
“Marlaghman comparing a few working class protestants equal circumstances to the majority of the Catholic population is not a good anology. Their social conditions may have been similar but in reality they had more rights, freedom and jobs than their catholic neighbours.”
I missed your last post before I sent my own at No25, so I must come back again. The proportion of Catholics suffering deprivation – broadly defined – in Northern Ireland was certainly significantly higher than that of Protestants, especially in Belfast. However, far from it being “a few working class Protestants”, there were, overall, in numerical terms, more deprived Protestants than Catholics. I keep on asking you questions I know, but here’s another one: what exactly were the “more rights” and “freedom” that working class Protestants enjoyed over their Catholic neighbours?
Marlaghman comparing a few working class protestants equal circumstances to the majority of the Catholic population is not a good anology. Their social conditions may have been similar but in reality they had more rights, freedom and jobs than their catholic neighbours
Posted by tacapall on Jan 30, 2010 @ 08:15 PM
Now we have look at the pass lets look at the future.
We are all equal now, although some will not admit to this.
There seams to be alot of movement on both sides tonight and an agrement is a step closer but we will be back here again unless you have the parties all together and agreeing to work for all the people in Northern Ireland and trusting each other is at the fore.
We need to get real and chase the Churches from our schools, I believe the seventh day was set aside for this, unite our education through the state,(our MLA’s that is what they get paid for) unless they want to pay for it in full by themselves.
This is the first step the Education Minister should be doing, instead of dividing the community, this is the only way to learn our children that we are all the same no mater what church you are born to attend.(we are kept devided by them from birth)
It will be a slow process, but then we in this island still find it hard to move on from 400/500 whatever years ago.
The past is the past let it stay there, learn from it but do not stay there, as the path that has been traveled by some was wrong and with the will of us all we can make Northern Ireland a better place till 50+1% says different. (a bad way to leave any part of a country as there will always be them who think they can Bomb/Bullet people in a direction they do not want to go)
Then we are into another senario and prase the Lord I will have departed this hell hole for a better place
DerTer
I certainly acknowledge the difference between SA and NI. The magnitude of the discrimination is not comparable. Tacapall was responding to a comment earlier blaming the PIRA/SF for everything. He is highlighting how stupid this line of arguement is. The violence was a reaction whether you view it as disproportionate or not. Would you be comforted much by civil rights reforms being granted in the early 70′s if you had lost a family or friend during bloody sunday or the falls curfew? Sorry but peaceful protest was at times met with further opression. Do you honestly believe unionists reformed themselves or could it not be contributed to outside pressure?
DerTer whatever you think about the anology about SA, theres not much difference in attitude the mindset of afrikaners and modern DUP unionists,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soweto_uprising
The 1,500 heavily armed police officers deployed to Soweto on June 17 carried weapons including automatic rifles, stun guns, and carbines.[4] They drove around in armoured vehicles with helicopters monitoring the area from the sky. The South African Army was also order on standby as a tactical measure to show military force. Crowd control methods used by South African police at the time included mainly dispersement techniques, and many of the officers shot indiscriminately, killing many people.
Tell me how much different is this to Bloody Sunday
• their houses and land contiguous to white areas were seized, and those expelled (and many others) were exiled to housing of a very poor standard in rural sub-towns like Soweto
The house had been allocated by Dungannon Rural District Council to a 19 year-old unmarried Protestant woman, Emily Beattie, who was the secretary of a local Unionist politician. Emily Beattie was given the house ahead of older married Catholic families with children. The protesters were evicted by officers of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), one of whom was Emily Beattie’s brother.
black people had no votes and thus no democratic access or voice whatever
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday
It wants the introduction of one man-one vote, rather than one vote per household, which was also seen as discriminatory against Catholic homes with multiple occupancy and an an end to gerrymandering electoral boundaries which in Nationalist areas like Londonderry has led to the return of Unionist-led authorities.
Yeah whatever DerTer, you can fool some of the people some of the time, but you wont fool all of the people all of the time.
Elected Reps for the north 1969, pretty fair
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPs_elected_in_the_Northern_Ireland_general_election,_1969
Sure we was all in the same boat
tacapall, do you honestly believe that only ‘Catholic homes with multiple occupancy’ existed and no Prods lived in homes with multiple occupancy?
Gerrymandering was only applied to local council elections.
and was and still is used in many other countries like the USA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering
Help may come from elsewhere:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQJrovKgrTw&feature=PlayList&p=0612120466300AEE&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=16
Gotta love those accents…
tacapall
Why not stop cutting and pasting bits out of Wikipedia and sloganising and answer my questions: (1) What particular abuse of power by Unionists justified the killing of anybody? (2) What precisely were the “more rights” and “freedom” that working class Protestants enjoyed over their Catholic neighbours?
Thanks
DerTer my original post was in reply to the post by Marlaghman. Bringing it to a dispute between working class protestants and catholics was a diversion by you.
The conflict of the last 40 years did not just start in 1969, its origins were passed down to us through generations of culture and oppression, the six counties are the last pieces of ground stolen from Ireland by British invaders and gerrymandered to ensure the planter class an acendency if you like into government and power. The twenty six counties being given back to its rightful owners after centuries of conflict. When the civil rights movement started, it was about equality for all in the allocation of housing, equal oportunities in jobs, one man one vote, the right to peaceful protest. It was not about a United Ireland, Unionists could have easily give those demands without loss of face or constitutional status. Instead, Civil Rights marchers were beaten, attacked, intimidated and jailed. Policemen were seen throughout the world clubbing demonstrators to the ground in Derry on October 5, 1968. Nothing was going to change while Stormont remained under Unionist control. The last 40 years were about changing that status. On the Unionist side it was about resisting any change, keeping the status quo at all costs. Peaceful protests were met with oppression and brutality and that was always going to be reciprocated. To blame one side is to deny that Irish historical events are fact.
tacapall: Policemen were seen throughout the world clubbing demonstrators to the ground in Derry on October 5, 1968. Nothing was going to change while Stormont remained under Unionist control.
You are ignoring the reforms of late 1968 – ‘while Stormont remained under Unionist control.’
tacapall
You are still refusing to answer my absolutely simple questions. But let’s give it a go again. Bloody Sunday (and we might pause on the anniversary today to remember those who were killed) was of course comparable to Sharpeville, except as regards scale. But since the IRA had started to kill people long before that civil rights march, that really doesn’t advance your re-active violence case very much. Sharpeville, by contrast, happened before the ANC turned to armed struggle.
Just to focus on Derry; according to the Cain listings, in the 4 months leading up to Bloody Sunday, 7 members of the British Army and 3 members of the RUC were shot dead by Derry-based IRA volunteers (both P & O) – indeed the policemen were shot just 3 days before Bloody Sunday. I remind you that in response to criticism of the IRA’s campaign of violence, you originally contrasted the violence of the IRA (on one side) with Unionist behaviour (on the other side). I still need to know exactly which one, or more, of the acknowledged abuses of power by the Unionists (or indeed the British) justified these killings. And you still haven’t told us what extra rights and freedoms that Protestants enjoyed more than Catholics – by the way, it was Marlaghman who said that many Protestants were in the same boat as Catholics, and it was you who dismissed that accurate statement out of hand.
PS Apologies to everyone else for drifting off thread so much!
DerTer, some poor protestants were in the same boat as Catholics, the majority were not. As for the difference between Catholics and Protestants I will leave that to the then Prime Minister.
The basic fear of the Protestants in Northern Ireland is that they will be outbred by the Roman Catholics. It is as simple as that.
It is frightfully hard to explain to a Protestant that if you give Roman Catholics a good job they will live like Protestants, because they will see neighbours with cars and TV sets. They will refuse to have eighteen children, but if the Roman Catholic is jobless and lives in a most ghastly hovel he will rear eighteen children on National Assistance.
It is impossible to explain this to a militant Protestant because he is so keen to deny civil rights to his Roman Catholic neighbours. He cannot understand in fact, that if you treat Roman Catholics with due consideration and kindness they will live like Protestants in spite of the authoritarian nature of their church.
Lord O’Neill Prime Minister of Northern Ireland.
For the record,
Gusty Spence became involved in the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), in Belfast in 1965. A year later in October 1966 he was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of a young Catholic barman
PS Apologies to everyone else for drifting off thread so much!
Don’t apologize, it keeps stuff true to life. Just when everyone wants to talk constructively about how to sort stuff out, some twat comes along and starts blethering about stuff that happened before he was born and that he had no interaction with except to hear it from someone else or read about it in a book.
Comrade Stalin unlike yourself, I was around in the 60s and I and my family and my neighbours and friends have suffered in this conflict through Loyalism and the British Crown. When you look back at where and when it all started why begin in the middle, why not go to the start. No one side has a monolopy on the suffering or the high moral ground, that is what got us to the situation we are in today. Unionism has to recognise their part in all of this. If its good enough for the Australians to recognise their mistake and apoligise to the aborigines, then the Irish people deserve no different.