Sinn Fein believes negotiations are now closed…
Good morning. Another week-end looming and still no deal between the DUP and Sinn Fein. The problem is this: as of now, come the first week in May Republicans can put on show as evidence of the transfer of policing and justice powers a justice minister at work and all the attending swearing-in publicity. The attorney general will be visibly seen assuming his office and essentially for Republicans another link has been broken with England, if only symbolically, with local control over policing and justice being the order of the day.Against this background what will the DUP have to show for all Peter Robinson’s negotiating skills? Herein hangs the tale. The DUP has majored “on getting parading right.” The question is what does this mean ?
The existing Parades Commission is a creature of government to remove responsibility from it for having to take charge at Executive level every year regarding where people can or cannot march. In other words the Parades Commission does the government’s dirty work for it.
The government is reluctant to undo this edifice because Sinn Fein/The SDLP/the PSNI/the Police Federation/and the Policing Board all want to retain the parades commission. The DUP is pressing to put an alternative structure or structures in place.
This is a rather difficult area in which to bring comfort to the DUP apart from being awkward. It is the rock however upon which everything could perish. About one third of the DUP’s elected members want visible ‘product’ up and running to coincide with Sinn Fein’s ‘goodies’ in May.
No deal is yet complete.
The DUP is hard-balling. That party wants Sinn Fein to make a concession not stated publicly yet. Sinn Fein is no mood for reopening negotiations. They believe they have been closed. Gerry Adams is adamant that no matter what emerges Republicans will not live with Orange parades marching in catholic/nationalist areas where they are not welcome.
The Orange Order historically marched where it wanted along what it saw as ‘ the Queen’s highway.’ We are all prisoners of folk memory.
One wag said of Irish history: “It is just one f…….thing after another.” Crude but accurate.
Marcionite – “Orange marchers: do they or do they not march happily with UVF/UDA banners”
If the banners are marked 1912 UVF then most Protestants wouldn’t have a problem with that. Of course, if they are referring to the modern day versions, then bands which carry them should be disciplined. The argument some of these bands give is that the GAA is state funded and glorifies P-IRA/INLA terrorists. Something should be done about that too.
But like BryanS, I also say – Excellent posts. We have much more in common than many want to admit. I particularly liked the proposal of an English Language Act for Belfast!
Marcionite
I think that it’s a bad idea to try to skew the debate by bringing in this notion that the people who speak Irish have to be speaking it from time immemorial. If they learned it and have built an entire community in Belfast and elsewhere around the Irish language – not just Bunscoileanna as you so dismissively suggest, that has to be a good thing. And their demands can’t be dismissed. They do pay taxes. They are citizens of NI. They have acted responsibly and therefore their rights should be respected on the same basis as other citizens in other part of the UK who speak other indigenous languages.
After all the Scots Gaelic language is spoken by far fewer people in Scotland than Irish is in NI – even though Scotland is a bigger and more populated country. Welsh language learners are protected as well as those who are Welsh language ‘native speakers’.
Of course language protection of Irish has to be discussed in a UK context as well as an all Ireland context – and under both jurisdictions Irish should be protected in NI. Ie Irish is protected in the south via the Constitution and the Official Languages Act while in ‘mainland UK’ Scots Gaelic and Welsh are protected. NI is the exception in all of this, the anomaly. There is no valid reason for the maintenance of this differential treatment.
There is also a valid argument to be made that the unionist regime between 1920 and 1969 allowed Irish to die out as a native language in the parts of NI where it was spoken by native speakers – Tyrone etc. To complain now that only ‘native speakers’ deserve the protection of Irish language legislation is a bit self serving and hypocritical.
Marcionite, every lambeg drum involves the sacrifice of two goats!
I still think an ILA would be good for all of us. If unionists embrace the Irish language intrepidly, non-unionists will have to start and work at it in earnest. No more Heaneyesque ‘mythopoeic’ use of the language (that is, not bothering to learn it properly).
In time we can start campaigning for a Latin Language Act. It excited me greatly to learn when I went to my first lunchtime Irish class (shocking thing for a unionist in the 1970s) that inniu came from Latin in die, and that leabhor came from Latin liber.
I do hope that our deliberations are being followed in Hillsborough.
People, especially the DUP would do well to remember that once great political parties can disappear virtually overnight.
Remember the once great UK Party called the Liberals. In recent times the then Conservative Party in Canada was reduced from a comfortable parliamentary majority to 2 seats in the early 1990s. They split hopelessly and had to constitute a new Party eventually 15 years or so later.
abc123 hmm. I understand the difference between the UVF of 1912 and the latterday one but when I see the words UVF, my blood runs cold.
Similarly, the GAA need to be sensitive about naming grounds after IRA/INLA. There’s room for improvement on both organisations. politics and sport need to be seperated
however, I am also rendered cold whenever I see a Cromwell Road/ Street.
Perhaps a new quango, headed by Monica Queen Quango McWilliams herself (NICCI indeed, what a pile of dung) to take the next 5 years into assessing the offensiveness of each street and townland name in NI.
Two corrections to the language posts:
(1) Get real, everyone. The Irish Language Act when it comes should be about enabling ALL of us to read our own classical literature. Do we want to be able to read Táin Bó Cúailnge in the original? Yes!
Sadly a knowledge of modern Irish will not enable one to read An Táin in the original Old Irish. There isn’t even a decent translation of the entire text in modern Irish. Most people read Kinsella’s English version.
(2) Conchubhar wrote: After all the Scots Gaelic language is spoken by far fewer people in Scotland than Irish is in NI.
Well, the Scottish Gaeltacht is home to 60,000 native speakers whose habitual language is Gaelic. I don’t care what wishful thinking people indulge in when filling out the NI Census forms, but nothing like that exists in the North of Ireland.
Do you realise that while we our exercising our typing fingers the Dow is down 180 and the little dog Footsie is down 100 and even oil is down $2. We are doomed!
Conchubar
As much as I object to the old Stormont regime, they didn’t exactly round up and shoot Irish speakers, did they?. Irish was on decline anyway, just as it was in the 26 counties. Despite all the protections and money the 26 Counties threw at Irish, it didn’t turn the nation into a nation of Gaelgeors (Irish speakers as they refer to themselves). While the old Unionist Party didn’t encourage its survival, its decline was on the cards anyway. Besides, Irish was/is taught in every RC secondary school anyway so you can’t use the educational argument.
As for the Bunscoileanna (Irish language schools), you cannot just set up a linguistically separatist school and demand political and financial recognition. Irish was not the everyday language of the Falls or Lower Ormeau in the 20th century so what is the reason for trying to reconstitute it now?
I’m a taxpayer, if I set up a Francophone school in Belfast, should there be a FLA and automatic state funding?
There’s a right and a wrong reason for everything and as a nationalist who has the inside track on nationalism by dint of growing up and living in nationalist areas, I know fine rightly that 95% of new Irish speakers are doing it for political and many for hostile reasons, or rather for politica and hostile reason of their parents.
Everyone can quote the exception but those are my findings.
For balance, I apply the same to Ulster Scots, a language I never heard off until after the Anglo Irish agreement was signed. I’m only waiting for the more extreme elements of the Alliance Party to come up with their own language any day now.
My objection ultimately is that Irish is being used as a stick to beat the DUP with. As much as I dislike the DUP and what they stand for, waiving totems does not make for an inclusive society.
If you are bona fide Irish speaker who genuinely believes in hte language, I apologise if my posting cause offence but Sinn Fein have a lot to answer for for politicising the language and turning it into the bogeyman it is today. I sincerely wish that was not the case but here we are
Thanks for making a good point, Nordie Nordsider, and please allow me to expand upon it. First we learn modern French. In time we come to read La Chanson de Roland. First we learn modern German. In time we come to read Das Nibelungenlied. First we learn modern English. In time we come to read The Canterbury Tales.
Posted by BryanS
” Do you realise that while we our exercising our typing fingers the Dow is down 180 and the little dog Footsie is down 100 and even oil is down $2. We are doomed! ”
At least there is a comforting certainty about being doomed.
Much better than if/but/maybe doomed. Oh for the comfort of certainty.
Marcionite,
“I’m a taxpayer, if I set up a Francophone school in Belfast, should there be a FLA and automatic state funding?”
No, because Belfast is not in France.
Two weeks ago Robbo was finished, his political obituary written.
One week ago he was the brilliant strategist steering a new united unionist political movement.
Today he is the ruiner of the Union and observes a wreckage where the DUP used to be.
Week, politics, triumph, disaster……..
From the Belfast Tele:
“You are still down to getting the big boys onboard,” a talks insider commented — a reference to those very senior sceptics including Gregory Campbell, Willie McCrea, David Simpson and Lord Morrow.
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/brian-rowan-northern-ireland-negotiations-in-waiting-room-14665506.html#ixzz0eaQ7UMT4
*****
As someone pointed out the other day, they’re the ones that have MPs salaries to fall back on if the Assembly collapses or, in the case of Morrow, isn’t even in danger of losing his Westminster seat at all (although House of Lords membership doesn’t attract quite the level of perks as the Commons).
Marcionite, I too am thoroughly enjoying your recent contributions.
The thing that bothers me most about the current state of the Irish language in NI is the way it is being used to mark territory. At least in the South it is applied generally – ridiculously wasteful, but even-handed. In the North we find bilingualism being applied on a street-by-street basis, which is just compounding our existing problems of ghettoisation. Whatever comes out of the ILA, the first priority should surely be to depoliticise the language. If that means bilingualism on all road signage then maybe it’s a price worth paying? It would be a one-off expense, unlike the translation of court documents (for example) which would be ongoing.
Speaking of road signs, has anyone else noticed how the word “Londonderry” is studiously avoided as much as possible on the A5? South of Omagh, only Omagh is signposted; north of Omagh, only Strabane. You have to drive past Strabane to find the first “Londonderry”. Fear of vandalism?
What SF need to do now is to reach out to those ‘unionists ’ who favour neither UCUNF nor TUV and who are somewhat queasy about the FP wing of the DUP .
SF can maintain their Irish Unity aspiration while at the same time taking their seats at Westminster and offer their support to Gordon Brown’s Labour. In this way they could be seen to support the economic and social interests of ‘liberal’ or left unionists who are now ‘disenfranchised ’ at Westminster .
To those who would see such a move as a betrayal of Republican principles I would point out that the voters have long since given up on so called ‘principled’ politicians for two reasons
a) very few if any exist and b) they have not been unknown to change their principles when opportune .
With the dual mandate ending for the Assembly and Westminster a move to Westminster would surely sharpen SF’s parliamentary skills for the future and presumably with a an extra couple of SF MLA’s would strengthen the party and enable them to move on to the post Adams era stronger rather than weaker .
Such a reach out might even help SF win an extra seat at Westminster -it would also strengthen the GFA .
It would also enable some ‘unionists ’ to vote for SF candidates WITHOUT putting the ‘union’ at risk .
SF probably have a better chance of picking up that extra Westminster seat than the SDLP and/or Alliance given their base support .
If the Tories can stick their noses into NI politics and upset the ‘applecart ’ why should’nt SF do the same at Westminster ??
mickhall ,
‘Empathy, empathy we must have empathy.’
So NOT we nust have Empey , Empey , Empey
?
Empathy doesn’t pay well in the Old Testament . Eye for an eye or better still two for one .
Notice near the border that they try to squeeze as many NI towns in their bilingual form as possible, no matter how improbably distant from the signpost itself. I find it quite humourous.
I propose Derry is renamed Dublinderry. That’ll keep us in arguments if God forbid the P+J issue is sorted.
We should be grateful, I suppose, that the old Stormont regime didn’t round up and shoot Irish speakers. However the Irish language died in these areas on their watch and if they had any respect for the minority culture in NI, they would have done more to ensure its suvival. The opposite holds true. Unionist politicians spoke vehemently against the Irish language and NI was a cold house for Irish speakers in that time.
Despite this the Irish language survived and is now thriving. Life’s too short for people in their thousands to be speaking and spending their days as Gaeilge as an act of hostility against the Brits or Unionists. Most people in NI, where I lived for many years myself, don’t encounter the Brits or the Unionists from one year to the next. Most young speakers of Irish – ie the hundreds of students at Coláiste Feirste – weren’t even born when the first IRA ceasefire was announced. They are as much ‘native speakers’ as our Gaelic friends in Scotland.
Irish is a minority language in a country, on an island, on an island where the majority language is English. As such I accept it’s not practical to suggest that Irish only Gaeltachtaí be set up throughout the North. At the same time, the Irish language is a vibrant spoken indigenous language. As such it deserves the same protection as other indigenous languages in the UK – Scots Gaelic and Welsh – and in Ireland, Irish.
Your argument suggests that Irish speakers in the north should lie down and accept a second class status to indigenous minority language speakers in the other parts of the UK. Surely you realise that this is what politicises the language and radicalises its speakers! And more of the same will push people who are peacefully and reaasonably carrying on with their lives, as Gaeilge, paying their taxes etc into extreme political positions. These Irish speakers have no interest in using the language to beat the DUP with – but if the DUP continues with its extreme anti Irish stance then that’s what will happen. At the same time as one SF many was saying that every spoken word of Irish equalled a bullet in the struggle, the DUP’s Sammy Wilson was describing Irish as a ‘leprechaun language’. This colourful rhetoric continues today and is all the more hypocritical because the DUP claims that the Irish language is being politicised by Sinn Féin and yet sits in government with that party. Either the DUP is sharing power with SF and the two parties are partners in government pursing a common agenda or its not. The two main parties can’t be pursuing opposite agendas while sitting in the same government – or can they?
The Ulster Scots language and culture is not to be bundled with the Irish language. They’re entirely different things and there is a valid argument that the Ulster Scots language has become secondary in a movement which is aimed at promoting ‘Unionist culture’. I have no objection to the promotion of Unionist culture – but call it what it is.
conchubhar ,
‘ The two main parties can’t be pursuing opposite agendas while sitting in the same government – or can they?’
Well that’s exactly what they’ve been trying to do these past three years .
As you can see it’s “working ” on and off like with more off than off it seems
Excellent post btw .
abc123:
“If [Orange Order] banners are marked 1912 UVF then most Protestants wouldn’t have a problem with that.”
Surely by that logic, ‘most Protestants’ wouldn’t have a problem with banners marked ’1916 IRA’ passing through their neighbourhoods?
I somehow doubt that.