“While we are a city of culture there has to be a recognition that we’re not part of the UK.”
Londonderry may have been shortlisted to become the UK’s first City of Culture in 2013, but the Sinn Féin party leader on the council, Maeve McLaughlin, is not happy.
Ms McLaughlin said she believed the bid was “very heavily weighted in terms of cementing our relationship with London”. “While we are a city of culture there has to be a recognition that we’re not part of the UK.
“We are not opposing the bid, but we are putting down a marker at this stage and saying we should be exploring, rather than cementing, this relationship. “There is a huge onus on the team that’s been put together to lead this bid to put in writing how they will address the issue of the tens of thousands of nationalists and republicans in this city and region who do not recognise themselves as part of the UK,” she said.
She’s wrong on both counts…
Topic: Politics
Region: Northern Ireland, UK
Hey Joe!
I always wanted to say that!
I totally agree with you about the shinners, no sense of humour at all, unless of course they are killing someone. Oops shouldnt have said that…
Joe Canuck
By the Way you should try blogging. A great way to let off steam and give your imagination an airing!
The commentators on this site have obviously not been listening to the debate today in Derry.
The City of Culture proposed bid has been recently made known to a strategy group. Its emphasis was heavily (if not exclusively) on Derry being a potential minature version of London. With proposals like bringing the oxford
/cambridge boat race to the Foyle, what it called ‘home county’ premiership teams to Derry and the Brit Awards. There was little or no mention of our Irish culture in the city and Sinn Fein rightly objected. These objections were leaked (by you know who) and a six county story ensued. However the objections to the bid are extemely legimate and needed to be aired anyway. As an Irish city trapped in the UK, for now, I am happy for the proposal to go forward but only if it reflects the real culture of my city, not a contrived one by the luvvies, in order to win a competition. I am delighted to hear the bid will now be amended.
Maybe they could do a british lions on it and make it an uk and ireland city of culture, to be honest someone in sf had to say something to cover their backs i doubt we will hear much more about it from them.
Medillen @ 10:18 PM:
The Foyle (unless there’s a strong northerly) ought to be a good rowing river. But Oxford/Cambridge up (or even down) the Foyle? They’re not men enough! My money would just be on Cambridge: they have to train on the Fenland waters in mid-winter, so they’d know the meteorological score. The idea of a regatta, though, is a good one: especially if there’s a chain across the stream.
As for lamhdearg @ 10:23 PM, Heaven help the rest of the world if the men of Derry truly take to rugby, the way they do in (say) the Hartlepools (a mate of mine once calculated that 80% of the male population of that town had to be engaged to provide the number of rugby teams playing each Saturday). The hard men of Limerick would be in full quiver.
But culture? Hardly.
We are dealing with a planned city here. Look at what Viollet-le-Duc did with Carcassone (for good or ill). Now apply large amounts of money to Derry, its walls and its 17th-18th-19th century buildings. It could easily, and quite affordably (with gentrification), be a gem. Bishop Street Within and its environs have potential to represent the best surviving image of a period of Ireland’s history.
The area inside the walls (though buggered about by recent events) still maintains an essential integrity.
Then there’s the Guildhall. Sell that as a full and positive appreciation of Victorian, Edwardian and Georgian (George V-ian) brickwork and glasswork. For it’s period, it’s small, but perfect in most details.
Malcolm, there are loads of reasons why Derry could be a serious condender for a city of culture (despite tonights Spotlight) but that proposal must be showing Derry as it is, not as some may like it to be, for some UK competition.
Medellin, heartwarming to hear PSF got all principled over a boat race and the Brit awards, yet supported the removal of Articles 2 and 3, which stated Derry was part of the island of Ireland.
You can{t speak out of both sides of the mouth at the same time.
BTW, guess who got the private security contract to protect the Canadian Royal Navy and Royal Marines when they docked in Derry bedecked in Royal insignia?
None other than the highly principled Provos.
I hope Derry becomes the UK’s City of Culture in the same way as I hoped Tyrone’s Peter Canavan would be voted the BBC’s Sportsman Of The Year a few years ago. Canavan was clearly robbed. Everyone knows he topped the poll. The BBC knew he wasn’t really British so discarded the result. Derry hasn’t a hope.
A good friend from Belfast said to me once “Derry is the place you pass through to get to somewhere nicer.” I kind of agree with that, and also agree that if Derry were to win the bid, the wider North West would benefit. As the posts so far explain, Derry isn’t to everyone’s liking. What place is? But it is a gateway to beautiful sites politically North and South of the border. That’s the selling point. Now, if we could just get the random shooting and murder off the streets … Pity the Shinners couldn’t manage that instead of talking ahite all the time.
It would be churlish not to wish Derry/Londonderry well. It shares so much in common with Liverpool another place of culture….for example most of its successful ex-residents choose to live eleswhere while singing “The Town I loved so Well”.
But lets not lose sight of what this is all about……..MONEY.
If I was a journalist in Derry and worried about my career prospects in an economic downturn, Id be forming a PR company to assist in the bid.
No doubt when we see a list of backers for the Project we will see loadsa familiar journalistic names who couldnt resist the call to assist……er for a consultancy fee.
Nobody is going to get poor out of this. Some might even get rich.
Rather like the Mel Brooks comedy “The Producers” it doesnt actually matter (to the PR companies) whether Derry/Londonderry succeeds or fails.
For myself, I look forwars to Guild Hall Square being packed with Derry residents cheerfully waving their national flag (er both of them) while the people who actually awarded the title cringe and the Daily Mail goes mad.
“Gin and tonics all round…..and may I look at your brochure on villas in spain?”
Without re-entering a debate had years ago, may I remind you Old School. That the removal of Articles 2 and 3 were the 26 county Governments’ contribution to historical compromise to move us out of conflict. To most northern republicans and nationalists, whilst Articles 2 and 3 were nice sentiments, they were ultimately meaningless in practice, as they stood idly by.
As regards foriegn navys docking in Derry, I welcome them all, it is a port after all.
Can you explaing Medellin, Why Gerry Adams and many Northern nationalists were members of the Irish National Congress, which was formed in 1990 to “defend Articles 2 and 3″, yet only a few years later was telling us punters the same articles were “meaningless”.
If you think a constitutional claim of territory is “meaningless”, how can you possibly get upset about something as trivial as the Brit Awards??
Should Argentina drop it´s claim over the Falklands or Spain of Gibraltar? They are politically astute people, and don´t do deals and gimmicks for short term gain.
If you welcome the Royal Navy, I take it you have no problem with British Army bases in the North also?
Are you one of these New Sinn Fein types?
No old school, I have been around for quite a while, don’t worry. A foreign ship docking at a port temporarily whether it be British or Argentinian cannot be compared with establishing a military base, have a bit of sense. I campaigned for the retention of articles 2 and 3 as a northern republican, but realised that as part of an overall compromise I would be willing to see these meaningless words replaced with a meaningful process that would bring these aspirations into a reality.
By the way, old school, are you one of these new super republican types, absent for the years of the struggle but who have found new courage as keyboard warriors.
Articles 2 and 3 stated a fact.
That the Nation of Ireland was constituted by the entire island of Ireland.
Why vote to scrap something you believe is true other than short term expediency.
Youd never see the Unionists bend on that one.
Having voted against it, and accepting, through the GFA, the legitimacy of the 6 Counties within the United Kingdom, Sinn Fein just look silly now trying to backtrack, and act radical again.
Typical response from PSF.
Try to emasculate or belittle opposing voices by asking who has the biggest c*ck.
Bit rich calling someone a keyboard warrior…from a keyboard.
I dont have to blow my trumpet for anyone. Needless to say I was a member of your party before you left me in 1997.
old school, they’re not trying to backtrack on their renunciation of national rights, since that isn’t possible. What they’re doing is trying to create the bogus impression that they haven’t renounced them in either (constitutional) deed or freewheeling spirit.
Part of the creative ambiguity that Whitehall used in writing the GFA was downplay the importance of constitutional and international law so that those national rights could be renounced in such a way that those who renounced them could be led to believe that they had done no such thing or, failing that deception, that constitutional and international law was just an “empty formula of words” which should be considered as solemn and as binding as a whore’s promise that her five-dollar blowjob is the world’s greatest.
Because the British state intended to perpetuate a major fraud on those within its sovereign territory who were denied their national rights, it of course needed the collusion of their leadership. So, although they have been led to endorse the legitimacy of British sovereignty and to renounce their own former right to national self-determination, they need that leadership to reassure them that (a) they have done no such thing, or (b) that if they have done such a thing that it is just a short term expediency that can be undone (by, presumably, requesting that the Irish state abrogates the treaty it signed with the British state and thereby puts itself in violation of international law).
So, this is simply presentation that is designed to consolidate their supporters within the UK by assuring them that they are promoting the Irish nationalist agenda that they have betrayed and not a British state agenda that they now support. It’s a bit like the stories that leaked from the recent talks process where it was reported that photos of the queen were turned upside down by the Shinners – these are there way of assuring the muppets that they’re ‘republicans.’ Other examples are using the term “the North” and giving graveside orations for those who the touts giving the oration put into those graves. Still, the muppets lap it up…
The name should be returned to Derry and not be up for discussion. In the interim, they should return Donegal to its original Ulster jurisdiction as it was gerrymandered to ensure a “majority support” for British rule in Ulster.
Fact:
An old Irish word “Daire” makes historical reference to the name Derry dating back to the sixth century AD and maintained that name up until the name was changed from Derry in 1613 during the Plantation of Ulster to reflect the establishment of the city by the London guilds. .
Fact:
“Partition of Ireland in the early 1920s was to have a massive direct impact on County Donegal. Partition cut the county off, economically and administratively, from Derry, which had acted for centuries as the county’s main port, transport hub and financial centre. Derry, together with West Tyrone, was henceforward in a new, different jurisdiction officially called Northern Ireland . Partition meant that County Donegal was now almost entirely cut off from the rest of the jurisdiction it now found itself in, the new independent state called the Irish Free State, known since April 1949 as the Republic of Ireland. Only a few miles of the county is physically connected by land to the rest of the Republic. The existence of this ‘border’, cutting Donegal off from her natural hinterlands in Derry City and West Tyrone, has greatly exacerbated the economic difficulties of the county since partition”.
The reason this was done was because much of the county was seen as being a bastion of Gaelic culture and the Irish language. It now holds the second-largest Gaeltach area in the country.
If Donegal was returned to its original jurisdiction, I doubt the Brits would have the “majority rule” in Ulster today.
mcclafferty,
I also would like co Donegal to be included, In a new nation of ulster,an ulster with a constitution that requires a majority of 75% of its people to vote it out of existence (into a union with Britian or with the ROI)pipe dream i know. However this is where i must get argumentative, At the last count Donegals population of under 150 thousand (not all of voting age) would not give irish nationlists a majority, On being split from the rest of ulster having a detrimental effect, ” sure havin we all been all goin there fer years to get er heads pace and spendin er money” finaly “original jurisdiction” i take it you refer to
the nine county Elizbethan model?.
add on, i am off to bed,catch you later.
My understanding that as of today County Donegal’s population exeeds 250,000 people!
Have a good night sleep, as sure as I’m posting here, one day Ireland will be united. What puzzles me the most is that all the people who are loyal to England still stay in Ireland? Why don’t they go and live in England and they can espouse all their allegiance to the Brits?
Regardless of how any Unionist feels, Ireland is one nation comprised of 32 counties and it is Ireland not the UK. I realize how the Brits had to destroy Irish Catholics, gerrymander the island and oppress the Irish culture, but at the end of the day… it is the Loyalist/Unionist whatever you want to label them – that are the foreigners in Ireland. You obtained the north by fraud. You are nothing more then carpetbaggers and always will be.
Irish history, if it hasn’t been the revisionist version by the Brits, tells the true story of Ireland and it’s subjugation to the Crown.
Sleep well.
mcclafferty – how long do you have to live in a locality before you stop becoming a foreigner? Do you qualify if you were born there? How about if your parents were? Grandparents?
By your reasoning most of those alive today in both north and south american, who arent of “native” stock, should be considered as foreigners. Should the average Brazilian, Argentinian or Canadian be considered a foreigner in their homes?
I think if you set the bar high enough everyone is a foreigner, because at some point their ancestors probably pushed out someone else to live there. In South Africa for instance, are the Zulus who the Afrikaners and British pushed out in natal actually native? They themselves moved out others before them.
bigchiefally, – I understand what you are saying but in Ireland’s case it’s a bit different in my perspective because of the persecution that took place of the Irish both north and south under British rule in order to maintain its hold in Ireland. Ireland’s history is a sad history from the time of Cromwell, the Black and Tans and on into the present day.
Ireland was one country with no borders. When Britain conquered it, every means to eradicate the Irish were taken. The Irish were treated as second-class citizens in their own country. Forbidden to openly practice their faith, their land was taken from them, they couldn’t vote without owning land, they were spit upon and treated like “white niggers” of Europe by the British. If it weren’t for the IRB the 26 counties in the south would still be under British rule today. Unfortunately, Michael Collins under the threat of war by the British government did not negotiate a 32 county Republic at that time. Big mistake on his part.
Prior to the Stormont Agreement, Irish-Catholics in the north weren’t treated much better. The Irish were not allowed to fly the tri-color, there were no jobs to be had for Catholics, any sort of civil rights movements taken place in the late 60’s and 70’s were being crushed and its leaders imprisoned or murdered (i.e., Bloody Sunday). Loyalists randomly burned Catholics out of their homes, deliberately marched through predominately catholic areas for purpose of intimidation with their (Orange Day parades) – which they still do to this day, and the collusion between the crown’s servants and the Loyalist paramilitaries led to many deaths of innocent Irish Catholics and I’m talking only about the last 40 years of unrest in the north, all in the name of keeping Ulster British.
It is believed that if the British had not gerrymandered Donegal (the furthest most northern county in all Ireland) they would have lost any chance of maintaining British rule in Ulster after partition.
What bothers me most about this issue is that Ireland is Britain’s last colony and why? Don’t tell me it’s because the majority of its citizens wish to belong to the UK. We already know how that came about – it was the game of gerrymandering.
England is a beautiful country but with so many issues of it’s own to deal with it. It is costing the British government unbelievable amounts of money to maintain the north of Ireland and for what reason? Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution clearly stated that ‘”the whole of Ireland formed one national territory”. But in order to again ensure British rule in the north, the Constitution was amended in Stormont in 1998 to read: “The Irish nation as a community of individuals with a common identity rather than as a territory”? That doesn’t make any sense as there are two distinct communities with two separate identities in the north – one loyal to Irirish nationalism/republic and one loyal to the UK? So how does that amendment make any sense? It was, again, intended to ensure British rule in the north of Ireland.
My contention is still the fact that the “majority” in Ulster loyal to the Crown was a false count to begin with it because of all the gerrymandering that went on in order to ensure such an outcome. What do you think would happen if the entire 32 counties were part of that vote to reunite Ireland or even just Donegal?
mcclafferty, unfortunately Nationalist Constitutionalists who negotiated away the Irish Nation under the GFA, have ensured that the Union will be copperfastened in our lifetimes.
The minority Unionist population dictate the future for the majority on this island.
The Unionist veto has been enshrined by PSF and the SDLP.
mcclafferty
I assumed from some of your other posts,that you had a titter of wit,that last one has put me right,question 1 do you beleive mankind came from ireland(if not we are all foreigners)Q2 when was this? that ireland was one country without borders, The history of ireland (before it was unified under british rule)was of small disparate kingdoms that where prone to beating the tripe out of each other, Not much change there then, Please take your rose sorry green tinted glasses off there are two sides to every story.