Wednesday, June 04, 2008
Question time
Quick bit of blatant plagiarism from Mark Devenport’s blog, but I liked “Stormont spy’s” list of questions:
1. Will Sinn Fein fail to put forward McGuiness?
2. If it does happen will Robinson and McGuiness shakes hands?
3. Is this being done to bring Gerry Adams back to the spotlight?
4. What happens to MLA’s pay? Will it be suspended of the Assembly is dissolved?
5. Does the Executive members give up their departments to direct rule ministers?
6. What can Gordon Brown do?
7. Does the Civil Service go into “purdah”?
And finally to leave you with this… Who has more to lose? McGuiness or Robinson? My pension is on Robinson. Firstly he will lose seats to Sir Reg. Secondly he will lose seats to Jim Bowen (Allister). What happens then? What if Sinn Fein is the largest party? Will Robinson sit down in Government as a deputy?
What I think:
1: Probably, but I remain to be convinced that they’ll push it to an election.
2: Pretty unlikely, it’d be madness on Robinson’s part.
3: Not a bad call.
4: The same thing will happen as in normal election period circumstances - but only if SF refuse to nominate after the 7 day period I think.
5: I’m pretty sure not. I know that in Westminster during an election there are no MPs, but there are ministers. I assume it’s the same here.
6: Threaten to legislate over the DUP’s heads. The 42 day detention vote is looking more and more safe for him, so he will be more disposed to ignore the DUP.
7: No idea.
8: I couldn’t possibly comment.
Michael Shilliday @ 12:03 PM
Has there never been a Raving Looney Unionist Party?
Posted by on Jun 04, 2008 @ 06:38 PMFor accuracy, is not/was not the DUP the UDUP?
By my reckoning we have had 24 or 25 Unionist parties,with the word unionist in the name, and probably 6 or 7 others which didn’t qualify because of a derivative word in their title. That’s quare goin’.
Posted by on Jun 04, 2008 @ 06:44 PMHas there never been a Raving Looney Unionist Party?
Of course. See the lists above! They cunningly disguised their names though.
Posted by on Jun 04, 2008 @ 06:53 PMDriftwood,
Horseman, I’m sure someone stood for the Dail on a Unionist ticket, but can’t be sure.
In 1997 Jim Devenney stood in the Dail election in Donegal North-West as an independent. He was widely seen as a crypto-unionist, however, for reasons of his various (Orange?) connections. He came bottom of the poll with 1657 votes, and his votes mostly transferred to Paddy Harte of Fine Gael, which is in most cases the preferred party of southern Protestants.
Devenney is probably similar to whoever it is you are thinking about. I’m not aware of anyone in recent decades (and certainly during 1969-1998) who would actually have put a ‘unionist’ tag on themselves south of the border. That would have made them electorally untouchable (in the Indian sense).
Posted by on Jun 04, 2008 @ 07:04 PMA pity Devenney didn’t get 33 more votes!
I,m sure some one in Dublin put themselves forward, but i’m not sure how serious they were.
Posted by on Jun 04, 2008 @ 07:07 PMDo you remember when? Because all the results are available on the web (http://electionsireland.org/index.cfm)
Posted by on Jun 04, 2008 @ 07:14 PMThe problem, Driftwood, is that if someone stands as an independent their policies do not get recorded in the results. Since only registered parties are listed, and no unionist party ever has registered (in modern times) in the south, your possible ‘unionist’ candidate will be untraceable amongst the independents.
Posted by on Jun 04, 2008 @ 07:18 PMConcerning the big list of unionist parties and groups, has anyone yet mentioned the Ulster Clubs?
Posted by on Jun 04, 2008 @ 07:21 PMSammy et al - you are all cheating now. No Wiki and no google until Driftwood decides.
Posted by on Jun 04, 2008 @ 07:34 PMBut the Unionists could never unite.
No, let’s not go down that road.
This has been a day which has crossed into the surreal. Let me first count the ways.
There was the booze-up on the London Underground which was anthropologically misunderstood.
Then, the best bit of writing I found in the public prints was Richard Morrison, in the Times, celebrating a sewage pumping station:
If you ever go to Crossness (and I really think you should) try to forget the faint but unmistakable pong of ... well, you know what. And the fact that, by its very nature, the building is located next to the accumulated product of what eight million Londoners ate last week. No, just feast your eyes on the ornate decorations that Bazalgette bestowed on the place. Here are intricate cast-iron screens, floridly coloured arcades of columns, Romanesque mosaics and arches - and, the crowning glory, a spectacular octagonal atrium at the building’s heart.
I now hear Young-Earth-shocking news of bdelloid rotifers:
small transparent animals that live in damp places such as puddles, or patches of moss. Among evolutionists, these animals have something of a cult following, because they have a lifestyle that is not supposed to exist. As far as anyone can tell, the bdelloid rotifers are ancient asexuals: they appear to have been living entirely without sex for more than 85 million years. And each time we learn more details of their lifestyle, the wackier it becomes.
And then yous lot are at it like ferrets, especially Horseman @ 07:01 PM, whose question really got me going [Damn good blog, Horseman: strongly recommended—“ambivalent Senator Ross”, indeed].
May I draw attention to one unionist (in all but name) who sat in Dáil Éireann for Fine Gael between 1951-73? Sir Anthony Esmonde was TD for Wexford: he never disguised his “west British” background, accent and attitudes. In our folly, we lefty “progressives” mocked him for it. He inherited his baronetcy from his elder brother, Sir John (a middle brother was killed, aged 19, in WW1: a half-brother, Eugene, was awarded a posthumous VC for a futile torpedo-bomber attack on the Scharnhorst).
Sir Anthony’s eldest brother, Sir John Esmonde, was dead before I became politically aware. He was elected MP for (I believe) North Tipperary in 1915 (while serving as an engineer officer with the Leinsters in France). He was FG TD for Wexford for the 9th Dáil and 10th Dáil. Perhaps here, or elsewhere, somebody can remind me of any other active MP-cum-TD. In the curious politics of 1948, when the cumbersome coalition came to power, the egregious Seán MacBride proposed John Esmonde as a compromise Taoiseach, on the ground that he had no baggage from the Civil War.
Autres temps, autres moeurs.
Posted by on Jun 04, 2008 @ 07:58 PMWell, Horseman @ 08:04 PM, Jim Devenney was High Lama of the Donegal Ulster-Scots the last I heard. That may not be a declaration of Unionist affiliation, but “if it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck ...’
Posted by on Jun 04, 2008 @ 08:06 PMFascinating Malcolm but please try and focus on the quiz mun !
Posted by on Jun 04, 2008 @ 09:33 PMI’m afraid I’ll have to disqualify independents. But leave in Independent DUP..I Know, I know, but a line has to be drawn somwhere.
However, it’s early days. What are the people who leave the TUV when Jim Allister “sells out” going to call themselves?
Can we come forward with possible titles forthwith?
The winner gets a deposit on the next MEP election. I am ruling out ‘Independent TUV’immediately so as not to complicate.Posted by on Jun 04, 2008 @ 10:06 PMDriftwood:
1) Have they had to stand for election to Westminster?
2) If it’s obvious people have?
i) googled or
ii) been on steroidsAre they disqualified ? - (And what’s the appeal procedure !!!)
Posted by on Jun 04, 2008 @ 10:10 PMI’m just a humble Jedi Knight (on the last census anyway)
Yes, graduate, but are you Catholic Jedi Knight or a Protestant Jedi Knight?
I know, too obvious, but it had to be done!
Wasn’t there also a Volunteer Political Party, which although not having Unionist in the title was the political wing of the UVF and certainly a unionist party.
As I’m not allowed to use Nicholas Whyte’s site presumably, I think they were the UVF-linked candidates who stood in West Belfast in the 1973 Assembly elections.
No Wiki and no google until Driftwood decides.
Dewi, I’m offended in your lack of faith in my über-geekness! I was well aware of both parties, just providing links for those struggling with the difference between them (small difference in names, big difference in ideology). And I love looking at that clenched fist with the pointing finger! Vorvärts Kameraden!
Didn’t a Unionist candidate (listed as Non Party on the returns) stand in Sligo-Leitrim sometime in the 1980s or early 1990s and get a derisory sub-100 vote?
Posted by on Jun 04, 2008 @ 10:21 PMAll appeals to John O Connell. It’s only fair the SDLP adjudicate on this. Shit, Wiki and google all you like, but I need a definitive answer on number of ‘pure’ Unionist parties (any election) by 11am tomorrow.
Tie breaker is the name for TUV breakaways when Jim Allister declares a policy on something.
Good Night y’allPosted by on Jun 04, 2008 @ 10:30 PM“Shit, Wiki and google all you like”
But what about steroids ? - Nos Da !Posted by on Jun 04, 2008 @ 10:50 PMPro - Assembly Ulster Unionist
United Ulster Unionist party
United Unionist Assembly PartyFrom “History of British Political Parties” Boothroyd...read that Malcolm?
Posted by on Jun 05, 2008 @ 07:20 AMSammy Morse,
Didn’t a Unionist candidate (listed as Non Party on the returns) stand in Sligo-Leitrim sometime in the 1980s or early 1990s and get a derisory sub-100 vote?
I’ve looked through the results from 1977 to 2007, and there is no sign of one at all. The few independents that stood in Sligo-Leitrim are usually known crackpots, or the perennial Stalinist, Declan Bree!
A guy called John McCrea stood in 2002, and although he shares the same name as a leading Orange Order person, he is definitely not the same person. Sligo’s John McCrea is still there, writing cranky letters to the local papers, and doesn’t appear to be a unionist at all.
I voted in Sligo-Leitrim in the 1980’s, and I have no recollection of any unionist candidates - and they would not have gone unnoticed!
Posted by on Jun 05, 2008 @ 08:47 AMDewi @ 08:20 AM:
I’ve seen David Boothroyd’s book (either it passed through the house in the clutches of a daughter doing Politics as her subsidiary subject, or I leafed it through in a bookshop). I think it’s properly titled The Politico’s Guide to the History of British Political Parties, which implies that I saw it in Politico’s, before the bookshop proper closed down. I remember it as the equivalent of an Ian Allan trainspotter’s guide. If it lists these groups here, that’s reliable info.
Without scrolling through all the previous pages, has anyone tagged the “Union Group”? I know they have/had a webpage (all poetry and JFK), but no contact details.
At risk of Dewi never being nice to me ever again, can I mention another southern Unionist of curious interest?
St John Brodrick (MP in Surrey, but with Irish estates) was the leader of the Irish Unionists, which formalised as the Irish Unionist Alliance (not to be confused with the Ulster Unionists, who had their own agenda long before partition came up). He had a long history of service to the Tory Party, including being Secretary for War during the South African campaign.
After the Treaty he was appointed to the Seanad (as the newly-ennobled Earl of Midleton), along with a couple of other Tories, the Earl of Dunraven and Horace Plunkett. Zach from Denver, CO, who posts here as “yourcousin”, will appreciate the link to Dunraven: it proves all his worst fears about the British upper class. Dunraven snaffled Estes Park (the Rocky Mountains NP today) as a personal hunting estate.
What makes Brodrick a passing curiosity for me is his relation by marriage to the von Trapps (of The Sound of Music infamy). Brodrick’s sister married Whitehead, the inventor of the torpedo (and so arguably the most significant strategist in 20th century naval warfare). Their grand-daughter (and Whitehead’s heiress—therefore the basis for the von Trapp wealth) was the first Baroness von Trapp. I think von Trapp met Agathe Whitehead when she launched his first submarine command. The eldest von Trapp daughter was named Agathe for her Whitehead mother.
Posted by on Jun 05, 2008 @ 10:02 AMI fear I may be responsible for initially moving us off thread, but into possibly more interesting territory.
Dewi, any chance of a latest draft of the list?Posted by on Jun 05, 2008 @ 10:11 AMI get all the dirty jobs......I’m not enirely sure (hmmm) that there is no duplications and do the WRUC count ?
Anyway - there you go.
1)DUP
2) UUP
3) UKUP
4) PUP
5) United Ulster Unionist Party
6) Vanguard Progressive Unionist Party
7) Labour Unionist Party?
9) Popular Front for the Liberation of Judea Unionist Party
10) TUV
11) NIUP
12) United Ulster Unionist Council
13 UDP
14) Independent DUP
15) UUAP
16) WRUC (If acceptable under your scientific criteria)
17) UPUP
18) Unionist Party of Northern Ireland
19) Conservative and Unionist Party
20) UPNI
21) OUP
22) Protestant Unionist Party
23) United Unionist Coalition Party
24) Protestant Unionist Party
25) Ulster Clubs
26) Pro - Assembly Ulster Unionist
27) United Ulster Unionist party
28) United Unionist Assembly PartyWhen they had all those by-elections they got people to stand for the Agreement as Nationalists only stood in potential gains. What was that party called?
Posted by on Jun 05, 2008 @ 10:30 AMAnother question:
If Mr Robinson suceeds today what will the FM and the DFM have in common?
Posted by on Jun 05, 2008 @ 10:37 AMDidn’t they all change their names to Peter Barry? or whoever the Republic’s foreign minister was at the time. Halcyon Days!
Posted by on Jun 05, 2008 @ 10:38 AMDewi,
When they had all those by-elections they got people to stand for the Agreement as Nationalists only stood in potential gains. What was that party called?
You mean all the multiple ‘Peter Barry’s’? (aka Wesley Robert Williamson)
I think he/they stood under a ‘For the Anglo-Irish Agreement’ banner.
Posted by on Jun 05, 2008 @ 10:40 AM
