Tuesday, August 19, 2008
What does Team GB, not UK, say to you?
Since Brian’s mentioned Paddy Barnes’ magnificent efforts in Bejing (Kenny Egan looking good at the moment too), it’s as well to mention in passing that Christine Ohuruogu has bagged an impressive Gold in the women’s 400m, and Germaine Mason has a Silver for the High Jump. (See 10 ways Britain changed over the weekend). But Suilven points us to an interesting piece from Kevin Myers on the subject of the GB designation (something Michael Shilladay should be speaking about on the IPM programme on Radio 4 this Saturday). Kevin Myers has this to say on the subject of Team GB:
A straw in the wind. Unintended, as straws in the wind usually are, but a reminder nonetheless that the people in Britain (and even that term might itself soon become obsolete) have reverted to pre-Troubles default mode. Ireland (or any part thereof ) is something they know nothing of, and care less about. Now that their various intelligence agencies have finished playing ducks and drakes with democracy in Northern Ireland, and foisted two sets of tribal bigots into power, they can once again pretend that those six north-eastern Irish counties are no longer their business, as they did for 50 ruinous years after 1922.
Another straw in the wind draws near this autumn, though this time, being intended, it is more of a haystack in a hurricane: the probable ending of the Common Travel Area between the islands of Ireland and of Britain, including Northern Ireland. Travellers from the North to Britain will need special documents to gain admission. This is undoing the Good Friday Agreement, Sunningdale, the 1948 Ireland Act, the 1922 Treaty, the 1920 Government of Ireland Act, 1801 Act of Union, the creation of the crown of Ireland in 1541 for Henry VIII, and Poynings’ Laws: moreover, it is the first paninsular annulment of English authority over any part of Ireland whatever since the submission of the Irish kings before Henry II on November 11, 1171.
There is more to this than airborne hay: tectonic plates are moving. Britain looks as if it is breaking up anyway, but even if it’s not, it is clear that there is no genuine British regard for the Ulster unionists. If in the creation of a team for one great international sporting global contest, the British do not even remember that Northern Ireland shares their kingdom, then clearly there is not a surfeit of natural affection there.
Mick Fealty @ 12:57 PM
Hell has officially frozen over. I find myself agreeing with a Kevin Myers article.
Then again, I just read the excerpt posted here by Mick. Maybe the rest of it concerns his in-depth anaylsis of why he thinks the harp is a lame symbol for Ireland, or yet another eulogy to the WWI-era British army.
Posted by on Aug 19, 2008 @ 02:35 PM-
Posted by on Aug 19, 2008 @ 02:40 PM
They’re not terribly smart. If they had called it “Team GBNI” (pronounced gibney), they might have secured an awesome amount of sponsorship from a certain gin manufacturer.
Posted by on Aug 19, 2008 @ 02:41 PMI though this was worth posting in full text
From “Cranmer”Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Team GB? What of Northern Ireland?
As David Cameron moves to ‘normalise’ the politics of Northern Ireland by absorbing the UUP, it is curious that no-one has sought to normalise the nomenclature of British athletes in Beijing, or to assert that the Olympic team represents the nation state of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and that ‘Team GB’ is affront to the loyal British people of Northern Ireland, of which there are very many indeed.According to Reuters, the Prime Minister is hailing the most excellent performance of the UK in the Olympics. He is, of course, doing no such thing. The UK does not feature as a nation in any Olympics literature or performance table, being referred to only as Great Britain or ‘Team GB’. This is curious, given that the official name of the team under the IOC is ‘Great Britain and Northern Ireland’. In addition, the national Olympic committee is the ‘British Olympic Association’, thereby incorporating Northern Ireland, and the national anthem played after each resounding success is that of the United Kingdom – God Save the Queen (with no dispensation for atheists or republicans).
There is no political entity called Great Britain. Within the UK may be found the entities of Scotland, England (,/&) Wales, and Northern Ireland, but ‘Great Britain’ is only part of the UK, and just one of the isles from which members of ‘Team GB’ hail.
In Barcelona and Atlanta, British competitors were always announced as ‘representing Great Britain and Northern Ireland’. There seems to have been a change, doubtless to pacify the sensitivities of the Irish, and all mentions of Northern Ireland have disappeared. Interestingly, the official announcement in French for the ‘Team GB’ cycling sprint gold medal was ‘Royaume-Uni’, but possibly only because the French refuse to refer to the island across La Manche as ‘Great’.
According to the International Olympic Committee’s existing charter, ‘the Olympic Council of Ireland represents the whole island of Ireland.’ Apparently, it was former Irish IOC member and IOC president Lord Killanin who ensured that the OCI was responsible for all 32 counties on the island of Ireland. The OCI charter giving it full responsibility for all of Ireland ‘was agreed by former IOC president Avery Brundage and then re-enforced by Killanin when he became president’.
Attempts by the BOA to change their charter with the IOC to include the words Northern Ireland have not succeeded. So the OCI sends a team representing Ireland and the BOA sends one representing GB.
Doubtless to the delight of Sinn Féin, Olympic sports are organised on an all Ireland basis. While Northern Ireland athletes can compete for either team, they generally go with the Irish teams as inclusion is less competitive. Thus there are distinct and separate Ireland and GB teams: Ireland uses the tricolour and national anthem of the Republic, and GB flies the Union flag and sings the national anthem of the UK.
Of course, most of ‘Britain’s’ sporting success in Beijing is really that of the English, but one dare not mention that. While the Scottish media hail the occasional medal for the occasional Scot* as a great and victorious triumph for Scotland, when the English win, it is never for ‘Harry, England and St George’, but for for Britain and the British.
One wonders if by 2012 ‘Team GB’ will exist at all, or will that be the year of the first Olympiad with teams from Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England? Might it just possibly be the year we bid farewell to Great Britain?
*Not at all to detract from truly Olympian accomplishment of Chris Hoy.
Posted by on Aug 19, 2008 @ 02:44 PMClue here is in Kevin’s signoff: “More tomorrow”. Today’s column is clearly just a bridge between one of his pet peeves (how Peking became Beijing) and what he really wants to write about. I shall read tomorrow’s column with interest!
Posted by on Aug 19, 2008 @ 03:00 PMP.S….though while I think Cranmer stirs it beautifully, actually to answer Mick’s question:
“What does Team GB, not UK, say to you?”
I’d answer:
Let’s not be TOO oversensitive and extrapolate from it Kevin Myers-style end-of-empire, collapse of civilisation conclusions, wonderful polemicist and brave heart that Kevin is when there’s real news to make. It’s just mildly annoying in a familiar vein. Don’t let’s expose our sillier insecurities. Let’s settle for variable geometry. NI people can choose their identity brand. Isn’t it wonderful!Posted by on Aug 19, 2008 @ 03:06 PMBrian
A bit like being able to have 2 passports, cheaper diesel, smuggling… I wonder how many people in NI like our sense of dual identity/apartness.
Someone once wrote a book about here called A Place Apart, but I can’t remember who.Posted by on Aug 19, 2008 @ 03:19 PMDervla Murphy.
Great book, I’d recommend it. Really summons up the chilling weirdness of the 1970s.Posted by on Aug 19, 2008 @ 03:37 PMThe French are actually quite happy to call Britain “Great” if you look into it.
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grande-Bretagne
...though it is only to distinguish it from what is called Brittany in English - the precise reason why the adjective was addded in the first place.
Posted by on Aug 19, 2008 @ 03:37 PMThat was it Newton
I read it about 10 years ago and she was quite flabbergasted by the ‘province’. She wrote some other travel books as well? Always travelling on bicycle.Posted by on Aug 19, 2008 @ 03:41 PMShe’s best known for a book about cycling to India, but predictably I’ve only read her book about here. There’s some great set pieces in it - the ones I remembner best are about going to hear Paisley preach at the Martyr’s Memorial, where she is overpowered by a sense of “evil” but wonders how much of it is her own prejudice, and another about attending a Peace-People picnic in front of City Hall while watching Royal Avenue getting evacuated during a bomb warning, and another about walking through Belfast gripped with random paranoia about parked cars and who might be a terrorist walking by.
They should put this stuff on the syllabus instead of “Bill’s New Frock”. But sure, that’s just crazy talk.Posted by on Aug 19, 2008 @ 03:55 PMIt means nothing. No more than ‘the Bank England’ means that only one bit of the country benefits/suffers from having a central & reserve bank. For the ultra obscurantists out there, while the derivation of ‘Great Britain’ is simple enough (‘Greater Brittany’), its usage has shifted over time, and much as ‘England’, politically, has too often stood duty for the UK as a whole, centuries before there even was a Union, ‘Great Britain’ was employed to mean what we would today call the ‘British Isles’. For anyone other than the neurotic, is the least big deal there’s *ever* been.
Meanwhile, I, for once, have to disagree with the Colonel. He’s off on one: there won’t be any document a UK national flying from, say, Belfast to London, has to show, above and beyond what the selfsame British national would have to display, were he flying from, for example, Edinburgh to London. I’ll cheerfully take on all-comers for a bet, any size you like, on that one.
Posted by on Aug 19, 2008 @ 04:08 PMFAO Kevin Meyers
I think you protest too much; The official name of Team GB is in fact Team Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The Fact that we the People of Northern Ireland are now included as part of Team GB is Fantastic, tho’ we are part of the United Kingdom and not Great Britain we we are included that is the main thing, isn’t it?
We done TEAM GB (which includes Northern Ireland.
Posted by on Aug 19, 2008 @ 04:33 PMFunnily enough, Dervla Murphy concluded after her travels that the term “British Isles”, which as a southerner she had grown up deeply resenting, was in fact the best description of the Archipelago of Here and There.
Posted by on Aug 19, 2008 @ 04:37 PMNo more than ‘the Bank England’ means that only one bit of the country benefits/suffers from having a central & reserve bank.
Of course not. And that’s a fine reverse spiral Porky the Pig is executing outside my window.
Macroeconomic and fiscal policy in the UK is made for the benefit of South East England, and if it doesn’t bugger the rest of the country up too much, that’s just an added bonus. Look at the way in which high interest rates throttled the manufacturing industry in the late 1990s and early 2000s up to 9/11 as the government in vain tried to prevent a property boom in the South East.
Northern Ireland is not even a fraction of a spot of the Bank’s calculations. Sorry.
Posted by on Aug 19, 2008 @ 04:52 PMgood post. NI used to be part of the team, regrettable not now, failure of labour govt
con govt may treat the great people of ulster betterPosted by on Aug 19, 2008 @ 04:59 PMI think it allows cnuts like Myers to write shit like this: “we rhyme Torino with urine”. Do we? When? Where? Who has ever heard of the great Turine team of the 1960s?
Posted by on Aug 19, 2008 @ 05:10 PM“good post. NI used to be part of the team, regrettable not now, failure of labour govt con govt may treat the great people of ulster better”
lol. Ur txt is hilarious. Hoo needs skool?
FFS!
Posted by on Aug 19, 2008 @ 05:29 PMI remember her describing going to Martyrs memorial Newton. Also being told by an orangeman at the 12th when she enquired what the event was celebrating to “go and read her bible”. I read anoother book about the same time called ‘The Glass Curtain’ by Carlos Somebody.
Posted by on Aug 19, 2008 @ 05:58 PMWonder who from NI will play in the much vaunted UK wide football team which is to debut at London in 2012?
Posted by on Aug 19, 2008 @ 06:00 PMDriftwood
George Best, by then they will both be dead
Posted by on Aug 19, 2008 @ 06:06 PM1 “I though this was worth posting in full text”
It wasn’t. Perhaps you should just post links?2 “I remember her describing going to Martyrs memorial Newton… I read anoother book about the same time called ‘The Glass Curtain’ by Carlos Somebody.”
Anyone else half remember bits of books you read ages ago but can’t quite dredge up with any particular relevancy? Perhaps you can quote hazily some banal point from it or half recall the author’s name?
The floor is open…
Posted by on Aug 19, 2008 @ 06:30 PMDoesn’t mean anything much to be honest, you can’t reasonably say that “team GB” is evidence of anything other than convenience surely? It’s easier to say and there are only 2/3 NI athletes in a pretty big team anyhow, they got a tracksuit, aren’t actually at home watching the BBC and are British so falling under the oppressive description of being “team GB” may not get them up in anger.
However the guy who complained about the celtic goalie blessing himself in parliament may want to spend some tax payers money going for an inquest or enquiry on the “team GB” moniker.
Apparently they have banned the Welsh and Scots flags? yet more provocation for their nationalists?
As for us 6 county/ni lot we’re fortunate we can represent whichever will have us, if we just get away from our computers to train a bit we could meet for a pint in Stratford in 4 years time?
Fair play to all the athletes from these shores over there. I’d like to congratulate them all on their efforts and i can’t wait for the Boxing to come.
I like the boxing because it seems there is a much bigger spread of geography and also the economic fortunes of the countries seem not to matter? I don’t generally follow it but it’s been great seeing the Armenians, Mongolians, Kazagstani’s, Indians and more go toe to toe with countries we always see having olympic success.
This makes Paddy Barnes, Egan, Sutherland and the GB boxers achievements of their medals even better in my view.
Posted by on Aug 19, 2008 @ 06:48 PMApparently they have banned the Welsh and Scots flags?
The IOC banned any flags that weren’t the national flag of a participating National Olympic Committee.
I imagine that has something to do with Tibet?
Posted by on Aug 19, 2008 @ 07:38 PMBrian Walker
Where do you get the information that the BOA does not include Northern Ireland?
The BOA website seems pretty clear:
“Team GB is the Great Britain and Northern Ireland Olympic Team.”
http://www.olympics.org.uk/contentpage.aspx?page=127
And:
“The British Olympic Association (BOA) is the National Olympic Committee (NOC) for Great Britain and Northern Ireland.”
http://www.olympics.org.uk/contentpage.aspx?page=20
Posted by on Aug 19, 2008 @ 07:44 PM
