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Learning from 1798?: Northern Ireland’s Upcoming Decade of Commemorations
Last year, the Lilliput Press released a new extended edition of Tom Dunne’s Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize winning book, Rebellions: Memoir, Memory and 1798. First published in 2004, Dunne’s book provoked considerable controversy with its critique of the ‘commemorationist’ history that Dunne believed dominated the 1998 commemorations of the 1798 Rebellion. The book blasted the involvement [...] read our review » -
Titanic: was it all right when it left here?
Not according to metallurgists Tim Foecke and Jennifer Hooper McCarty whose research has suggested that dodgy Harland and Wolff rivets were at fault for allowing the Titanic’s hull to be ripped apart by the pressure of the iceberg impact. With six of the hull’s chambers exposed to the Atlantic waters, the “unsinkable” ship lasted less [...] read our review »
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What has The Third Man got to say about Northern Ireland?
Short answer: very little, other than he enjoyed the environs of Hillsborough Castle, enjoyed working with the local politicians, and has Gerry Adams to thank for Bobby his dog. Peter Mandelson’s book The Third Man has captured media headlines in recent weeks as the Times serialised the most juicy bits. But what did he have [...] read our review »
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Comment on There are some lessons for Catholics in the unionist tradition
on 18 July 2011 at 4:12 pm
@SK
But it was all about freedom, freedom from being subsumed into an all Ireland democratic unit, even one still within the UK. You may think that an inappropriate concern but it’s churlish not to recognise it as a matter of fact. I certainly recognise that Irish Republicanism was a movement for freedom from being subsumed into an all archipelago democratic unit despite being a unionist.
Such concerns are in practice orthogonal to human rights concerns or anything you’ll find in human rights declarations. You can read the European Convention on Human Rights or the UN Declaration from cover to cover and you’ll be absolutely none the wiser as to whether Cyprus should be one state or two, whether Kososvo is Serbia or not, whether there ought to be a Basque state, what should be done with South Ossetia, or indeed whether there should be a united Ireland or partition.
Respect for every generally recognised human right is compatible with both of the basic republican or Ulster unionist principles. e.g.
A) That the nationalist people of Ireland had a right to self determination to secede from the UK but that the unionist population for some reason or other did not have a right of self determination to secede from Ireland.
B) That the nationalist people of Ireland had a right to self determination to secede from the UK and that the unionist population had an equivalent and equal right of self determination to secede from Ireland which then required a utilitarian compromise.
In fact complete respect for human rights is even compatible with the position that the Republic of Ireland never had the right to secede and is still part of the British nation (official BNP policy IIRC).
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Comment on “There was no provocation”
on 13 July 2011 at 12:58 am
@Comrade Stalin
Frankly I don’t think this even has anything much to do with Ardoyne. If the Ardoyne parade was banned they’d just move on to the next location. If that was banned then the next location and so on. What we’ve got here is not a local protest against a parade but rather an Irish nationalist version of the EDL brought to us through the magic of the invention of Mark Zuckerberg. Thinking that solving the Ardoyne issue would stop their annual twelfth hootenanny is about as naive as thinking that someone backing down on building the new mosque at the location of the last EDL march would stop the next EDL march.
What we’ve got here are mindless idiots bred on a diet of nationalist mopery that paints Protestants and the British in just as unrealistic a light as the Daily Mail paints Muslims. That’s the problem. They’re somewhat a monster of Sinn Fein’s creation, in the sense that Sinn Fein have spent decades spreading lies about the past, about the present, and even about the future (e.g. united Ireland by 2016), but they do not answer to Sinn Fein and Sinn Fein cannot turn then on or off.
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Comment on Marching on a pin head as Belfast District LOL No 6 squares up to the Parades Commission (updated)
on 12 July 2011 at 7:34 pm
Whether the Protestant working class used to run the country or not, Stormont was prorogued 40 years ago. The majority of those marchers, as with the majority of people alive today in Northern Ireland, were not even born, and most of those who were born were mere children.
Nationalists need to get a new mantra than “the Protestants oppressed us” because they increasingly sound like the Poles who tried to get extra votes in the EU Council compared to Germany to recompense them for the Second World War, irrespective of the truths of what did and did not go on 40 years ago.
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Comment on Some more Bonfires/Bonefires/Bonies
on 12 July 2011 at 7:16 pm
A hell of a lot of feigned ignorance here.
Of course it would be wrong for the Swiss to burn an Austrian flag but the situation we have here is not one of mutually recognised neighbouring nations. There is an ongoing nationalist aspiration to the elimination of Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom, with aggravation by nationalists on a daily basis and attempts to delegitimise Northern Ireland’s Britishness, from City Hall flags to NLP style Orwellian language such as “the north of Ireland” repeated constantly by even SDLP politicians on the TV every day. Get real people. This is not Austria-Switzerland, more Kosovo and Serbia, or perhaps what Kosovo-Serbia could be in ten years time with a begrudging drop of the claim as Serbia tries to enter the EU.
It will be inappropriate to burn the tricolour once nationalists recognise that the border separates two distinct legitimate nations, or even recognise that there are two nations on this island at all, whatever the border. While nationalists continue to constantly project the fictitious notion of an all island nation they have no right to proclaim the burning of the tricolour offensive and in any way equivalent to people burning the flag of a normal neighbouring country. Simple as. They just have to lump it, for the same reason I have to lump people on my TV screen talking about the “north of Ireland” and the “32 counties”, which is something, unlike a tricolour burning, nobody can avoid. The one is a quid pro quo of the other. One is more dramatic but rare and not aimed to be seen by those it offends, the other more subtle, much more frequent, but aimed to aggravate directly, but the two things are of the same essential nature. A proclamation that this is not part of this particular nation, or not part of that particular nation.
If Austria had the same existential attitude to Switzerland as the Republic of Ireland has to Northern Ireland it would be perfectly legitimate for Swiss people to burn Austrian flags in protest against that.
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