Stormont Is On The Slippery Slope. Again…

Belfast and Glenariff is a Slugger reader from Belfast.

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow mindedness and many of our people need it solely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime”.

This quote is attributed to Mark Twain, one of America’s most famous and greatest literary figures. What inspired me to repeat it here? Well, most of the local media on Monday led the week, as they invariably and predictably do, with various outraged Unionist politicians and callers navel-gazing, ranting, raving, foaming and gnashing their teeth about dual English/Irish board signs that have been proposed for the shiny big new Grand Central Travel Hub in Belfast. You could hear the collective groan of Nationalists and Republicans as Groundhog Day visited us once again. Irish bus & train signs can now be added to the Unionist/Loyalist black book of……Irish medium primary schools, Irish street signs, Casement Park, Feile an Phobail, the Wolfe Tones, Flegs, Kneecap, St. Patrick’s Day, Republican commemorations, Ireland’s Future, the constitutional debate and many more examples I’m sure people will remind me of. The farcical ‘political process’ cannot go on like this, but I fear it will.

We now have 3 main constituencies within the Power Sharing Executive. Sinn Fein, the DUP and a centre collective of Alliance, the SDLP and a very small group of liberal, soft Unionists. The DUP never signed up to the Good Friday Agreement and has continued along in that negative vein. Everything they do is begrudging, conniving, sleekid, and with the rise of the TUV, they have retreated, if that’s at all possible, into an even deeper, darker, sectarian cocoon of paranoid No Nay Never.

There is no equality agenda, no partnership and no goodwill whatsoever within the devolved institutions. Nationalists and Republicans cannot celebrate, hold, stage or commemorate any vestige of their culture, history or dead without daily howls of protest and opposition from Unionism and Loyalism.

Elements within this group are determined to hold on to the past, indeed they nostalgically look to the times when Nationalists were seen and treated as second class. Psychologically they will never allow us to move from the back of the bus.

Reconciliation is most certainly all one way. We have seen numerous examples of Sinn Fein & SDLP politicians and Catholic clergy meeting and greeting the British Royal Family with genuinely good intentions and emotions on both sides. Nationalist & Republican representatives have attended and laid wreaths at Remembrance Day events both here and in Britain. What have Unionist public figures, in particular the DUP and TUV, ever done to reach out to the Northern Nationalist community or to the wider Irish populace? Gordon Lyons won’t go near a Gaelic match but other Unionist politicians will go to the Brian Robinson UVF band parade every September and participate in Orange Order marches in July as Shankill Butchers steward them. Not only does a large section of Unionism refuse to reach out to my community but they actively look to burn the small bridges that have been built. Our extended hand of friendship is always slapped back with roaring insults.

In this context, the role of the Northern media must also be examined. They cannot be above criticism. Every day, particularly on local broadcasting outlets, we are force-fed a constant diet of “Unionist/Loyalist fears, anxieties, concerns, worries, doubts & insecurities, etc”. There seems to be a media rule where the term “Nationalist or Republican” cannot precede any of these words; only Unionists and Loyalists can feel like this. So, consequently, the radio will start the day with another contrived PUL crisis or a DUP/TUV “I’m more hardline than you” farce. The Nolan Show will then very loudly proclaim that “Unionists are up in arms, angry & furious about A, B & C” and “Loyalists are in uproar because of X, Y & Z” and thus that day’s news agenda, tone and narrative have already been set. By mid morning U105 will have run with it and in the afternoon Talkback will top their bill with the TUV moonhowling about whatever THEMMUNS thing annoys them. The tea time BBC NI & UTV news programmes will scream “But…But…But… Sinn Fein/IRA” as we eat our spuds and “Up At Stormont” at 10.40pm will end the night with a big serious discussion about the latest Unionist doomsday scenario and DUP/TUV mud wrestling. Most of the commentators will look at the UTV presenter and try not to laugh and shout out “Wise Up”. However the Groundhog Wheel of platforming “Unionist offence, outrage & ire” continues to turn again and again and again and never stop. It won’t either because it is the lifeblood of the local media, without it they have nothing. It is, however, completely shameful that they continue to excuse, sustain and prolong such sectarianism.

For many Nationalists, particularly in Belfast, Casement Park was the ultimate litmus test of equality here. The decaying stadium says it all. Yes, there were genuine residents’ concerns, and COVID-19 played a part in rising costs, but Unionism/Loyalism has made the project another ‘crisis’, and they are blocking it at every and any opportunity. The multi million pound rebuilds of Windsor Park, Ravenhill & Dundonald Ice Bowl; the new N.I. soccer training campus; the £40 million Irish League football grounds fund AND the £350 million Belfast transport station all went by without comment or criticism but how dare those “Fenian GAA Bogballers” demand equality. Millions are spent cleaning up after The Twelfth but no-one says a word. Be in no doubt, the opposition to Casement is unabashed sectarianism. Sadly however the detached, arrogant Labour Party Proconsul Secretary of State here also chooses to hide behind finance and the Unionist excuses.

Within all this context the devolved institutions cannot last. We are now at the same stage where Martin McGuinness withdrew Sinn Fein from the Executive. It is delivering absolutely nothing for Nationalists and Republicans, never has and never will. A deeply sectarian element within the DUP, the minority TUV, online Loyalist bloggers and shouty Unionist phone in shows continue to dictate the entire political agenda and narrative.

Shamefully, the ineffective Sinn Fein, weak SDLP and disinterested new Irish government whistle Dixie and look the other way. They are all complicit in appeasing the DUP and playing second fiddle to them. Animal Farm How Are Ye? Gavin Robinson and his crowd are running rings around political Nationalism. The Unionist/Loyalist veto is very much alive and well in 2025. John Manley of the Irish News sums it up in Tuesday’s paper. “Irish Nationalist culture is again the fall guy in the DUP/TUV battle”. Consequently, many within the base constituency for Sinn Fein and the SDLP have come to the ultimate conclusion that Stormont and the northern statelet are just rotten, always were and deserve to go the same way as the infamous ship that left these shores and perished in 1912. Nothing ever changes in this place.