Andy Pollak – Slugger O'Toole

Talking to a broad-minded sporting unionist who defies all the southern stereotypes…

Andy Pollak on March 10, 2023, 7:00 am | Readers 6522

Brian Dougherty is a unionist. This Derry community worker says he is more determined in his unionism than he has ever been. Yet in every other way he goes against the narrow stereotype that most people in the South have of unionists: he is a socialist who is hugely committed to his working class community; open to and interested in Irish music and culture; in favour of cross-cultural legislation including promotion of the Irish language; a board member of an …

New GAA President Jarlath Burns is an impressive and visionary man…

Andy Pollak on February 22, 2023, 7:00 am | Readers 7392

I am going to stray into the unfamiliar territory of the Gaelic Athletic Association for this post. As a sports-mad half-Irish boy growing up in London, my games were football (soccer in Ireland) and rugby (although I was occasionally seen on the touchline at the GAA’s London ground at New Eltham). At the risk of being controversial, I would describe Gaelic football and hurling in Northern Ireland as objectively sectarian pastimes, since few if any Protestants play them and the …

In this still deeply divided country, should we be talking about confederation?

Andy Pollak on February 11, 2023, 7:00 am | Readers 2803

white boat near bodies of water

The former Tánaiste and Progressive Democrat leader, Michael McDowell, has been writing recently about confederation.1 I may not often agree with his views on social and economic issues, but I have always found his political analysis of the North to be nuanced and insightful. He concluded from the findings of the Irish Times/ARINS opinion polls in December that there is “a very large gap between majority opinions in Northern Ireland and the Republic respectively.” He went on: “Quite apart from the issue …

A United Ireland will have to include Unionists – so let’s get on with the difficult task of including them…

Andy Pollak on January 17, 2023, 10:34 am | Readers 5805

an abstract painting of purple and blue colors

I will be surprised if I see a united Ireland in my lifetime (I am in my early seventies). But the direction of travel is unmistakable. The history-changing reasons have been well rehearsed: the growth of the Catholic population – and particularly the young Catholic population – in Northern Ireland; the new confidence of Sinn Fein-led northern nationalists; the emergence of the Republic of Ireland as a prosperous, successful, liberal country at the heart of the EU; and the decline …

An optimistic story about climate change…

Andy Pollak on January 4, 2023, 10:55 am | Readers 754

field of green trees

In the first week of January 2023 it is not easy to be optimistic. There is no obvious end to the cruel, grinding Russian war against Ukraine. Economic recession looms for the West. Climate change targets are being missed all over the place. Closer to home, the Protocol deadlock continues and hope of any real reconciliation in Northern Ireland has all but disappeared. So for my first blog of the New Year I am going to write about a novel …

Why the Shared Island Initiative matters…

Andy Pollak on December 28, 2022, 3:00 pm | Readers 3332

gray stone on green grass

Nobody would ever accuse the former Taoiseach, Micheál Martin (now Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs), of being an inspirational public speaker. But listening to his speech at the big Shared Island event in Dublin Castle earlier this month, I realised he was outlining an inspiring vision of Irish people, North and South, genuinely coming together around vital shared goals and aspirations, practical and achievable and mutually beneficial. Not political unity – that remains the dangerously risky issue that continues …

Loyalists feeling “abandoned” and “extremely left behind.”

Andy Pollak on December 9, 2022, 8:18 am | Readers 10423

grayscale photo of high rise building

Ulster loyalism is in crisis – but then when in recent years has it not been in crisis? Opinion in working class and rural areas has hardened against the Northern Ireland Protocol, which has given DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson little room to manoeuvre when – and it will be when – the British government under its new more pragmatic leader Rishi Sunak reaches agreement with the EU on reforming that controversial instrument. So we’re heading towards one more climbdown …

O’Leary’s conclusion is that Ireland is now simply a better, fairer and more prosperous country than the UK…

Andy Pollak on November 18, 2022, 7:00 am | Readers 5976

I have been reading Making Sense of a United Ireland by the University of Pennsylvania-based Irish political scientist Professor Brendan O’Leary. This is an important book, rich in detail, truth-telling but also hard-nosed. It is the first deeply considered exploration of how and why Irish unity should come about through a Border poll as allowed for by the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. It is not without its flaws, an almost exclusively nationalist reading of the future being the major one. …

“One of the most disturbing features of contemporary Ireland is the almost universal ignorance among the younger generation of the Northern Troubles…”

Andy Pollak on October 31, 2022, 11:00 am | Readers 7165

Una Mullally is a high profile Irish Times columnist: a gay left-wing feminist (although I have never seen or heard her describe herself as a socialist) who is particularly popular among the young. This is not surprising given that one of her recurrent themes is that young Irish people (idealistic, open-minded, liberal in gender and identity politics, probably Sinn Fein inclined) are mobilising to take over the running of this country from old Irish people (reactionary, narrow-minded, Catholic Church-influenced, probably …

What next for Ireland’s Future?

Andy Pollak on October 11, 2022, 7:57 am | Readers 6043

photograph of concrete structures beside tree

I was at the big Ireland’s Future ‘Preparing for a United Ireland:Together we can’ event at Dublin’s 3 Arena earlier this month. There was very little ‘preparing’ in the proceedings – it was more like a ‘Forward to the Promised Land’ rally, with not a voice raised in dissent. Well, maybe one: Fine Gael leader and Tánaiste Leo Varadkar, while saying he believed in a united Ireland, then suggested that the existing structures of the Good Friday Agreement – internal …

The results of the census and the revolt of the masses…

Andy Pollak on October 3, 2022, 8:34 am | Readers 2276

Firstly, and briefly, the 2021 Northern Ireland census results. We know the headline figures well by now, that the number of those who are Catholics or from a Catholic background (at 45.7%) now outnumber the number of people who are Protestants or from a Protestant (or other Christian) background (at 43.5%). Given that Northern Ireland was originally set up as a Protestant state for a Protestant people with a two thirds Protestant majority, that is a truly historic shift. The …

Sinn Féin are winning the peace, as people forget the IRA’s war…

Andy Pollak on September 2, 2022, 7:00 am | Readers 7131

Sinn Fein are winning the post-1998 peace. They are now the largest party in Northern Ireland, and almost certainly will be the largest party in the Republic after the next election. A combination of internal and external events have come together to make their brand of ‘left populism’ (housing spokesman’s Eoin Ó Broin’s telling phrase) seem unstoppable. The housing crisis in the South and the chaotic aftermath of Brexit, the Covid pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis caused by the Ukraine …

Mary Lou McDonald and the forgotten people of the Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’…

Andy Pollak on August 17, 2022, 7:00 am | Readers 6178

Silent!

My core contention in writing this column is that for more than 400 years there have been two clashing politico-religious cultures on this island – Catholic nationalist and Protestant unionist – and that for the past century these have been forced into the ‘narrow ground’ of Northern Ireland, with disastrous consequences for all concerned. I hold that before Irish people can come together peacefully and harmoniously in the same political unit, there have to be mechanisms in place to allow …

I prefer good art and archaeology to bad politics

Andy Pollak on October 31, 2014, 5:35 pm | Readers 830

Taken from Andy Pollak’s monthly blog… Sometimes the sheer badness of politics in Northern Ireland takes my breath away (badness=bad faith, lying, incompetence, being mired in the past). Take the third week of October, for example. Peter Robinson boycotted the opening meeting of the British government initiated all-party talks he had himself called for to deal with the deadlock between the DUP and Sinn Fein on a wide range of issues which has led to the North being largely ungoverned …

While Britain and Europe’s tectonic plates move, we argue about Orangemen and Ardoyne

Andy Pollak on April 12, 2014, 3:37 pm | Readers 83

[This is taken from Andy Pollak’s monthly blog www.2irelands2gether.com] What is the strategic issue causing senior people in the Irish Department of Foreign affairs to lose their sleep these nights? In the week that Michael D. Higgins paid the first ever, spectacularly successful state visit by an Irish President to Britain, it is the possible break-up of the United Kingdom and its exit from the European Union. In September the Scottish people will vote on independence.As Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair’s …

Would Bobby Sands have agreed with cross-border teacher training?

Andy Pollak on October 25, 2013, 1:18 pm | Readers 99

A republican acquaintance of mine once said that Bobby Sands didn’t die for cross-border teacher training. I’m very sorry that Bobby Sands had to die at all. I don’t believe his cause, the IRA’s armed struggle (or terrorist campaign, depending on your point of view) to unite Northern Ireland with the rest of the island, was worth one death, let alone the more than the three and a half thousand it led to between 1968 and 1998. Cross-border teacher training …

A Cross-Border Gun for Hire

Andy Pollak on June 26, 2013, 4:27 pm | Readers 71

So, after nearly 14 years, it is time to say farewell to the Centre for Cross Border Studies – although not to this blog, which is migrating to a new site (see below). We have done some good things in our small centre in Armagh during that time, and I must pay tribute to my colleagues for their huge support and extremely hard work: incoming director Ruth Taillon, particularly for her superb work on impact assessment; deputy director Mairead Hughes, …

My Top 14 cross-border co-operators in Ireland

Andy Pollak on May 29, 2013, 4:30 pm | Readers 100

Since this is my penultimate ‘Note’ before I stand down as director of the Centre for Cross Border Studies, I am going to use it to nominate my personal Top 14 cross-border co-operators, one for every year since the Centre was founded in 1999. There is no doubt that the pioneers of cross-border cooperation are passing on: some, like the intellectual leader of the movement, Sir George Quigley, and the valiant unionist headmaster from Portadown, Billy Tate, have gone to …

‘Note from the Next Door Neighbours’: a 90 second read from South Armagh

Andy Pollak on May 2, 2013, 8:57 am | Readers 77

Two good news stories from South Armagh and Social Welfare In a small village in South Armagh something rather wonderful is beginning to take shape. After some difficult early years the Middletown Centre for Autism, a North/South body whose mission is to create a centre for excellence in Ireland for the education of children and young people with autism spectrum disorders, is beginning to take off. In 2009 the Centre, set up two years earlier with funding from the two …

A LAST PLEA FROM SIR GEORGE QUIGLEY FOR MORE NORTH-SOUTH COOPERATION

Andy Pollak on March 27, 2013, 3:31 pm | Readers 112

Sir George Quigley died on 3 March after a long and full life of service to Northern Ireland and Ireland. He was as near as a small place like Northern Ireland gets to a Renaissance man: head of four government departments; chairman of Ulster Bank and Bombardier; the tireless chair of numerous public bodies in both parts of Ireland; leader of the campaign for lower corporation tax; author of a mould-breaking report on contentious parades; overseer of loyalist arms decommissioning …