Ian Clarke – Slugger O'Toole

Quality working class drama is alive and well and living in East Belfast…

Ian Clarke on November 22, 2024, 7:00 am

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For many years now the bulk of what is passed off as “working class” based drama in Belfast makes my skin crawl. Not to mention “comedy”. It is so often middle-class people writing and performing a caricature of how South Belfast or Ballyhackamore sees the working class, replete with irreformable, irrational bigotry and mispronunciations of words to generate a laugh from an audience heavily bought into the caricature. There is rarely any empathy shown towards the characters and even less …

Political stability? Keep it a secret…

Ian Clarke on March 22, 2024, 7:00 am

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grayscale photo of woman doing silent hand sign

The media coverage – and some political reaction – to the DUP’s vote on the extension of a new EU law to Northern Ireland was very telling, if predictable. Overall the vote and its implications were no big deal. The importance was but it was part of the agreement between HMG and Jeffrey Donaldson that got Stormont back in action. Therefore it was important that the DUP used the opportunity it presented to weaken the destructive and flat earth pronouncements …

Beware the Clickbait: Navigating a Media Landscape of Manufactured Hype…

Ian Clarke on February 26, 2024, 7:18 am

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blue LED Hype sign

I’ve expressed before on Slugger my concerns about our indigenous media’s insatiable appetite for political instability to fill its programmes or pages. This dates back to 1994 when those in authority failed to make any meaningful effort to adapt to the coming post Troubles lifestyle here. So ever since then we’ve had numerous efforts from withing the media to destabilise the fragile DUP/SF partnership. Sometimes its just snide use of terms like “Chuckle Brothers” or “Marlene” but on other times …

Come Together, Right Now…

Ian Clarke on February 9, 2024, 10:03 am

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Now the negotiation and speculation is behind us and the Executive is up and running, the immediate priority for all of us should be to wish the ministers well in their efforts to fix what’s currently broken in our society and to improve the lives of as many of our people as possible, of whatever age and community background. None of the incoming ministers will have an easy job so I would hope – rather than expect – our mainstream …

It’s been a long time coming…

Ian Clarke on January 31, 2024, 7:47 am

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In the past 12-months virtually every politically oriented piece I’ve submitted to Slugger – the others were about music – has focussed on what I hoped Jeffrey Donaldson would do, what he needed to do, the obstacles he would face within the DUP and whether he had the stomach or resilience to confront and overcome them. Now that Jeffrey has made his decisive and successive move, I think it’s apposite to revisit some of my earlier comments in that context. …

Last Call for Jeffrey? Step up and play.

Ian Clarke on January 23, 2024, 8:29 am

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Over the course of 2023 I had 4 pieces published by Slugger on the challenges facing Sir Jeffrey Donaldson in getting his party back into government in Stormont. To recap, my line on all 3 was that he needed to face down the old Paisleyites in the DUP by claiming victory from his negotiations with HMG and using that claimed victory to lead a realignment of mainstream unionism into something currently lapsed voters can embrace. I seriously hope this is …

Is Jeffrey ready to hit his home run?

Ian Clarke on December 18, 2023, 7:43 am

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This is the fourth piece I’ve submitted to Slugger in 2023 on the challenges facing Sir Jeffrey Donaldson in getting his party back into government in Stormont. The essence of the previous 3 was that Jeffrey needed to face down the old (literally and figuratively) Paisleyite rump of his party by claiming victory from his negotiations with HMG and using that claimed victory to lead a realignment of mainstream unionism into something currently lapsed voters can embrace. It certainly hasn’t …

Shane MacGowan: A personal tribute…

Ian Clarke on November 30, 2023, 1:58 pm

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No one should have been surprised when it was announced today that we’d lost Shane MacGowan, aged 65. He lived a worse lifestyle than Keith Richards, and we hadn’t heard from him musically in what seemed like decades. Plus his partner Victoria posted some photos recently that showed a man in terrible health. But I was still shocked. Some people seem like they’ll always be there. Obviously, I’m from a very different background from Shane and would have a very …

The destructive use of dismissive language in politics…

Ian Clarke on November 28, 2023, 8:01 am

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neon light mounted on white surface

Two things coincided this week that led to this piece. The first was Thursday’s violence in Dublin. The second is the fact I’m about two thirds through Graham Linehan’s autobiography in which he details his fall from grace and into career isolation following his emergence as a critic of transgender ideology. Two very distinct issues but they had one thing in common, the use of language as a basis for avoiding debate of the issues underpinning both. Arnold Carton touched …

The opportunity grown up Unionism needs to grasp…

Ian Clarke on October 20, 2023, 8:39 am

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I submitted this article six months ago and three or four weeks after the announcement of the Windsor Framework. The essence of it – from an unapologetically pro-union perspective – was that Jeffrey Donaldson had stalled very quickly in his efforts to present the gains of the Windsor Declaration as something to be built on by his party and by unionism in general to enable the return of Stormont to stabilise things at least psychologically and allow unionism to present …

Is it now the case that music and politics don’t mix?

Ian Clarke on September 14, 2023, 7:46 am

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I was going to write this piece a couple of weeks ago when the hysteria over the Wolfe Tones at Feile had settled down. But it didn’t. So I didn’t. Then last week it was worse than ever with their appearance and apparent triumph at the Electric Picnic Festival. But probably better timing for me. Leaving aside the embarrassing spectacle of thousands of young people singing along to a dirge in tribute to sectarian terrorism, it raised a bigger question …

Good Art. Yours, mine, theirs or everybody’s?

Ian Clarke on July 30, 2023, 8:30 pm

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man wearing white sherwani robe beside graffiti

So we’re all agreed Cillian Murphy is a fine actor who was outstanding as Oppenheimer. Yes? Okay I felt Robert Downey Jr slightly stole the show but if Murphy wins the Best Actor Oscar I don’t think anyone could reasonably object But now I see there’s some question over him taking the role in the first place as he’s not Jewish. So how far do we take this? I see he was raised a Catholic. So that’s him ruled out …

So how’s our press getting on in 2023?

Ian Clarke on July 20, 2023, 9:29 am

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man sitting on bench reading newspaper

The last time I wrote for Slugger on the performance and prospects of our three local daily newspapers was in March 2021. At that point in the aftermath of the defection of Allison Morris and Sam McBride to the Belfast Telegraph from the Irish News and News Letter respectively. I haven’t contributed on the industry in the subsequent two and a half years as I’ve felt – frankly and regrettably – that there was little to be added to my …

Review: A People Under Siege by Aaron Edwards…

Ian Clarke on June 21, 2023, 9:34 am

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This is an important book for a number of reasons. While genuine students of unionism and the pro-union community here will be familiar with the historical timelines that hold the narrative together, there is a level of honesty and an attempt to explain the unionist community from an empathetic, sometimes sympathetic, position that has been too rare for too long. Edwards – unlike far too many writers from what is now euphemistically termed “a unionist background” – does not set …

For political Unionism surely the time for pragmatism is now?

Ian Clarke on April 3, 2023, 3:09 pm

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When I submitted this article we were four or five days from the announcement of what became known as the Windsor Framework. The article laid out – from an unapologetically pro-union perspective – how I thought Jeffrey Donaldson should respond to the forthcoming announcement to secure the strongest possible outcome for Unionism and for Northern Ireland. I voted Remain in 2016 because after years living in the post-industrial heartlands of the West Midlands, the North East and the West of Scotland …

The DUP and its Decisions, Decisions ….

Ian Clarke on February 22, 2023, 11:34 am

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No matter how we look at it, or from what community perspective we look at it, the next few days are likely to be pivotal ones. I want to look at the next few days from an unapologetically pro-union perspective and what I think the DUP leader needs to do to secure the strongest possible outcome for unionism and for Northern Ireland. It’s hard for anyone to argue that the DUP hasn’t had a decent few weeks. Whether by design …

Try Talking to People for a change…

Ian Clarke on August 25, 2022, 7:14 am

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There have been a number of posts here recently about the unionist community, its failings (real and unfairly accused), its difficulties and most recently its need to “embrace its Irishness” as if it was a straightforward and simple issue. Too many of the comments thet followed them are generally well off the mark and border on the obsessive about the Unionist mindset from people outside that community with little grasp or genuine interest in its complexities. And little sympathy for …

A Window of Opportunity?

Ian Clarke on May 16, 2022, 7:11 am

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It’s important to head this up by stating clearly that I’m completely indifferent to which of our First Ministers gets to speak first at press conferences. It’s meaningless. Certainly, I would rather we didn’t have the optics of a Sinn Fein First Minister who spends selected weekends attending commemorations of Provo killers, but equally I think it’s a fitting punishment for the DUP’s party before country chicanery in the St Andrews carve up. Michelle O’Neill does not represent my outlook …

Unionism and a Leap of Faith…

Ian Clarke on March 30, 2022, 8:21 am

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achieve, woman, girl

For this article to work we all need to suspend disbelief and all work on the assumption that in real terms Stormont is ineffective, worthless and has no real positive day to day impact on our lives. That whoever is First Minister has no significance other than symbolism and bragging rights, and that we can all get through the intense period of gloating and recrimination if Sinn Fein emerge the biggest party in May. Do you think we can do …

A Buddy’s eye view of “Belfast”

Ian Clarke on February 8, 2022, 8:00 am

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I thoroughly enjoyed Brian Walker’s thoughts on Kenneth Branagh’s “Belfast.” As Brian witnessed and covered many of the darkest events first hand it’s always interesting to hear his recollections and understandings. I would like to come at the movie from a different perspective as one of the many hundreds of “Buddys” who watched the movie through Branagh’s own window. I viewed “Belfast” with some trepidation as someone who would relate strongly to that period and place. I am nine months …