Provisional Liquidator Appointed

One of the real unsung heros of northern politics Republican Labour MP Gerry Fitt entered a bookie shop in West Belfast 40 years ago this week. He made a phone call that changed Irish politics irrevocably. He spoke with Jim Callaghan in Downing Street and asked him to send British soldiers into protect nationalists in Belfast who had been the victim of a retaliatory pogrom in response to the Battle of the Bogside. Callaghan said to Fitt it was no problem but replied 'Gerry, I can get the army in but its going to be a devil of a job to get it out'
Nobody who was present in 1969 could have forecast how the troubles would have developed. The Taoiseach Jack Lynch made his famous “won’t stand by” speech. As a child I remember the tension, especially as I had close family connections to the north. A few days after the Battle of the Bogside, my Dad brought us to Derry or Free Derry corner as it had become. Callaghan had come to speak to the people of the town. He walked briskly past us as he came down from Rossville St flats at Butchers Gate towards the two up two down houses that are now long gone. He spoke from an upstairs window to the crowd as the British army looked on from the walls above.


40 years on it’s timely to reflect on what transpired and perhaps how the north has missed the boat so many other times before and ended up with an executive which has less powers than the Scottish Parliament that was delivered without so much as a minor injury and an over populated political class. Much of the problem stems from the reality that northern politicians never had to take a decision for which they had to account to the electorate for. It was easy to say no. Northern unionists often looked down on the south as poor. But by contrasting the sunshine of Fermanagh and South Tyrone with the grey bleak rain of the Irish Free State they missed the reality that Irish ministers actually made decisions that had huge impact.
When you compared how farmers in the south milked the EEC in the 70’s with the poor subvention extended to their northern counterparts or how the south’s economy benefited from ongoing EU infrastructural investment for 25 years, the real impact of political decision making can be seen. Southern politicians had to account for decisions and blunders they’d made. Politics in the south has always been about being in power but politics in the north has been about being in opposition. While politics in this state was dominated by economic decisions and the impact of cabinet decisions on daily lives for most of the 40 years of the troubles, northern politics became stale. It did not attract trade unionists, business people or community activists that influence politics here. Many Sinn Fein MLA’s spent long periods in prison. The SDLP became identified with the civil rights generation. The UUP parroted for many years whatever Paisley thought and Paisley spent most of his dysfunctional life ruining the lives of others who had the misfortune to cross his path.
So I watch First Ministers Question time on BBC Parliament with great interest. I’m struck by the culture, half Daíl half Commons. SF members address the chair as Ceann Comhairle, ceisteanna trí gaelige, members use the acronym OFMDFM to shave seconds into their speaking time, Robinson speaks for McGuinness and vice versa, you couldn’t separate SF from the DUP on any issue. Robinson often turns to speak directly to his own side when answering their questions but looks at the chair when answering a SF question. Robinson and McGuinness sit opposite one another not together, the opposition Alliance sit in the middle! The Irish solution to the Irish problem is certainly better than the alternative.
And yet at the back of it all you ask yourself have some of the key players fundamentally changed? If crookery can co-exist in a slightly constitutional party in the south for decades can a complete personality transformation be performed over night up north? Somehow I get the feeling that civil servants are choreographing and writing speeches like there’s no tomorrow up north. DUP ministers like Nelson McCausland or Sammy Wilson are to put it mildly rough around the edges. They see themselves as manning the gap as the apprentice boys did over 300 years ago. They cannot be allowed to fail and the luxury of having a world view isn’t needed. No Surrender has re-morphed into “the terms of the GFA”.

So long as Sinn Fein feel they’re making progress recent events have shown they’ll stick to any agreement that they sign up to. But what happens after Adams? If a southern leader is elected as Uachtaran Sinn Fein and shows as lamentable knowledge about economics as Adams did in GE 2007, how will SF MLA’s react if they lose seats? Fitt delivered Sunningdale in the 70’s Hume delivered it again for the slow learners in the 90’s. And in the background there’s still from time to time “The Shadow of the Gunman” looking for the remedial version.

Ireland 2009, Reds still under the beds

Last week I was in my local newsagent. One particular headline grabbed my attention. The Catholic Voice asked was Labour anti-catholic. The newspaper has only recently started but the title is well known from religious publishing in other countries. A quick glance over the main story and I quickly saw that that august organ was setting out its concerns at Ruairi Quinn’s view that the non-denominational patron Educate Together should be permitted to become patron of more schools. As someone who is a member of another patron Co Wexford VEC, I don’t know why a catholic newspaper has no problem with my secular patron body but is concerned enough by Educate Together to use it as a stick to beat the Labour Party with.
Thankfully not everyone in the Irish catholic church doesn’t share the concerns of the “Catholic Voice”. Dr Diarmuid Martin, Archbishop of Dublin seems to be of the view that its not in the interest of the catholic church to hold on to patronage of schools where many parents do not subscribe to catholic values. On the face of it I don’t see a huge amount of difference between the effect of what Dr Martin proposes and the reality that Ruairi Quinn points out that new schools need to be built in expanding communities and these have to have a patron and if a Christian church is not available then who plays that important role. It’s not as if potential patrons are knocking on the department’s door everyday! Ruairi has recently highlighted the penchant of Opus and Knights for departments with a social role that give them control over Irish society.

The article has more of a hint of a red scare about it. Appropriate that it targets Labour almost 40 years on from the 1969 General Election where the Irish right smeared Labour candidates. The then Agriculture Minister mohair clad Neil Blaney said” labour members ranged from pseudo-intellectual Marxists, Maoists, Trotskyites and the likes who have emerged from the sidelines to pick off the flesh of the Irish people”.
Local Government Minister Kevin Boland concerned at the gutting his cabinet colleague Charles Haughey was getting at the hands of Connor Cruise O’Brien said Labour wanted to seize peoples property, savings and land. Justice Minister Michael Ó Morain who subsequently quit a day before the arms crisis broke said “Brendan Corish was a mere puppet of the modern Marxist elite and of the new left wing political queers who have taken over the Labour Party from the steps of Trinity College and RTE”. Sean McEntee, ironically the Cruiser’s father in law said “Labour stood for the red flames of burning homesteads in Meath”. A Mayo candiate said Labour would permit abortion, divorce and it would be “great for the fellow who wanted a second wife every night”. A Sligo candidate said Labour would tear down every crucifix in the state.
Lynch distanced himself from all of this by canvassing every convent in the country, re-assuring rural and traditional Ireland that FF could be trusted with the important decisions. As a teenager I remember walking home from mass after the 1977 election rout in the company of my father and a FF supporting neighbour. The conversation quickly turned to politics, the delight of Lynch’s victory was only surpassed by the eclipse of Labour in particular the defeat of our local Labour TD Justin Keating who I was informed was a “card carrying communist.” In retrospect I suppose there was no point being a communist unless you had the card to prove it! Keating had been over whelmed in the media by rising prices. He was also singled out by FF supporting miners and prospectors over the Bula affair and his strict conditions on developing any hydrocarbon fines.
It worked then but it won’t work anymore. The population are better educated but also who remembers communism? Red scare is a waste of breathe and that’s a problem for our opposition. They cannot dismiss Labour nor our ideas. They cannot use the tactic to obstruct useful developments like schools nor accountability on matters such as industrial schools. So buy the Catholic Voice, any Labour member should take this type of attack as a compliment and a glimpse back to another age.