Well, to me, it is a great poem, first and foremost. He was a mighty man too.
Agreed
Well, I agree with 95% of those comments. My caveat would be against a phrase like āgreen Catholicismā. People are entitled to be Catholic, same as people are entitled to be Methodist. Catholicism, whatever RF Foster might claim, is not something to be transcended. I am not a believer of any kind but people are entitled, within reason, to hold whatever amalgam of views they want.
I was friendly, when i lived in England, with quite a few people, men and women, from a variety of Ulster Unionist backgrounds. They find it disorientating to be considered Irish in Britain ā and then some of them find it liberating. But a lot of them go and live in Scotland.
My core objection is to the soft passage Unionism typically gets as a political position, not to its status as a cultural attachment. Most Unionists/Loyalists want to ride a minority horse from a majoritarian saddle. Does not wash with me.
You have to remember that my thinking was formed by the utter hypocrisy of Conor Cruise OāBrien during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. CCOāB was applauded ā and is still applauded ā for saying there could no movement away from partition because there would ensue ācivil warā in Ulster. Meaning, CCOāB was granting the threat of Loyalist terror a veto: where would any post-partition violence otherwise arise? Anthony Kenny took over the CCOāB position entirely for his report, The Road To Hillsborough (1986). Said impasse continues to this day ā and no one adverts to it.
Hence my dissatisfaction. Of course, ācivic Unionistsā such as Norman Porter can no longer shelter behind the notion that the Six Counties is socially more liberal than the 26 Counties, with concommitant gain or loss in personal liberty. The opposite scenario now obtains.
I get thatā¦ Weāre all inspired/directed/victims of the historiography of our time. Being a little bit younger than you and coming of age when peace was being ironed out, I feel I traverse an older more tribal view of things but yet a newer outlook of wanting to brush the past aside and start anew. But I think we all despise the CCOāBs of this world. I think RTE are the personification of his outlook.
The DUP are stuck in the last century, moderate unionists are pushed to the side,siege mentality is alive n well in some quarters and always will be present,
Unfortunately thatās a fact of life,as is the poverty in the Shankill and on the Falls, investment could have changed things but whoād come in this current climate - nobody
In my mind there will be no progress until social issues are tackled, if they ever are. The Loyalist Paramilitariesā main support comes from poorer areas with high unemployment, school dropouts and substance abuse; disenfranchised people are always more likely to be more entrenched and extreme in their opinions.
The Brits, Iād imagine, would rather keep this status quo rather than actually invest money and resources into tackling long term social deprivation, seeing as they are not long for this world as far as the North is concerned. Let Dublin handle it when the time comes, and as we have seen, our own government would not be much use at tackling these same issues in cities and large towns across the 26.
The thing is moderate unionism is a fringe movement. The DUP and the UUP more and more in recent times are playing to the gallery of fervent loyalism to play their votes.
Moderate unionism represents about 8% of the electorate.
Whatās the north made up of? Staunch nationalist/Unionists. Moderate nationalists/ unionists. Middle ground who donāt see themselves as either. Then 1st/2nd generation immigrants? ā¦ A right mix.
Unionism is made up of 80% rabid dinosaurs. They vote DUP/UUP/TUV.
The thing about staunch nationalists and republicans is that they are not represented in the ballot box, they do not vote. They are a stealth voter who will come out in a border poll. Itās definitely overlooked, itās not a huge cohort but a 50k grouping like that could make a savage difference on the day.
A lot of truth in this. But hereās a thing, which I canāt point to a report for but I heard a pretty knowledgeable commentator (head teacher as well) say ā the areas of highest deprivation and male underachievement in education are Catholic\Nationalist\Republican areas.
I certainly agree that jobs and education are the main way forward. Not necessarily the complete solution. Saw a clip of an interview with a young Shankill Rd loyalist. All he knew about Gerry Adams was that āheād been in jail for murdering peopleā. He didnāt know that Adams had been the MP for his area and had never heard of Maggie Thatcher. A reduction in the levels of ignorance would certainly be welcome.
There was a BBC programme called the Estate a few years back. It was a horrendous study of the effects of abject poverty in some shithole ultra unionist estate.
Thatās right. It was in Coleraine, a town of about 20,000 people and a very unpleasant place for fenians.
This eg took place in a small catholic area of Coleraine when a mob of loyalists invaded the area after, itās widely believed, being told by cops that the fenians were flying tricolours
These are the sentences for the killing of one catholic man and leaving another permanently disabled.
" Nine men have been jailed in connection with the death of a Catholic community worker in Coleraine, County Londonderry.
Kevin McDaid, 49, died after he was attacked outside his home in May 2009 in what a judge described as an ugly sectarian incident.
His friend Damien Fleming, who was also attacked, needs life-long care."
Another concern for people of the North, according to surveys, is the shitshow of the HSE when compared to what they have presently. I have no idea what sort of reform of the health service would need to take place, but you can be guaranteed that vested interests and unions in the Republic would slow down any overhaul that would be needed.
You got that right straight away social issues ,crap mostly down to unemployment
What holds up things and will hold up things is the constant need to balance each different viewpoint,itās been a shit show since the inception of the NI executive
What percentage of people in the North would you say are vehemently rabidly opposed to a united Ireland? As in would never accept it even if it was voted through and made economic sense
I will have a go at explaining my frustation in this area, at gathering up my thoughts. Will be long post, though, necessarilyā¦ Apologies in advance.
Sorry, I was over the top yesterday. Not really to do with you: more an awareness that unhelpful stuff in still floating around in academe, even via people not unsympathetic to counter arguments where partition is concerned.
From what I can gauge, you have been exposed to the āa pox on all their housesā take on nationalism, to the conviction that the 26 county state was wafted into being on gaseous rhetoric and myths of ancient Gaelic glories. Patrick OāFarrellās two synoptic studies would have been praised, Irelandās English Question: Anglo-Irish Relations 1534-1970 (1971) and England and Ireland since 1800 (1975). But I can imagine you were not alerted to questions concerning POāFās manipulation of archival material so as to gloss the Gaelic League as largely Catholic and sectarian.
I imagine you were urged to read John Hutchinson"s The Dynamics of Cultural Nationalism: The Gaelic Revival and the Creation of the Irish Nation State (1987) and similarly inclined work. Fair enough. I read those books. There is truth in some of their insights. And there was a fairly bonkers belief in some quarters that the Gael was purer than the Saxon. But really, in the end, how odd was this factor? Plenty of people in England believed at the time Scandanavia contained the purest man. Versions of this dynamic existed throughout mid to late 19th century Europe. The phenomenon surely needs to be contextualized with regard to primitivism, decadence and Cesare Lombrosoās publications on inferior types ā among other encircling pressures. I remember finding Daniel Pickās Faces of Degeneration: A European Disorder c. 1848 c. 1918 (1989) helpful.
Insights, so, but an awful lot of oversight as well. The serious problem ā to me at least ā is that this work nigh inexorably tends to see Irish nationalism/separatism as irrational. This orientation, taken plain, seems dubious. There were plenty of rational reasons behind the wish to sever from the United Kingdom/British Empire.
I will mention only two of the leading prompts, with neither of them rooted per se in cultural nationalism. One push was experience of famine during the 1840s. A famine, rather like a pandemic, draws a heat map of a stateās innermost energies. Isaac Butt, who had been an ardent Unionist, announced he became a Home Ruler because the British State treated its subjects differently on flagrantly ethnic and sectarian grounds. Buttās point, summarized? People were left to starve in Ballina and Dingle that would have been saved if from Bristol and Derby. His point remains insufficiently flagged as a reasonable prompt towards severance. If you are a second or a third class subject in a monarchical empire, there is scarce little foolish per se in considering the prospect of inhabiting another kind of arrangement.
The second push, obviously, was land ownership. This issue, whatever its ultimate complexities both before 1920 and after 1920, might have proved fractious and emotional but there is nothing misty or idealistic in a farmer wishing to own the land he works. Hard headed pragmatism is far easier to discern.
This emphasis brings me to another macro aspect. Historians of late 19th and early 20th century Ireland, when dealing with Unionism, tend to focus on questions of strategy. Telling case in point: Andrew Gaileyās Ireland and the Death of Kindness: The Experience of Constructive Unionism 1890-1905 (1987). This political perspectiveās rectitude is taken for granted. What needs to be detailed is merely the vicissitudes of Unionism in gaining strategic traction.
Contrast the approach to Irish nationalism. Here, the central studies focus intently on questions of motivation. Rectitude is presumed absent because irrationality and emotion are so present.
Think I am exaggerating? If so, an Irish Historical Studies article from 1981, RV Comerfordās āPatriotism as pastime: the appeal of fenianism in the mid-1860sā, makes for an intriguing read. RVC basically argues that Fenianism largely appealed to young lower class men because of their sexual frustration. This current flowed into RVCās The Fenians in Context: Irish Politics and Society 1848-82 (1985). This publication bids fair as the stupidest work of Irish history in the last 50 years. I have often wondered about establishing regional illegitimacy rates in 1860s Ireland and seeing how they square up with hotbeds of Fenianism. There should logically be a correlation if RVCās case is not entirely vacuous.
Nor does this moment count as aberration. Peter Hartās The I.R.A. and Its Enemies: Violence and Community in Cork 1916-1923 (1998) got lauded on release. The lustre dimmed for quite a few observers, unless your career obliged soundness on the revisionist question, when PHās fast and loose way with source material emerged. A bit like Patrick OāFarrell, he had no compunction about doctoring evidence if he felt the separatist case ended up sickened.
This craic was well exposed by Niall Meehan, Brian P Murphy, John Regan and others. Less known is that PHās research initially put much weight on young men in Cork being attracted to the IRA because there was a āWren Boyā element to masking and traipsing around the countryside. To me, the continuity with RVCās speculation about sex-starved young Fenians remains patent. Does analysis so bogged in a fixation with motivation, while scanting Unionism in same.regard, truly count as analysis at all? I doubt it.
I have said enough, even without saying anything about John Brutonās ludicrous notion of a āHome Ruleā Ireland as a much better Ireland. Isaac Buttās level perspective rather leaves JB a joke.
Anyhow, rambling over and thoughts some way gatheredā¦ I wonder will they chime with people.
For now, you long-winded bastard.