Northern Ireland political parties: Search/Destroy

(i *think* wolfe tone wz protestant also, though he counts as 0% of the vote as currently calculated)

Martin McGuinness seems to be a good Education spokesman from what I've seen on bbc politics programmes. Abolition of the 11+, which he is pressing for, would seem to be a step in the right direction re- making NI a fairer society.

there are somewhat more of both than you would think. My impression is that Protestant nationalists are generally leftists of some sort, while Catholic unionists are kind of establishment types.

Wolfe Tone was Protestant, but he lived over two hundred years ago, before the modern Nationalist-Unionist divide existed.

do many people in Northern Ireland vote for politicians on the basis of any issues other than Northern Ireland?

??? do may people in France vote on the basis of any issues other than France? If you mean voting outside the Nationalist-Unionist divide, there are parties like Alliance, the Workers Party, Womens Coalition, and others which don't fit easily on either side of that fence. That said, the sectarian divide in Northern Ireland is unignorable, and it would be a strange party that pretended it wasn't there, even if they weren't on one side or the other.

my impression is that our friends in the North have voted for WAR.

This was an interesting/alarming article in the american media.

What a brilliant question!

Gerry Adams, on his new career as Northern Irish buddha.

But seriously, this quote represents much of the problem. Both sides swear they want peace....but they want it at the other parties' expense (huge surprise). Compromise takes willingness and an open mind, not pushing forward with bloody-minded singular purpose. The current accord is a start, but it isn't a total packaged solution.

Perhaps, as a partly imaginary Unionist schoolmaster once said, Perhaps I am wrong.

The Vicar has said that the people of NI have voted for war. S. Hoggart (cf elsewhere) has said equivalent, naturally.

I suppose that an individual vote is not a vote for the totalized situation that emerges.

Nonetheless the results seem to me somewhat catastrophic. I do not mind Arthur Griffith's party or Hume's. Right now I am not even much afeared of Carson's, or perhaps I mean Trimble's; perhaps they are different. But a country that votes for Paisley as its effective PM is a fright.

'The country', to be sure, has if you like not done that. Certain people have.

A legitimate question might concern the legitimacy of the Belfast Agreement: is it

a) invalidated by the withdrawal of consent by majority of Unionists, or

b) validated still by the vote of a majority of the overall voting population?

this is very true.

But a country that votes for Paisley as its effective PM is a fright.

my impression is that people who vote DUP are oppositionists - they're not interested in running things, they're interested in blocking things they don't like. So they vote DUP to block the perceived sellout of the Good Friday Agreement.

it is a fundamental problem with divided societies that there is an incentive to both communities to choose more hardline leaders who will make less concessions to the other side. That is, if you see politics as a zero-sum game where one side can only gain at the other's expense. What both nationalist and unionist voters are failing to consider is that if they vote for people unable to cut deals with the other side then no deal is possible; also, that the situation is not zero-sum, in that both sides gain from an absence of political violence.

PF's question about the legitimacy of the GFA: there is the tacit assumption that to work it must be supported by a majority of both NI communities. In practice it has always had massive nationalist support and at best barely slightly over half of unionist support.

Is this true? Even with Old Uncle Berlusconi and all? If so, how? A few sympathizers in Boston can't have achieved so much, surely.

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/lack-of-progress-on-the-march-1.1855651

decent brief sketch of the marching situation and a more nuanced look at loyalism than would normally be seen

I found myself thinking about the NI Assembly today. As far as I understand it, Sinn Féin won the largest share of the vote or most seats or both, and the DUP then refused to share power with them and operate the assembly. I believe, also, that they gave excuses, about the NI Protocol or similar, rather than saying that they refused to let SF be the largest party in the assembly.

As far as I understand it, this is mendacious, corrupt and radically anti-democratic. A major national assembly or parliament for one of the four nations of the UK is being prevented from even existing, according to the whim or political interests of one party.

In any other parliament (including Westminster) this would be unthinkable. It would be like Westminster not existing because the Con party refused to turn up. Yes, SF do refuse to turn up, but that doesn't stop the House of Commons proceeding.

I am aware that the NIA was designed in particular ways to encourage co-operation, balance and peace. All that was well-intentioned. But it seems to me that this is now simply being abused by one party for factional purposes.

The UK media is mainly interested in which corrupt person will now run the corrupt Con party. They are not interested in the fact that the parliament of a nation of 2 million people, one of the four nations of the union, is not currently permitted to exist.

This leads me towards the view that NI does not belong in the UK, which is not sufficiently interested in it. It would probably be better off in the RoI, in which I suspect people would have to become very interested in it.

this is mendacious, corrupt and radically anti-democratic

My uncle Paddy’s last words were reportedly: “Don’t let me die on my own.” Which he did. Far from his six children, face down in the street on Bloody Sunday. This is the most personal column I’ve ever written. I hope I did Derry and Paddy justice. https://t.co/nUbLVw4hTL

— aoife moore. (@aoifegracemoore) January 29, 2022

Sacked columnist calls Sinn Fein a ‘malign force on this island’ as he refuses to apologise over Twitter saga. https://t.co/0Dae93uxc1

— Richard Garland (@richardtgarland) May 8, 2021

I don't really know enough about Irish politics to pontificate about it but I would have thought that the Right and Centre Right in Dublin have never exactly been thrilled about the prospect of the urban working class of Belfast and Derry etc ending up in a united Ireland. They'd take the farmers at a push.

You're not wrong. I wrote a little bit about the partitionist tendency here. Irish politics discussion thread

(Also grateful I used the word "partitionist" so I could find that post!)

Yes, that's what I thought. Although I confess I've never had much clue about the difference between FF and FG. Growing up in the West of Scotland, Ireland, or rather the Republic of Ireland, is a long way away whereas Northern Ireland, or rather, Ulster (nine counties), is on your doorstep. Dublin may as well be London whereas Belfast is like Glasgow over the sea.

I won’t make the joke

Btw traditionally difference between FG & FF is:

FF: formed from the side that opposed the Anglo Irish treaty & creation of NI
traditionally party of small farmers
republican (they have moved away from this gradually)
small c conservative, but officially supported Repeal. Famed for giveaway budgets during the boom. Hate the poor slightly less openly.

FG
Formed from the side that supported the Anglo Irish treaty & a group of fascists
traditionally party of large farmers; now also party of comfortable urban constituencies
veer from outright discomfort with Irishness (John Bruton) to a kind of soft anglophilia tempered with open disdain for the church (Varadkar)
notorious in Ireland for trying to do shit like tax children’s shoes and take a shilling off the pension. Nominally more socially conservative (although have had some absolute raving racists elected)

I think that’s it but I haven’t lived at home in so long some of this will be out of date

Sorry. Last bit about FG should be “nominally more socially liberal”

Yes, seems a bit complex.

BBC Radio 4 this morning: an election will not be held soon to break the deadlock at Stormont. It wouldn't change anything because the DUP need the NI Protocol to be resolved.

Misleading. 'Break the deadlock' sounds like intransigent Irish people are at loggerheads and can't get on.

They should report it as: the DUP are an undemocratic party that only believes in its own power and has sabotaged democracy in NI. They are continuing to ransom others with these EU border demands that they have no democratic right to make, and the BBC is treating them as legitimate.

OTM

4 months later, every time I turn on the news I hear that the DUP has a veto over NI democracy and the functioning of NI society.

It is not reported in those terms, but that is how it seems.

The British media do not seem to find anything strange in one political party having a veto over a society. Perhaps the Irish media do.

To complete my stay in looking-glass land, I heard that the DUP had concerns about a 'democratic deficit'.

Even though all this crowing over what a great job Sunak has done with this deal is making me puke, it would still be great to see the chancers in the DUP getting shafted by the British state. About time these cunts were taken down a peg or two.

With the census they’re already on the ropes, it’s well past time

Numbers against them as well. Shedding a blood tear.

With a possible UK-EU NI Protocol deal, here is LT's last polling re. the issue (Jan23). Could be said the DUP need the 37% of Unionists who 'may accept' a deal onboard, added to the 21% of Unionists who already say 'Yes'. Tho 41% of Unionists want the protocol removed completely pic.twitter.com/jwxLiO7Gqj

— LucidTalk (@LucidTalk) February 27, 2023

Get out the tiniest of tiny violins.

DUP apparently up in arms about King Charles meeting Ursula von der Leyen, like she was the Pope or something.

What top British civil servant hasn't dreamed of taking a career break from politics and Whitehall, to run a boozer at the base of the Mournes in south Down in the 1980s during the height of armed conflict. https://t.co/b9CaQ3AdIY

— Mark Malone (@soundmigration) March 3, 2023

Only just discovered this story.