However, I expect all the money will end up “resting” in the tax-haven bank accounts of various Tory cronies.
Less snarkily, the savings from our EU contribution are going to be needed to offset the economic damage of Brexit. Whether there will be anything left over for the regions, as well as all the other programs the EU supported, is open to question.
There’s a kind of knee-jerk reaction to soldiers being prosecuted for anything – Our Boys Can Do No Wrong.
Wrong. Soldiers do wrong all the time. The mess canteen would never get its potatoes peeled otherwise, and stones would go unpainted. Sergeant-majors’ faces would never achieve the requisite purple hue, and they would never develop that foghorn timbre that gets them Town Crier gigs after they demob.
If a soldier accidentally fires a round, even just into the ground, with no harm done to anyone or anything, s/he’s in trouble. Negligent discharge of ammunition is a chargeable offence, with serious consequences. Firing a weapon outside specific orders to shoot is also a serious offence.
These are good things. By and large, the British Army’s fire discipline is pretty good, hence their relatively non-existent ‘friendly fire’ incidents. I’m perfectly happy for soldiers to be held to a higher standard than terrorists – as anyone should be.
Bernadette Devlin McAliskey didn’t really ‘fit’ with the Troubles, although she was a shooting star at the very start.
From a working class Catholic background, she was a socialist, and became involved while at university in the Civil Rights Movement which was hijacked by the Troubles. As such, she had perhaps more in common with the US civil rights activists and other student activists of the late 1960s than she did with Irish nationalism. She always claimed that, despite her sympathies for the republican movement in Northern Ireland, she was essentially non-sectarian and wanted to work for all the people of Northern Ireland.
Until Mhairi Black of the SNP became a Member of Parliament, McAliskey was the youngest woman to take a seat in Westminster, at only 22, as a republican-aligned Unity politician. Her maiden speech (for, unlike other nationalist MPs, she did not practice abstention) was considered one of the best since Disraeli’s in the 1830s. In it, she tried to explain the difficulties that Northern Irish Catholics faced. Interviewed recently, she said the speech came from her political naivety: “I didn’t think the government was bad. I genuinely thought they just didn’t know and if I just went to London to tell them, people would say, ‘Do you hear that young woman there? We need to do something about that.’ But then I realised: the bastards, they do know and not only do they know, they don’t see anything wrong with it.”
She later served a prison sentence for her part in organising the working class residents of Derry in the Battle of the Bogside, and witnessed the events of Bloody Sunday in the city. Then an independent socialist MP, she gained notoriety by slapping a fellow MP, Reginald Maudling, for comments he made about Bloody Sunday.
She gave birth to a daughter, Róisín, in 1971. This was a considerable scandal as she was unmarried, and it cost her some political support amongst Catholics.
By 1974, her public political life was over. She lost her seat in parliament in the general election, and has never held political office since, despite running for election to a number of bodies.
Later that year, she helped found the Irish Republican Socialist Party, a splinter group from Official Sinn Féin, but left after a failed attempt to co-opt the Irish Nationalist Liberation Army terrorist group. I’m not sure of the details – did she leave because the attempt failed, or because the attempt was made in the first place (given her claimed non-sectarian stance, it’s interesting that the INLA had some Protestant members). However, she later supported the blanket protest and the dirty protest, and was the main spokesperson for the Smash H-Blocks Campaign, which supported the republican prisoners’ hunger strike, all of which involved INLA prisoners.
In 1981, she and her husband were shot in their home by members of the Ulster Freedom Fighters.
Currently, she runs the South Tyrone Empowerment Project, which advocates for migrants.
The old guard, those who lived through the Troubles and were involved at some level in sectarianism, are crapping themselves in private, and publicly trying to pretend that a united Ireland will never happen, that Mother Britain will never abandon her red-headed stepchild. Rather like the Protestants of Donegal, almost a century ago, just before they found themselves in the Irish Free State.
The younger generation – at least, those that managed to avoid the sectarian brainwashing from their elders – don’t mind one way or another. Some would actively welcome the change.
Those are the broad strokes. There are some older people who view UI with equanimity, and some younger people who think that Ulster will continue to say no. There’s also a variation in attitudes to UI with education level, and with experience of living outside NI.
OTOH, I know some very bitter, elderly, pro-Brexit, unionist-voting Protestants who would actually like to vote Sinn Fein, if only a certain SF candidate were running.
Takes all sorts, so it does.
AAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!
My personal preference is for Brexit to be cancelled.
I am from the Republic, but now live in Northern Ireland. My brothers live 20 minutes drive away, in the Republic. I’ve lived in various parts of the UK for all my adult life, and, purely for my own personal convenience, would prefer to stay in the UK. For me to return to the Republic would require quite a learning curve as I haven’t a notion how things like healthcare work, and I’d have all the hassle of transferring my UK accounts, child benefit, National Insurance credits, pension entitlement, private pension, etc., etc. and it’s just such a draaaaaagggg. Ugh. Then there’s the annoyance of custody and access arrangements for my half-Brit kiddo…
I was born shortly before the Troubles started, and many of my earliest memories are of nervous boy-soldiers hiding in ditches along the border, chicanes and road humps at border crossing points, and long drive-arounds because so many roads were simply closed to traffic. After the peace deal, it was glorious. Northern Ireland, Republic, UK or united Ireland, it didn’t matter – we were all European. Sure, it was irritating still having to change money – sterling to euros, and Northern Irish notes to English – and flights to Northern Ireland still boarded as far from the terminal as they could get and still be part of the same airport – but none of it mattered any more. Unionists didn’t have to worry about being forced into the cloudy grey skies of a “Free State” (a lot of them have never dropped the term), and the nationalists had as many links with the Republic as they could want (and still have their lovely free NHS). No more searches at shop entrances, no more Friday traffic standstills in Belfast as bomb disposal checked out the 20-odd bomb threats called in, no more checking the news before you went out for a drink to see if the pub you were going to was a) still standing and b) reachable without braving a ‘suspicious package’.
Now, I don’t see how a border of some kind can be avoided. It might be where the old border was, or it might be an imaginary passport boundary over the Irish Sea. It might mean many roads are closed to goods vehicles, or there could be special cameras and weighing points. People in cars and buses might be subject to random stop and search. Any of these could rile up the paramilitaries on one side or another, and we’ll be back where we started.
There is an active lobby for extension of the 1967 Abortion Act to Northern Ireland, and there has been since I worked for the NI Women’s Movement back in the 1980s. However, there is more public support than ever before: polls suggest that over 70% of the people of Northern Ireland now support this change.
However, our political parties do not reflect the grassroots. In a spreadsheet published by the Belfast Feminist Network before the recent Assembly elections, it is noted that all the Unionist parties and the nationalist SDLP are anti-abortion, although the UUP does permit its members a ‘vote of conscience’ on the issue, as does the Alliance Party. Sinn Féin supports only limited access to abortion for fatal foetal abnormality (FFA) and in cases of incest and rape. The only sitting pro-choice parties are the Green Party and People Before Profit Alliance, both of can only expect to which hold one or two seats apiece.
Of the candidates in the Assembly Election who expressed an opinion (one hung up the phone twice when asked),
71% of potential MLAs oppose abortion, compared with over 70% of pro-choice voters.
Now, let’s look at the donkeys we actually elected, and how they would vote:
Well.
I’m not sure what it says about our leaders that they are so out of touch with what their voters want.
But I do know what it says about Northern Irish voters: that they consistently vote for a shower of worthless gobshites who work against our interests, and those of Northern Ireland in general.
We’re mugs, morons, fools of the highest order, and we deserve everything the scum at the top defecate onto us.
Northern Ireland, as part of the UK, will be leaving the EU. There’s no way around that. The EU today has indicated that Northern Ireland would automatically get EU membership as part of a united Ireland, but that is some way off. There would need to be strong evidence that Northern Ireland voters want a united Ireland (maybe after the Tories can’t seem to find the cash to replace NI’s EU subsidies after Brexit?), followed by a referendum, followed by whatever negotiations and transitional arrangements are necessary, etc., etc. It won’t be soon, and it won’t be quick.
Brexit means that there ought to be a customs border, and a travel border for EU and RoW travellers entering Northern Ireland from the Republic. Much has been suggested regarding how this can be achieved without plunging the province into terrorism again, such as using traffic cameras for customs control and having the travel border between GB and the island of Ireland. So far, there are no good solutions and no solid plans.
800 years is a long time. It’s so long ago that:
Now that I’ve cleared that up for you, I’m sure you can see your way to the answer.
No?
Okay, the English and some not-quite-onboard Welsh – who were all actually Frenchmen descended from Vikings – went to not-Ireland to help one of the warring kings of not-Ireland against all the other kings of not-Not-Ireland and the referee-king. Following the not-invasion and ensuing not-conquest, the French Viking not-English-and-not-Welsh brought not-quite-Catholicism to some parts of not-Ireland. Not-Ireland had signed up about 100 years previously to the not-quite Catholic Church – having been a lot closer doctrinally to the Orthodox Churches from which the not-quite Catholic Church had recently schismed – but the not-Irish had signed up to the even-more-not-quite-Catholic Church on several occasions since Patrick popped his pampooties and had not followed through, so the not-quite-Catholic Church was keen for a little more cooperation and enforcement on the matter.
Through centuries fraught with attempted takeovers by the Germans and Spanish and actual takeovers by the Welsh, Scots, Dutch and the Germans (more successfully this time), French-England-and-Wales became Great Britain, then not-proper-Catholic, then Protestant, then proper-Catholic-as-understood-at-the-time, then Protestant again, then maybe-Catholic, then ultra-fundamentalist-Protestant, then who knows under Charles II, then Catholic, then Protestant, where it finally stuck. During this period, not-Ireland became Ireland under British rule, and the natives progressively more Catholic. This happened largely without the nation-wide convulsions seen over the water until the very end, when the last British Protestant-Catholic war was fought in Ireland by a Pope-backed Protestant against a Franco-Scottish Catholic. Such was the confusion engendered by this bizarre confluence that they forgot to take it with them when they went back to Britain – or rather, to continental Europe, where both William and James (titular kings of Britain and Ireland) spent much of the rest of their lives.
Now: William, King Billy, was more concerned with getting his big white horse over to the continent to continue his wars there, than he was about his English throne or Ireland, and signed a surprisingly modern, non-punitive treaty to end the war in Ireland. Unfortunately, Parliament, frankly knackered from a century and a half of turmoil which had seen them variously kicked out of their jobs, hung drawn and quartered, burned as heretics, or on the run in foreign parts, decided they simply were Not Having That. Hence, the Penal Laws.
Lest ye be thinking the mud of confusion is finally beginning to sink to the bottom of the flowing stream of this narrative, fear not: the Penal Laws didn’t just affect the Irish (they applied in Scotland, England and Wales too) or even just Catholics (anyone who wasn’t a member of the Anglican faith was subject too – Presbyterians, Quakers, Jews…). Partly as a result of this, many of the Irish rebel leaders and agitators for home rule and/or Irish independence from then onwards were in fact Protestant, including Wolfe Tone, Robert Emmet, William Smith O’Brien, Charles Stuart Parnell, Erskine Childers, and Douglas Hyde.
It was really only after partition that the conflict coalesced into a Protestant vs. Catholic division, and, even then, only in Northern Ireland. The religious terms gloss the two traditions, and have come to be applied, retrospectively and inaccurately, to the demented carousel that is Irish history.
A NI-Republic border ought to happen, as Northern Ireland will be outside the EU following Brexit. There’s no basis in law that I am aware of to suppose that Northern Ireland would get special EU status, although I understand that the EU is willing to consider it – thereby giving more thought to the province than Westminster has since the EU referendum was mooted.
Technically, Brexit breaks the Good Friday Agreement, under which the border is invisible. In addition, during the Brexit vote in Parliament, an amendment to Article 50 which would have protected the Good Friday Agreement during the Brexit process was comprehensively voted down – effectively, Parliament voted to break GFA.
Complicating the issue even more is the historic Common Travel Area between the UK and Ireland. This works just fine if both the UK and Ireland are in the EU, or outside the EU. No one knows how this will operate, or even if it can, after Brexit.
Then, there’s Gibraltar, where similar issues apply.
~Sigh~. Look before you leap. Actions have consequences. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Too many spanners, not enough broth.
Under the Good Friday Agreement, if there’s credible information that the majority of Northern Irish voters would vote to leave the UK, then the Northern Ireland Secretary of State is empowered to call a formal vote on the issue.
The rest of the United Kingdom has no input. That is, Westminster cannot, in theory, stop or postpone Northern Ireland’s vote on the matter, nor can Westminster ignore or cancel the outcome, regardless of whether it’s stay or leave. Officially. However, the Tories, who are in power now, are the Conservative and Unionist Party. Extrapolating from their response to the SNP’s calls for another independence referendum for Scotland, they and their Northern Ireland Secretary may choose to be ‘blind’ to any and all credible information that the Northern Irish people want to leave the UK. A Labour Party government, or a coalition government without the Tories, is more likely to permit a border poll, but the chances of Labour forming a government at present, either alone or in coalition, seem remote.
Similarly, under GFA, the Republic of Ireland can call a vote to decide whether or not to unite the two jurisdictions. As part of GFA, the Republic gave up its constitutional claim of jurisdiction over the island of Ireland, and officially see unification as a long term aim, subject to the wishes of the people of the island of Ireland. Again, depending on economic conditions, the Irish government might try to postpone a border poll, but, unlike the UK, none of the parties have a vested interest in preventing one taking place.
If NI voted to stay in the UK, they stay, the result of a border poll in the Republic notwithstanding. If NI voted to leave, but the Republic voted against unification… I don’t know. I don’t know if the Republic would vote against unification. However, there would be a transitional period during which Northern Ireland’s exit was thrashed out: perhaps, if the Republic did vote against unity, that period could be extended so that further talks and negotiations could take place. Northern Ireland would not be in a comfortable place during that process, though. No change there…
Battle Pedant 