Those Ontario riots: I feel so ashamed - don't you?

Oh dear. You have disgraced yourselves again, as  W B Yeats told the Abbey audience at that Synge play (or was it the O'Casey one?)  Like you, I'm horrified and ashamed at the scenes of rioting coming from London, Ontario. A lot of people got cuts and minor injuries, it seems, and thousands of dollars-worth of property was damaged. It appears to have been perpetrated by students from a nearby college or colleges, which makes me feel relieved that when I was a student, I never let alcohol pass my lips ("Lips that touch liquor will never touch mine", I used to explain to beautiful girls in bars),  never got into fights of any kind, acted in a responsible way, and never woke up next morning saying to myself "Holy Mother of God, part of my skull is missing and  I'm going to throw up, I know I am". But out of adversity comes opportunity: with our experience of those awful  Holylands disturbances, we're now in a position to ship out the Vice-Chancellors of UU and Queen's to Ontario, where they can explain to the authorities there how they've managed to deal with those disgustingly young people - sorry, I mean disgusting young people in the Holylands who spoilt things for everyone else by drinking in public and smashing things and giving people cuts, despite what sober responsible grown-ups told them. I mean, as that grave-faced man in the BBC clip from Ontario said, enough is enough.

By the way -  I assume, like me,  you never got pissed or bolshie when you were young? Right. I thought not.

Further thoughts on the Ulster Covenant (and goal-mouth technology)

Last weekend QPR manager Mark Hughes was going a bit ballistic about a goal he says his team scored but the ref ruled they hadn’t.  The ref said he couldn’t see it from his angle so he couldn’t judge if the goalie had scooped the ball out before it crossed the line; the assistant referee/linesman said his view was blocked by two players between him and the ball;  goal-mouth replays on TV showed the ball had definitely gone in. 

You thought I’d forgotten about the signing of the Covenant, didn’t you? Bear with me. As in the case of the disputed goal, the way you see the Covenant signing depends to a great extent on where you’re positioned. If you’re in the shoes of a traditional (or maybe average) unionist, you’ll see it as a glorious event that laid the foundations for the state you’re now living in. Faced with forcible expulsion from the United Kingdom, the men and women of Ulster came together to make clear they were having none of it. Nearly half a  million men and women solemnly pledged themselves to resist by all possible means such unfair and misguided treatment. (The women weren’t allowed to sign the Covenant, just a Declaration, but let’s not go there). 

If you’re a nationalist/republican, you’ll see 1912 differently. From your seat in the stands you’ll see a minority of Irish people  resisting the democratic and lawful wishes of the majority that they should be granted Home Rule. You'll also point to the contradiction of a unionist people defying the very British government to whom they vowed allegiance. You might add that the Covenant people, promising violence if their wishes were not met, acted not just undemocratically but opened the door to a decade of violence – the Larne gun-running, the Howth gun-running, Easter 1916, the Tan War, the Civil War. By bringing the gun into twentieth-century Irish politics, they sent hundreds of good people on this island to their graves and plunged thousands of loved ones in deepest grief. 

So is that it? Do you pick your side and chant insults at the opposing lot? Well, maybe if you’re supporting a football team, but not if you’re seriously addressing Irish history. If it’s history you’re talking,  you stay open-minded to other views and perhaps new evidence. You scrutinise the signing of the Covenant and try to tease out the meaning it can have for us, one hundred years later. You’ll probably raise that old question: does the meaning and/or its morality change with the passage of  time? 

That’s what happened on BBC Radio Ulster/Raidio Uladh’s Sunday Sequence last weekend. They were talking about the signing of the Covenant, and panelist Brian Feeney said in so many words that we mustn’t judge the signing of the Covenant/the Larne gun-running by the standards of today. Presenter William Crawley immediately did his job. He asked “Why?”  Why shouldn’t we judge the morality of the Covenant signing and the Larne gun-running by today’s standards? After all, we judge the actions of Hitler in the 1930s by today’s standards – why not those in the north of Ireland during second decade of the twentieth-century? In response to the question Feeney gave a jokey remark about religion but no answer.

So do we show how tolerant we are and settle back into moral relativism? You say tomato, I say tomayto? Everything depends on what vantage point you've got, and anyway we can’t really judge people and events that happened so long ago? My own view is that relativism is bunkum. Of course we must keep in mind the context in which people found themselves and the beliefs they held then. But when all  that tomato/tomayto stuff has been said, there are still conclusions to be be drawn and judgments to be made. The video replay, the goal-line technology should be wheeled on and used. We can't let the value of historical events depend on the state of someone's digestion.

Five things about Martin McGuinness and the Queen of England

Tell you what. On this sun-filled St Patrick's Day, let's look at the Queen of England. Or to be more exact, the suggested meeting between herself and Martin McGuinness. Five things.

1.    There's something faintly hilarious about the northern leader of a party which, for years, people would have chopped off their hand rather than shake hands with; now he’s being asked, courted, demanded - you choose your word - to shake hands. Remember Gay Byrne's famous refusal to shake the hand of Gerry Adams on his Late Late Show? And now there are people who'll be miffed if Martin McGuinness doesn't shake hands with the head of the House of Windsor. Sometimes it's hard to keep up with the twists of diplomacy and etiquette.

2.    Do you shake hands only with people whose political views match yours? I'm putting the finishing touches to a book about three of the major centenaries we now face. In the course of preparing it, I interviewed politicians of every stripe - from flinty republicans to dyed-in-the-wool unionists. In every case I shook hands with them, and they with me. I can't speak for them but I know I figured it was a civilized thing to do. It didn't mean I shared their philosophies or indeed that they shared mine. Ditto Queen and Deputy First Minister.

3.    There are some who'll seek to make political hay out of any McG-QE2 meeting. Some will say it shows McGuinness has sold out - that he's accepted the Queen as his lawful sovereign, and all those years of conflict were all a bit like your man in the 'Dallas' soap - all just a bad dream that never really happened. Others will say that it  shows nationalists/Catholics in the north - esp the under 45s, if you're to believe at least one priest - don't give a monkey's about a united Ireland. Both of them clearly don't know Martin McGuinness.

4.    Why is McGuinness prepared to do it? Well, only he knows for sure. But my guess is that, like Alex Salmond, he wants to reassure those in the community who might be filled with fears about the future that, as far as acting in a civilized and respectful manner  towards the woman they - well, not so much they have chosen, since choosing a monarch has nothing to do with the people - the woman who has been landed on them as their head of state.

5.    This is another stage in a long journey that Sinn Fein have taken towards reconciliation with their fellow-Irishmen who are unionists. Their attitude to Irish soldiers who died in British uniform in WW1, their taking of seats at Stormont and the Dail, their sharing of power and its responsibilities - they are determined to remove any unnecessary barrier between them and the unionist community. On Thursday last I was in Berry Street Presbyterian Church. The minister introduced the discussion of the signing of the Covenant - attended by at least as many nationalists/republicans as unionists - and then handed over, in his words, to his 'good friend Danny Morrison'.

All changed, changed utterly. You can interpret that as a total sell-out of the great mass of republicans of everything they fought for over several decades - killed and were killed, went to prison for years, all the other wounds of conflict - all sold out, the Queen of England acknowledged as their sovereign. Or you can see it as republicans treating in a civilized way someone unionists, for reasons best known to themselves revere. My money is on the second of these two. A final footnote: if republicans are respectful of unionist figure-heads such as the Queen of England, that poses an interesting question. How will unionists treat those things which republicans hold dear and honour? 

About last night in Berry Street Presbyterian Church...

I attended a historic event last night - historic in both senses, of being unique and having to do with history. It was held in Berry Street Presbyterian Church and with the BBC's Yvette Shapiro in the chair,  there was a panel discussion between Gordon Lucy, Eamonn Phoenix and Tom Hartley. The topic was the first of the many centenaries thundering this way: the signing of the Ulster Covenant.

Well. If the English are a nation of shopkeepers, then we must be a nation of historians. The breadth and detail of knowledge of events shown by the three panel members and various contributors from the floor - including (whisper it) Fianna Fail's Martin Mansergh,  Martin McAleese and Alban Maginniss - was impressive to the point of astonishment, at least for an ignoramus like me. People were talking about events in 1886, 1910, 1914, 1921 with an ease and familiarity, as though they had happened yesterday. That's your cue, if you're so inclined, to say that this is precisely the problem - we dwell on the past far too much.  I beg to differ. The debate was lively and informed, and set the Covenant signing in a context that I found repeatedly illuminating.

There was one moment in particular that stood out for me. It happened when Gordon Lucy, speaking from the unionist tradition, was asked what he and the other panel members would like to see achieved at the end of this 'decade of sensitive centenaries', as I think Martin McAleese phrased it. (Yes, since you ask,  Jackie McDonald was there too). Lucy's reply was that he'd like to see lots of events like this one but added an emphatic note of caution: he'd put his view of things, people like Alban Maginniss would put theirs, but it wouldn't really change anyone's thinking. Both parties would leave with the same views they entered. At this point, without waiting for the microphone to be passed to him - or permission from the chair - a man at the back stood up and said he completely disagreed. The whole point of discussion was to open your mind to new ideas, new perspectives on a given topic, and that you should leave meetings like this with something to chew on, mull over, nudge your thinking in new directions.

There you have it in compressed form. You either see the meeting of different points of view as a verbal butting of heads, looking to see who comes out on top; or you see such meetings as opportunities to acquire - at no cost - food for thought.  Tom Hartley says something to this effect in the (very blurred) video clip that I'm hoping to put up with this posting. The evening was rich in so many talking points,  I feel I'm doing it an injustice with something as brief and amateurish as this. But maybe you were there. In which case, post your comment. For God, Ulster and Ireland's sake.

That tweet: a station stands accused

Oh dear. If you're to believe the Irish Times this morning, RTÉ has got its knickers in a fearful twist about that tweet. You remember, the one that purported to come from Sinn Féin during the famous presidential Frontline  debate - or that was announced as same by Pat Kenny. You can get the timeline for what happened that night, you can get what Sean Gallagher says and said - you can get just about anything on the topic, because RTÉ and its critics believe this tweet puts the station's reputation on the line.

I'm amazed. Well no, half-amazed. Half of me is impressed by the thoroughness of this tweet investigation, suggesting the determination of the station and everyone else to locate fault, if fault there be, and act accordingly. The other half of me is amazed - AMAZED - that nobody in RTÉ or, it seems, anywhere in the south thinks that RTÉ treated Martin McGuinness in a lop-sided fashion during the campaign. Given that I don't think I'm the only one north of the border who thinks this way, you'd imagine the Irish Times would have the odd irate letter. Not so, to the best of my knowledge. So the state and the station are aghast at a tweet being attributed to Sinn Féin when it wasn't, but have made no effort to see what balance there was between questions put to McGuinness  during the campaign about his actions from, say, the past twenty years and his actions in the twenty years preceding that. Was it because talk of people being killed - by the IRA, of course - made for better television than questions about working for the creation of the Good Friday Agreement and the crushing work  of keeping it in place in the years that followed? Was it that RTÉ and the state genuinely feared that the forces of law-and-order would break into Áras an Uachtaráin half-way through a McGuinness term as president and arrest him for war crimes? No, no, no. RTÉ and the state establishment were simply determined that no damned northern Shinner was going to come down and by his presence in the Áras accuse them daily of platitudes about partition. They didn't feel abashed about their partisan questioning of McGuinness - they gloried in it. They didn't feel embarrassed about the absence of questions about McGuinness's political career - they prided themselves on just that. Pssst, guys: little secret. Sometimes sins of omission are graver than those of commission.

That Mary McArdle move

The last time I wrote about Mary McArdle,  I got abuse - some spoken, some silently acted on - from those in high places and in conspicuously low places. So it's with my sinews, such as they are, stiffened that I tiptoe towards the topic again.

Mary McArdle, you'll remember, was convicted for being part of an IRA unit that attempted to kill Judge  Travers on his way home from Mass. They wounded the judge and they killed the judge's daughter Mary, who was with him. Mary McArdle was appointed a special advisor to the Sinn Féin Minister for Culture, and a campaign was mounted to have her removed, with the voice of Anne Travers, Mary's sister, most frequently heard. It didn't succeed. Or at least not at the time - McArdle has in the last couple of days been moved to another post within Sinn Féin. Anne Travers declares herself delighted that she's achieved a victory for her dead sister, and now calls on Mary McArdle to divulge the names of those who were on the mission with her.

I could repeat for the umpteenth time how horrible it must be to lose through violence a member of your family, but can we take that as read? Hundreds, thousands of people here have experienced it over the past forty years and the pain they live with is immense. The question is, was Mary McArdle forced out of her job because of pressure by Anne Travers? Probably not. Had McArdle resigned in the heat of the media onslaught, the answer would have been different. But the fact is, the case has sunk to the back of the public consciousness.  My guess is that McArdle was moved primarily because a gap occurred elsewhere in the Shinner organisation which they believed McArdle could fill effectively. At some secondary level, they may have felt that it might indicate that, while they're not prepared to be dictated to, they have sensitivity about the matter. If  Anne Travers feels entitled to claim that as her victory,  fine.

What's she's not entitled to do is to start another campaign to have Mary McArdle provide the names of the other people who were with her that day. Which she shows signs of doing: "Now I would just like it if Mary McArdle could just find it in her heart...to tell me who else was involved in Mary's murder and the attempted murder of my parents".   She clearly wasn't listening when Martin McGuinness at the Saville Inquiry and numerous other republicans  made it clear that they will not give information about their comrades in anything short of a full truth and healing engagement involving all sides, including the British state and its forces. Now there's a campaign that might have merit.

The Irish language and two verbal muggings

I’ve been reading a biography of Alice Milligan,  an amazing woman from the wonderful town of Omagh. She came from a fiercely anti-Home Rule Methodist family, yet she spent her long life (she died in the 1950s) promoting Irish republicanism. An integral part of that work, she believed, was the promotion of Irish culture in all its forms, particularly the language.

So when I was chatting to a  woman the other day about learning Irish, I asked her why was she doing it. “Because I’m Irish” I was told. So I suggested there must be more to it than that, given that there are about six million Irish people and not all of them were learning Irish like her. Big mistake. I immediately got my lug-hole filled with sharpish reproof for daring to think I could know her motivation for learning Irish better than she did, things had come to a pretty pass when someone like me could claim he knew more about her motivation than she did, etc, etc, etc. Wham, bam, shut your mouth, man.

On the same day I was talking to a man who’s well up  on the development of the Irish language in the north. He explained to me how there’s been a phenomenal growth in the language over the past fifteen years or so – from nowhere to fifty Irish-medium schools across the north. So, I asked,  could he explain why it was almost exclusively nationalists who were behind this revival, given that -   I was going to say given that it was northern Protestants who saved the language in the eighteenth and nineteenth century – hence the McAdam part of the MacAdam-Ó Fiach Cultúrlann building in Belfast, for example. I was going to ask that but I couldn't, because my companion had wheeled away calling over his shoulder that he wasn’t going to get into that, if I wanted to talk about Irish development, fine, but not that.

Two little stories that show the sensitivity of some Irish speakers about linking Irish culture with our social/political situation. Alice Milligan had very definite views on that. Some, she said, wanted to make the language a glorious jewelled brooch  they placed under glass in a museum, for admiration. Others, like her, wanted to wear it on their breast and bring it shining into the world of events and political effort.

So is it the Alice Milligans that some commentators are thinking of, when they claim republicanism has “hi-jacked the language”? Maybe. But if you look at Irish history, you’ll see how Irish culture, especially the language, during Milligan's time and before and after, weaves in and out of political commitment. Maybe some devotees of the Irish language are afraid the Protestant/unionist horses will take fright from the language, if it’s seen as standing too close to politics. And so they pretend no such link exists and get shirty with anyone who even hints otherwise?

Discuss.