Oh my God - what's that coming up the road?

I was on the Nolan Show  (radio) earlier this week, discussing the Belfast Telegraph’s latest poll which shows just 3.8% of people here would want the border removed tomorrow,  and  22% would want it removed in twenty years’ time. I’ll resist the temptation to get into the discussion I had with Malachi O’Doherty  (I’ll put the link up if I can locate it); but an interesting spin-off is the number of polls the Telegraph  has taken to churning out. If you enjoy these polls, you’ll be delighted that there very likely will be a lot more; if you don’t like them you’ll be pretty cheesed off.

The interesting question is: why?  Why is the Telegraph  keen to present a picture of northern society as firmly post-nationalist?  (That 3.8% figure, if you allow for a 3% margin of error, could conceivably mean that 0.8% of people here want the border removed tomorrow.) Simple: we’re approaching 2016.

John Waters has an interesting piece in The Irish Times  today where he says that when Enda Kenny holds a general election in that year (assuming his government runs to its full term), he’ll be competing not against Fianna Fail or Sinn Féin but against James Connolly and P H Pearse. In other words, the society that exists in 2016 will receive rigorous comparison with the vision of Connolly and Pearse and the others who were executed. You may be sure Enda and Co will do all in their power to avoid any such comparison, but it will happen. Significantly, the one thing Waters doesn’t mention in his Irish Times  piece is the North. It’s as if the North of Ireland formed no part of Connolly or Pearse’s vision for Ireland. 

But the Belfast Telegraph isn’t making that mistake. It and other media outlets will be straining every sinew to counteract the weight of history, to somehow nullify what the men of 1916 gave their lives for.  Their polls will be directed towards showing that things now are changed, changed utterly - only a handful of loonies in the North care about a united and self-governing Ireland. So while Connolly’s vision and  even Pearse’s were understandable and fine at the time, things have changed and nobody today has an interest in what the signatories of the Proclamation envisaged. Out-of-date. Romantic and unrealistic. Noble and all that but hey, this is now, that was then.

This stuffing of the media with non-nationalist arguments will be very necessary. I’m old enough to remember the 50th anniversary of 1916, and there is no doubt that the presentation of the facts and the people involved stirred the thinking of the Irish population, in some cases quite profoundly. The same will almost certainly happen on the 100th anniversary, so those who know what a shameful bisected mess the Ireland of today is will be shouting from the rooftops how old-fashioned/unrealistic/out-of-step-with-the-times are those who cling to the founding principles of Easter 1916.

Whose voice  - that of Pearse and Co or the Belfast Telegraph  and Co - will be the shrillest?  The Bel Tel crew. Whose voice will be the more convincing?  I don’t think I need to answer that. 

Footnote: the Nolan show link: http://audioboo.fm/boos/1609483-malachi-o-doherty-says-it-s-time-to-forget-about-a-united-ireland-jude-collins-disagrees