ONE FOOT IN THE FUTURE

The seemingly forced resignation of Sajid Javid as Chancellor, substituting one casino capitalist for another, has understandably owned the front pages when it comes to Boris Johnson’s Cabinet reshuffle; but perhaps the removal of Julian Smith as Northern Ireland Secretary should warrant a little more attention than it has so far received. Having played his part in the restoration of the Executive at Stormont after three years of suspended animation, Smith’s stated Remain stance and conviction that a no-deal Brexit would have an especially disastrous impact on Ulster probably didn’t help, regardless of the key role he appears to have played in helping repair an apparently intractable situation.

However, this Downing Street regime isn’t merely engaged in the traditional power struggle between No.10 and the Treasury (see ‘Yes, Prime Minister’); as the PM demonstrated when expelling 21 rebel MPs from the Conservative Party last year, any divergence from the Cummings script that can be perceived as disloyalty is swiftly dealt with. Julian Smith’s dismissal highlights how a minster’s better-than-expected performance cannot even save them if they express an opinion contrary to the consensus. Indeed, following the favouritism extended to the DUP as a means of shoring up Theresa May’s decimated numbers in 2017, it’s a miracle anyone has managed to bring the opposing factions together again. But perhaps the scant coverage given to this particular dismissal also reflects what a busy, transitional time it’s been on the island of Ireland lately; maybe the appointment of the third Northern Ireland Secretary since 2018 was bound to be overshadowed by other events.

A week which saw Northern Ireland’s first same-sex wedding ceremony take place also saw 52-year-old Paul McIntyre charged with the murder of Lyra McKee, who was shot dead as she observed a riot on the infamous Creggan estate in Derry last April. The province was united in its outrage at the death of the 29-year-old journalist, with the priest conducting her funeral earning a standing ovation as he angrily noted the assembling of Northern Ireland’s political class in its Sunday best at the service; Nationalist and Unionist politicians could be brought together to virtue signal their disgust at a senseless murder, yet couldn’t overcome their differences to revive Stormont, mothballed since the resignation of Martin McGuinness in January 2017.

As a rising star of political journalism and a prominent gay rights campaigner, Lyra McKee had seemed to embody the changing climate in Ulster, highlighting the coming of age of a socially-liberal generation too young to have experienced The Troubles and too focused on the future to be weighed down by inherited sectarian baggage. That Lyra McKee should be cut down by a gunman representing a diminishing number of ideological antiquarians was a cruel blow, yet not without its significance; the overwhelming revulsion at the backward-looking violence of her killer underlined just how much the gun and the bomb have been comprehensively rejected by the Nationalist community bar a tiny handful of dead-end dissident Republicans.

Just as recent social legislation in the Republic has now been belatedly echoed in Ulster, the post-Brexit political frontrunners of the North are finding shared aims in the South. Sinn Féin, for so long tarred by the toxic brush of its terrorism associations, has successfully shed its past reputation and repositioned itself on the political spectrum to the point where it has now become established as the dominant party on the island. The result of last weekend’s General Election in the Republic, hot on the heels of more Nationalist than Unionist MPs being elected to Westminster for the first time ever, saw neither of the two parties that have dominated Irish politics since partition – Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael – gain a majority. The former won 38 seats whilst the latter managed 35. Yet, sandwiched between them with a staggering 37 seats, is Sinn Féin. The party that was traditionally accompanied by the suffix ‘The political wing of the IRA’ has smashed the mould in the Republic after a century, mirroring aspirations and ambitions on both sides of the border.

Although many hinted the new, broader appeal of Sinn Féin – binning the old romantic Republicanism in favour of focusing on left-of-centre social issues (particularly housing) – might secure the party a record showing, the pitiful placing it had suffered during last year’s European elections hardly suggested it would ascend to the position it now holds in Eire with such rapidity. As things stand, neither Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael can contemplate a formal coalition administration with each other, but one of them will have no choice but to enter into such a partnership with a party that won almost a quarter of the vote, a party that was seen as something of a pariah in the Republic not so long ago.

Over the border, Sinn Féin’s detachment from the party’s old allegiances on home soil was further emphasised by the news that Northern Ireland’s Deputy First Minister Michelle O’Neill and her Sinn Féin colleague Gerry Kelly have received death threats for their appearance at a recruitment event for the Police Service of Northern Ireland. O’Neill’s response to dissident dinosaurs still associating the province’s police force with the RUC or even (more accurately for those spending their days living in the past) the Black and Tans, was succinct. ‘These people have no politics, no strategy and nothing to offer,’ she said. ‘They are at war with the community and are now threatening political representatives…These groups have nothing to offer.’

Those who had directed the armed struggle brought it to an end with the Good Friday Agreement, though this was a bitter pill to swallow for some lower down the pecking order who’d had a good war. Obstinate opponents continuing to cling to ye olde Republican mythology have been very much in a minority ever since; and as the country moves further away from 1998, let alone the savage carnage that typified the three decades before it, dissidents will find little support in their retrogressive attempts to preserve the spirit of 1916 in amber. Even the old-habits-die-hard singing of ‘rebel songs’ has been severely admonished by Sinn Féin’s leaders in Dublin and Belfast, recognising the negative connotations such dirges have and how contradictory they are to the aims of a party with its eyes fixed on the road ahead rather than behind.

The question of Irish Unification is in the air again as a result of all these events, something that was undoubtedly kick-started by Brexit. Standing still and maintaining the status quo is no longer an option. However, Boris Johnson’s fanciful idea to revitalise the province – i.e. building a literal bridge between Northern Ireland and Scotland – has been scuppered by the realisation that the proposed route of the 28-mile site would risk disturbing a WWII munitions dump in the middle of the Irish Sea. A more realistic proposition would be a plebiscite on unification, something that – regardless of Sinn Féin’s strong foothold in both North and South – is bound up with the Good Friday Agreement and would still require the British Government playing a substantial part in proceedings. After all, we remain the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. But for how much longer?

© The Editor

THE HISTORY MAN

It’s an old saying, but it seems especially applicable today – one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. Martin McGuinness, who has died at the age of 66, will be remembered as both warmonger and peacemaker, a visionary who paved the way for the Good Friday Agreement and a murderer who prolonged the bloodshed until he belatedly realised there was nowhere left to run. In a divided community, few figures continue to generate more division than the mass of contradictions that was Martin McGuinness, and it’s doubtful that death will alter any fixed opinions of someone whose remarkable journey took him from the Bogside to Stormont, from IRA Commander to Deputy First Minister.

Even when he was regarded as a dangerously intransigent paramilitary by the security services, he and Gerry Adams were flown to London for top-secret discussions with the British Government at a house in Chelsea’s exclusive Cheyne Walk. The talks, chaired by then-Northern Ireland Secretary Willie Whitelaw, were undertaken during a brief IRA ceasefire in the summer of 1972; they collapsed in failure, but McGuinness had already been earmarked by MI5 as a man the Government could work with. Many might say it was a pity it took another twenty-five years, and the loss of hundreds more lives, before that came to pass.

That McGuinness could rise through IRA ranks with such speed and reach such a prominent position when still in his early twenties is testament to the dangerous life he’d chosen for himself; one-by-one, his superiors were killed in the line of duty as the violence intensified following the formation of the Provisional IRA in 1969. A Nationalist community under siege from Loyalist mobs strongly opposed to Catholic calls for civil rights had welcomed the British Army as peacekeepers in the absence of their traditional protectors; the effectively defunct IRA had been mocked as I Ran Away. The new Provisional wing embarked on a bombing campaign in Belfast and Londonderry, targeting city centre businesses to draw troops and the RUC away from the neighbourhoods where the organisation had to rebuild trust and support. It worked, aided by the increasingly clumsy joint policies instigated by both Stormont and Westminster.

A string of disasters during the early years of the Troubles, from Internment to Bloody Sunday, served as effective recruitment drives for the IRA, and while the abolition of the Unionist stronghold at Stormont may have provoked cheers on one side of the sectarian divide, the imposition of Direct Rule and the continuing presence of the British Army on the streets of Ulster galvanised the Republican call to arms that eventually crossed over to the mainland and brought the war to London and Birmingham. A year after the British Government had hoped McGuinness was someone they could work with, he was behind bars on terrorism charges in Eire; after his release, he took his first tentative steps into the political arena by becoming involved with Sinn Fein, a position that gave him indirect contact with British intelligence during the 1981 Maze Hunger Strikes. He remained someone with the potential to bring about change without the bomb, but there was still a long way to go.

The IRA ceasefire of 1994 marked a turning point both in the life of Martin McGuinness and the politics of Northern Ireland; there suddenly seemed a viable way forward that didn’t involve Armalite. In 1997 he was elected MP for Mid-Ulster and was Sinn Fein’s chief negotiator during the peace talks that led to the Good Friday Agreement. When the power-sharing executive was established at Stormont, he became Minister for Education, but it was his ten-year tenure as Deputy First Minister, establishing an unlikely and unexpectedly convivial working relationship with his one-time nemesis Ian Paisley as First Minister, that suggested McGuinness’ progression mirrored the progression of the province as a whole.

Another indication of the will to move on came with his regular condemnation of Republican dissident splinter groups and their recurrent attempts to revive the tactics of old. McGuinness’ landmark 2012 meeting with HM the Queen was potent with symbolism for both parties, though the fact it happened at all speaks volumes as to how far both McGuinness and Northern Ireland itself had travelled in two decades.

The understandable cries of betrayal on both sides when the Northern Ireland Assembly was formed in the wake of the Good Friday Agreement nevertheless failed to sway the determination of former enemies to work together for the common good; and men laying down their arms in favour of portfolios wasn’t necessarily unprecedented. The immediate post-war governments of France contained many who could once have been labelled terrorists, as did the first government of Israel; and there’s always post-Apartheid South Africa. Martin McGuinness was pivotal to the peace process, whatever his past activities had done to prevent peace, and this has been recognised in the statements issued by British politicians today, particularly those who played their own part in it.

Many feel (as with Gerry Adams’ similar comments) that the repeated denials by McGuinness as to the degree of his involvement with the IRA long after he claimed to have left it amounted to evasive revisionism designed to enhance his newfound status as a respectable politician. Many can never find it in them to forgive his role in a campaign of carnage that killed and maimed hundreds over a quarter of a century. One could argue most significant political leaders have blood on their hands, though it tends to come with the elevation to political power; McGuinness did it in reverse.

In death, as in life, he will always be a controversial character, albeit one that undoubtedly made an indelible mark on his times, for good or ill. Where Martin McGuinness is concerned, it seems the jury is permanently out.

© The Editor

HARD TIMES

Ooh, it’s hard – it’s really hard! Yes, porn-speak infiltrates political discourse and, guess what, the SNP, Sinn Fein and the Lib Dems aren’t happy. Finally, the PM emerges from her Downing Street bunker and outlines her Brexit strategy. It’s only taken Theresa May the best part of six months to come up with some sort of speech to get the classes chattering at Westminster, Holyrood and Stormont, but she’s done it at last.

Yesterday, Our Beloved Leader announced that the UK will be leaving the European Single Market as part of our exit from the EU, confirmation of something that had been anticipated and (in the self-interested case of Nicola Sturgeon) hoped-for. Free movement of goods, services and capital without the free movement of people isn’t going to happen, so the Prime Minister had little option but to include this as a key part of her speech. It goes without saying that prominent Remainers in Parliament took the news badly; Tim Farron described being removed from the single market as ‘a theft of democracy’ and ‘not something proposed to the British people’. In case he’s already forgotten, nothing other than Leave or Remain was on the ballot paper last June; that was the extent of the detail.

The PM said Parliament would indeed vote on the final deal once unveiled, though a majority of votes by MPs and Peers against it wouldn’t alter the deal being enacted, which renders the laborious process of debating the issue in the Commons and the Lords somewhat redundant; I suppose it’ll serve as a token gesture to the Great British Sovereignty that a Leave vote was allegedly intended to return us to the bosom of, and it’ll also waste more time as the negotiations drag on and on, of course.

Along with leaving the European Single Market, the UK will wave bye-bye to the EU Customs Union, with the PM claiming it restricts Britain from being able to cut trade deals with non-EU member states; at the same time, she said she wanted the UK to have a new tariff-free trading relationship with the EU. It looks like Mrs May wants that cake and she’s determined to eat the bloody thing! It was this aspect of the PM’s plans that particularly upset the Nationalist parties in Ulster, with Sinn Fein MLA John O’Dowd declaring the decision ‘creates a hard border on the island of Ireland’. However, May did add that a crucial element of her intentions for Brexit in relation to Northern Ireland would be that the Common Travel Area between the UK and Eire remains.

At this moment in time, with the power-sharing Executive suspended pending an election, Northern Ireland would seem to have more pressing matters; not so Scotland, of course – according to the SNP, anyway. The PM may have said all the devolved UK administrations would have a part to play in formulating the Brexit strategy, but Nicola Sturgeon wants a ‘special deal’ for Scotland that flies in the face of May’s rejection of the European Single Market. The First Minister may be publicly stressing she believes Scotland remaining attached to the EU is in Scotland’s economic interests, but it’s been evident ever since she succeeded Alex Salmond that she intends to overturn the Independence Referendum result of 2014 at the first opportunity; and now it would appear that Theresa May’s speech has presented it to her.

Perhaps still stung by Obama’s threat of the UK being at the back of the queue when it comes to trade deals should the country dare to exit the EU, the Government now seems to be hinging a lot of post-European optimism on maximising ‘the special relationship’ again. The President-Elect wants to be our friend, or at least that’s what we’ve been led to believe via the Donald’s stated fondness for Britain, his thumbs-up for Brexit and his apparent willingness to do deals with us. Toe-curling snapshots alongside the likes of Farage and Gove probably shouldn’t be taken as an indication that this is where the majority of our global trading future lies, however.

Enthusiastic Brexiteer Boris Johnson has played down any over-reliance on the US by claiming endless other nations will be queuing up to sign trade deals with the UK once the death warrant on our EU membership known as Article 50 has been triggered – well, once the expected two-year process is over and done with. The Foreign Secretary added that ‘we are not slamming the door to migrants or hauling up the drawbridge’. But for all Bo-Jo’s bravura, nothing is as clear-cut as he and his ilk are liable to paint it; and one of the few straws Jeremy Corbyn could clutch at yesterday was his conviction that extricating ourselves from the EU might take a little longer than a couple of years.

Whether that means all those countries forming an orderly queue to trade with us are prepared to wait that long, only time will tell; and all of this is undoubtedly going to take time.

© The Editor

PS We can still console ourselves as to the integrity of our Great British Institutions, however…

PAST AND PRESENT ARMS

When the general consensus declares a decade to be hip again, the difficult truth that a ten-year period is not a self-contained entity in which everything and everyone adhered to a specific train of thought forces the fashionista to cherry-pick the highlights. Therefore, whenever the 1960s are in vogue, we get mini-skirts, Beatle hair and hippie threads; we don’t get 60s-themed fancy dress parties with guests turning up dressed as Vietnamese peasants with their napalm-fried flesh hanging off. The 1970s have been periodically dipped in and out of for the last twenty-five years, but again it’s a very narrow vision of afro wigs and platform soles. At one time, this could be attributed to the fact that those quick to embrace the image weren’t actually there; post-Yewtree, it could be down to a need to pluck the positive from a barrage of retrospective negativity perpetrated by hypocrites who actually were there.

One aspect of the 1970s from a British viewpoint that could do without being revived is one that spanned the whole decade and beyond, only officially ending a couple of years away from the dawn of the twenty-first century. Whilst the dress sense of its practitioners during their 70s peak seems unlikely to be seen on the catwalk this summer (unless a top designer decides tank-tops are chic), the activities of Irish Republican dissidents have slowly edged back onto the periphery of the headlines.

With Sinn Fein politicians having held prominent posts in the Northern Ireland Assembly since its inception and former IRA bigwig Martin McGuinness having gone so far as to play host to the Queen, any resurgence of old-school Republicanism does seem reminiscent of Japanese soldiers still hiding out on remote Pacific islands because nobody told them the Second World War was over. The 1998 Good Friday Agreement and the establishment of non-sectarian political systems that followed in its wake has served to transform Northern Ireland for the better in the space of a generation, and the PR that has promoted Ulster in the last fifteen years has been almost wholly positive. Anyone old enough to recall even the 80s will remember how no national news bulletin was complete without the announcement of another callous assassination on the streets of Belfast or Londonderry or in those rural outposts the British Army referred to as ‘bandit country’. Thankfully, casual murder in Ulster no longer forms part of the daily headlines.

However, this is a corner of the United Kingdom where some communities remain physically divided by huge Berlin Wall-like edifices given a collective name that Donald Trump’s team might consider when it comes to their plans for Mexico – Peace Lines. Erected to replace the makeshift barriers of burnt-out cars and old furniture hastily shoved together at the outbreak of the Troubles in 1969, the Peace Lines separate Catholics and Protestants in the notorious interface neighbourhoods of Derry and Belfast. Some are as high as 25 feet, some are as long as three miles, and – rather remarkably – more have been built since the Good Friday Agreement than before it. They both represent and perpetuate an Us and Them mindset that continues to fester in the poorer quarters of Ulster despite the progress of the past couple of decades, building on the bigotry passed down the generations to communities on both sides of the divide.

It’s no real surprise that the worst excesses of Nationalism live on in such neighbourhoods; I doubt there’s much else that can provoke passion when former Republican heroes like McGuinness are seen lording it up at Stormont. Most would be of the opinion that McGuinness has done his bit for the Cause, but if your daily existence revolves around the limited opportunities on offer in a sink estate as bad as any in mainland Britain – with the additional grim feature of a 25-foot wall greeting you first thing on a morning – the sight of Martin McGuinness being driven in a Ministerial limousine en route for tea and scones with Her Majesty probably feels less relevant to Republicanism than a mural marking an incident that occurred in the seventeenth century.

The various IRA splinter groups that have continued to operate on a small scale since the Provos decommissioned their arsenal have often filled their time either controlling the illegal drug supplies in and out of Northern Irish cities, indulging in bank robberies and petty crime, or simply ‘policing’ their areas with the same ruthless notions of law enforcement that are characteristic of the dark days of the 70s. Recent attacks on individuals in Northern Ireland have sounded distinctly paramilitary in nature; when someone is shot in the legs, one cannot help but remember the horrible punishment known as ‘knee-capping’.

The language used by the group calling itself ‘The New IRA’ – a method of distinction presumably along the lines of what distinguishes The Seekers from The New Seekers – has a ring of the bad old days about it and yet also possesses an inherent and curious quaintness that renders it almost comical, declaring its members are ‘determined to take the war to the age-old enemy of our nation’. One could positively wince at the clichés. Just as some political parties seem happier in permanent opposition than in government, there are clearly many disgruntled diehards in Ulster who will never accept what is good for the province as a whole and can only relate to what makes their lives feel fulfilled, thriving on chaos rather than submitting to order.

That their activities have apparently caused the threat of mainland Republican attacks to rise up the charts for the first time since the 90s must have made their day and vindicated their futile attempts to drag the British Isles back forty years. Expecting this deluded little outfit to compete with the blood-chilling professionalism of the new kids on the terrorist block, however, is a bit like watching the corner shop take on Waitrose. The majority of the Catholic population of Northern Ireland have moved on. As have the British troops that provided the paramilitaries with their violent raison d’être. Wake up and smell the century, chaps.

© The Editor

THE GREEN GODDESS

Amidst the centenary celebrations of the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland, one name hasn’t been mentioned as much as one might expect, though her absence from the siege at the Dublin Post Office and the fact she evaded execution perhaps excludes her from the roll-call of Republican martyrs. Countess Constance Markievicz was a remarkable woman in more than one respect, however. The fact that she was the first woman ever elected to the House of Commons should be enough to ensure her place in history, even though she didn’t take her seat on account of refusing to swear an oath of allegiance to the King, representing Sinn Fein in the 1918 Parliament when it was the third largest party with a tally of 73 seats.

She was an unlikely rebel, emanating from Anglo-Irish aristocracy and yet bearing the distinction of being the only uniformed woman officer of the Irish Citizen Army in 1916 and being posthumously honoured with a statue in Dublin, the sole female participant in the Easter Rising to receive such recognition. When Sinn Fein MPs formed the first Dali Eireann rather than head for Westminster, she was awarded the post of Minister for Labour, one of the first women in the world to hold a cabinet position.

Although I had delved into Irish history for many years, perhaps inspired by lingering childhood confusion at the reasons behind the Troubles and IRA mainland activity, the name of Constance Markievicz was totally unknown to me until I was fortunate enough to stumble upon a 1934 biography of her in a second-hand book shop around a decade ago. The book, written by an acquaintance of hers, Sean O’Faolain, opened a window onto a world when born beneficiaries of the British Empire questioned the right of Britain to rule over its nearest neighbour and were sufficiently enamoured with the rise of anti-imperialist socialist nationalism as a political force to sacrifice their social standing for the romanticism of rebellion. Markievicz could count the likes of poet WB Yeats and playwright Sean O’Casey amongst her closest friends and was prepared to take up arms when many of her class and upbringing would have run a mile.

Eventually labelled ‘The Red Countess’, Constance Markievicz entered the world as Constance Georgine Gore-Booth in the capital city of the Empire, London, in 1868. Her father, though an Anglo-Irish Baronet, had an independent streak that manifested itself as adventures exploring the Arctic; though a prominent landowner in Ireland, he had an unusual (for the time) sympathy with the workers on his County Sligo estate and distributed free food to them during one of Ireland’s periodical famines in 1879-80. His altruism made a deep impression on his two daughters Constance and Eva, both of whom developed an affinity with the perennial struggle of the poor and oppressed that was unconventional for their privileged status.

Whilst studying painting at London’s Slade School of Art, Constance joined the nascent battle for women’s suffrage; she was clearly a woman in need of a cause and the women’s movement seemed tailor-made for her. However, relocating to Paris removed her from the Suffragette frontline and it was in the French capital where she met her future husband, artist and Polish exile Casimir Markievicz, who styled himself ‘Count’ even though there was no concrete evidence he possessed such a title. Nevertheless, Constance Gore-Booth was known as Countess Markievicz from the moment of their London wedding in 1900.

The newlyweds set up home in Dublin and ingratiated themselves with the Irish artistic intelligentsia, picking up on the then current fad for reviving traditional Gaelic culture, which quickly morphed into nationalistic passion opposed to British rule; Constance found the circles she was mixing in revitalised her rebellious streak and she returned to the Suffragette cause. Her most notable contribution to the cause during this period was publicly opposing the re-election of Winston Churchill to Parliament during a Manchester by-election in 1908; that Churchill failed to be re-elected was attributed to the Suffragettes hounding his hustings campaign. By now a member of Sinn Fein, Constance’s political activities were growing increasingly radical and she suffered imprisonment for the first time in 1911 after speaking at a meeting of the Irish Republican Brotherhood opposing the Royal visit of George V.

Seeing the native poor as the most evident casualties of British imperialism on home soil, Constance joined the Irish Citizen Army, which was initially set up to aid striking workers combat the actions of police brutality in 1913. Her involvement with the paramilitary elements of the Nationalist movement meant that when the Easter Rising erupted she was at the forefront of the action. She held the rank of lieutenant during the six-day siege at St Stephen’s Green, which ended when news of the surrender of the Post Office reached the 200-plus insurgents holding out in the Dublin park. Evading execution purely on account of her sex, a sentence of life imprisonment ended at Aylesbury Prison in Buckinghamshire the following year when the British Government granted an amnesty for survivors of the Rising.

Her historic election to Parliament in 1918 tends to be overshadowed by Nancy Astor, the second woman MP (elected in 1919), largely because Astor took her seat at Westminster; ironically, Constance was more eligible to be there in that Astor had been born in the US and she had been born in London, but the new Irish Republican Government was her political destination. She was a member of that Government until 1922, when she left as a protest over the Anglo-Irish treaty that created the Irish Free State, and also left Sinn Fein for the newly-formed Fianna Fail party in 1926. Despite further spells behind bars during this period, she also played a part in the Irish Civil War and seemed set to remain a distinctive fixture on the Irish political scene until her untimely death as a result of complications arising from appendicitis at the age of 59 in 1927.

Constance Markievicz may well be revered by Irish historians, but she really deserves wider recognition as a key figure belonging to a generation of brave and groundbreaking women who broke down barriers that presented a far more imposing obstacle to female emancipation than the trivial concerns that so preoccupy certain sections of feminist thinking today.

© The Editor