NEW NATIONALISTS?

Two Irish political parties, SDLP and Fianna Fáil , are planning to combine. The shape of this combining  will become clearer in a few days time; it could be a merger, an agreement to support each other in elections, a sharing of resources, a coalition, more perhaps.

One of the parties, the SDLP , Social Democrat and Labour, grew out of the old Nationalist Party and was founded in 1970. The old Nationalist Party was powerless - when  Ireland's northeast was organised as the last part of Ireland under London control it was made powerless. Constituency boundaries and voting were arranged to make the Ulster Unionists unbeatable,  assuring them of an unchangeable majority of seats in local government and parliament. Seats in both were often uncontested in elections because it was not worthwhile to contest them.

When the northeast was carved out to make it politically unchangeable Nationalists tried at first to have nothing to do with it, then they  took their seats  when elected  and tried to create some  elements of democratic interaction between themselves and the unbeatable Unionists. Eventually, under  pressure from some of their  influential constituents, high clergy for example, they even consented to  become an official Opposition, an opposition that could never be in government. A  Nationalist leader, T.J. Campbell, wrote in his memoirs  (Fifty Years of Ulster, published 1941) that in his experience his party was able to bring about only one piece of legislation. It was  for the Protection of Wild Birds. It could never put forward  successfully any measure for the protection of his party's democratic  constituents.

The two parties, Unionist and Nationalist, managed however to create a small system within a system :  Nationalist representatives in City Hall or local council would identify " decent Unionists" - of whom there were more than could show their decency in public - and ask them to vote for some measure that would not be politically incorrect, for instance new amenities in a mostly Nationalist area of Belfast. In return Unionists would approach Nationalists to add their votes in councils for some politically harmless measure that might not get the enthusiastic support of fellow Unionists.

In the mid-sixties,  however, an important revolution happened : nationalists turned away from asking  favours and took to demanding rights. 

Those who now saw the old Nationalist Party as worthy but powerless  created a  new party combining Social Democracy and Labour. It was a loose-fitting title for a loose fitting political programme but in the circumstances it worked. The civil rights campaigns had brought new strength to demands for good government. And meanwhile another revolution was pending, a widespread reawakening  of the political idea of, " We are not looking for suitable people to govern us, we are looking for how to govern ourselves". Sinn Fein summed up that thought in the title of their  Party which challenged both Unionist and Nationalist.  As Sinn Fein gained strength the SDLP lost it. 

For some time now  a weakened SDLP in the northeast has been approached by Fianna Fáil,  from the other side of the border,  to create a merger, a sharing of resources or whatever the two parties agree to.  This might  perhaps help  the SDLP to survive and help Fianna Fáil to become an all Ireland party.

Both parties have their doubters internally. Bringing two  political groups together  can cause internal weakness in both of them rather than strength for both of them together, so they have to depend on this new alignment to compensate and to fulfil the needs of both. Which is quite a lot to ask. 

Other things to ask - for  future electors to ask - what  are the needs of these two parties on their way to becoming successful partners?  Are they likely to use their combined strength to preserve  old ideas or to create  fresh ones? Are they going  to strengthen  confrontational politics  so as to eliminate other parties rather than find common cause with them in building a shared democracy  for all Ireland ?

Working for a shared democracy in Ireland is for now.

After that there will be plenty to agree and differ about.

But first things first.

The year the SDLP came into being, 1970, the Alliance Party also came. Early attempts to change the politics of  N.E. Ireland under leaders like Terence Ó Neill still left the Ulster Unionist Party refusing membership to Catholics who wanted to test the sincerity of such changes. Two prominent ones  applied for admission to the Party and were refused.

During the nineteen sixties however Young Unionists  ( the title they had) became prominent and as far as they seemed able opposed this exclusiveness. In time the Alliance Party came into being  and was basically a unionist party in which Catholics would  be welcomed and feel so. Some prominent Protestant clergy as well as prominent Catholic non-clergy were involved in the New Ulster Movement that led  up to the formation of Alliance. The New Ulster Movement included, prominently, those whom the Ulster unionists had rejected.

All of which is part of a strange and interesting  Irish  political evolution we  Oldies remember.  Churchill's foolish remark about the permanence of Fermanagh's dreary steeples and other people's insistence on saying everything always was and always will be a simple carve-up between orange and green, a backstop colourful but inaccurate, may have overlooked what many of  our fellow citizens were really up to all those years ago. Maybe overlooking what they are really up to now?

PADRAIC FIACC

Padraic Fiacc , Joe O Connor, has left us.

After his 94 years seeing life for what it is, like treading on grass littered with broken glass and shredded bricks, hope, fresh amazement dissolving into sorrowful disappointment, rising again because the spirit is stronger than the hardest of worlds, not needing a sweet smelling lawn from which to leap to where the spirit is at home  ......................

A friend, he  came to visit us and we talked about life and death, about poetry and about why we should be afraid of poets............

He did us the honour of writing a poem about it afterwards :

 "Ducking flying glass from the workers cleaning

Up afterwards, I take to the middle of Royal Avenue

On my way in gold rimmed Polaroids to give

A poetry reading in Ballymurphy : clutching at

Ragged editions of my own poems , like clutching at

strands of grass to keep you up from falling

with crashing debris  down the mountainy ware

- houses and hotels !  .........................."

Rest peacefully, Joe , and remember your friends..............

BREXIT

The campaign for Britain to leave the European Union was based on some ideas that were far from safe. For instance, that Britain could "go it alone", depending upon trade agreements it could make or renew one by one in the future , depending also on an "ourselves alone" policy on everything , freely making and unmaking its own laws on justice, foreign policy, trading and much else.

Forgetting that Britain was never self-sufficient.  

It built up its great industries, power and wealth not from  its own natural resources but by using the natural resources of other nations whom it attacked and controlled. When an English monarch first  licensed and gave military support to pirates the pirates changed status to "privateers",  that is, piracy was nationalised and became a protected and successful English national industry. Historic out-sourcing by government.

Empire building nations including the British fought each other for control of the slave and piracy, opium and other trades, making them into national industries.

Two things about that : the need to be self-sufficient, to provide for a nation's needs and development from its own resources, was not necessary,  military conquest provided resources that really belonging to other people.  As long as this was happening Britain , like other empire builders, did not have the need, or even the possibility or desire of being self-sufficient. And in any case the nationalising of slavery and piracy and the seizing of resources was to provide wealth for only some of the population at home. Many of the rest lived in poverty.  

Another idea was that if Britain left you, the loss is yours, or if you left Britain, the loss was yours. People believed the Empire's foreign resources were worth fighting for, waiting for , hoping for, even if only a minority got the benefit. The English author Charles Dickens, recognising the poverty and misery of so many English people seemed to believe the remedy lay in a flourishing middle class becoming kindly and helping the poor.

Nowadays we are watching the development of huge trading and military groups in competition with each other and threatening each other, among them the USA, China, Russia. Whether these nations or groups of nations are morally or politically  good, bad, democratic or whatever, to cut loose from any of them or enter into competition with them is something to think  long and hard about.

The European Union is a vast trading bloc too.  Did London really expect it would be possible without hard thinking, planning and much preparation to create new trading agreements when so many powerful rivals are waiting in the wings ? Agreements on its own terms like in the good old days when Britain ruled the waves sailing on hulls of free Irish oak ? Relying  perhaps on the goodwill and resources of the old empire whose countries  were now changed from obedient subjects to profit-making traders on their own account?  To create trading arrangements in a world where you had to think twice and more before sending in the military ? President Trump is putting in place a programme of  war  for trade and  trade for war.  You  don't get into that game without a lot of preparation, a lot of internal domestic resources and a lot of allies.

There was no real preparation for Brexit.  There is still no realistic preparation for it. The best that can be done now may be to start at the beginning, spend two years, three years, more if necessary finding out and telling people what exactly is the price they and we would pay for doing business with the biggest hosting of trading and military empires the world has ever seen. Rushing into that situation with patriotic cries and waving flags will not do.  

Many years ago wise people said that if London lost control of Ireland that would signal the collapse of the Empire. They were right. Then they said that if London lost control of the north-east of Ireland that would signal the breakup of the United Kingdom. Were they right about that too? For the first time in the past hundred years British politicians are using the word " secession" in relation to Scotland, Wales, N. Ireland. London and those who put their faith in it seem not to realise what is happening even to England. When empires fall the world realises for the first time how weak the centre of an empire really is when left to its own devices  - and how the very devices created to save an empire may one day prove the empire's undoing. Devices for instance like artificial borders in the Middle East .

Or in Ireland.       

IRISH TRAVELLERS

New Year -  time  for looking both backward  forward, wondering if what happened last year will make the coming year better or worse. 

For instance, in  the Irish presidential election  last year one of the contestants seemed to have little chance of election, he had only a few points in the opinion polls, but from that  humble beginning he ended up getting  nearly 25 percent of the votes cast . So what happened to bring him such  increased popularity? During his campaign he made remarks about Irish Travelling People that seemed likely to reduce his chances but they  had the opposite effect. He was reported to have said, "Travellers are basically people  camping on other people's land" and that they did not pay their share of taxes.  

For many people these remarks were unwelcome and damaging -  in recent years there have been significant  efforts to assert the dignity of  Travelling People as an Irish ethnic minority, equal citizens entitled to all the courtesies that deserves.  Support for this has been  increasing but there is  opposition and resentment as well. Mr Casey's sudden rise to nearly  25%  showed that an unexpectedly large  number of people in Ireland  were serious enough , and numerous enough, to challenge the slowly emerging  favourable change  in public opinion about our Travelling People .  This comes at a time when people  in other European countries  are showing increasing anxiety and anger about  migrants coming in from other countries ;  Ireland has in a sense  migrants within -  moving from place to place in Ireland to live according to their own traditions in their own country. In Ireland  they are part of the nation , not "foreigners" ,  so any European trend against "foreigners" does not  apply.   

One of our artists, Liam Andrews , was fascinated by the Irish Travelling People whom he recognised as keepers of an Irish and international cultural tradition. The relationship between "settled" people and the Travellers in Ireland though has a lot of problems that need  sensitivity and imagination similar to his, and social resources as well.

Problems like this increase as people become more and more organised into, and around,  land ownership, so what happens when people whose culture arises  not  from land ownership but from land use and  when the services they provide to others require that they move from place to place to provide them? It is not an Irish but an international historical situation that has not been solved because we allowed land ownership to win over land as a shared inheritance for our peoples.

"Reservations"  caused so much hurt in America and Australia that we  think , How could they treat people that way?  Then we realise nervously how in Ireland we have reservations too , small reservations, asking people who are essentially Travellers to become "settled " like the rest of us.  Maybe we don't realise how some social - and economic - changes we consider "natural to progress" have been so hurtful  for some of us.

The Casey incident  may suggest that a lot of us in Ireland are willing to base our politics on  selective  rather than shared citizenship. We Old Folk saw such ideas swell up and develop in Europe in our day. Minorities were converted into enemies in their own countries. 

We found out the hard way how bad that was. In Germany, Ireland.......... or anywhere else.  So  in 2019 will we see land ownership and  enlightened land sharing moving  together in Ireland ? It could prove difficult in the present political climate in Europe but Ireland could perhaps lead the way in an  imaginative, creative  Irish solution to an Irish - and international - problem.  A new political party to  restrict the rights and dignity of Irish Traveller citizens is, however, a sad possibility.