STATE OF INEFFICIENCY

When six counties were carved out of Ireland's north east in the nineteen twenties by the London government political, economic and social arrangements were made to ensure permanent British rule there. London insisted that the area must be held without question as a military base and to control the  economy of Ireland. The area had about one and a half million inhabitants. It had to be not only militarily and economically controlled but governed in such a way as to make it as little of a financial burden to London as possible.

Within the carved out area (six counties out of the historic Ulster nine) there were unionists who, having secured this base which they could rule for the foreseeable future and beyond, were willing to try to develop it  and give those in it a fair deal. However, these were too few and not influential enough to do it.  Forty years later a new generation of such liberal unionists  emerged with the same desire but a similar  lack of influence, such as the Young Unionists of the nineteen sixties and eventually the Alliance Party in the seventies.

Those who did have both  power and influence had different ideas, principally to keep and enlarge their power and control.  During the next decades the carved out area found itself the poorest  part of the British kingdom and  ungovernable. Why?

In their efforts to confine political and economic power firmly in a few hands they had built permanent inefficiency into the political system:

First :

1  One third of the population, the Catholics, they ruled out of future major political decision-making. This left only two  thirds of the area's future intellectual decision-making potential.  

Then :

2  From the  remaining two thirds they ruled out half, that is the women, thus   reducing the future intellectual potential for efficient political decision-making to one third of the population.

Then :

3   From that one third they gave preference to members of the British Army and others chosen for the strength of their  commitment to the Union.

Then :

4   The special status of the Masonic Order came strongly into play, that nothing in the Government of Ireland Act  would alter the rights and privileges of the Masonic Order; and police, who were forbidden by law to be members of secret societies could legally join the Masons .  Other "loyal" societies benefited from more informal agreement of the same kind.

So more than two thirds of the population were excluded from significant political decision-making  and special privileges were given to many of the rest. Thus future  inefficiency was carefully built into the political and economic system.  Failure was  bound to happen, in both government and standard of living. Keeping the system in place by force made natural development  impossible and the carved out area practically ungovernable. In time it found itself among the poorest areas of the United Kingdom.

...............................................................................................................................

Now that talks are to begin in May about reasonable NI government it is interesting to  look at the above  historical arrangements and ask questions:

How much  progress has been made in allowing and developing the potential of women, of Catholics, of everyone? 

How far have we already moved away from those early restrictions on  our people's potential, away from the deliberately inbuilt inefficiency and refusal to recognise the abilities of most of the population?     

Are we at the beginning of a movement towards reasonable government, or already  further along  the road to it than we may think, with  the future (and possible) task of flushing the last deliberately created inefficiency out of our NI system?

What would have happened if London had encouraged what even its King  (George the Fifth) said he wanted, namely development built on shared desire and ability to work for prosperity and peace leading to a fresher and more productive political union?

...........................................................................................................................

Footnote .  During exclusion from significant decision-making in NI  the Catholics were referred to as "The Minority". But they were never a minority. They were a majority in Ireland, a majority of practising Christians in England, majorities in France, Spain, Italy and many other places in the world. They were created  a minority in NE Ireland at much the same time as people of other nationalities and religions in other places were being separated and made into artificial minorities by other imperial powers. For similar reasons as in Ireland.

Curiously, Catholics accepted  this title of "minority" and took to referring to themselves as "The Minority".  A reason was  that some time , especially after World War 2 , there was so much talk about - and apparent sympathy for - unfairly treated minorities in the world that international help could  perhaps be invoked to do something about it in  Ireland.

It didn't work.

 Any anyway women could not refer to themselves as a minority anywhere. 

So the N Ireland situation kept on  getting worse, against a tide of demands for democracy to be painfully achieved only piece by piece.

From time to time a few of the people generally  excluded from the system would be appointed to significant positions. These were often seen as mere "tokens" .  Like the liberal unionists they had not enough numbers or influence to make much difference.

 

 

 

RESURRECTION IN PARIS

The burning of Notre Dame Cathedral was a great pity. But not a total disaster. While the ashes were still red important people came forward to help clear away the rubble and rebuild.

Many sympathisers will have taken down and dusted off their "Guide Book to Paris" for a reminder that Notre Dame has had its many hard times, suffering the indignity of damp walls and decay even while Napoleon proudly crowned himself and Josephine emperor and empress there, seizing the crown from the hands of the Pope to do it.  And how the writer Victor Hugo rescued the building from final decay  by writing his novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Notre Dame de Paris has a strange fascination for people - and people have such a love for it - that enabled it to survive for so long.

For us Oldies, the 1939 film in which Charles Laughton gave a heart-breaking and brilliant portrait  of  "the hunchback" was our first rather doubt-filled fascination with Notre Dame.  Those were the days when it was thought improper and frightening that a man with such a figure should dare hope for love or sexual life.  We have come a long and blessed way forward since then, may nobody succeed in dragging us back to it.

For our moment of shared glory watched the Movietone   film of General de Gaulle striding through the crowded cathedral at the end of the German WW2 occupation, striding straight as a ramrod, while snipers inside the cathedral were trying to kill him. Thrilling it was to see him and hear the shots in such a sacred place, even at a distance.

So when eventually we got to Paris ourselves we thought we knew the Cathedral already because of Laughton and Victor Hugo; we did not know about the people sleeping under the bridges who tied  bottles on long string and dangled them in the river to cool their wine. Victor Hugo did his best to give them new life too but wealthy people were less inclined for that. Sort of "Buildings Before Prophets" seemed to be their motto.

Now the latest great restoration will begin, restoring  a national monument that happens to be a place of worship as well - a change from its origins as a place of worship that became a national monument. The people standing in the cold streets while the Cathedral burned was a sad reminder of how sad and inglorious  Notre Dame's history often was.  Saint and soldier Joan of Arc was burned alive and the best Notre Dame de Paris could do for her was to host  a retrial and recognise her as a saint. Church and state doing their best to make their own history bearable.

The interaction of financial experts, church and state officials and the demands of a population who want the old Notre Dame rather than a cold steel substitute for any part of it will be interesting but probably not fully known about in detail until the cathedral is flourishing again, as an historic attraction or a place of living worship, hopefully both.

Who are the wealthy benefactors then? Hardly novelists like Hugo, although they can help to lead the way.  Not, one may hope,  arms manufacturers and their enthusiastic government customers.  Nor destroyers of the  beautiful earth who  hope to supply future  pilgrims with  plastic  bottles. Nor adventurers who have stocked up vast monies awaiting higher interests of a kind far different from that of real lovers of either Notre Dame or her cathedral or the eternally sacred earth  they rest on!

Let's hope, pray and make demands about it.  We're all involved, not just the Parisians !

EASTER BLESSINGS

May we all enjoy a Peaceful and Happy Easter.

REASON RULES?

"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." 

When this remark was made (Blog January 17 th. January 2019) it was a long shot. But like many another strange thing in the present Brexit upheaval, it became less of a long shot because some people insisted on  shifting the target to where they wanted it to be.

Now Mr Donald Tusk, President of the European Council,  is talking about a delay with a rather open end and even Kenneth Clarke has been  murmuring words like... "as long as it takes....", and some British politicians have  even suggested that if they have to take part in European Parliament elections, well, they  might simply have to get elected but not sit or take part in a parliament they believed should not control what they don't want.   Curious, because  they still say they don't understand Irish people, like Sinn Fein, getting elected to Westminster and not  taking their seats because that parliament should not control their policies!  Political upheaval in London  produces some understandings amid the chaos!

The upheaval of people in British streets struggling to control the direction of their government, members of parliament struggling inside the House of Commons to take control of business away from the government, all of it a struggle to define where power should  lie in the British  political system,  so many of the certainties of British political life becoming uncertain - one could say that Mr Rees Mogg should understand this shaking of the foundations of  old institutions:  ancient certainties of the old church have also been shaken to the core in recent times.

Institutions are not forever. Submitting to  change they get extensions of  power on their own terms through the centuries  but even in Buckingham Palace  these days there must be  some  ideas about how stability can lead to stagnation, to demands for more reasonable government in which fresh  energies can emerge from fresh minds.

We could  argue that the next logical step in the development of modern democracy must be to have  every political party in government. Is the British party system past it? What is happening in Britain has been described as a serious crisis: very well then,  in time of war it is normal to create a national government rather than a party one. So, nothing strange about Mrs May and Mr Corbyn coming together  to  solve problems  rather than as rivals to create them - after all, whoever may be responsible for present political  failure or success, everyone is affected by both of them. So why not a national co-operative government in Britain now ? 

In the far future students may well be studying the emergence of such a pattern of government  emerging out of the present British chaos.  And quite likely  if the BBC is still working it will be referring to "the British triumph of creating such a step forward", even while  other nations may be  moving towards it because of reason ! There is no need for empires to crumble into intellectual and material poverty but it most often happens that way. The worst of them have crumbled from within, like the Roman one, while pledging international co-operation, good order and goodwill. From the setting up of the EEC until now London has never been happy with European co-operation except on its own terms. The European Union will not last forever any more than the European empires did. But we could say, "Let nature take its course, letting it develop with reason and then evolve, not with old fashioned ideas of a united states of Europe arming itself  for other wars but with new ideas you have to nourish from within,  rather than let it stagnate with old ideas that did not work even for yourselves".