Northern Ireland

Cross-posted at Slugger O’Toole…

The current parades-related legislation is cumbersome and deeply irritating to many in Northern Ireland. Every procession with the sole exception of the Salvation Army must go through the process of filling out an 11/1 form and seeking an adjudication from the Parades Commission. That means not only Republican and Loyalist marches, but entirely non-contentious GAA and British Legion parades, gay pride parades and, yes, even the Boy Scouts.

Doubtless, the process could do with a significant degree of streamlining. OFMdFM’s attempt to produce something acceptable to both the DUP and Sinn Féin produced something even more bureaucratic and deeply restrictive, which outraged civil society. The proposals were rapidly ‘unagreed’ by the DUP when the Loyal Orders came out against.

Nobody likes the current arrangement, but the alternative is that we return to the mid-1990s scenario of the police making decisions on whether or not a parade should proceed based solely on public order grounds. That, as we all remember, politicised the police against their will, and led to a situation where the party to any dispute who could summon the greatest degree of disruption or violence won. It must obvious to all that any return to the status quo ante is a disaster for everyone, and in particular a disaster for anyone who believes that ensuring the police are impartial and seen to be impartial is a necessary criterion for peace and order in Northern Ireland.

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Crossposted at Slugger O’Toole…

48, 48, and 48 – those are the nightmare numbers for Unionism. Not necessarily for the Union, but for Unionism the political ideology as we have understood it for the past century or so. In the 2011 Assembly election, only 48% of the population voted for Unionist candidates, interpreting that term as generously as possible. In the 2011 Census, only 48% of the population were classifiable as ‘Protestant’ by community background, even given the statisticians’ remit of allocating the non-religious to their community of origin by any means possible. And in the same census, just 48% of the population identified itself as British in any way, even when given the opportunity to mix their Britishness with either or both of Irish and Northern Irish identities.

All three of those figures are set to decrease in the years to come. To put it as bluntly as possible, the Protestant population tends to be older and the Catholic and non-classifiable populations tend to be younger. Short of convincing the Unionist population to ‘breed for victory’, committing ethnic cleansing on a Rwandan scale or convincing Catholics and liberal Protestants to vote Unionist for the first time, there isn’t much Unionism can do about this. Option 1 is unlikely to prove popular, Option 2 is (I hope) off the cards and as for Option 3 – how credible, if they are being honest with themselves, do Unionists think Peter Robinson’s ‘hug a Catholic’ Party Conference speech looks in the cold light of six weeks of flag riots?

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Crossposted at Slugger O’Toole…

People in Belfast like to be blasé about riots, as if they aren’t a big deal. Our gallows humour spawns #flegmovies memes on Twitter. But it’s OK to be frightened by riots. People in London are frightened by riots. People in Cape Town, where they are a more frequent occurrence than they are here, are frightened by riots. Riots are frightening because of their sheer unpredictability. The latest outbreak of Loyalist street violence is essentially leaderless, the DUP and paramilitaries long having since lost control. It is utterly unpredictable. It also fearsome in its capacity for violence, as the attack on police outside Naomi Long’s office demonstrated.

I am not only frightened but angry at the minute. This was not what I was promised from the new Northern Ireland. In that at least, both the middle-aged woman with her placard and I agree. I don’t think anyone expected it to be perfect. But we all expected a lot better than this. The problem is that we were all sold different interpretations of what the new dispensation meant. We are all learning that reality is not quite as advertised. On the political fringes, the disappointment is acute.

The blunt reality is that the political settlement was sold by Sinn Féin on the basis of lies, and sold by the DUP on the basis of lies. Sinn Féin pretended to its supporters that there was a simple and rapid route to reunification because a Catholic majority was inevitable and coming quickly. The DUP spent two years pretending it hadn’t done a deal with Sinn Féin, and then three years pretending that it only had after winning on all substantial issues.

In particular, both main parties deluded both themselves and their supporters about the realities of demographics. The DUP pretended that a region with rapidly changing demographics would not continue to experience deep cultural change. Sinn Féin pretended than an impending Catholic plurality over Unionists would lead to a United Ireland within two decades.

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