The Troubles with Northern Ireland

‘Here we go again’ has seemed to be the unspoken motto of Northern Ireland, whether it be flags, parades or parks there is always an element of the old ways leaking in. We seem to be caught in some sort of political stasis and once in a while certain elements bring these issues back to life and they remain as inflammatory as always. The last number of weeks has brought about the same old feelings, the same reasons to despair but I genuinely feel that all is not lost.

Unlike the times gone by what we have now is a greater saturation of our differences across the global stage, from Portland to Melbourne the world is looking at our country as a place of unrest and political destabilisation.  This exposure can also be attributed to social networking with live updates from the front lines of the clashes or up to date information on which roads to avoid. As with most news it is the sensationalist stories and images that spread the fastest and by and large they are not wholly representative of the entire situation. I hope through exposure to differing opinions, through social media, certain hard-line opinions may be cognitively challenged more than they would have been in the height of the troubles.

I believe that accurate information and personal honesty are two things that could really help the situation here, we need to let go of our long held prejudices that most of us will have inherited rather than having gained by experience. It seems easier to suggest it than to manage it but the need to progress needs to walk hand in hand with the ability and strength to compromise. Over the last few months this situation has been brewing and it is the willingness to accept information given by political leaders without questioning that has caused a lot of the issues.

We hear the DUP, UUP and to an extent the TUV making some claims that are just accepted and that fuel the fires of old hatreds. They will say that British identity is being eroded and that the Britishness of Northern Ireland is being attacked on a regular basis but where is the evidence? They will tell working class Protestants that Catholics are getting a better deal and have gained more than them since the Good Friday Agreement, but once again where is the objective empirical evidence for this? This is the only way you can fairly judge a situation and when provided with statements from politicians you should be doubly sure that you check their sources as the politicians are not beyond using the public to support their own cause.

The first reaction you may have after being told you are being unfairly treated may be an uncontrollable frustration, perhaps anger, but what you then have to do is justify your frustration with hard evidence. There are so many things that you wouldn't take merely on someone's word, claims are made that you will check out for yourself because you do not want to be sold as a fool. In Northern Ireland it seems that certain elements just put the blinkers on when it comes to politics because ‘well that sounds about right’. There are artifacts of the rhetoric of division that still cling to the psyche and they are easier to access than the idea that compromise isn't submission. The clearest example and very much at the heart of this current situation is the distributing of anti-Alliance party leaflets across East Belfast.

To date 101 police officers have been injured.

"The Leaflet..."

Let us roll back the clock to November when unmarked leaflets, that are widely understood to be from the DUP, circulated around Belfast on the issue of the flag vote that was on the cards. My first question here was why the political parties responsible hadn't contacted the people during the 16 week open consultation period. This would have been an open medium by which the concerned people could come and have their opinions and suggestions put on the record. Why did the parties involved not mobilise people into the democratic process and into a channel that could actually make a difference? Given that working class Protestants remain the demographic that has the lowest turnout at elections perhaps it was easier to leave mobilisation until they had an antiquated rhetoric to force people out onto the streets.

There is the ability to draw a causal line between the leaflet distribution and the trouble that flared and I am in shock that the parties involved have not been investigated for some measure of incitement to public disorder. Those involved have been quick to distance themselves from this issue stating that the leaflets were not related to the trouble but that the undercurrent of unionist frustration over various issues had been tipped by the flag issue. It is of course an exercise of damage limitation; it is obvious to those who look at the situation not through the red, white and blue tinted glasses of the troubles where the blame lies. This is not going to be lost on the wider political stage, or indeed the annals of history, as the DUP and UUP are transparently seen by reasonable people as having manipulated the working class of east Belfast into violence.

So while I may be saying that people were manipulated by the parties that espoused to be supportive  for them I would hope and expect that you would ask me to justify what I am saying and to provide evidence of this claim. The best way to analyse this is to look directly at the leaflet that was distributed and critically assess its content. So here it is:

There are many things to note about this leaflet and how it has went about manipulating people so we will look at the issues one by one.

1) The leaflet carries the colours of the Alliance Party rather than the parties distributing the leaflets. They immediately try to bias the discussion by putting the issue at the door of the Alliance Party. The trouble here is that it was not them that called for the flag to come down permanently, so why not mention Sinn Fein who proposed the flag coming down? It seems that the interest here is to reclaim the seat in east Belfast that Alliance won through Naomi Long in the last election and this is a theme that we will see again.

2    2) The headline “A Shared Future for Who?” is a fine example of poisoning the well when it comes to honest discussion. The question seems to suggest that someone is losing out and that is Protestants who are losing. There is no discussion that through advice from the Equality Commision and the EQIA assessment the best course of action was to only fly on designated days.

   
    3) The two contrasting images shown, City Hall with a union flag and City Hall without a union flag, is a complete misrepresentation of the issue and provides a false description of policy. The flag will fly on designated days, it is not gone forever and this was not the position of opinion of the EQIA or Equality Commission.

4) The statement “Brought to you by the Alliance” is again a false statement and coupled with the images it really does begin to cement the fact that this was a malicious attempt by the DUP and UUP to discredit a legitimate political party for the possible garnering of future support. The Alliance party did not bring the flag down; it kept it flying in a traditional British context.

Up to this point on the leaflet it has merely been purposely flawed rhetoric, but if there is one way to build your case it is by empirical fact but yet again we see that the leaflets are sorely lacking and misleading. So, let’s have a look at what was said:

1)  “Nearly 90% of people…”

      Statistics are funny things, when they are handled properly then are very useful and insightful things but in the wrong hands they can be stunningly manipulated. The 90% here sounds like a lot and at first glance you may think that the decision made to fly on designated days flies in the face of popular opinion. The truth behind this 90% is that it is based on 15,000 signatures on a petition; a petition cannot be used as an indicator of opinion. The reason for this is that it is targeted and will return biased results and it needs to be representative of the wider community not just the names that the UUP and DUP had on their books.

To put this figure into a wider context we must look at what the figures actually represent in quantative terms. The population of Belfast is around the 640,000 mark, so when we look at the 90% of 15,000 in a population of 640,000 what you are left with just about 2% of the population. Looking at it objectively the will of the smallest portion of the population should not in a democratic society overrule a democratic decision made by the majority.

2)  “More than 95% of councils surveyed on the mainland fly the union flag 365 days a year”

I find this interesting for a number of reasons but most importantly because there is the call for Northern Ireland to fall in line with the mainland. The Alliance Party have contacted all 400 councils to find out the details of their flag flying policies, as it turns out 300 councils responded with 52% having the policy of designated days. The DUP and UUP have not released where they got their figures from. With the mainland opting for designated days and the Crown body stating that designated days is British tradition it seems at odds with the call to be more like the mainland by flying the flag 365.

      3)  “At the minute Alliance are backing Sinn Fein/SDLP that the flag should be ripped down on all but a few days.”

Notice the emotive language used, saying that the flag is being ‘ripped’ down is intentionally provocative and later on they refer to it as being ‘torn’ down. The reality is the flag is being lowered and stored away to be raised on designated days, nothing more and nothing less. There is an attempt to lump Alliance in with 'Sinn Fein/SDLP' to create a false dichotomy in the typical ‘them and us’ narrative. Truthfully, and officially on record, the Alliance have always supported the move to not take the flag down permanently but fly it on designated days, as has the PUP even though you wouldn’t know it now.

4) The leaflet also gave Naomi Long’s name and contact information to challenge the upcoming decision and it is here that true intentions freely come to the fore. Why would the DUP want people to target Naomi Long? She has not sat on the council in two years since she won the East Belfast seat in Westminster, a seat that was taken from none other than DUP leader Peter Robinson. There is due cause for any thinking person to see that this topic could have been hijacked in a bid to gain support to reclaim the seat that was lost. 

The fallout from this saw a protest at City Hall, when the vote was cast to change to designated days, devolve into violence. There may have been genuine protesters there but many arrived with weapons, golf balls, bolt cutters and it is something that cannot be justified by anyone in society. From here began continuing street protests, some largely peaceful, but many involving serious violence. There are ongoing protests outside Naomi Long's office, political offices in Carrickfergus have been burnt out and death threats issued across differing parties. 

"It's my right to protest..."

There has seemed to be a lot of talk of rights, specifically the right to protest, and it seems that most involved in the protests do not understand some of the key regulations governing your right to protest. Firstly you must inform the police of the gathering, this is not to curtail your protest but to in fact accommodate you, others and also to be there to protect you. The social media world is alight with claims of excessive police presence but nearly all seem to miss the point that the police are there to also protect them.

Secondly you are not allowed to block roads or pavements. It is so obvious that this is flagrantly being abused and broken on a widespread daily basis, people returning home from work are stuck in traffic and people walking home are taking alternative routes out of intimidation. The reality is you are not born with these rights, we as a society decide what these rights are and in involving yourself within that society you adhere to respects the same rights of others. Your right to extend your arm is honoured only until it hits another person and by the same logic your right to protest extends only as far as you are in breach of other people’s rights.  Some may be peaceful protests but when you set up camp on the road and block vehicles then you are involved in an illegal protest and are at risk of police intervention and punishment.

There has been frustration by many by the seemingly accommodating nature of the PSNI, we want people who are breaking the law to be rounded up and subsequently charged. The nature of the police activity seems to that of playing the long game; minimum interference, containment and evidence gathering. I do believe that there is a shock coming to the flagrant rioters, the police have been gathering evidence for weeks now and building cases against individuals and as has been said, “there is a knock at the door coming.” It is disturbing to see the politicians who began this mess sitting far away and watching this all unfold while offering nothing but standard statements from the handbook of calling for calm. 

The truth seems to be that the politicians that tried to gather the support of the people they riled up are the people who are scorned by the protesters; they are seen as disengaged from the people and of little use.  To a large degree they are right, in this ill-advised move by the DUP and UUP you can see that they have very little to offer the working class protestants of East Belfast or Unionism as a whole. Tied down by old hands the anachronistic rhetoric of the fractured Unionists serves little or no purpose in today’s progressive Belfast and Northern Ireland.

"Unionism divided..."

It is a strange thing that Unionism is as weak as it is as there is a huge majority in this country who want to maintain the union. The problem lies with that feeling that it is a very protestant unionism that is being offered with little or no room for any progressive thought. Probably the best solution for preserving the union, not that it is actually at risk, is to court middle-class Catholics and to actually affect their daily lives is to alienate those that could give you what you want.  There has always been the old scare tactic of the United Ireland card that used to get played, and still gets played to a degree, by Sinn Fein andSDLP.  The reality is that no Catholic/Irish person would realistically want a United Ireland unless fueled by an unhelpful and myopic dose of nationalism.

Some people need to develop a different level of perspective and ask themselves some seemingly obvious questions about the reality of a united Ireland. To be part of Ireland would be to give up the NHS that while not perfect is much preferable to the Irish system. Economically it would be an utter disaster, with people struggling for jobs as it is why would you opt to make things more difficult for yourself and your family? Probably the biggest question to ask is ‘would Ireland even want us?’ Ireland is a country that has a myriad of issues of its own and you have to wonder why they would possibly want to inherit a country infused with so many internal issues. It's a genuine question and the reality is that Northern Ireland has always been a poisoned chalice and with the option of not drinking from it I would guess that Ireland would pass.

There is a better Northern Ireland that exists already, and it is accessible to all who want to be part of it and who will respect their neighbours. There have been a number of peace rallies that have happened over the last number of weeks and it is here that the world press should focus and it is here that the people in this country should take heart.  These rallies have seen people of all backgrounds, nationalities and religions all coming together in the name of a shared, peaceful future. This is the Northern Ireland that I now know; it’s not the one I grew up with and it’s all the better for it.

Northern Ireland's humour at its finest.

"Where do we go from here?"

What we are left with at the minute is a directionless minority, unsure of what they want and more unsure how to get it. There are emergent voices amongst the crowds that claim to speak for the people but in fact have next to nothing to say. The likes of Willie Frazer, Johnny Harvey and Jamie Bryson are mere opportunistic narcissists that like to be heard, the truth is that when you dissect what they are saying they are in fact saying very little. There have been numerous television and radio interviews over the last few weeks with these individuals and in each one you will have conflicting statements, flawed logic and no direction. We also have the unionist forum emerging that is seeking to engage with grass roots unionists to develop a strategy for moving forward. We do not move forward by walking alone, it is like Catholics and Protestants both having one half of a map and to get where we need to go we need to involve each other. I agree with the forum to the extent that it might focus issues and take people off the street but with disengaged rioters and illegal organisations pulling the strings it is hard to see how this will follow.

Unionism deserves to have responsible leadership, a leadership that is genuinely interested in progress and has the ability to compromise to achieve results. Currently it is floundering; the old guard have shown themselves to be removed from the people on the ground and to offer nothing in the way of solutions to close the disparity that they have tried to sell to garner votes. Unionists need someone to lead them towards something positive and not just meander through a bog of old hate. Working class Protestants are the lowest performing in education in the country and that is an issue that needs addressed and paid attention to, not the number of days a flag flies. They are also the lowest to turn out at polls and that is something that needs to change and a more worthy exercise would be to engage with them in the political process before the riots start. I genuinely hope that someone stands to this challenge, but does so honestly and puts care for the people of this country before political gain and symbols. Contrary to what many protesters are saying democracy does in fact work, even when it a decision does not go your way it is still working as you have the democratic freedom to challenge the decision.