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Are you listening Jeffrey?
Unionism, especially its DUP component, has been
talking up unionist and loyalist resistance to the Irish Protocol since before Boris
Johnson dirty-joed them, broke his commitments to them, negotiated and then signed
up to the Protocol.
There is some evidence of this in the loyalist
street disturbances earlier this year and the sacking of Arlene Foster and of
Edwin Poots. The dramatic decline in the polling fortunes of the DUP, as it
flounders about trying to assert its former role as the undisputed leader of
unionism, is also linked to its stance on Brexit and its transparent efforts to
blame everyone else for a debacle they helped create.
Jeffrey Donaldson was in Dublin
two weeks ago meeting An Taoiseach Micheál Martin. The Protocol was top of his
agenda. The arrogance and rhetoric were loud - the politics insipid. He was at
it again last week when he met the Tánaiste in Belfast. “The protocol, the Irish Sea border, has to go” he told Leo
Varadkar.
Inevitably, his comments
contained the not-so-subtle threat. If unionism doesn’t get its way then the
Protocol, he said “has the capacity to so
undermine the political progress here that it drags us backwards … the Irish
Government needs to very quickly recognise the damage that this protocol is
doing to political stability in Northern Ireland.”
The DUP leader speaks as if he represents the
majority of citizens in the North. He doesn’t. The political instability he
speaks of is rooted in the attitude and behaviour of the DUP he now leads.
Donaldson refuses to accept the reality that he represents a minority. He seems
to believe that if he says something often enough – however inaccurate or plain
wrong - that people will believe it. Even Jeffrey himself doesn’t. So, the Protocol
is all Dublin’s fault. The Protocol is damaging the northern economy. The business
and farming sector are opposed to it. It is undermining the Good Friday
Agreement. And so on. None of which is true.
Brexit is the responsibility of those who advocated
for it, campaigned for it and voted for it, especially the DUP.
The fact is a majority of citizens in the North
voted against Brexit. They wanted to remain within the EU. They were worried by
the likely economic dislocation Brexit would bring. And they were right to be
worried. Its impact on the British economy is clear for all to see. Ian King,
who presents the daily business programme on Sky summarised the situation for
many last week, when he said: “England
has become a country where the pubs have no beer, farmers don’t have anyone to
pick their fruit and even if they did there aren’t enough lorry drivers to get
it to the shops.”
The medical
supplier Seqirus has said it is postponing deliveries due to a Brexit-related
shortage of lorry drivers. Logistics UK, which represents
freight firms, and the British Retail Consortium (BRC) warned last month that
the loss of 25,000 EU drivers is putting significant pressure on supply chains
for retailers. The list of companies impacted is growing daily – Brewers, Coca
Cola, Nando, McDonalds,
BP, Iceland are just some. The Bank of England has also reported shortages of
furniture, car parts and electoral goods, as well as cement and timber for the
construction industry.
In stark
contrast the most recent trade
figures for the island of Ireland reveal that the business sector is taking
advantage of the unique position of the North which is in both the EU single
market and the customs territory with Britain. Last month the Central
Statistics Office (CSO) in Dublin released trade figures showing what the
London Guardian has described as evidence “deeper economic unity on the
island of Ireland.”
The value of goods moving North to South in the
first six months of 2021 dramatically increased by 77 per cent to €1.77 billion
(£1.5 billion) – an increase on the same period last year when it was just
under €1 billion. The value of good travelling South to North also jumped by 40
per cent to €1.57 billion. This is an increase of almost half a billion over
the same period last year.
The Guardian newspaper concluded: “If it is
sustained, Northern Ireland’s deepening economic ties with the republic – and
weaker ones with mainland Britain – will raise questions over the region’s
relationship with the rest of the UK.”
So, where now stands loyalist/unionist resistance
to the Protocol? Two weeks ago Jamie Bryson and Jim Allister and an assortment
of hangers-on travelled to Enniskillen to campaign against the Protocol. The
reports on the numbers who attended vary. Most fall between one hundred and
three hundred.
One seasoned
journalist from Fermanagh, Denzil McDaniels writing about the Enniskillen
protest said: “It’s clear that decisions
to accommodate Brexit are taken at an international level and if there has been
a betrayal of Unionism, loyalists should remember that it was their own
basketcase of a British Government that let them down. That should be the real
focus of their disillusion. Not the Irish Government and certainly not the
people of Fermanagh who don’t want a return to the difficult times of Borders
past…”
And
that’s the prize we have to keep our eyes firmly fixed on. No going back. No
returning to the past. A future in which
we can all live in harmony and equality with each other. I believe that can be
best achieved in a United Ireland. Others have a different view. Ok. Let’s talk
about it. Are you listening Jeffrey?
Reclaiming the Enlightenment
The
best kind of history is that which successfully brings the stories of our past
to life. Recently I had the good fortune to buy three little books that do
exactly that from An Fhuiseog on the Falls Road, beside Sevastopol Street. The
three are Mary Ann McCracken 1770-1866 – Feminist, Revolutionary and Reformer;
The United Irishmen and the Men of no Property, The Sans Culottes of Belfast;
and Cave Hill and the United Irishmen.
Together
they give a wonderful insight into the lives and working experience of those in
the Belfast region who helped shape the United Irish Society of the late 18th
century. They are all written by John Gray who is the former Librarian of Belfast’s
Linen Hall Library. John Gray has written and lectured on “many aspects of Ulster’s Labour and radical history.” The pamphlets are written under the auspices
of ‘Reclaim the Enlightenment’ which “is
committed to recalling and celebrating that progressive era in Belfast’s past.
We are convinced that doing so can lend inspiration in the present.”
Anyone
born in Belfast or who has lived here even for a short time, is conscious of
our Belfast Hills. These cradle the city and give it a spectacular backdrop.
Foremost among these is Cave Hill, to the North of the city. It is a place long
associated with the United Irish Society. Many of us are familiar with the
account of the occasion in May 1795 when the leaders of the United Irishmen
went to McArt’s Fort. Wolfe Tone recorded what happened there. “Russell,
Neilson, Simms, McCracken and one or two more of us, on the summit of McArt’s
Fort took a solemn obligation … never to
desist until we had subverted the authority of England over our country and
asserted her independence.”
Through
John Gray’s three pamphlets the men and the women of 1798 become more than just
names on the pages of a book. The connections between Belfast – a town of
around 20,000 people – and its hinterland of Carnmoney, Templepatrick,
Skegoneill, Hightown, and Roughfort rath, the first rebel assembly point in
County Antrim that is only four miles from the Cave Hill – are described. So
too is the plight of the tenant farmers and the growth of the first trade
unions linked to the hand loom weavers, many of whom were from that locality.
In
July 1792 Belfast celebrated the third anniversary of the French Revolution.
There was a ‘Grand Procession’ with
‘citizens in pairs and people of the neighbourhood for several miles round,
with green ribbons, and laurel leaves in their hats.’
Gray
describes how one group was singled out. He writes, “namely, ‘one hundred and eighty of the most respectable inhabitants of
Carnmoney and Templepatrick’. They bore a green flag, with the following
mottos: -
Our Gallic brother was born July
14, 1789;
Alas we are still in embryo”
And
on the reverse side:
“Superstitious galaxy.
The cause of the Irish Bastille;
let us unite to destroy it.
Their banner was designed by
James Hope, a weaver from Mallusk to the west of Cave Hill and later destined
to become the most celebrated artisan United Irish leader …”
The
central role played by Presbyterians and by women is also recorded in the pages
of these pamphlets, one of which reflects at length on the life of Mary Ann
McCracken. For a long time she was known mostly as the sister of Henry Joy McCracken
but Gray reminds us of her contribution as “a
revolutionary, yes, as a feminist before the term was invented and as a social
reformer.”
He
writes, Mary Ann “did not approve of
separate women’s societies though for entirely liberated reasons arguing for
the admission of women to the main societies, ‘as there can be no other reason
for having them separate but keeping the women in the dark and certainly it is
equally ungenerous and uncandid to make tools of them without confiding in
them.’
Three
relatively short pamphlets. Full of information and detail about a pivotal
moment in our history. I am happy to recommend these for anyone interested in
the people and places and events that have shaped Ireland.
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