As Politico reports in their daily morning email today:
Following Northern Ireland's biggest ever public sector strikes on Thursday, Secretary of State Chris Heaton-Harris issued a statement overnight promising “urgent action” to address the issues they raise.
The U.K. government has offered money to resolve the strikes, but will not pass it on until the Northern Ireland Executive is restored.
The DUP kiboshed the latest attempt to do so this week, putting a legal obligation on Heaton-Harris to call fresh elections. Unions called on him to pay out the money regardless.
I often talk about the importance of democracy when writing this blog. I mention the threats that exist to it. Trump's name is often associated with that, but so too is the far-right in general.
It is, however, all too easy to ignore the fact that here in the so-called United Kingdom democracy has now been suspended in one of the four constituent countries for more than two years, with significant, and always adverse, consequences for the people of Northern Ireland where this is happening.
The reality is that democratic government in Northern Ireland has ceased because a sectarian, evangelical Christian, opaquely funded, far-right political party has refused to engage in that democracy because it did not come first in an election which it thought by right was its to win. Does that sound familiar?
I have three thoughts and suggestions.
The first is why is no one talking about this? Are we really that indifferent to democracy, Northern Ireland and those who live there? If so, why do we claim the right to rule it?,
Second, why has the government let this continue? Could it be that it is indifferent to this happening, and is more than happy for it to do so because it really does not care about democracy?
Third, what is Labour saying about this? Where is it? I haven't heard it siding with those on strike to demand that they get the pay they are owed which is being deliberately withheld from them by a Tory / DUP alliance of indifference? Do they not care, either?
So much for a supposed United Kingdom. It would seem that its leaders are united, but only in their indifference to what happens within it but outside England.
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Seems to me that on many related issues the Westminster Parliament and its supporting/controlling Establishment are resigned to the coming of changes they didn’t and don’t want and can’t stop, so are delaying/sabotaging progress at every stage, giving themselves time and resource to be able to insulate themselves from these changes when they bite.
The obvious point I would make is that the Good Friday Agreement effectively committed Northern Ireland to an eternity of Sectarian Politics by not having any kind of end date on power sharing. In effect it restricts democracy, something that might have been regarded as a price for ending the Troubles but is no longer acceptable.
I suggest given the rise in non sectarian parties that this part of the agreement needs renegotiating to prevent the situation we have now.
Does the Political Leadership exist to do this?
The DUP supported Brexit then when it happened and Northern Ireland had to remain in the single market, they tried to carry on as though it never happened. It was-is- the denial of reality. They also deny the greater reality which is they have had their day. The Belfast Telegraph does polls on unification. There is a small majority against it at present but if the figures are broken down, it is clear the younger people have a majority in favour. The change will happen in the longer run-which could be shorter than they think.
British politicians sometimes talk about maintaining the Union but it is not up to them. It will be settled by the people of Northern Ireland. ( Many Scots will be encouraged by this-if it goes well. If Scotland leaves the Union first, the departure of NI is inevitable soon after)
I believe that for the UK govt. to over-ride the DUP would require an amendment to the Good Friday Agreement. Could be wrong. It would require the Republic to consent. I think they would.
The Conservative and Unionist party won’t do it. Will Labour? If they care about the future of what is still part of our country, they should.
I agree with your conclusions
Richard, you wrote that “so much for a supposed United Kingdom. It would seem that its leaders are united, but only in their indifference to what happens within it but outside England”
I would tweak that to “London and south east England”. The UK has been run for the benefit and interests of one region for the past 45 years
Fair comment
The ultimate destination for Northern Ireland is a border poll and union with the south. The DUP’s obstructive actions just make that more likely. The only question is when.
In the meantime, the assembly is dysfunctional. It can only work when the two leading nationalist and unionist parties agree to cooperate, and falls apart when an issue gets in the way, whether that is the Irish language, or Brexit, or some other thing.
If our government took its head out of its ass long enough it might see the damage it has done to the UK in this last decade. Nowhere less than the havoc they’ve wreaked on the GFA institutions.
These settled that Northern Ireland must have a consociational system, not a majoritarian one. That becomes a big problem when you quietly/sneakily change the system and remove cross-community consent in order to implement your botched Brexit. This is what the Tory’s done to get the NIP ‘over the line’.
So when zero unionist MLAs (who are the largest designation within the Assembly) see the Sea Border as fundamentally problematic that is a problem and can’t be solved by browbeating them and steamrollering over their concerns.
That’s the mess this government has made in NI, one can only hope Labour and Hilary Benn can bring a more considered approach if they get in soon.
Ireland (both the Republic and the North) are forgotten about – not really ignored even (as that requires remembering that something is there in the first place). The great Guardian writer Hugo Young called the British attitude to Northern Ireland ‘anesthetised indifference’.
It is now at the point in national identity surveys that the last holdout of ‘Britishness’ is the unionists in Northern Ireland, but for the DUP this ‘Britishness’ is a warped version that really never has ever existed this side of the Irish Sea. (I’ve never understood the DUP – radical fundamentalist non-conformist Protestants – and their attachment to layers of the trappings of monarchy which upholds an established religion!)
“this side of the Irish Sea” ?
Which side is that?
“This side of the Irish Sea” meaning England, Scotland and Wales (Britain). I am not going to use the loaded term “the mainland” (language created by unionists in NI).
Ireland is well over a third the size of Great Britain, so it is too large to call GB “the mainland”. (It is a way unionists especially the DUP use to ignore they are part of Ireland.)
Thanks Duncan. No problem. But had you been in NI you would no doubt have said “the other side” (and I had no way to know where you are).
Indeed, England, Wales & Scotland constitute Great Britain – as in “The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland”.
It needs to be faced that the UK has “simpleton” political parties because voters are themselves willing to be behave like simpletons. In particular they are far too willing to accept the mantra “Market good/state bad” without thinking about the implications of this shallow nostrum. As I previously posted David Braazer the Australian historian demolishes the nostrum in a 2016 paper (“Mainstreaming money: perspectives on currency in the history of the British Isles”) when he says the following about a country’s need to have a single stable currency:-
“The state requires a stable system of values in order to proclaim and to calculate what is owed to it, and what it owes. The state also determines what passes as money, and at what value, by proclaiming what it will accept and give for its own payments.”
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1080/14490854.2016.1156158?needAccess=true
Even the most stupidest of voters has to recognise, for example, that sometimes a country has to go to war and the state has to play the lead role in this but cannot do so without directing of expenditure in huge amounts whilst simultaneously trying to mitigate the effects of abnormal inflation as production is switched away from normal consumption.
What has been allowed to happen in Northern Ireland is one of the biggest most irresponsible acts of political vandalism I have ever seen.
It shows quite clearly that the Tory plan in 2010 was nothing but blind revenge to expunge all remnants of the Blair administration. It was not about anything else.
Shameful – and even more so because it’s the Irish yet again suffering from typical English upper class indifference.
The Tories are nothing but extremists. But in this world, ‘extremism’ is seen is anything to the Left of the political spectrum it seems.
It says a lot about the stupidity of the Tory party that after centuries of violence they think a Westminster wheeze is going to solve the problem.
Since the Good Friday agreement I thought there was a chance that the province would settle down into some kind of EU anomaly that would allow Protestants to regard themselves as British and Catholics to regard themselves as Irish until eventually the differences started to fade, but Brexit put an end to that.
The Brexiteers never bothered to think through the effect on Ireland. And , indeed, much else.
I suspect that Labour, having been the originator of the Good Friday Agreement, are not going to intervene in a way which is effectively asking for direct rule from Westminster.
Paul is right that the credibility of the GFA solution was in the situation where both Ireland and the UK were part of the EU. While the DUP could have been awkward under different circumstances, the current issues are a direct result of the Conservatives’ Brexit – and Labour wouldn’t want to imply they support that (particularly when one of the few policies they seem to have is undoing some of that like SPS non-alignment).
It’s not a help to the people of Northern Ireland though.
This is purely anecdotal; however, an in-the-know person from NI recently told me that many of his contacts who are staunch DUP supporters applied for and hold Irish passports.
And wny not?
Anyone in NI is entitled to one
Absolutely! Pragmatism is the order of the day balancing their utter distrust of anything to do with the ‘South’ (as they would put it), against getting through passport control faster into the EU.
I see Sunak has had his Gordon Brown moment with a member of the public; and it was worse – and NHS worker, cut off mid-stream by a laugh (chorused by the paid spad courtiers, and a group scarper).
I have to hand it to Sunak; he has moved from the mere rictus grin, by inventing his very own rictus laugh (he nailed the excruciatingly unfunny delivery); and then finished with the perfect robotic, automaton walking (I’m not really in a hurry, but is that the time?) scarper. At last he has found his true vocation.
If only there was no Sir Robert Chote to spoil the perfect neoliberal political package Sunak has devised for his modus operandi.
He turned and ran…
For those on Twitter it is available here https://twitter.com/tamcohen/status/1748336239059542376
That laugh at that very polite and reasonable lady is vindication for me at least that the Tories are worth swearing at to be honest if that is all being nice will get you.
Sunak eh? What a complete dick.
I watched a long Telegraph interview by Steven Edginton with the journalist Simon Heffer. It is full of unconscious humour and muddled thinking, but the most striking remark was made by Heffer, trying to see a hopeful political light at the end of the tunnel for a Conservative Party he acknowledges has been catastrophic in power, Cabinets full of ill-chosen, notably unintelligent Ministers, and with two of the worst PMs in British history (Johnson and Truss): he emphasises the importance of campaigning, the need for the Conservatives to ‘find and enemy’ and crucially “to frighten the people”.
I thought immediately of Roosevelt “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself–nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory” (First Inaugural Address of Franklin D. Roosevelt; Saturday, March 4th, 1933).
Heffer’s reasoning appears closer to Neville Chamberlain than Franklin Roosevelt, or even Churchill for that matter (who wasn’t really a Conservative; at least the contemporary Conservative Party never thought so, until they had nowhere else to go).
Late in the day to post -but this report sums up that something what rotten in Northern Ireland.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/19/northern-ireland-dirty-corner-of-europe-due-to-lack-of-governance-say-experts
Worrying
It is interesting that the DUP – “we’re British” (bellowed a hundred times and plastered in as many union jacks as possible) – are very happy to work with Roman Catholics when it comes to making sure there is no abortion provision in NI. They are happy to not be “British” in that case. A comment on Slugger O’Toole said it best years ago of the DUP attitude: “No gay marriage, no abortion – we’re British”.