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Ireland; the centenary of Partition

One aspect that seems to be missing from the more recent narrative is how the voting population have gradually moved away from the SDLP and UUP to the far more extremes of SF and the DUP, despite the overt support of the Good Friday Agreement.

I suspect there will be limited celebration of the partition, as ably highlighted in the talk, though he indicated that it should be promoted as an educational event. The problem here is that there is almost total segregation in the educational system - the other evening I watched a documentary about a programme whereby pupils from different schools, and hence religious backgrounds, go away on holiday together. Yes, whilst away on holiday they mix perfectly well, but on return any friendships rarely (never?) persist and they simply cannot be shown within their community to have a friendship with someone from a different community.

Not sure if anyone has any knowledge, but back in the 1990s I heard of an unpublished report apparently highlighting that by 2020s the Catholic population would excedeed 50% of the toyal population, thus leading to a potential referendum result with severe consequences for the Union.
 
Caliente said:
One aspect that seems to be missing from the more recent narrative is how the voting population have gradually moved away from the SDLP and UUP to the far more extremes of SF and the DUP, despite the overt support of the Good Friday Agreement.

I suspect there will be limited celebration of the partition, as ably highlighted in the talk, though he indicated that it should be promoted as an educational event. The problem here is that there is almost total segregation in the educational system - the other evening I watched a documentary about a programme whereby pupils from different schools, and hence religious backgrounds, go away on holiday together. Yes, whilst away on holiday they mix perfectly well, but on return any friendships rarely (never?) persist and they simply cannot be shown within their community to have a friendship with someone from a different community.

Not sure if anyone has any knowledge, but back in the 1990s I heard of an unpublished report apparently highlighting that by 2020s the Catholic population would excedeed 50% of the toyal population, thus leading to a potential referendum result with severe consequences for the Union.
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I've heard about the degree of separation by religion, I had hoped it was now less. I know from working with a N Irish colleague here in England that in early primary school in the 70s-80s she played with all the other girls as you would expect. Then, by about the age of 10, in her words she "was no longer playing with the Grainnes and Siobhans, she was only playing with the Claires and Michelles" . It's a shame that the communities are divided to that extent and in that way.
 
I may be wrong, but I believe that there are very few secular (couldn't think of a more appropriate term) schools - I am more than happy to be proven wrong, but this is clearly where a primary issue rests?
 
Caliente said:
I may be wrong, but I believe that there are very few secular (couldn't think of a more appropriate term) schools - I am more than happy to be proven wrong, but this is clearly where a primary issue rests?
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Efforts were made to try and explain to the Brexiteers at how fragile the peace process was. The EU was the glue that kept the lid on the North. Also the huge strides made by Ireland over the last 30yrs to a relatively prosperous country. It has moved well beyond the North in terms of real economic prosperity. The Catholics will eventually be the majority but a bit like Brexit a border poll that generates a 52-48 win to reunite is not decisive. Hence personally I would think it will take another 20-30yrs before a clear result might emerge. If we end up joined on a narrow poll win I would shudder to think of the misery that will ensue.

The British empire has left continuing misery all over the world. Sad fact.
 
Be careful about equating "Catholic" and "Nationalist". It's true that demographic change will result in a Catholic majority in NI very soon, but that stat also masks a rise in "No Religion" responses in the census data (cue old joke about Northern Ireland having two Atheist Societies, depending on which version of Christianity you didn't believe in).

There is a sizeable minority of middle-class Catholics who do not favour a united Ireland, because their regular contact with the Republic lets them see that their life as a subsidised dependency of the UK is probably better than if they were in a country that has to pay its own way. "Four Green Fields" is all very well, but more expensive car taxes, and £50 (plus cost of the prescribed medicines) every time you want to see the doctor...? Maybe Westminster isn't so bad after all...

The shift to extremist parties after the GFA is an interesting phenomenon, though, which is, I think fuelled partly by the way the NI institution was set up. It does, however appear that this might be breaking a little. I think if the man UK parties were to actually campaign in NI, they could take a couple of seats, but they have a longstanding agreement with their NI counterparts (UUP and SDLP for Conservatives and Labour respectively) to not stand competing candidates. Similarly, the Republic's parties do not stand candidates in NI to fight for the Nationalist vote, despite SF running in both jurisdictions.
 
Caliente said:
I may be wrong, but I believe that there are very few secular (couldn't think of a more appropriate term) schools - I am more than happy to be proven wrong, but this is clearly where a primary issue rests?
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Integrated schools. It's true that there are relatively few, mainly because the Catholic Church wants a Catholic education for its parishioners. As a result, I met my first Catholics at Queen's University, to discover that they had the same number of heads, legs and arms as I had, attached in approximately the same places. I did second-year chemistry practical with a priest for a partner! (A delightful guy - we corresponded for years afterwards - he had the devil's own job trying to stop the Catholics in the year addressing him as "Father").

One particularly honourable exception is Rainey Endowed in Magherafelt, one of Northern Ireland's top grammar schools. The Rainey, as it's known locally, has educated both sides from its 18th century inception. On old university friend became Senior Chemistry Master there - in the same class he had a kid whose RUC father had been killed by the IRA and another whose father was in Long Kesh as an IRA member. Yet Rainey has always been able to hold it all together and turn out first-class exam results.

In the 19th century, a serious attempt was made to educate the children together. These were the Model schools. I'm not clear on the history, but I think the experiment was sabotaged by the Protestant side. A couple of Model schools still exist -I went to the Belfast boys' one in Carr's Glen (the girls' school in in Dunkeld), and there used to be one in Newtownards*, but they're now state schools with, I suspect, zero Catholic participation.

* P.S. Now a primary school:

https://www.newtownardsmodelps.co.uk/legacy/
 
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These uprisings of violence and destruction over the past 6 or 7 days are troubling. I get the impression that the police are not sure what to do or how to contain them. Initially I thought it was from the loyalist side only, but it's definitely on both sides now, and sectarian and mainly perpetrated by youths. By 'sectarian', Catholics v. Protestants but I wonder if it is just that, or even that; maybe these families live in ghetto type areas and simply harbour hostility to other ghetto areas.

Is it political? Has it come to a (nother) head because of shortages/unemployment caused by Brexit? These riots are not protest marches or gatherings which have been infiltrated as in England, it seems; nor fuelled by IRA v UDI (?).

Anybody cast any light on this?
 
I'll try...

Ostensibly, this is a result of "Loyalist Community" anger at the soft treatment given by the police to senior members of Sinn Féin who broke guidelines during the COVID lockdown. Last year, Michelle O Neill, the SF head in Northern Ireland, plus several other SF bigwigs attended the funeral of a former IRA member, in what really was a pretty flagrant breach of the restrictions on gatherings that were in effect at that time. The Police Service looked into the reports, but said they could not bring charges because the laws under which those restrictions were supposed to be enforced were sufficiently vague that no charge would be able to stick.

This is not a surprise, in a way. In most countries, UK included, Covid restrictions have been more requests for people to do the right thing, than legally-enforceable rules. To add to this, the police were involved in the staging of this event in the first place, as SF members had liaised with them in order to make sure there would be no trouble - that involvement made it harder for them to then turn around and say it was illegal.

That appearance of soft-treatment for SF was the spark, which was fanned by Unionist politicians into criticism of the PSNI itself, which, combined with existing rhetoric about the NI Protocol prompted Loyalist gangs to riot and attack the police. But, that said, there's a good deal of suspicion that this was also an opportunity that was grasped by loyalist criminal gangs to damage community support for the PSNI (which had been making good progress in limiting their criminal activity). The spread into Nationalist areas seems to be contagion from this original violent protest, as the kids involved quickly extended the scope of their rioting to address their favoured enemy: exactly the same kind of kids, but from the Nationalist areas.

The Unionist politicians waited very long to condemn this violence, blinded as they were by the opportunity to score points against Sinn Féin by condemning the chief of police instead... Thankfully, some sense is starting to show, but it's a bit late, and in any case, these kids don't listen to Arlene Foster or Michelle O Neill anyway. Getting the local "big men" on side is the only way it'll stop.

The worst thing that could happen right now would be Boris Johnson weighing in, as he is regarded as the man who sold the Union down the river by conceding so much to the EU in the NI Protocol.
 
The basic problem in Norn Iron is that, tribally, we now have a zero-sum game, i.e. what pleases one side automatically displeases the other side in equal measure. The two tribal versions of The Promised Land have nothing whatsoever in common, and this makes common ground impossible to find. The basic idea of the Good Friday Agreement was to move forward on things on which they could agree - housing, education, jobs - and kick the contentious can of the border far, far down the road. However, Brexit has accelerated us to the point where the can is again at our feet, and the supposed political leaders are losing control of the argument to the streets. I just hope that it won't need deaths to bring people to their senses.
 
tones said:
The basic problem in Norn
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Just reading an article in yesterday's paper re. the current troubles by a N. I. correspondent. He quotes the police super as saying that some of the 'cause' may be 'recreational rioting' !!!!!!!

Wonder if that'll ever become an Olympic sport. Certainly not a walk in the park, for sure.
 
tones said:
A very good article on the damage done by Brexit:

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...xit-belfast-violence-eu-good-friday-agreement

As it puts it nicely, Johnson & Co. weren't trying to destroy peace in Northern Ireland, they simply didn't care.
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In a decade or so, many will look back with justified horror at what three consecutive Conservative Prime Ministers did to Britain and its standing in the world. A decay cycle from shallow managerialism (Cameron) through May to the populist, factional destruction of Britain’s internal and external relationships at the hands of Johnson and his accomplices.
Something new will emerge from this but I don’t think it’ll much resemble what went before.
 
KrisW said:
There is a sizeable minority of middle-class Catholics who do not favour a united Ireland, because their regular contact with the Republic lets them see that their life as a subsidised dependency of the UK is probably better than if they were in a country that has to pay its own way. "Four Green Fields" is all very well, but more expensive car taxes, and £50 (plus cost of the prescribed medicines) every time you want to see the doctor...? Maybe Westminster isn't so bad after all...
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For context, I now live in Dublin, grew up in NI and lived in England for a long time. And what you say above is commonly cited, I do get that from many friends and family who still live in NI.

But it’s not really a balanced picture. Pensions, child benefit and unemployment benefits are much higher here than in the UK. For instance, we have 5 kids and get just over 800EUR a month in child benefit. About a third of the population get free GP access and treatment with a medical card. If you do pay for GP access, many people get private healthcare through their employer and get half of the cost back via the insurance and another percentage back via a tax rebate. There’s a ceiling on medicine costs, plus you get tax relief on this. And - unlike my experience in London - I get a GP appointment within 24h and can have as long as I reasonably need with them (30 mins+ on occasion), whereas I had 10 mins max in London and often had 2-3 days to wait for an appt. Third level fees are 3000EUR/year vs the 9000GBP/year in the UK. And, yes we have the much-hated VRT tax on new and imported cars, but it’s come down dramatically (usually <20% now) and our cheaper fuel costs offset much of that in any case.

Of course on top, the salaries in the Republic are much higher than in NI. Tax is higher too of course, but that impacts higher earners mainly, not so much those on average incomes.
 
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