Nationalism and Globalisation: Two Snapshots in Time

Mason's blagged his way into a party:

Another obvious social and political fact resonating off last night's events is how Spain has modernised socially. I watched the match in a bar full of Catalan people, some of whom had been on the million strong demo in favour of independence from Spain the day before, carrying banners saying "Adeu Espana". As they surged onto the street last night they were all for Spain, and they were met by the entire staff of a Pakistani-owned pizza shop called Al Capone's, who surrounded me shouting (in English): "We are Spanish, we are Spanish. We Love Spain!". On the streets where the Catalan flag and language were once repressed, people used both to celebrate the Spanish victory. In a landscape shaped by inquisition-era Catholicism, gay men leapt around in the fountains wearing only bathing trunks bearing the word "Espana".

Basically, as in the Facebook profile option, "it's complicated" - and there is no going back.

But, ah, it ain't so complicated everywhere. Or at least not complicated in the sense of seeing new juxtapositions of attitudes and identities emerging, which manage to be both dichotomies and overlaps. Hyper-modernity carries with it a trailing gown of history's unfinished business in some places.




So we have football fans acting out their (temporary) role as joyful nationalists in one place, and the representatives of two* national traditions acting out their role as anything but joyful football fans in another.

(*No, I've not signed up to the BICO line. But you have to admit that in Northern Ireland it's taking a while for 'all that is solid to melt into air' as Marx put it, and a grudge, held long enough, looks powerfully like a nationalism to me....)

Hardly Only The 2nd Time, But I Still Hope This is Farce

McGuinness has been threatened by dissident Republicans. Presumably he's now some kind of weird Michael Collins re-incarnation in their heads. Word by Storm dissects dissent Republican strategy with an unflinching eye over on the Cedar Lounge Revolution. Basically, he doesn't think they've got one.

But perhaps they don't need a strategy to destabilise SF and through SF, the Good Friday Agreement. Splinty sets out the potential logic,

"What anti-Agreement republican activity does..... is to ask the question “Which side are you on?” Do you, in essence, support the state against republicans, no matter how deluded you think those republicans may be? Imagine this being asked to a panel at a debate. It wouldn’t be a difficult question for an RSF member, who would simply answer No. It wouldn’t be a difficult question for a member of the SDLP, which has been collaborating with the state for decades, and who would simply answer Yes. The leftist on our imaginary panel would huff and puff and say that this was the wrong question, and we should really be talking about water rates. But for a PSF politician? Totally committed to the peace process, yet subjectively unwilling to openly pledge loyalty to a partitionist settlement, or even to recognise that that’s what the settlement is. For that reason, it’s still problematic to support the state against republicans – that’s why they don’t say they’re defending the state, they say they’re defending the Good Friday Agreement."

But the question that won't go away for me now is more pragmatic - who is it, exactly, that is giving McGunness the legitimate protection he needs? The State he fought? Or the supposedly disarmed organisation he once headed? The dissidents don't have to actually shoot him to undermine him.

5 Minutes of Heaven

It's your choice - sign on at the LSE for this course, or just go to BBC i-player and download this. A drama about 'reconciliation' in Northern Ireland - and about how the media spins such processes - that was so good even James Nesbitt couldn't ruin it.

Antrim Killings

Condemned by Sinn Fein. Sneered at by Richard Seymour. Despaired of by the discussion on Cedar Lounge Revolution. It seems the perpetrators are isolated from both mainstream republican and far left opinion. From the initial press coverage they seem even more isolated from the mass of non political people in both communities.

But it is the nature of the potential retaliation which now matters. A successful police hunt is what is needed. A violent trawl through nationalist communities is not. The killings were carried out to provoke a reaction, and to undermine Sinn Fein by leaving them looking like collaborators. Or at least that's the only possible strategic logic.

At moments like these, Northern Irish politics is a macabre reel where all the parties know only too well that a slip in the rhythm, an accidental stepping on each others' shoes, can ruin the dance. The politicos have to move in lockstep on this one, each party keeping an wary eye on the community reaction of the other side.

Counting to 32 Slowly or Taking Too Big a Risk?

Fianna Fail have made their first steps towards setting up shop in Northern Ireland. Discussion on Slugger seems to suggest there are some grounds for expecting some kind of rapprochement with the SDLP, even if full merger is probably not currently on the agenda. The Slugger regulars seem to think the calibre of the individuals involved in the FF initiative is quite high.

This follows the formal re-marriage of the Tories and Official Unionists, and the setting up of an all-NI constituency branch of the British Labour Party, which I posted about here and drew Paulie's disapproval in doing so.

I was confused by the Tory move. Now I'm even more confused. What do the locals think?

Well, the only other bloke on Blogger who lists Eurocommunism amongst his interests is up for it,

"The establishment of competing UK-wide and all-island parties in our province would give local politics the shake up it is so badly in need of, move beyond conducting politics on a sectarian basis and offer people here a choice of a better quality than that currently being provided by our hopeless provincial groupings."

Splinty also has a very low opinion of the actual calibre of local politicos in the six counties - and has indicated a deep cultural and political Republicanism, albeit from a far left perspective, which leads him in general to favour Fianna Fail over Fine Gael. So I'd guess he wouldn't object. Garibaldy and South Belfast Diary do a double act on the background to all this, starting from the stand point of a Irish Labour Party which must, surely, be expecting to receive a 'Dear John' letter from the SDLP. That's the very same SDLP which the Democratic Left -nee Workers Party nee Republican Clubs nee Official Sinn Fein aka 'the Stickies' - told its Northern members to join when it merged itself into the Irish Labour Party. (Do keep up). But perhaps all this is by the by.

So what might all this mean? Let me try to structure a paragraph from which I have surgically removed a dozen or so 'ifs' to aid clarity: in a few years, it is possible that the debating chamber at Stormont will be dominated by two big blocs, one including representatives of the governing party of the Republic of Ireland and one including representatives of the governing party of Great Britain. There would also be two sizeable minority parties - Sinn Fein and the DUP - whose formal political position was to be more 'nationalist' than the parties with the links to the two governments, but which increasingly get sidelined into policy positions which made them sound more and more like provincial ( in both senses of the word) parties. The politics of the six counties will have been 'normalised' to acceptable European standards. This, in a sense, is the honourable case for what Cameron has done with the Official Unionists - and it might even open up some space for the election of at least some Labour members to Stormont. (Though, as Garibaldy points out, the prospect of New Labour types getting it together with the old Workers Party folk with their past fondness for North Korea is quite an entertaining thought.)

Alternatively, it could all go horribly wrong. It's one thing the two governments standing guarantor to the Good Friday Agreement – because that is their position in reality – whilst the local parties get on with their dysfunctional 'cold shoulder consociationalism'. It's quite another if the two governing parties are actually locked in direct electoral combat with the local NI parties. That might encourage a bit more grand-standing to the tribal gods by the local parties on both sides - and, in the North, the tribal gods are vengeful and violent as we all know...

A Rub of the Green: What is Cameron Upto ?

For reasons I don't pretend to understand Cameron is pushing through a formal Tory rapprochement with the all but electorally dead Official Unionist Party. Slugger O'Toole is full of it. Along the way Cameron has given several hostages to fortune, including really problematic statements such as," I'm not neutral on the question of the union." Such statements seem problematic to me because they feed the 'auld ghosts' of the ur-Republican view, rather than move politics onto any kind of a new terrain. I genuinely struggle to see what is in all this for the Tories. So it feels a bit irresponsible to put it mildly.

From a distance, Northern Irish politics seem stuck in a kind of shadow boxing mode. Yes, the guns have been put away - or almost all of them anyway. Yes, we have formal power sharing - when the elected representatives can be bothered to decide they'll talk to each other, which, to be frank, isn't that often. But they really don't seem to talk about the 'elephant on the sofa': the demographic shift.

One of the ironic effects of Direct Rule was that the long term existence of a higher birth rate in the Catholic community actually began to have demographic effect, because the Brits gave more jobs to people from the nationalist communities thus stemming the traditional flow of emigration. The balance now stands at something like 43:57, down from the 1/3rd - 2/3rds split of the 1960s. Some time around 2040 there will be an adult nationalist majority. Followed shortly, one presumes, by a referendum in favour of Irish unity. But when the last British soldier and civil servant leaves there will still be a million people living there who, unless something changes, will be extremely resistant to incorporation into a united Ireland.

In this context Cameron's intervention seems...well a bit bonkers.

I also learned on Slugger that the (British) Labour Party has now authorised the setting up of a NI wide CLP, although this is several steps away from formally standing candidates in any elections in Northern Ireland, which would still require the explicit approval of Labour HQ. This too gives rise to a certain foreboding, although, at a push, I could just about grasp the logic of NI Labour candidates standing in European elections if jointly sponsored by both British and Irish Labour parties, as both sides of the argument over the border seem to approve of EU membership and, indeed, EU links are often touted as one way of decreasing the relative importance of the border in the politics of the North. But even this has to be seen in the context of the existence of the SDLP with its firm (if much diminished) base in one community but not the other. So it could still go very wrong.

In any event, Europe may be a bit of an exception: I can't quite see how a Labour candidate affiliated to the British Labour Party could possibly appeal to both communities in elections to Westminster, Stormont or any local council. & surely it is paving the way for some kind of cross community unity, to minimise the possible consequences of that '2040 moment', that is the big longer term contribution British politicians can make to the future of the North of Ireland.

Sinn Fein Leader has Container Confiscated at Customs

The BBC says so,

"My spies at Belfast City Airport tell me that when the hirsute Sinn Fein President made his way through security recently a large bottle of fluid was confiscated. Closer inspection revealed it was anti-wrinkle cream. Given that Gerry Adams is such a smooth political operator I can only assume this must have been a gift for someone else."

(H-T the inevitable Slugger - does anything move in those six counties without it appearing within 30 seconds on his site? )