Northern over exposure? A potential significant error by the Republic. May 17, 2011
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish Politics, Northern Ireland, The Left.trackback
This isn’t the worst day to consider the following…
Quite a good piece in the Backroom column in the Sunday Business Post which runs through the recent Assembly elections in the North. It’s probably not worth paraphrasing it in its entirety, amongst the interesting thoughts is the point that the TUV brand of ‘DUP old rhetoric’ failed markedly. Though one could argue that the UUP has in some ways shifted towards that terrain – not least in the Elliott outburst on the day of the count, though the writer acknowledges this when s/he writes ‘It’s still busy alienating its former supporters by its more extreme positions while simultaneously not being credible to old-style DUP voters’. Though how many of the latter exist who are not well pleased with the DUP itself is hard to gauge. The DUP has a remarkable hold, and in some ways a remarkable evolution, that it has managed to become increasingly technocratic in many ways is no small achievement. It’s also, and this is also an achievement, become oddly positive, replacing dourness with a sort of efficiency.
On the nationalist and republican side we see interesting times too. As the writer notes: ‘[the SDLP] is mature enough to celebrate its role in bringing the extremists into the mainstream. But it hasn’t broken out of a clique-driven malaise which makes it look more like a vehicle for personalities than a party’.
To which many will say ‘same as it ever was, so’. But the writer has a point that it still has a solid enough councillor base and it could probably do more.
The column doesn’t mention Sinn Féin, except in passing, but like the DUP it remains pre-eminent. Is that sustainable? On some levels I’d tend to think not, and then I think of – say – Labour in Britain, or perhaps the SNP in Scotland and the idea that it could increase further in size – within the constraints of NI politics – doesn’t seem entirely off the wall [to use the technical term], perhaps ultimately leaving the SDLP as a rump. That said it will be interesting to see how the SDLP operates from here on out and how it addresses its base in class and other terms.
Still, the column makes a very important point when it notes that ‘… the failure of either Enda Kenny or Eamon Gilmore to make any significant outreach in their first two months in office shows that the North has slid well down their agendas. This is understandable given the economic issues which have to be addressed. At the same time, however they should remember that they are custodians of a peace process built up over many years, and partly through the determined commitment of their predecessors’.
And crucially it notes:
Take your eye too far off the issue and you’re running a risk. There are still militants and there are still unfulfilled national ambitions. Everything is looking good and stable for the time being, and those in Leinster House need to show a bit more interest to make sure it stays that way.
Politically there’s little question that there is a greater degree of stability than might have been expected even twenty four months ago. While some of the votes for non-SF candidates was respectable I doubt they or the SDLP are quaking in their boots. And though that could change in the medium term dependent upon the nature and depth of the recession the intrinsic coherence of SF in particular provides a significant barrier to others. This operates in some ways like those dissidents wedded to armed struggle. It’s not simply that they’re small and isolated and capable only of minor operations, it’s that others tried it before and on a much larger scale and failed and therefore the gap between where they are and where they want to be is further underlined.
This is true politically too – and in some ways there’s the basic point that those who dissent from the GFA structures have literally nothing else to operate within. Grand for a critique but not necessarily the best position to build up support for counter-arguments. None of which is to suggest that there won’t be political dissent or that this may not grow, but more to posit that there are constraints, at least at this point in time.
But the second point is – from a position in the South, more important again.
One of the great failings of the South was to effectively eschew responsibility for the North (an approach that was for much of the 20th century a reflection of a British refusal to take responsibility either and instead sub contract out to Stormont). When the situation spun out of control this merely added to a combustible mix and it deepened a sense (and an actuality) of isolation on the part of Northern nationalism.
It would be profoundly dangerous for that to be replicated, even in a muted form. One of the clearest ways to maintain a relatively settled polity in the six counties is to ensure that the linkages already established are worked. As important is that the government remember that the GFA institutions are central to the political process in Ireland. And all of this can and should be justified on utilitarian grounds, if nothing else.
By the way, on a slight tangent, half a good word for Lucinda Creighton and the sitting of the Oireachtas where NI MEPs were invited. It was good to see MEP Bairbre de Brún of Sinn Féin in the Dáil chamber and to see some evidence of a recognition that this is a very small island indeed. That approach is important for precisely the reasons pointed to by BackRoom.
good article. I am sure that the FGers and Lab would comment that the state visit is such a focus.
But as too often with FG its an outreach to one side. Dont forget the others even if they are sitting across you from the opposition bench.
History would tell us not to expect much from FG in this regard.
Secondly if I was a SDLP committed activist (is there such a thing) I would be very annoyed at seeing the SBP continue that old yarn about how the SDLP brought the extremists in etc. etc.
How long can a self created myth of martyrdom be wheeled out in response to the SDLP. That even know over 15 after Humes-Adams dialogues its still being wheeled out.
How long can once excuse last?
Until all the middle-class Catholic voters who could never stomach SF have defected to the Alliance?
so now the SDLP should blame Alliance?
Dr Phil would say the SDLP should take ownership of their problems.
Even you comment about middle-class catholic voters and their stomachs shows that the SDLP is defined not on its own terms but pretty much solely as “we’re not them”.
That excuse about the SDLP being forever doomed by Hume-Adams is beginning to take on the stature of the venerable Labour excuse about the party being forever marginalised because it didn’t take a position on the treaty. The advantage of such excuses is that they make a party’s decline seem inevitably determined by events in the past, thus absolving those currently at the helm from any responsibility whatsoever. Which is very nice for them but a disaster for their party. I suspect, a few traditional strongholds aside, the SDLP are going the way of the old British Liberal Party.
EamonnC,
Think you are right. The SDLP is like the UUP, hyper-regional, disunited and with a leader thats not going to cut the mustard. Oh and the fact that no one knows whats the purpose of the SDLP.
The DUP might not call it Darwinism but it is.
Just about the Elliott comment: I’m not sure if it represents any attempt by the UUP to compete with the TUV for the irrendentist vote – i reckon it says more about the class basis of different strands of unionism. I reckon the average DUP voter may hate SF and all they stand for, but s/he doesn’t feel superior to SF pols and voters in class terms – although there’s probably a metaphysical superiority complex at the far Presbyterian fringes – there are ways in which both parties represents many the same types of voter, and each recognises this in the other. Whereas the ‘garden centre unionist’ vote not only hates SF ideologically, but also despises them for being the ‘kind of people’ they are. The unspoken message is that ‘the likes of them’ have no business in running the state, not just because they’re taigs, but because they’re a bit rough.
@ sonofstan:
“The unspoken message is that ‘the likes of them’ have no business in running the state, not just because they’re taigs, but because they’re a bit rough.”
In one way not that dissimilar to southern middle class attitudes towards Éirígí. They’re not politicized – how can they be? – they’re just scumbags, etc, etc.
Think it was in the Sunday Times that I read a more plausible explanation of Elliott’s outburst. One of the SF MLA’s elected (Lynch?) was a member of the IRA in the 80s. Think the writer said that he was in the company of Seamus McElwaine of the IRA when he was killed by the British Army. Elliott, afaik, was a member of the UDR. He would have had friends and neighbours killed by the IRA.
Before I’m accused of being a West Brit loyalist supporter… what I’m trying to point out is that the wounds are still fresh on both sides in Fermanagh and across the North. What surprises me is that outbursts like Elliotts are rare enough on either side.
Elliot may be many things but a Garden Center prod he is not. More like a “country boy” who under the cover of simply “calling it as it is” says incredibly offensive things.
While it may be all well and good to talk about “class” I don’t think that comes into it as much as the rural issue. I mean why does Tom Elliott or his neighbor (que’s number 4 comment) have to try to relate to the either upper class unionism via the gold coast or urban working class Shankhill? Why can’t they be content to be farm boys who will never rich in a flashy way? Not to say that they have to live a paupers as anyone who looks the price tag of farm equipment can attest to, but just that they have different beliefs and standards.
SoS,
open to correction here but I would think that the garden center type would be very different to Tom Elliots of this world. How much in common would a lad on the gold coast who is a have yacht, and working in finance have with Tom Elliot types farming and doing physical labour all day. The latter would have more in common with a working class fellow driving a truck all day or working in a garage.
There is a class divide in Unionism but I think the left who have not yet been able to clearly work out what class means in a modern context, will invariably makes mistakes in working that class division out. Farmer Tom Elliot might well have more in common with the gold coast but his neighbour farmer also lets say a UUp man might have more in common with someone on the Shankill than on the gold coast.
just rambling
Que, but what they might have in common might be very different to what they perceive they have in common. Wealth envy is quite a driver in respectable society, upwards social mobility and promise of same (never downwards of course) provides a formidable set of blinkers to class consciousness. Of course we live in hope that material circumstances will provide evidence of the lie.
I think the attitudes people are talking about are rooted in the idea that unionists have been the upholders of law and order (as well as democracy and decency) while nationalists – and especially the provos – have not. This of course is completely blind to the reality of unionist ambivalence towards violence, or encouragement of it or involvement in it (and now that Bill Craig is dead, there’s an interesting story about the early 1970s to be told there), but that’s what the self-perception is. This is tied up with class, but I think it plays a subordinate role in this.
Elliott’s outburst was totally his own fault with his needless remark about the flag of a foreign nation provoking the boos. But I think that remark was based in the attitude towards respect for the law and the state.
From http://1690andallthat.blogspot.com/
How to make a Party Election Broadcast
Brilliant! What’s a poundie?
Great stuff…
Make the La Provence sound quite the Social Democratic paradise by comparison.
On the Elliott stuff: I agree, it’s probably more complicated than I said earlier.
Re Joe’s comment: I have friends in Fermanagh who told me that Elliott’s comments (completely stupid) were occasioned by his seeing in the audience, giving him cheerful v-signs, a man who had murdered a neighbour of his. I’ve seen some taunting at Dublin counts but it’s seldom been that close to the bone.
7, you’d forgive me if i am sceptical about whether that happened or is just a spint o make tom look less nasty than he is.
SoS,
open to correction here but I would think that the garden center type would be very different to Tom Elliots of this world. How much in common would a lad on the gold coast who is a have yacht, and working in finance have with Tom Elliot types farming and doing physical labour all day.
I never really took the ‘garden centre unionist’ stereotype to be synonymous with the gold coast denizen – North Down is sui generis within the context of NI and, apart from bits of Surrey, Cheshire and south Dublin, within these isles as a whole. The fact that they’ve just elected a Green to the assembly, and their MP is Sylvia Hermon speaks for that. It’s no more ‘typically’ middle class than Moyross is ‘typically’ working class.
I always imagined the GCU to be much more ordinary, middle income, middle management, public service even, types. After all, the have yachts probably have gardeners to go to the garden centre for them.