Splintered Sunrise

The fall of the House of Paisley

November 13, 2009 at 2:42 am (Books, Norn Iron, Paisleyism)

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“I have a sentimental weakness for my children, and I spoil them as you can see; they talk when they should listen.”
Don Corleone in The Godfather

At the moment, you can’t see the big hole in Cromac Square where the road has collapsed. The Roads Service have it cordoned off until it can be repaired. But this flags up an uncomfortable truth for us. There’s a sort of historical myth that the industrial development of Belfast was down to the natural harbour. Fact is, even though the city lies at the head of the lough and it became a busy port, there was no natural harbour – the city was built on reclaimed land. So an awful lot of those impressive-looking big buildings in the city centre are resting on wooden frames which in turn are resting on silt, and are sinking infinitesimally year on year. What the Cromac Square event shows us is how quickly something that looks permanent can be hit by subsidence.

Which brings me nicely to the book of the moment, David Gordon’s The Fall of the House of Paisley. Readers of the Belfast Telegraph will of course be familiar with David as the investigative reporter who is a dab hand with the old Freedom of Information request. He had more than a walk-on part in the downfall of the Paisley dynasty, so it’s only fitting that he’s providing the narrative here. And quite a narrative it is.

What we don’t have here is a replication of what’s already been done. The extensive biographical background in Ed Moloney’s Paisley: From Demagogue to Democrat is not rehashed. Nor is the in-depth theological deconstruction in Dennis Cooke’s wonderful Persecuting Zeal, still for my money the toughest critique of Big Ian because it hits him where it’s most important. What we do have is a most entertaining run through the events that shook the House of Paisley over the last three years or so. This takes us from Papa Doc’s coronation as First Minister in 2007 to his abrupt resignation as DUP leader and Executive head a year later, not to mention his enforced departure as boss of the Free Presbyterian Church, the fundamentalist denomination he had founded all the way back in 1951 and been permanent moderator of for as long as anyone could remember.

What happened, then? There were several interlocking features, including unrest in the DUP’s voter base (although the party itself remained remarkably disciplined), unrest in the Church, the eagerness of Peter Robinson after thirty long years as deputy leader to ease the octogenarian leader into retirement – and, running through this like lettering through a stick of rock, the Junior Problem. The rebellion of the base against a man they had for decades regarded quite literally as God’s anointed leader would be a story worth telling in itself, but the antics of Ian Jnr add just that note of low farce that your humble scribe enjoys.

There are a number of things we don’t know for sure. We don’t know exactly why Paisley did the deal with the Provos in the first place; and we don’t know the exact process of his resignation. The DUP maintains a strict omertà when it comes to such issues, so the best we have to go on is informed speculation. Several things are clear, however. The groundwork for the deal can be seen in the DUP’s decision in 1998 not to go into opposition in the Assembly, but to nominate semi-detached ministers who would run their departments but not attend Executive meetings. Some while later, it became clear that the Robinson faction wanted to cut a deal – Jim Allister, not an unbiased witness admittedly, dates this no later than 2000. There was a transparent strategy of first destroying the Official Unionists and then, once the DUP was in the driving seat, cutting a deal that was more amenable to the DUP’s concerns.

So much we can say with confidence. It was also the case that, if the DUP could be brought on board, it could be a much more reliable coalition partner than the OUP, simply because David Trimble always had around half of his anarchic party openly scheming against him. The DUP’s fierce internal discipline – including making candidates sign undated resignation letters in case they went off message – was a whole different kettle of fish. But to make it work, you needed Paisley, and his unique personal authority. A Robinson-led DUP would have suffered a much bigger schism; as it was, the loss of only Jim Allister and a dozen or so councillors must have looked very manageable at the outset.

So the trick was to get Paisley to sign up. Since it’s unlikely the man himself will ever provide a cogent account, we aren’t sure why Dr No suddenly became Dr Yes, and a number of interviewees proffer their own theories. One theme is the serious illness, its nature still a closely guarded secret, that Paisley suffered in 2004. It is suggested that, realising his own mortality, he wanted to bow out on a positive note, having built something up rather than tearing it down. Others point to his not inconsiderable ego, which Tony Blair took great care to flatter. Certainly, the idea of being prime minister appealed mightily to him. It’s also interesting that Robinson became very nervous of letting Paisley negotiate one-on-one with Blair, such was his tendency to go off script. It’s likely to be quite a while before we know the details.

What isn’t in dispute is that the DUP didn’t prepare its base for a deal, which was a key difference between it and PSF. The Provo base is willing to buy whatever Gerry is selling, but he still has to make the sale. The DUP, as Robinson has subsequently acknowledged, didn’t make the sale. They came out of the St Andrews talks sounding very non-commital about a deal; they went into the 2007 Stormont election still sounding non-commital. Even when they struck the deal, they promised a battle a day in the Executive. And what did the DUP base get? They got the Chuckle Brothers.

Personal chemistry is an odd thing. Although Paisley has a justified name as a fierce polemicist, in person he’s often absolutely charming. Up in North Antrim, stories of his personal warmth and kindness abound, including from people who consider him a totally destructive force politically. Martin McGuinness is also a very likeable and gregarious chap. Compared to the previous Stormont double act of the congenitally spiky David Trimble and the rather grumpy Séamus Mallon, maybe it wasn’t that surprising that the odd couple would hit it off on a personal level. But it still looked really weird in political terms. Nor did it make any sense at all to the DUP base. They had been told that their party was entering government purely to ward off the threat of joint sovereignty, and they were going to get their battle a day. They surely didn’t expect their leader to actually enjoy sharing power with the enemies of Ulster.

Initially, however, Papa Doc faced more trouble in his church than in his party, which is itself instructive. The thing to remember is that, though Paisley is by far the most prominent churchman in the north, and it was largely his polemics that forced the largest Protestant denomination, the Irish Presbyterian Church, into its current passive and pietist stance, the FPC has never really broken out of the fringes. It currently has around 12,000 members in the north, which is about as big as it’s ever been. And yet, the FPC has an importance in that many of the core DUP cadre are church members (though by no means all – Peter Robinson and Sammy Wilson are Elim Pentecostalists, while more recent defectors from the OUP mostly belong to mainstream denominations). For people with this overlapping membership, Paisley was therefore both their political and spiritual leader. Outside of Iran, and possibly the haredi parties in Israel, this is a unique position.

But if heading the government was difficult to square for the leader of a historically rejectionist party, it was multiply so for someone who remained the head of a small, fundamentalist, highly ascetic denomination. The disconnect between the DUP’s mass support base and the Wee Free cadre – more stark in Belfast than amongst the country ‘n’ western element – was already apparent before entry into government, and massively increased after it. This may not be apparent to people who are unfamiliar with the Wee Free mindset. For instance, one of the first internal controversies was around the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure funding Belfast’s Gay Pride parade. DCAL minister Edwin Poots, a DUP member and Free Presbyterian, made a pragmatic argument that the previous Direct Rule minister had approved the funding, and there was no point in him dragging the department into a court case he couldn’t possibly win. This cut little ice.

But when this sort of thing touched the leader, it was far more powerful. Shortly after the Poots affair, it became known that the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister was funding LGBT groups to the tune of £180,000. Paisley could have made the Poots argument; he could also have said that stopping the funding would have required the agreement of his co-premier Martin McGuinness; instead he chose to blow smoke around the issue. This cut even less ice with the Wee Frees, for many of whom Paisley disbursing public money to the sodomites was much more hurtful than him going into government with unrepentant gunmen. Tears were shed and voices raised on the issue. And even the feelgood announcements the OFMDFM loved got the big man into trouble with his flock. So he might open the swanky Victoria Square shopping centre, a complex that trades on the Sabbath and contains outlets selling alcohol. So he might announce an initiative for young musicians, lightly sidestepping his years of condemning rock music as evil, and compound the offence by giving the musicians money from the sinful National Lottery. And then there was the Stormont book launch he hosted for Dana, where he was incautious enough to praise the singer turned politician’s strong faith – that is to say, her Catholic faith.

These are attitudes that seem quaint to the Belfast media class, and are probably shocking to British readers. But a Free Presbyterian in somewhere like Ballymoney would think very differently. These are the attitudes of the traditional Paisleyite movement, and the leader could do himself no good by stepping outside them. His former close friend and chief ecclesiastical critic, the redoubtable Rev Ivan Foster, harried him relentlessly along these lines, going so far as to denounce Paisley from the pulpit. So it was that Paisley found his church divided, and had to agree to step down rather than face an open schism and possible defeat.

The old man’s troubles were compounded no end by Baby Doc. There is no doubt that Wee Ian is the apple of his father’s eye, and the elderly leader, now suffering senior moments in the Assembly, came to rely on having his son by his side as OFMDFM junior minister. But Junior has never been very popular in the DUP – you hear him being openly described in such terms as “brash” or “charmless” or “buck eejit”. Apropos of Simon Mann being released from Equatorial Guinea, I was having a bit of a reread of Adam Roberts’ The Wonga Coup, in which Roberts wonderfully describes Mark Thatcher, another living example of the law of diminishing returns, as attracting trouble like a man wielding a golf club in a thunderstorm. Ian Jnr is very much like that.

A lot of the trouble centred around the north’s only World Heritage Site, the Giant’s Causeway, which falls within the North Antrim constituency represented by the Paisleys. Scientists reckon the polygonal basalt columns, famous from the sleeve of Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy, were formed by volcanic activity some 60 million years ago. Many DUP members reckon they were formed 5000 years ago as a result of Noah’s Flood. But that’s as may be. The salient point is that this is where property developer Seymour Sweeney comes in.

Seymour had a plan to build a visitors’ centre, and preferably other facilities too, at the Causeway. He has spent years, and lots of money, acquiring land in the area. This was opposed by Moyle District Council and the National Trust, who were agitating for a public-sector facility. It was also opposed by officials in the Planning Service. The Causeway’s World Heritage Site status also brought in the DCMS in London and UNESCO, neither of which were dying about Seymour’s big idea. But this did not fly with the Developers’ Unionist Party, and environment minister Arlene Foster announced that she was “minded” to overrule her officials and give Seymour the concession. Then Stephen Nolan, having been in receipt of a tip-off, asked Baby Doc on the radio whether he knew Seymour. “I know of him,” said Junior, which was a typically smartass Junior answer. And then all hell broke loose.

The resultant storm was mainly to the credit of a fairly small number of journalists, notably David Gordon, who asked the right questions, made the FOI requests and went where the evidence took them. There was also input from a few public representatives in the North Antrim area – from Declan O’Loan, from Daithí McKay and, perhaps most deadly, from Jim Allister, who doesn’t play fair and knows an Achilles’ heel when he sees one. It transpired that Seymour was a DUP member, that he knew both Paisleys well enough to have been lobster fishing with Junior, and that Junior had something of a history of energetic lobbying for Seymour.

This went well beyond the Causeway, incidentally. It included a housing development just fornenst the Causeway, where both Junior and his in-laws subsequently bought holiday cottages. It included a lucrative land deal outside Ballymena. All the Sweeney-related material is in the book. Nobody is suggesting actual corruption, of course – it’s just that the extent of Junior’s lobbying began to make him look like Seymour’s personal shopper, and created a serious perception of cronyism.

And it just got worse. It transpired that, at the St Andrews negotiations, Junior had approached NIO ministers with a shopping list of constituency projects, a couple of them Sweeney-related, that he wanted facilitated. Senior DUP figures were openly scathing about a member of the negotiating team seeking private side deals on things like funding for the North West 200. Then it came out that, although he was an Assembly member and devolved minister, he was also receiving public money to the tune of ten grand a year as a parliamentary researcher for daddy.

What turned the tide was the council by-election in Dromore. This was an area that should have been a walkover for the DUP – indeed, they should have taken it on the first count – and the party put a lot of effort in. Local MP Jeffrey Donaldson was in charge of the campaign, and the DUP relished the opportunity to humiliate the newly-formed Traditional Unionist Voice. But they didn’t. Around a third of the DUP vote switched to the TUV, and the majority of TUV transfers went to the OUP, who won the seat. The transfers were especially ominous, demonstrating that lots of voters wanted badly to poke the DUP in the eye. This was just recently repeated in the Euro-election.

Moreover, the DUP didn’t get – and still don’t – how to deal with the TUV. This is the result of Paisley’s traditional strategy of making certain he couldn’t ever be outflanked on the right. The first rule of unionism is not to give anyone the opportunity to call you a Lundy. When Jim Allister got up and said, in effect, “Big Ian, you’re a Lundy”, the DUP didn’t have a clue how to respond.

It was a stroke of bad luck that Dromore coincided with a row over MLAs’ constituency office expenses, which have been basically unregulated. Billy Armstrong (OUP, Mid Ulster) built a prefab office on his farm at taxpayers’ expense, and only afterwards got round to applying for planning permission. Michelle O’Neill (PSF, Mid Ulster) managed to claim £18,000 for an office in the tiny South Derry village of Gulladuff. That was the second most expensive office. The most expensive cost three times as much, and was an enormous party office in Ballymena, occupied jointly by Rev Ian Paisley and Ian Paisley Jnr. What added spice to this was that the building was purchased by a holding company in which one Seymour Sweeney acted as guarantor.

And so, with the constant stream of embarrassing stories about Junior, he was forced to walk the plank, though still insisting – with daddy’s support – that he had done nothing wrong and this was all a conspiracy got up against Big Ian. What is unarguable, however, is that Junior’s departure from government left the old man seriously exposed, and this helped the Robinson camarilla bounce him into retirement.

It’s a good story well told, and David ends up with some sober reflections on what passes for government under the New Dispensation. The half-baked economic strategy, based on the Brits forking out endless subventions and lots of US investment, looks a lot less convincing given the global economic crisis. Education is still bogged down in the 11-plus debate, with Caitríona Ruane attempting to apply bright ideas from the Queens education department while unionist MLAs, with the sole exception of Dawn Purvis, are so in thrall to the grammar school lobby that they don’t seem to register the massive educational underachievement in the Protestant working class. And then there was Sammy Wilson, the environment minister who didn’t believe in global warming. (Sammy has since been promoted to finance. His replacement at environment is Edwin Poots, who does believe in global warming but doesn’t believe in evolution.) Not to mention the DUP-run culture department, which takes up less than 1% of the Executive budget but around 75% of hot air in the Assembly.

However, the current Stormont system, though prone to sectarian friction, is more or less stable for the medium term. David goes into some detail about how the funding system helps incumbents, and about the unlikelihood of new players breaking the mould. (He is sceptical about the Tory-Unionist UCUNF boondoggle, and rightly so in my opinion.) In the last analysis, he reckons, the system is likely to hold because nobody involved has anywhere else to go. What was the big difference between Sunningdale and the GFA and St Andrews? Different players, same basic deal. Very few people are actually nostalgic for the Troubles – whether the peace process can provide worthwhile government is a whole different question.

6 Comments

The jabbing finger

November 9, 2009 at 12:28 am (Rhetoric)

PW_Botha_finger_pointing

The other day, as I was making my breakfast, I turned on GMTV. Usually I don’t register breakfast telly all that much – at that time in the morning, my brain can just about process Hi-5 or Elmo’s World – but this time I was brought up short. Who should be sitting on the sofa holding forth but this blog’s bête noire of the moment, Terry Sanderson of the National Secular Society. (An enormous groan rises up from the broad masses.) Now, bear with me, because I’m not going to bash the NSS here. What interested me was a stylistic issue.

As far as I could figure out – I evidently switched on halfway through the segment – this was a discussion of PC councils rebranding Christmas as “Winter Festival”, or some such tabloid cobblers. Terry was banging on about how bad it was that schoolkids were being drafted into nativity plays. What struck me was how soft-spoken he was being. From his occasional TV or radio appearances, obviously I didn’t expect him to be shouty, but nor did I expect him to be quite as emollient as he was. Perhaps that’s because his argument was weak – Commercemas has so little religious content these days that it would take a supreme effort for him to find something to get upset about. Perhaps it was an environmental issue, as being lightly grilled by Emma Crosby on a comfy sofa is not the same as having Paxman barking at you across the Newsnight studio. Perhaps it was because he was debating with the Rev Joanna Jepson, who projects such an air of overwhelming niceness that it must have felt like being mauled to death by a cute ickle bunny wabbit. Or perhaps it was just too early in the day for a full-on rant.

What I mean was that the Sanderson on the TV screen, talking for all the world like a reasonable human being who is capable of seeing the other guy’s point of view, is a bit of a jolt if you look at all regularly at his written output, because he writes like Jim Denham on steroids. I assume that he’s not that bad in real life, when he isn’t sat in front of his keyboard emitting steam from his ears.

I was thinking about this in connection with what Andy was writing there about keyboard rage:

Face to face human interaction generates hormonal response, with the generation of low levels of Oxytocin that makes people like being with each other. Human interaction mediated by technology lacks that aspect of social bonding, and people become excessively rude.

What is more the rudeness generates a self-referential culture, where people are rude because other people are rude – it is a learned social expectation.

There’s a lot of truth in that. Sometimes people get into flame wars and forget that there’s a real person on the other end. But that’s on a basic level. There is also an aspect of how the internet has democratised writing, where the blogosphere doesn’t require any professional training nor submission to an editor – which is not an unmixed blessing. And of course political subcultures and the learned behaviours within them contribute as well.

Firstly, there’s a clear disconnect in attitudes between those who are engaged in politics with a big P, and single-issue campaigners. What to me most commonly distinguishes single-issue campaigners is an overwhelming self-righteousness. This isn’t meant as an attack on the characters of single-issue campaigners, it’s an observation based on the nature of their activity. Big-P politics is not merely about the art of the possible; perhaps more to the point, it’s holistic in nature, with its starting point being society as a whole. Even Marxist politics starts from the working class, conceptualised as being the majority of society. This inevitably means compromise. By way of contrast, the single-issue campaigner only has to plug away relentlessly on that particular issue – compromise is not only unnecessary, but is a positive hindrance. I’m sure there are plenty of Burma solidarity campaigners whose first instinct would be to denounce Aung San Suu Kyi if they thought she was going to compromise.

One interesting feature, though, is the inherent expansiveness of liberal rights theory. For instance, the NSS, which is supposed to be about separating church and state, makes detailed pronunciamentos on all sorts of issues like abortion, stem cell research and euthanasia, usually on the tenuous basis that, since lots of religious people are against these things then secularists must support them. And at this year’s Gay Pride march in Belfast, a platform speaker lambasted the Dublin government for its civil unions bill, demanding no less than fully-fledged gay marriage. The speaker was a representative of Amnesty. Bearing in mind Amnesty’s traditionally narrow remit around prisoners of conscience, and its former self-denying ordinance about getting involved in domestic politics – during the Troubles, it was nearly impossible to get Amnesty to say anything about Ireland – this was quite striking.

In extremis, you can get single-issue NGOs broadening their remit so they almost function like small political parties, only without the obligation to seek votes, and retaining the single-issue modus operandi, which is something the single-issue campaigner brings with him into party politics. A good example of the MO is Peter Tatchell. Since recent catfights on SU demonstrate how fraught it is to mention Peter in other than glowing terms, I should start by putting on record that, though I don’t always agree with Peter and I think he could choose his company better (if you don’t want people to think you’re Islamophobic, posting on Harry’s Place isn’t the brightest idea), I do admire his courage and salute his indefatigability. No, the thing about Peter, as I keep saying, is that his strengths and his weaknesses are bound up so closely. He’s incapable of seeing a case of oppression without setting up a solidarity campaign, and has enough nervous energy to run about a hundred of these at any one time. Some of them are perforce quite obscure – the canonical example being Peter’s solidarity campaign for gay Rastafarians – and, while you’re glad somebody is doing something around these issues, and you would sign a petition if asked, it would take some convincing to get you to do more. But Peter tends to assume that his hobbyhorse of the moment should be everyone else’s top priority, and no sooner has he set up a campaign than the raised voice and the jabbing finger are deployed, as he demands to know why the left isn’t dropping everything to campaign for the gay Rastas. Eh? Eh?

Perhaps it’s unfair to single Peter out, because there are plenty of other examples. One example of the clash between holistic and particular views of politics came about over the embryology bill, when Labour MEP Mary Honeyball got stuck into Catholic MPs who either voted against or abstained, using some unfortunate Guy Fawkes rhetoric about how it was intolerable that MPs should be guided by “the Pope’s whip”. This drew sharp responses from some Labour MPs such as Jon Cruddas. Now, the point here is not that Cruddas is a Catholic and Honeyball a militant secularist – that figures, but it’s not the whole story. Rather, it’s a question of whether you view the Labour Party as primarily a coalition of social constituencies or as a vehicle for progressive causes. Cruddas, who knows a fair bit about psephology, can give you the crude statistic that, at the last election, Labour secured 34% of the total vote but 53% of the Catholic vote. A lot of that is a function of class and ethnicity, but it’s also the case that the teachings of social Catholicism – anti-war, anti-poverty, anti-greed, communitarian – are rather a good fit for traditional Labourism. So you have an important part of the Labour base who don’t necessarily expect to have their concerns on issues like abortion written into the party manifesto – but they would like to feel listened to, and if you tell them to bugger off and take their custom elsewhere, they just might.

And the worldview ties into one’s experience. Cruddas is basically a party man, with close links to the union apparati. Honeyball was a feminist activist before she was a politician, in much the same way that Sanderson was a fulltime gay liberationist before he was a fulltime secularist. I don’t say that these backgrounds are illegitimate, just to point out that they bring with them a particular approach. Where the professional party man can appear like a chiselling opportunist, the single-issue campaigner finds it much easier to hove to the biblical injunction of come ye out from among them and be ye separate.

You find a similar tendency to separatism in the left-sectarian milieu. Which is odd, because of the holistic aspirations of Marxism, but it probably isn’t surprising that smallish far left propaganda formations without any real chance of achieving power have a culture that’s much more akin to the single-issue NGO than the mass party. The other factor is a stylistic thing, in that the Russian Marxists of a hundred years ago were great at giving the impression of absolute certainty in their own correctness and in the scoundrelly opportunism of their opponents – which creates a small problem for the Church of Latter-Day Trotskyism in that Lenin and Trotsky violently disagreed with each other much of the time, and they couldn’t both be right. But what’s much worse is when you get these group gurus who aspire to be Lenin or Trotsky, or journalists in the left press who want to write like them. Then factor in a culture where much of the left cadre is trained up in what can only be described as hate speech. Those people with almost the same views as yours? They aren’t basically sincere people you happen to disagree with on some minor matters – they are traitors, sell-outs, lundies, apostates, enemies of the people fit only to be smashed. The watchword is no compromise under any circumstances, and woe betide you if you leave yourself open to attack on that basis.

And internet keyboard rage only magnifies this. Take a look at the comments box here, below a fucking death notice. The double act of Father Jack and Morality Blog is especially obnoxious, but the same thing can be found elsewhere in milder form.

And again, one can find much the same thing with the Decent Left. There you get the single-issue aspect, some bad habits from the left milieu, and exacerbated by the fact that the Decents are not activists – few of them are even members of the Labour Party – but are extremely voluble pundits. This is what leads you to people like Cohen, Toube or Attila the Hun doing their perpetual Mr Angry routine, which gets enervating very quickly. I’ve never been as angry about anything as those guys are about everything. And here is where, for once, I’d like to praise Professor Geras. If Normski was just banging on about Israel and Zimbabwe and Human Rights Watch seven days a week, not only would it be intensely boring for his readers, but it wouldn’t be much good for him. That Norm goes off regularly to write about cricket or literature or country music shows that he, unlike most of his Decent comrades, has understood the importance of the mental health break.

There is a lesson here, you know. It’s that stepping back, taking a deep breath, perhaps having a cup of tea before you hit that “send” button is rarely a bad strategy. I try not to blog when angry, because it usually just comes across as peevish. Occasionally you’ll get someone who does anger well, though I hope young Laurie is sensible enough to know that you can’t only do anger. Approaching something coldly and calmly helps; and the odd bit of frivolity doesn’t hurt either. Too much anger and self-righteousness will just end up giving you aneurysms. And it confirms the prejudices of those (particularly women) who read the comments boxes of the left blogs and come away with the overwhelming impression that the left is just a Sargasso Sea of mentalism.

33 Comments

Not coat-trailing but fleece-trailing…

November 4, 2009 at 1:01 pm (Culchies, Norn Iron)

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This picture almost speaks for itself, doesn’t it? This is the story that’s been convulsing Tyrone – or at least providing an opportunity to sound off on the phone-ins – about a Protestant farmer out by Ardboe who got up in the morning to find his sheep had been spray-painted in a tricolour scheme. God help me, I couldn’t help a chuckle, although the farmer, who now can’t sell his sheep, is entitled to be annoyed about it.

On one level, I suppose, this is of a piece with the sort of low-level sectarianism you get a lot of in north Antrim, Coleraine and such places. The form, one suspects, has something to do with that Tyrone farmboy culture that impels Queens students to hold wheelie bin races at three in the morning – the possibility of drink having been taken over Halloween can’t be dismissed either. But there you go – in Belfast people mark their territory by painting kerbstones, in rural Tyrone they paint sheep. Just when you think this place can’t surprise you…

9 Comments

He gets knocked down, but he gets up again…

November 2, 2009 at 12:07 am (Far Left)

arsheriff

What does John Rees have in common with Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor? On the face of it, not very much.

And on the face of it, there’s nothing much to be said about Pope Benny’s appointment of Cormac to two positions in the Roman Curia, at the Congregation for Bishops and at whatever Propaganda Fidei is calling itself these days. If you’re willing to take the statement from the Catholic Communications Network as the last word on the matter, this is quite simply the Holy Father registering his esteem for a distinguished prince of the Church by giving him these important responsibilities. This is quite plausible in its own terms – even Cormac’s sternest critics will acknowledge that he’s a thoroughly decent man who has given decades of selfless service.

On the other hand, if you look at it from another, more cynical perspective, this can appear like the kind of slick manoeuvre of which Machiavelli would have been proud, addressing several problems with one fell swoop. It is said that Vinnie Nichols and Bernie Longley are exercised at the possibility of Cormac getting in their feet – given the long history of previous primates dying in office, the English hierarchy doesn’t really have any experience of the backseat driver phenomenon. As for those Anglo-Catholics who might be considering a defection to Rome, their jittery nerves aren’t going to be soothed by Cormac hanging around, when it’s well known that he opposed the new Apostolic Constitution. Cormac himself would like a Curia job commensurate with his status. And Benny would probably like to have Cormac where he can keep an eye on him – if the rumours are true that the ferociously orthodox Cardinal George Pell of Sydney is taking over the Congregation for Bishops, that would certainly count as keeping an eye on any cardinals stationed there.

Slick, indeed. It’s even better than the way Cardinal Des Connell, a Ratzinger ally of long standing, abruptly found himself spending more time with his study of French philosophy.

The Central Committee of the Socialist Workers Party must be wishing they had found a similarly inventive way of dealing with the shambling miscreant Rees. Rather, since his defenestration from the CC at the start of the year, John and Lindsey have been holed up in their Stop The War fastness, nursing their grievance. And lo, with the pre-conference discussion period having opened, John has gone and got himself a faction.

There’s a write-up of this in the current issue of the Weekly World Worker News, which has got some ground to make up after the blogosphere has caught it napping several times in the last couple of years. They can run lots of good articles on Iran, and learned exegeses of Marxist-Leninist thought from Dr Macnair, but that’s not what people read the Weekly Worker for – if they can’t provide decent gossip, they’ve lost their USP. So anyway, Peter Manson is covering this – given the publication, the usual caveats about imaginative filling in of gaps apply, but you might find it of interest.

The reader will find more of interest than usual in the leaked IB, and there’s quite a bit there of political as opposed to prurient factional interest. Certainly I have no interest in the minutiae of how many papers were sold in Southampton last week, or how a comrade got a motion passed at a union meeting in Reading. On the other hand, there are a few debates on the go that are of broader interest to the left, because they’re touching on issues those of us outwith the SWP have to deal with. A serious and open discussion around issues like the economic crisis, No Platform, the antiwar movement, electoral strategy, developments in the unions and what have you would be all to the good. It’s entirely possible that there will be insights that everyone can profit from.

Anyway, this blog knows what the punters want, and what the punters will primarily be interested in is the factional barney. Now, it is not strictly true that this is purely a fight for position without political content. I think the fight for position is its motive force, but it’s picked up some political content as it’s gone along. It has done so, however, in a confused way, and there’s no obvious right side or wrong side.

Let’s begin with the grubby business of position, though. John Rees is evidently still aggrieved about his unceremonious dumping from the leadership. Although I don’t particularly like Rees, I can well understand his position – he’s had to walk the plank for things that many other people shared responsibility for, and after many years of being accustomed to a party culture wherein being a member of the CC meant never having to take responsibility for anything, not while there was someone further down on the food chain who could be dumped on. One particularly thinks of Cliff’s old party trick, when a “turn” didn’t work out, of blaming “conservative elements” in the party for failing to make the turn with sufficient enthusiasm, and then setting loose the apparat’s attack dogs on any poor sod in the branches who happened to be on the outs at the time. A year or two later, Cliff might announce that the turn had failed due to objective circumstances, but that was scant consolation to anyone who’d been fucked over in the interim.

The trouble is that, having dumped Rees less than a year ago, it would be an immense climbdown for the CC to take him back now, and unrepentant forbye. A Rees who had gone off and quietly spent four or five years doing an unglamorous job might have been rehabilitated, but not in these circumstances. Moreover, it’s hard to see how the CC could justify putting him in charge of a whelk stall, given the deconstruction of his failings that took place in the last pre-conference discussion. Here is Professor Callinicos:

The problem was rather that the crisis in Respect exposed certain systematic weaknesses in John’s methods of working – in particular a failure to respect the collective decision-making of the party and, in large part as a result, to make serious mistakes that caused him to lose the confidence of the majority, not just of the leadership, but of the party cadre as well…

The problem with John isn’t that he disagrees with the CC majority. Disagreements are necessary to the development of a living party. But John sees everything through the distorting lens of the struggle to maintain his personal position. This leads him to inflate real, but quite specific disagreements into systematic differences and to rubbish aspects of the party’s work for which, as a CC member for the past 14 years, he must share responsibility.

For a year now the Central Committee has had to grapple with the unrelenting struggle of an undeniably talented comrade to shield himself for being held to account for the mistakes he has made. For those of us with a long history of party membership, who remember the many personal sacrifices made by individual comrades and their disciplined acceptance of unwelcome decisions, John’s behaviour is nothing short of a scandal.

And here is John Molyneux:

Despite the odd nod in favour of democratic debate John makes it clear that really he is opposed to the idea of the ‘democracy commission’, while I strongly support it. John has never seen anything wrong with the state of democracy in the party and neither as far as I can tell have Lindsey or Chris B or Chris L . This may be true of other members of the CC as well but they at least seem to be shifting their position – John is not. John also makes it clear that he wants ‘firmer’ more ‘decisive’ leadership of the kind he has always been keen to provide. I have always disagreed with John about this. I always disliked those speeches John gave in which he would explain ‘the real nature of political leadership’ and it would turn out to be what he had done recently. Nor is this just a question of personal arrogance, I also think John holds an elitist theory of leadership derived from Lukacs’ concept of the party as bearer of working class consciousness (but perhaps that is a debate for another time). At any rate I think the question of John’s removal from the CC is bound up with the question of improving party democracy because it is seen by the members as asserting the principle that no one is ‘above’ accountability and that is why it is popular in the party.

John’s views on the Rees question have remained consistent for many years, as anyone who’s had the opportunity of talking with him will know. Alexander is slightly disingenuous, I feel. The reason I feel this is that the new regime is basically the old regime minus Rees and German, and that the people who a year ago felt Rees was unfit to hold a leadership position are the same people who for years protected him, promoted him, supported his brainstorms, went along with his pretensions to be the successor to Cliff, and went to war with important allies in his defence. Again, if we’re talking about serious fuckups, Alexander’s managing of the international tendency doesn’t seem to have undermined his position. (Although, to be fair, he seems to have calmed down a bit in recent years, and isn’t as promiscuous with the anathemata.)

What then are the political aspects? Well, the only real line in the sand that’s been drawn has been on the No Platform issue, and that’s not so much sand as mud. To recap: some while back John Molyneux, in his established role of loyal opposition, wrote a letter to SW arguing that No Platform should be re-examined – not that it should be dropped, but that it should be refined and amended. This seems sensible to me, especially given that no platform for fascists was conceived as an approach to be operated within the labour movement, and it’s only recently that it seems to have been extended to petitioning the state broadcaster not to interview fascists. This drew a swift response from the CC maintaining its total adherence to No Platform. Which in turn drew a response from the Reesites also proclaiming their total adherence to No Platform, while accusing the CC of having abandoned the policy. More heat than light then, and an example of how factional considerations can obscure an issue just as easily as bringing one into the open.

There’s also a more general issue of orientation – and this is where I think Peter Manson is off the mark when he accuses the CC of making up reasons for Rees’ defenestration after the fact. There were at least implicit differences a year or more ago, certainly since the parking of Left Alternative, and those have firmed up slightly although they’re still inchoate. Partly it comes out in scrapping over whether Stop The War or Unite Against Fascism is more important at the moment. For me, this is a tactical issue – while in general terms imperialist war is more important than a Mickey Mouse outfit like the BNP, the huge kerfuffle over Griffin on Question Time obviously required a response. It’s also easy to view this in purely cynical terms, based on who’s working in STW or UAF respectively. There’s something to that, but there’s also a political conception tied to it.

John and Lindsey’s insistence on the transcendent importance of Stop The War may be self-serving, but it’s linked to this view they’ve developed whereby the operation of various united fronts (mar dhea) is conceived as the path through which the party progresses. The CC, on the other hand, is cleaving much closer to a 1990s perspective whereby the party attempts to raise its own profile through agitprop, while operating fronts on a more ad-hoc and less permanent basis. This, by the way, is implicit much more than it’s theorised. Perhaps it will become more explicit as the debate rumbles on.

As I say, there’s no obvious right and wrong side in this. John and Lindsey had things their way for the best part of a decade, and to give them their due, they had the imagination to push outwards. (They also assembled a very talented team around them to give initiatives like Stop The War an impact previous campaigns hadn’t had. Where are those people now, I wonder?) They were much more open than previous leaderships in building links with the rest of the left. However, they also racked up a tremendous record of buggering up those relationships they had built and leaving a lasting legacy of bitterness behind them. It says something when Martin Smith, of all people, has to present himself as the smiling non-sectarian face of the SWP and try to rebuild those bridges they had burned.

From a Reesite perspective, the current CC must seem dreadfully insular, conservative and lacking in ambition. And such a critique could easily attract people who aren’t natural Rees groupies. On the other hand, many members must see the current regime of Democratic Martinism as quite a relief – certainly, spirits seem to be a bit higher these days. A steady-as-she-goes approach of routine party-building, broader initiatives on a more ad-hoc basis and professionalising some basic activities that had fallen into disarray – these things have an obvious attraction to party cadre whose heads have been left spinning from the party throwing all its energy into John and Lindsey’s various punts, year after year.

We also have the outworkings of the Democracy Commission, which I’m cautiously optimistic about. My instinct remains that a democratic revolution led by Martin Smith, Chris Harman and Alex Callinicos is almost by definition going to be a self-limiting revolution. But at least they have been willing to recognise there was a problem. As Molyneux says, neither Rees nor German, in their whole time as party leaders, expressed any sentiment that party democracy was less than perfect. They do now, but only by way of adopting the Jools Holland Fallacy. Viewers of Later will be aware of Jools’ theory that there is no piece of music that can’t be improved by the addition of some boogie-woogie piano. The counterpart of this is the theory that there’s no revolutionary leadership that can’t be improved by the addition of John Rees. I find both theories equally unappealing.

It may be that we’re just seeing John and Lindsey embarking on a path to political self-destruction, for which they would only have themselves to blame. But if they are intent on destroying themselves, let them do it themselves. Any short-circuiting of the discussion by administrative measures would cast the new friendly regime in a deeply unflattering light. To return to where we started, it’s a bit like the Personal Ordinariate. Whether the Anglican defectors number in the dozens or the thousands is probably less important than how much sensitivity the iniative is handled with. The Orthodox Churches will be watching keenly, as will traditionalist Lutherans in Germany and Scandinavia. Likewise, one hopes that Martin realises that there’s a tension between putting on a smiling face externally and continuing with the old head-on-a-stick politics internally. If he’s forgotten, it won’t hurt to remind him.

177 Comments

Two poor saps fight for world’s most thankless job

October 31, 2009 at 1:45 am (Norn Iron, SDLP)

Schopenhauer

It beats me why anyone would want to be leader of the South Down and Londonderry Party. And yet, incredibly, two people do want it, with both social development minister Margaret Ritchie (South Down) and incumbent deputy leader Alasdair McDonnell (South Belfast) now having declared themselves. What’s even odder, as Brian Feeney points out in a pithy analysis, is that the SDLP has been in existence since 1970 and this is the first time it’s ever had a contested leadership election. Gerry Fitt was leader at the foundation (had anyone chosen to challenge him, they would have soon discovered that Gerry was a dab hand at mobilising the graveyard vote); John Hume was proclaimed leader by acclamation, as was Mark Durkan.

Indeed, the party wouldn’t be having an election now if Alasdair McDonnell had his way. He’s publicly called for Margaret Ritchie to withdraw from the leadership race and form a “dream ticket” as his deputy. She won’t, of course, but it just goes to show that there’s nothing more elitist than Humespeak.

Brian remarks:

It’s not exactly a glittering field. In political parlance, neither is ‘a big beast’.

Well, we know Brian has a rather sour attitude towards his former party colleagues, but he does at least know them well. And what’s at stake for the party?

The party has been bleeding votes for a decade, a loss which became a haemorrhage in 2004 when the party dropped 100,000 votes in the European election.

Next year’s general election is another critical test. The SDLP must hold its three Westminster seats.

The immediate task for a new leader is therefore clear: to restore organisation and morale and stem the flow of votes.

In short, it’s a task that makes Gordon Brown look like he was born under a lucky star. The major talking point about the SDLP in recent years has been whether or not it would expire before the Unionist Party did. Look, for example, at the results from the 2007 Stormont election. The SDLP’s first preference vote was below one quota in Fermanagh/South Tyrone, East Derry, North Antrim, South Antrim, Upper Bann, North Belfast and West Belfast – although it retained seats in all these constituencies, these MLAs had to be elected in the later counts, largely via the transfer of PSF surpluses. In West Tyrone the party actually cobbled together slightly more than a quota, but lost its seat due to a lunatic strategy of running three candidates. The SDLP has very few surefire winners even in a Stormont PR poll, never mind for Westminster.

Mark you, even though the SDLP has no chance of increasing its three-seat haul, it does have some advantages. Mark Durkan is justly popular in Derry and, while Martina Anderson will give him a run for his money, it would be a huge shock if he failed to win there. In South Down, despite Eddie McGrady’s advancing years, he does have an incumbency advantage and can’t have been harmed by Caitríona Ruane’s travails as education minister. South Belfast, of course, is a hugely unpredictable three-way marginal. It will be a close-run thing.

So what do the candidates for the party leadership have to offer? Here’s Brian:

Organisation and finance are areas regarded as Alasdair McDonnell’s forte. A successful businessman himself, he is also a formidable motivator, but a polarising figure in the SDLP.

He and Mark Durkan did not gel as leader and deputy leader. McDonnell was not allowed a free hand in organising as he had hoped and allowed his frustration to show.

The good doctor can be ruthless and forceful and does not suffer fools. For some in the party his elevation to deputy leader was a shock and the same people now fear for their future if he were to become leader.

Interestingly enough, he’s less popular with those who’ve have close experience of him than with those who know him as a competent media performer. Nobody doubts the man’s ambition, but along the way he’s seriously pissed off so many party colleagues as to put a question mark over his electability within the party. Note also Durkan’s resignation statement drawing attention to the issue of double jobbing, something that could very easily be interpreted as a dig at Alasdair. Lucky for him that it’s a delegate conference and not the Assembly party that decides the contest.

You could see some of McDonnell’s opponents lined up behind Margaret Ritchie as she declared her candidature.

One is Carmel Hanna, MLA from McDonnell’s own South Belfast constituency. Another is Alex Attwood from West Belfast.

I like Carmel Hanna, but her influence is limited by Alasdair’s iron grip on the South Belfast SDLP. And wee Alex’s record as an electoral strategist surely counts against him.

For many people in the party Margaret Ritchie is the ‘Stop McDonnell’ candidate. For every member who believes McDonnell is exactly what is needed to shake the party up, blow fresh air through it, there’s a member who would be horrified if he became leader, fearing that he’s too brusque, volatile and unpredictable. It looks like a tight race which could turn pointed.

And it would be none the worse for all that. A cobbling together of a “dream ticket” that would paper over the very real differences in the party would arguably be far more damaging in the long run than a big barney that would at least get those issues out in the open. You can’t plot a strategy if you’re not going to have an argument about strategy.

Margaret Ritchie hopes to garner support among the party’s strongest areas: South Down and Foyle where the biggest branches are. Ritchie’s popularity in the SDLP has soared after her dogged stance against money potentially going to fund groups connected to loyalist paramilitaries. Being attacked by Peter Robinson didn’t do her any harm either. However, while Alasdair McDonnell could never be criticised for lack of ambition and drive, Margaret Ritchie has always been content to remain in the shadow of Eddie McGrady, working for decades in his constituency office and unhesitatingly accepting his decision to stand again for Westminster, both in 2005 and again next year at the age of 75.

She is the safe, establishment candidate. She will rock no boats. She threatens no one in the SDLP.

Indeed not, if she can’t suggest gently to Eddie McGrady that he might like to consider retirement.

The same can’t be said for McDonnell who believes some people in the SDLP need threatened. He’s a firm believer that in political parties hot air rises and dead wood floats and that, if there isn’t change, the SDLP will submerge under the weight of that dead wood.

I’m not sure about this theory of regeneration through hot air, but Alasdair is surely the man to test it out.

Where will he get his support if Ritchie holds on to the big branches?

First, his own constituency. Although his running mate, Carmel Hanna, supports Ritchie, McDonnell still rules the roost there. Other parts of Belfast are not important because there are no SDLP members in large swathes of the city.

This is true, as Brian well knows. In West Belfast, for instance, there is still a substantial SDLP vote, but the party probably has fewer paid-up members in the constituency than the Workers Party. One can extend this to many of the rural areas, where local fiefs can get elected by name recognition without needing branches. This doesn’t necessarily make for bad representation – someone like Dominic Bradley, for instance, is a decent and useful public representative – but there’s an obvious problem for the longer term in that many of the fiefs are getting a bit long in the tooth. As Brian points out:

The technicalities of the election aside, the new leader faces serious problems, the first of which is the average age of party members and elected representatives. The SDLP seems to have frozen about 25 years ago, around the time of the Anglo-Irish Agreement.

Incredibly, Mark Durkan – the outgoing leader at 49 – is their youngest MLA. Margaret Ritchie is 51 and Alasdair McDonnell 60.

Compare David Cameron (43) or Brian Cowen (49). There’s something wrong with a party whose current leader is its youngest MLA.

There are no visible young figures in the party. Yes, they do have a few young councillors, but none has developed a political profile. None is an obvious candidate for stardom.

It’s a paradox, isn’t it? Gerry Adams is a good dozen years older than Durkan, and most of his kitchen cabinet are about the same age as Gerry, but he still looks like he leads a more youthful organisation. Does the SDLP have people who are analogous to Conor Murphy or Michelle Gildernew or John O’Dowd? If so, they’re well hidden.

Finally, policy. What does the SDLP want now that the Good Friday Agreement has been achieved?

They exude an attitude of entitlement and bitterness, forgetting that voters don’t care about past achievements.

The leading figures spend their time attacking Sinn Fein’s policies. When John Hume was leader everyone knew what the SDLP wanted. They were sick hearing him repeating it. What does the new SDLP leader want? Can either McDonnell or Ritchie enunciate a separate identity for the SDLP, look to the future, carve out a path to follow that will not only enthuse members but attract new young recruits?

And this theme of entitlement and bitterness rings quite true. Alex Attwood has often seemed bemused at why voters don’t turn out in droves to thank the SDLP for having pioneered the peace process. Moreover, you can’t base a popular appeal on “we hate the Provos”, as the Workers Party discovered – although to be fair, the WP always had some positive ideas too. You need something that you actually stand for.

And the lack of actual policy is striking, although par for the course in the north. The Phoenix was saying the other week that, where Durkan was a Labour man, McDonnell was essentially a Fianna Fáiler. If this is so, it’s a matter of milieu, as Alasdair went to UCD and is mates with lots of FFers, while Mark worked closely with John Hume and so would have had exposure to the European social democrats. None of this has filtered through into any clear ideological division.

This, ultimately, is what’s going to be the new leader’s task – to lay out what the SDLP is for in the New Dispensation. If the winner can’t do that, it may well be that, as Brian speculates, the party’s first leadership election could be its last. Often with a Brian Feeney article on the SDLP, there seems to be an undertone of “Why didn’t those bozos make me the leader?” Today, Brian may feel that he had a lucky escape.

10 Comments

The Daily Tottygraph goes to university

October 30, 2009 at 2:18 am (Education, Journalism)

Lucy_Pinder_157

The British press do like their hardy perennials, don’t they? Every year when the A-level results come out, the Daily Telegraph has a big photo feature on the front page. And every year, Private Eye runs a spoof item where the Telegraph reports the shocking news that attractive young blondes are doing well in their exams. While the Eye’s humour is a bit frayed at the edges these days, that one works because of its deadly accuracy.

Well, the season for A-level results is long past, and Liz Hurley seems to have been keeping a low profile of late. But a picture editor’s work is never done, nor is that of the jobbing journalist whose job it is to write up a flimsy story as an excuse to run said pictures. For instance, the reason why the Daily Mail has more traffic on its website than any other British newspaper is its boundless enthusiasm for photos of celebutante Kim Kardashian, who is virtually unknown in Britain but attracts loads of online traffic from the States. The right sort of image is a godsend for generating traffic – Chris knows that, and so do I.

Presumably, this is why the Telegraph has chosen to leave the sixth-formers behind for the moment, having made the startling discovery that there are also lots of fruity young women at university. The tag for this story is the setting up at Cambridge University of The Tab, a web-based tabloid that’s supposed to provide a populist counterpoint to the established student papers. And indeed, it seems to have a healthy hit rate, not least due to its willingness to flash the flesh:

But a section where students pose in their underwear has caused controversy and led to calls for the scantily clad students to be covered up.

The Cambridge student union women’s officer, Natalie Szarek, said that they should be removed because they “reproduce and reinforce harmful attitudes towards women”.

Miss Szarek complained that “semi-naked women in provocative positions are being shoved in freshers’ faces”, adding: “We can do better as a university”.

Hmm. Well, at least Ms Szarek is educated enough not to claim that saucy photos are literally being shoved in people’s faces. Being a webzine, you would have to actually look it up on t’internet to see it. From my brief perusal, it doesn’t look horrendous – mostly campus news, film and gig reviews, a bit of humour, and guides to which pubs to go to in Cambridge. Normal student fare, then. These two or three features with mildly suggestive pictures are a fairly small proportion of the content – though no doubt they account for a lot of the traffic, we’re not talking Nuts here. And I didn’t spot anything nearly as offensive as what used to appear in PTQ.

Of course, the Telegraph doesn’t miss the opportunity to paint things as much saucier than they really are:

Meanwhile one of the student models, who posed on a punt in a small pink bikini and high heels, requested her photos removed from the site.

Becky Adams was said to have been “embarrassed” by the fall out of appearing in the tabloid and said she had only done it “as a favour for a friend”.

Female student does something for a laugh, regrets it later. It’s about as newsworthy as male students being a bit tasteless and vaguely sexist.

Until yesterday a picture of her accompanied an article headlined “Bra-vo” – a piece about a study which found that Cambridge women have on average the ninth largest bra sizes in the UK.

This was one of those self-serving commercial surveys, from Debenhams in this case. It was all over the Daily Mail a couple of weeks ago, so it’s not as if this was particularly outrageous.

“There’s a huge amount of intellectual snobbery around, mainly from those who haven’t read the site,” [Tab co-founder Taymoor Atighetchi] said.

“We do not think what we are doing is sexist. It was always the intention to have a debate about these issues. The website is a tongue-in-cheek version of the tabloid newspaper – we are not just emulating it.”

At this point, Taymoor sort of loses my sympathy. All he had to do was say it was a tongue-in-cheek tabloid format, and leave it there. All this “we want to stimulate a debate on these issues” business is just a pseudo-intellectual equivalent of the Daily Telegraph saying “This is outrageous! And here are the pics to prove it!” One recalls the old Russ Meyer movie poster showing one of the great man’s top-heavy starlets in profile, with the tagline “Stacked with redeeming social significance”. But, while Meyer may have been a sexist reprobate, at least he was funny.

The female photographer who took the “Totty” photos also defended the website and said that six senior women staff are all proud to work for The Tab”.

“As a female who works on the Tab editorial team and a feminist, I’m delighted that so much debate has been generated over the Tab Totty section,” she said. “The main aim of The Tab was always to stimulate debate, and I feel we have truly succeeded when it comes to the issue of Page Three modelling.”

Ditto. We’re not talking here about a sociological treatise on the subject of young women in their skivvies, with necessary illustrations. We’re talking about something that is basically light-hearted, tabloid and populist – and justifiable in its own terms, however little it may appeal to the sort of people it isn’t aimed at. But then, intellectuals doing tabloid is a path fraught with dangers. Back in the 1980s, Guardian journalists produced a one-off version of a Sun-type tabloid and handed it out to bemused estate dwellers. It didn’t work, largely because the Graun journos treated the product as basically a comic – whereas Sun journalists, or indeed staff on comics, take their product very seriously indeed. The Sun isn’t a dumbed-down Guardian with shorter sentences, tits and bingo; it’s a thing in itself. Not to my taste, but lots of people like it.

The correct argument is not that this student silliness is some earnest project to get people talking about images of women. The correct argument is that this is just a bit of throwaway fun, and while you may or may not like this sort of image, there are many more concrete problems young women – even those at Cambridge – have to deal with.

Featured model Heidi says in her Tab piece:

In recent debates within the university, the impression generated by the CUSU Women’s Council and others is that prior to a few girls getting their kit off, the university was a sexism-free zone. Whilst totally misleading, this nonetheless demonstrates precisely a pernicious concealment of sexist attitudes that are in evidence throughout the university. There is a 21% wage inequality between male and female academics; the first female head porter was appointed in the institution’s 800th year; women’s boxing and rugby do not earn the same full blue status granted to their male counterparts.

There is a culture of sexism in Cambridge that needs addressing. That it took photos of girls in underwear to make people think so is bizarre; that the photos have become a sole target for all that is degrading and objectifying to the university’s women is just ridiculous. CUSU’s recent focus is totally misdirected, and fails to deal with far more worrying, entrenched gender problems. To equate ‘smashing sexism’ merely with stigmatizing nudity completely skews any argument about latent gender inequality in Cambridge…

Quite so, and this is why I don’t have much patience for that brand of feminism that’s mainly centred around speech codes. It’s not that I don’t think there’s an argument to had around images or language and how they reflect power in society, but we’re talking about the difference between image and actuality. See also, Andrew Pierce for a reflection on the kind of protection the gay community needs – that is, protection from the rise in homophobic assaults, not some half-baked legislative action to prevent ignorant glipes like Chris Moyles or Jan Moir from hurting their feelings.

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Reggie and his malcontents

October 28, 2009 at 12:48 am (Unionism)

dave-reg

So, the Official Unionist conference was on at the weekend, and I know readers will be agog to hear about it. This was the second party conference since the Forza Nuova lash-up with the Tories was agreed, and of course the big initiative was at the centre of things. Last year, Rankin’ Dave Cameron himself turned up; this year’s guest speaker was William Jefferson Hague, which might seem like a bit of a come-down, but then this is a party that’s used to the devastating charisma of Michael McGimpsey.

There’s no doubt about it, the UUs are in better spirits than they’ve been for some time. There are those who have doubts about the UCUNF boondoggle – and we’ll get onto some of those momentarily – but at least pan-UK unionism is an idea, and that’s not insignificant for a party that has lacked any vaguely coherent ideas for a very long time. Sir Reggie’s reorganisation, shifting power from the constituencies to the centre, makes them look more like an actual party and not quite so much like a disorganised rabble. The Tory connection brings some material resources, and a connection to what looks like a winning team on its way to government. Perhaps most importantly, there’s Jim Nicholson’s achievement in outpolling the DUP at the European election. Well, I say Jim’s achievement; his main achievement was to hold his own while Jim Allister took the DUP to the cleaners, but then the Unionist Party can go a long way on schadenfreude at the DUP’s travails.

There’s also the possibility that the Prodiban assault on the DUP may mean them picking up a couple of Westminster seats next year, even if they don’t significantly increase their vote. South Antrim could be interesting – Singing Willie has never been popular there, not least because of his unwillingness to leave Magherafelt and actually set foot in South Antrim. Grumpy Gregory is not totally secure in East Derry. And a face-off in Upper Bann between gospel-singing DUP incumbent David Simpson, and Freddie Mercury impersonator Flash Harry for the Official Unionists, could be better than X Factor.

Not that Reggie is getting things all his own way. The UUs’ Labour-oriented personalities are still not very gruntled at all this palling around with Cameron – the party’s sole MP, Lady Sylvia Hermon, didn’t bother turning up for the second year in a row, while veteran Belfast councillor Fred Cobain did attend, but cleared off halfway through to go to the Crusaders match. And following the conference, there’s been yet another broadside from the Unionist Party’s socialist wing (essentially Roy Garland and Chris McGimpsey). Their open letter is reproduced in full over on Slugger, but here are the highlights.

Throughout its history the UUP has been a party which had the foresight and the commitment to fend off Irish independence, to form the Government of Northern Ireland, and to keep Northern Ireland running over half a century, including the challenging period of the Second World War. Today it appears that the UUP does not have the vision to see across to the far side of the Albertbridge Road.

Ooo.

The new arrangement is a great deal for the Conservatives.

They tried and failed to gain support here over a decade ago. In the 1992 General Election they received 5.7% of the popular vote. Their last outing was in the 1993 Local Government Elections when 9437 brave souls gave the Conservatives their First Preference Votes.

Under this new dispensation the UUP leadership are offering the Tories a Northern Ireland wide organisation, tens of thousands of loyal voters, around 150 councillors, over 20 MLAs and two seats at the Executive table at Stormont.

Bearing in mind the chronic feebleness of the Ulster Tories, there’s something to that, if you look at things on the Norn Iron rather than UK scale. Reggie would no doubt urge sceptics to look at the big picture. And, while Cameron and Hague are dispositional unionists, there’s a pragmatic argument for acquiring a regional affiliate at little cost. I also suspect Cameron is interested in the Unionists not merely for their own sake, but also in terms of what might happen in Scotland.

What does our Party receive in return? At one Executive Committee meeting we were assured that we would have two seats at the Cabinet table in any new Tory administration.

Assuming Cameron follows through on this, I would hazard a guess that David Trimble would be a safe bet for one of those. For the other, it depends whether the Unionists can elect any MPs. For all we know, this arrangement could mean Flash Harry sitting in the Cabinet. Or, if worst comes to worst, there’s always Jim Molyneaux, who I’m sure would be willing to serve despite being 175 years old.

The UUP had been members of the European Peoples’ Party for all of Jim Nicholson’s European career.

It was a grouping he was happy with and it had treated him and the UUP well – making him one of its three Quaestors. However, David Cameron did not favour the EPP and because Jim had to take the Tory whip he had to leave and join another more right wing group replete with some fairly dodgy eastern European MEPs.

There’ll be no taking the march past of the Latvian SS veterans for Reggie, then.

In addition,we are now approaching a General Election wherein our candidates have to be jointly selected by the handful of Northern Ireland Tories. Some constituencies have been told that they must select Tories irrespective of the wishes of the local activists. Others have been told to delay selection meetings until secret discussions have been undertaken with London. Never in the history of the UUP have we submitted to another party having the final say as to who we should run for election.

Considering the relative weight of the two parties, it is a bit of a scud, right enough.

Historically the Ulster Unionist Party was a uniting force within the pro-British community. Irrespective of your national politics you could be an Ulster Unionist. Left and Right could sit together in the same branch. Even when our MPs took the Tory whip the party remained a uniting force within Ulster.

That’s right, historically it was a catch-all party for Prods. The weakness of this argument, of course, is that since its eclipse by the DUP it can’t hope to regain its status as a catch-all party, and must find some distinctive identity beyond “We’re the unionist party that isn’t the DUP.” Reggie understands the question – whether he has the right answer is another matter.

Will those working class constituencies which have always returned Ulster Unionists still do so once it becomes clear that the Ulster Unionists have become little more than the eccentric old maiden aunt who lives in David Cameron’s house but to whom no one pays a blind bit of notice.

Ouch! Actually, that reference to the working class raises a whole other train of thought about the sociology of unionism, but that would take us so far afield it’ll have to wait for another post.

Perhaps you, Sir Reg, and the rest of the leadership should remember the advice given to Edward Carson when he followed a similar road. “Be careful Edward, the Tories have never adopted a cause yet but they have betrayed it in the end.”

You don’t have to go as far back as Carson. You only have to ask which party was in government at Westminster in 1972 when Stormont was prorogued. David Cameron may be a dispositional unionist, but are we to believe that, if Washington pressures him to give some concession to Gerry, he’s going to jeopardise his relationship with the Americans for the sake of Reg Empey’s feelings? Garland has been especially insistent on this point, arguing that the Unionists simply can’t rely on the Tories to stand up for Norn Iron – the Unionists would have to do the standing up for themselves.

But then again, these malcontents are yesterday’s men to some extent, of an older generation, representing a tradition of Labour Unionism that’s in danger of extinction. They don’t have an alternative vehicle to hand; they have nowhere else to go but home, and, whatever their ability to stir the pot in their associations, Reggie can probably afford to ignore them.

What he can’t afford to ignore for much longer is the Sylvia problem in North Down. The incumbent MP has made it clear that she won’t stand on a Tory ticket under any circumstances. The North Down Tories have selected the affable but lightweight Ian Parsley, despite him having been in the Alliance Party only five minutes ago. The Unionist Association hasn’t selected a candidate. It’s a tricky little quandary for Reggie. Complicating things is North Down’s long-established preference for quirky independent politics, and in particular UU defectors – first the late Jim Kilfedder, then Bob “Cream Bun” McCartney. Lady Sylvia is so popular with the housewives of North Down as to be virtually bulletproof, with or without her party. And a party in the fragile condition of the Unionists will have to think very carefully about whether it wants to dispense with one of its most capable representatives, when it doesn’t even have a credible replacement lined up.

I’ve said before that the Tories would find the Unionists more trouble than they were worth. When Cameron went in for his rhetorical flourish about the Tories fighting every constituency in the UK, did he have any idea what he was letting himself in for?

7 Comments

The long dark afternoon of Cool FM

October 26, 2009 at 10:34 pm (Jesus That's Awful!, Music, Wireless)

cheryl

I’d like to thank Phil for this idea, which IIRC he raised in some other comments box many moons ago. Many readers will be aware that Graham Linehan, of Father Ted fame, runs a blog entitled “Why, That’s Delightful!”. Graham, I’m sad to say, has a sunnier disposition than me. Not that I don’t get where he’s coming from – some mornings I open the Irish News, see Richard O’Rawe nailing Gerry’s ass to the canvas, and exclaim to myself, “Why, that’s delightful!” But oftentimes my reaction is just a tad more jaundiced. Therefore this blog is launching an occasional feature entitled “Jesus, That’s Awful!”

Let us begin with a double header. Those of you who don’t reside in the greater Belfast area will probably not be familiar with Cool FM. But you will, I trust, know that there’s such a thing as commercial radio and have some idea of what it’s like. I have no reason to suspect that Cool FM is anything more significant than the local version of a broader phenomenon. But that doesn’t stop me having the same sort of animus towards Cool FM as a proud gardener would have towards a cat that insists on using her flower beds as a latrine. It may be the nature of the beast, but it’s no less of an irritation.

The irritation comes from what are just common features of the genre, that come to grate intensely with prolonged exposure. The relentless chirpiness of the DJs – and I’ve long thought Sonya Mac sounded far too pleased with herself for somebody who comes from Ballygowan – you could take in small doses. It’s the permanent chirpiness that gets up your goat. Likewise with the ads – a cheery jingle for Sam’s Yer Man has lost something of its charm by the four thousandth listen.

But no, it’s the records that end up doing your nut. If you’ve ever thought that the Radio 1 daytime schedule had an absurdly restrictive playlist, the commercial pop sector makes Scott Mills sound like John Peel. There is a very small and very rigidly followed playlist, basically consisting of the big sellers of the moment, plus the most heavily promoted pre-releases. Moreover, the list seems to change at a glacial pace. And even in the classic requests slot, there’s a distinct element of “If it’s half past twelve, it must be ‘Livin’ On A Prayer’.” Even if I liked the records, I’d get browned off sooner rather than later.

It may be objected that this is a popular formula, which is true. Every second radio you pass is playing Cool. It may further be objected that I’m not the target audience, which is also true. But until a station is launched where agreeably morose DJs play Johnny Kidd and the Pirates, you have to take your wireless programming where you can get it.

Which leads me to the pachyderm monstrosity of The X Factor. I’m not going to discuss the programme for the moment, but, as Paul remarks, it’s a remarkably efficient vehicle for total domination of the charts. And, in commercial radio, charts mean airtime. In this case we’re discussing Cheryl Cole’s “Fight For This Love”, which has made number one this week, being the year’s fastest-selling single, but this week’s run at the charts follows a good couple of weeks of saturation airplay. On Cool FM, it appears to be being played every hour on the hour, although my mind is probably exaggerating slightly. Only slightly, though.

I don’t like this record very much. And I like it less by the day. To begin with, this solo debut from the fashion icon, reality TV star and fourth best singer in Girls Aloud was just in-one-ear-out-the-other forgettable. A thin vocal, a lyric composed entirely from relationship manual clichés, and what sounds like a Bon-Tempi backing track. Compared to Girls Aloud’s best material – that mix of stripy hair, elaborate dance routines, pounding beats, nonsensical lyrics and an overwhelming sense of fun – it’s a bit of a let down.

But then you have to reckon with the airplay factor. What at first was forgettable, after the twentieth listen is mildly annoying. After the fortieth listen it progresses from the mildly annoying to a Black Eyed Peas level of annoying. At present, I am seriously wondering whether this was the stuff they used to drive Michael Caine mad in The Ipcress File. And at the current rate of sales, it’s likely to stay on the playlist for months on end.

At which point you say frig this for a game of soldiers, stick the old earphones in and treat yourself to some sounds that you actually like. And if that smacks a little of fogeyism, well, at least you’re not being driven demented by Cheryl Cole any more.

9 Comments

St Alfonzo’s pancake breakfast

October 26, 2009 at 2:20 am (That Old Time Religion)

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If there’s one thing I find fascinating about Pope Benny, it’s not his theology – although his writings are impressively crunchy, and his book on Jesus in particular is well worth your time – but how he’s developed his own political style since taking over as Pontifex Maximus. JP2’s rock ‘n’ roll papacy was always going to be a hard act to follow, and not a great deal was expected of Benedict, partly because of his natural reserve and partly because he’d spent so long holed up at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith acting as JP2’s theological enforcer. Those of us who take an interest in these things may have noticed that, while Wojtyła was rooted in a very Polish mystical tradition – which reminds us that Catholic Poles are not as far removed from Orthodox Russians as they might like to think – Ratzinger’s background was firmly in the German rationalist school. But like I say, that’s a matter for theology aficionados.

Over the last few years, though, we’ve got a better idea of Benny as a political operator. This doesn’t always come through in media coverage – especially in Britain, where Catholicism usually only features in the news in relation to abortion, an issue that’s infested by Catholics pretending not to be Catholics (the ProLife Alliance) and non-Catholics pretending to be Catholics (‘Catholics for Choice’). Church politics as such doesn’t get much intelligent coverage, which is perhaps why Benny’s establishing himself as a reformer has gone largely unremarked.

More important, though, is a conceptual fallacy whereby most commentators equate reformism with liberal reformism. It seems impossible to grasp that one can be theologically orthodox – and if you aren’t theologically orthodox, you won’t get to be Pope in the first place – and still be a reformist. In fact, Benedict has racked up quite an impressive track record of cracking down on malfeasances in the Church although, in his characteristic style, he isn’t very ostentatious about it.

Take a look for a moment at this atrocity:

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Now, you will probably be saying to yourself, “What are those guys doing waving around a naan bread on a giant pair of BBQ tongs?” This is a Corpus Christi procession in the Austrian city of Linz, and is supposed to be the bit where the Host is paraded on a monstrance. In fact, it isn’t a naan but a focaccia, although I’m willing to bet focaccia is still an illicit substance. What were they thinking? “Hmm, we’ll just get some bread-type stuff and stick it on the end of these tongs – it’ll do just as well…” That’s the sort of muddled thinking one would expect from the C of E, but more of them later.

Benedict, of course, is a great enthusiast for raising the overall liturgical standard – although in the German-speaking lands he may have his work cut out – and apparently the Austrian bishops’ ears were burning after the Focaccia Incident became known. But the disciplinarian aspect goes well beyond slapping down instances of liturgical silliness. Luke Coppen lists quite a number of significant moves, in an article worth quoting at length:

Consider the following incidents, most of which have been widely reported but are rarely linked together:

The Maciel affair: In May 2006 Pope Benedict took the highly unusual step of ordering one of the world’s best-known priests to retire to a life of prayer and penance. His decision followed a Vatican investigation into allegations that Fr Marcial Maciel, founder of the Legion of Christ and the Regnum Christi movement, was a sexual abuser who had fathered at least one child.

Investigating America’s seminaries: Not long after his election Benedict XVI oversaw an apostolic visitation of seminaries in the United States. The investigation was inspired by the clerical sexual abuse crisis of 2002 and covered all schools of theology as well as college-level seminaries, houses of formation, and academic institutions that form future priests.

Scrutinising American female religious orders: The Pope has also ordered a wide-ranging investigation of American women religious. The apostolic visitation of institutes of women religious in the United States, which is currently underway, covers approximately 400 apostolic religious institutes of women and approximately 59,000 women religious. It is likely to lead to a shake-up of American female religious life.

Deposing the leader of an African Church: Earlier this month Pope Benedict accepted the resignation of Archbishop Paulin Pomodimo of Bangui, the most senior Catholic cleric in the Central African Republic (CAR). The resignation followed a visit to the CAR by a papal emissary, Archbishop Robert Sarah, secretary of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, in March. It is widely thought that the Pope requested the archbishop’s resignation because he tolerated priests keeping mistresses.

Calling for a thorough accounting of abuse in Ireland: Also this month Pope Benedict called for a profound examination of the state of the Irish Church following a damning report into “endemic” abuse in schools run by religious orders.

Crisis talks with the Austrian bishops: And this week Pope Benedict held an emergency meeting with the leaders of the Austrian Church. The gathering followed the appointment and subsequent resignation of Gerhard Wagner as auxiliary Bishop of Linz and reports that priests in senior positions in the diocese live with mistresses. The Pope reminded the bishops of “the urgency of going deeper in the faith and the integral fidelity to the Second Vatican Council and the post-conciliar magisterium of the Church” – a coded message that the Austrian Church is in serious need of reform.

These events together show the determination with which Pope Benedict is confronting the gravest scandals in the Church today. They have all had considerable publicity, but nevertheless have not created the perception that Benedict XVI is a bold reformist pope.

So why, despite the accumulating evidence, is Pope Benedict not regarded as a reformer intent on ridding the Church of wrong-doing?

Some suggest it’s because in mass media terms a “reformist pope” can only mean a pontiff who takes a progressive stance on hot-button issues such as priestly celibacy, contraception and women priests. They argue that the kind of reforms Pope Benedict is pursuing – enforcing celibacy, cracking down on liturgical abuses and investigating radically progressive American nuns – simply don’t fit the existing media stereotype.

There is some truth in that. But there are other factors at work:

1) The geographically disparate nature of the reforms makes it difficult for observers to connect them together;

2) Many of the investigations are carried out in strict secrecy with severe ecclesial penalties for anyone who breaches confidentiality. This means that neither media nor the wider Catholic public ever know precisely what is going on.

3) Pope Benedict rarely mentions the investigations in public and, if he does, speaks in coded language that only those already in the know will understand (see, for example, his ad limina address to the bishops of the CAR where he discusses the need for reform of the priesthood).

I think Luke makes a persuasive case there. To reiterate, anyone expecting a liberal Pope endorsing the nostrums of the Guardian or Channel 4 News is likely to be waiting a very long time, but it’s well within the abilities of a traditionalist Pope to shake things up, root out abuses and tighten standards all round.

But the big news of the moment is, of course, this new Apostolic Constitution that’s aimed at disaffected Anglicans. I’m still not sure what to make of this, whether it’s an utterly brilliant manoeuvre or it will turn out to be completely pointless. But the thrust of the matter is the establishment of a Personal Ordinariate under which umbrella Anglicans will be able to accept the authority of Rome whilst maintaining their established practices. This has already been given a trial run on a smallish scale in the United States, where there are quite a few traditional Anglicans who are deeply pissed off at the heretical modernist leadership of the Episcopal Church USA and have despaired of trying to coexist within the same organisation. What the Personal Ordinariate amounts to is something that was considered by the late Cardinal Newman, the establishment of an English Uniate Church, equivalent to the various Byzantine-rite formations within the RCC, or indeed the Lebanese Maronites. (Although previous pontiffs may well have thought the Maronites more trouble than they were worth, the same way English Tories came to look on the Ulster Unionists.)

It’s at times like this that I turn to Damian Thompson for some pithy observations. I have my worries about young Damo, not least his recent foray into Mussolini territory, but he knows his religious onions and is particularly good on the C of E. Quoth Damo:

The truth is that Rome has given up on the Anglican Communion. With one announcement, the Pope has given conservative Anglicans a protected route to union with Rome – and promised that, even once they are members of the Catholic Church, they will be offered a permanent structure that allows them to retain an Anglican ethos…

The Vatican would not use the phrase, but this is very close to the setting up of a “Church within a Church”. Yet that is not as unusual as it might seem: Eastern-rite Catholics have their own liturgy and church structures, and in America a small number of ex-Anglicans use service books that borrow from the Book of Common Prayer.

In point of fact, Benedict is offering traditionalist Anglicans more than the Canterbury communion has felt able to do. Within the C of E, the usual procedure has been to spend years debating these issues in General Synod and then to come out at the last moment with some convoluted proposal for a “third province” or “flying bishops” or suchlike. Now, there’s a firm offer from Rome about a long-term haven. What’s also interesting is the diplomacy surrounding this. There have been noises from the C of E about how poor old Rowan wasn’t told until the last moment, and this is a terrible snub. There have also, not coincidentally been critical noises from what one might term the Cormac camp within the English Catholic hierarchy. Actually, reports from Rome stress the high regard Benedict has for Rowan – I suspect the secrecy had at least as much to do with keeping the Bishops’ Conference out of the loop. Benedict will be aware that possibilities for a move of this type in the early 1990s failed thanks to the ecumenists in the BC; he will also be aware that for this gambit to work, the defectors would have to be offered something outwith the authority of the BC. Hats off to our modern Machiavelli.

And yet, and yet. These Anglo-Catholics can be awkward customers. Of those who’ve converted in dribs and drabs over the last wheen of years, many have got a hell of a culture shock – expecting some romantic world of incense, Latin and purple robes, they quickly discovered the actually existing Catholic Church in England was full of guitar-strumming, jumper-wearing priests in concrete churches. Besides, if you’re all that attached to Anglican liturgical forms, there is an outlet that can do them for you wholesale, and it’s called the “Church of England”. I can well imagine some of these High Church AngCats reacting with horror on being told they would have to ditch the Roman Missal and use the Book of Common Prayer instead.

It’s also objected, and there’s some truth in this, that those who were most likely to convert have already done so. It is also the case that quite a few of the AngCats have come to enjoy toddling along to General Synod and getting angry at the modernists, and would miss all the rows. On the other hand, there was quite a warm (if guarded) reception from Forward In Faith, and perhaps some less likely suspects might be attracted.

The departure of a lot of traditionalists would at least ease the factional situation for Rowan, although the conservative evangelicals in the C of E aren’t going anywhere, and nor are the extreme modernist trendies. But, in the end, what other options are there for the Anglican traditionalist? The Canterbury communion looks less welcoming by the year; the small Continuity Anglican formations in various countries have failed to take off; and the Eastern Churches, who could have done long ago what Benedict has just done, have been sleeping on the job as per usual. Benny has, in effect, told the Anglican traditionalists that they have to piss or get off the pot. Now they have to make their choice.

By the way, this affair has piqued the interest of our old bugbear, Titus Oates of the National Secular Society. Titus writes:

Of course, in a strictly secularist sense, the NSS should not concern itself with the internal machinations of religious organisations. If the Pope wishes to stab the Archbishop of Canterbury in the back (in a wholly ecumenical sense, of course) then that’s nothing to do with us.

Titus then, of course, goes on to fulminate at length about something he’s just said he’s not concerned about.

But wait a minute. The state is involved in this. We have an Established Church, the head of which is also the head of the State. So when the Roman Rat plays such a comprehensively dirty trick on Rowan Williams, we all have to consider whether there are constitutional implications.

Well, there aren’t. The Established Church remains the Established Church, regardless of the comings or goings of its personnel. But that doesn’t deter our friend:

Since the Holy See is at once both the government of the Catholic Church and also of the State of the Vatican City, any bishops who sit in the House of Lords who decided to opt for Rome would owe allegiance to the Holy See, which, when wearing one of its hats, is a foreign government.

Ah, it’s the old dual loyalty canard. Titus, as we know, is deeply concerned about Catholics getting into Westminster, lest they start wearing cloaks and funny hats and plotting to blow up King James. He seems less keen to level the dual loyalty charge against Jewish parliamentarians, which is probably sensible.

In other words, because there’s an established church at this end and a church-state at the other, the constitutional implications could be enormous. If half of the Church of England is going to end up under the Vatican umbrella, then can it really remain “by law established”?

Look, this is really quite simple. Those Anglicans who opt for the Personal Ordinariate leave the communion of Canterbury and enter that of Rome. It doesn’t effect the Established Church at all on the constitutional level. If Titus is attempting to argue that Anglo-Catholics defecting to Rome will, by some mysterious osmosis, turn England into a Papist theocracy, I must confess that his logic is too subtle for me.

In his anxiety to keep the “Anglican Communion” intact, Rowan Williams abandoned his own humane, liberal instincts and threw in his lot with the worst elements of bigotry within his flock. They have now rewarded him by conniving with the “Holy Father” to pile on the humiliation.

Is this humane and liberal Rowan Williams the same Rowan Williams upon whose head Titus and his mates heap abuse on a regular basis? I believe it is.

The Catholic Church in Britain is dying on its feet. And rightly so. The Church of England is already on life support, but it continues to twitch.

I suspect some wishful thinking here, but go on…

Both institutions provide a playground for some of the most gruesome and horrible people you could ever wish to meet (particularly if you are a child).

There is, you know, a reason why Catholics feel a deep anger about abuses such as were detailed in the Ryan report. That is because of the breach of trust involved, and because the guilty parties acted in contravention of the ideals of the faith they were supposed to be representing. But Titus doesn’t understand, or care about, that anger. What is more, people who loudly proclaim that celibacy is perverse and sexual libertinism praiseworthy are not best placed to attack people who fail to abide by a vow of celibacy. And again, if Titus is really shocked at homosexual priests who have a liking for teenage boys, perhaps he should speak to his pals in OutRage! who want to lower the age of consent to fourteen, which at a stroke would decriminalise much of what he’s complaining about. Or is it only immoral when clergy do it?

They argue endlessly and violently over which bell to ring and which language to say their prayers in.

Evidently our friend hasn’t heard of the vernacular Mass.

They spend their lives bowing down to the bones of a dead girl and pretending that a biscuit is actual flesh and that wine is really (that is, literally) blood.

Nor does he understand the doctrine of transubstantiation, or what the veneration of saints is all about.

And yet, throughout history, the Vatican has managed to convince those in highest authority that it is entitled to unique and unquestioned respect. Politicians and diplomats bow down to these monsters and let them get away with murder (quite literally sometimes). Whatever corruption the Vatican is involved in (and it has been involved in every conceivable immorality in its time) no-one in high secular authority (the UN, for instance) dare point the finger and ask for an explanation.

Where does the UN come into this, pray tell?

Through forming alliances with some of the worst dictators and tyrants the world has ever seen, the Vatican has managed to gain for itself a small patch of land where no international law can intrude, where no inspections take place, where no questions have to be answered. And from that protected base it stretches its poisonous tentacles around the world.

Aha, now I get it. Evidently our Mr Angry has been reading the collected works of Dan Brown on his holidays. No UN inspections can take place in the Vatican, lest they discover that neutron bomb guarded by heavily armed Opus Dei monks, while Pope Benedict cackles maniacally and strokes a white cat.

We need to ensure that the bigots and reactionaries that infest those few acres in Rome do not get a grip on Britain.

Perhaps you could form an alliance on this issue with the DUP. Although Iris Robinson’s views on homosexuality might be too ripe for our friend.

I always thought the great thing about atheism was that it was about personal freedom and you didn’t need anyone to advocate for you. Perhaps that explains why I get wound up by evangelical atheists, and keep wondering why people like Titus don’t just get themselves a hobby. In any case, religious people may feel reassured that they aren’t the only ones who get doughheads representing them – militant secularist rationalists can be as moronic as anyone else.

Rud eile: I know some readers are dying to hear my take on what’s going on with the Swips. There may be something on this in due course, but for the meantime Red Maria has the scoop.

Rud eile fós: I don’t do Search of the Week as a regular feature any more, but I just want to give a shout out to the punter who came here googling “George Osborne in school uniform”. That’s an image that’ll take a while to shift…

28 Comments

The Lost Revolution: the Intercontinental

October 22, 2009 at 5:25 pm (History, Ireland, Republicanism)

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The story told in The Lost Revolution is often grim, but at points there’s a surprising amount of gritty humour, much of it showing through in the interviews. There’s one anecdote from near the start of the Troubles which, though it could have turned out very seriously at the time, had me almost falling off my chair in laughter. The context of this was that, after the split in the republican movement, both factions suspected that the other had left sleepers behind – which was almost certainly true – and in the febrile atmosphere of Belfast, where personal and family connections ran so deep, this led to a lot of paranoia. Apparently, at one stage the Official leadership in Belfast suspected Mary McMahon of being a closet Provo. Given what we subsequently know about Mary Mac’s years of stalwart service to the Workers Party, this seems so incongruous as to be almost surreal. But then, that’s with the benefit of hindsight.

Actually, there is a parallel to this in that for years it was rumoured around the Provisionals that Jim Gibney was a Stick. And I don’t mean in the pejorative sense that some militarists might have called Adams a Stick, because they thought him too political – it was actually alleged that Gibney was a Stick. I never believed that, and the only evidence anyone seemed to have for it was that he lived in Twinbrook, but it’s easy to see how these things get started and then develop legs of their own. And it demonstrates how the lines were not as clear-cut as perhaps partisans of either side would have liked to think.

If these posts have had a theme, it’s been on the unpredictability of historical events – events that are both overdetermined, to the point where they seem inevitable in hindsight, but also contingent. The 1969/70 split in republicanism is a classic example. There was of course the basic force of the different constituencies within republicanism all pulling in different directions; there were also multiple political issues, which changed quite rapidly in both their form and their weight. Here I want to pick out four interlinked aspects of the debates leading up to the split.

The National Liberation Front
In a sense, nobody but the most hardened military elitist denied the need to forge links with other radical tendencies – to the extent that those tendencies existed, for there could be nothing analogous to the alliance between the IRA and Fianna Fáil in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Indeed, the very idea of republicans leading a popular mass movement presupposed that others would be involved. One recalls the short-lived Dáil Chonnacht movement as something that, while initiated by the Provisionals, was far from being a Provos-and-fellow-travellers affair – it included intellectuals, Labour Party members, possibly a discreet communist or two, radical Catholics, advocates of Gaeltacht self-government and so on. There are even later echoes in Costello’s big idea of the Anti-Imperialist Broad Front.

But the core of the NLF strategy, as formulated in the 1960s, revolved around the question of republicanism’s relationship with Irish communism. There were factors on the communist side of the argument, too – remember that Irish communism, as personified by Seán Murray and Mick O’Riordan, had significant roots in republicanism, and had recognised republicanism as the native form of political radicalism. (Of course the Comintern’s formulation of the United Front was first devised for alliances with anti-colonial movements and only later extended to social democracy. Probably more immediately relevant was the Kremlin’s contemporary interest in anti-colonial movements internationally.) What was more, the CPNI by then had shed its extreme pro-British colouring of the 1940s, come firmly under the influence of Desmond Greaves Thought and was moving towards reunification with the southern party.

There is little doubt that what Johnston was pushing for was a formal and permanent alliance between the republican movement and the two communist parties, in a schema that would see the communists provide a theoretical sophistication the republicans lacked, while the republicans had a popular base and organisational clout that the small and isolated communist parties did not have. The CPs’ trade union links were also an attractive factor, in particular the possibility of the CPNI providing a link to the Protestant working class. It must be emphasised, though, that Johnston didn’t have some sort of mystical power over the leadership, most of whom were willing to go along with Johnston’s brainchild because it seemed like a good idea to them. Goulding in particular didn’t seem like the kind of man to allow a Trinity intellectual to lead him by the nose.

It was also, of course, the specific alliance with the communists that caused dissension from traditionalists – from North Kerry, from Cumann na mBan, and with Mac Stíofáin fighting a rearguard action within the leadership. Mind you, the social background of the time was an Ireland where Masses still regularly included a prayer for the conversion of Russia.

The civil rights strategy
In a way, the civil rights strategy in the north, notwithstanding the theoretical framework Greaves had given it, was just a regional counterpart to Economic Resistance for the rural western base, and the growing housing agitation in Dublin. The big difference was that civil rights became a big enough movement to take on a logic and momentum all its own. In areas like Derry, Dungannon and Newry there quickly developed a situation pitching entire communities against the Orange state. The marching tactic, brilliant in its simplicity, proved ideal for building up a mass movement, which reached the parts Operation Harvest hadn’t.

Belfast, as ever, was different, and NICRA did not employ the marching tactic in Belfast – though Peoples Democracy did, occasionally and on a relatively small scale. This related in part to the internal politics of Belfast republicanism. On the one hand, the McMillen-Sullivan leadership, although it was interested in social agitation of the Dublin variety, was keenly aware of the sectarian dynamics of Belfast, and therefore reluctant to resort to what could be literally incendiary marches. On the other, there was a cabal of veterans in Belfast who were openly scornful of civil rights as a reformist strategy, who had been sidelined or expelled by the leadership in the preceding few years, and who would go on to form the core of the Provisionals in Belfast. We’re talking here about Jimmy Steele, Jimmy and Máire Drumm, Billy McKee, Leo Martin and probably John Kelly – later, in the aftermath of the August 1969 pogrom, they would summon Séamus Twomey and Joe Cahill from the vasty deep, and make a bid for support on an essentially Defenderist programme. In the meantime, the leadership was understandably cautious about staging anything that might look like a provocation.

There is a further footnote to this in terms of the relationship between the republican movement, the CPNI and Peoples Democracy within NICRA, and the 1978 official history of NICRA, for what I believe are factional reasons, obscures this issue. Bernie Devlin’s quip that the Communist Party was as conservative as the Unionist Party was a bit of hyperbole, but there’s no mistaking that, as civil rights got some momentum behind it, Betty Sinclair and her allies in the NICRA leadership did come to be the conservative wing, especially when PD changed the rules of the game with the Long March. There is still an unanswered question about the 1969 NICRA AGM, when PD carried out an effective coup against the communists, for which they must have had republican votes. The question mark is posed by the communists’ firm belief that they had a pledge of support from Goulding. The possible explanations are that Goulding was not quite as supportive as he let the CPNI think; that republican organisation was shambolic enough for Goulding’s position not to be conveyed to the northern members; or that the northern members were aware of the leadership’s wishes and disobeyed them. Any one is plausible.

In any case, the lines in 1969 were a lot more blurry than later accounts, informed by the rapid souring of relations between the Officials and PD, would indicate. Certainly, there was a lot of instinctive sympathy amongst northern republicans for the young militants of PD, and this had been indicated early on as the Long March went through South Derry. Sinn Féin had been cautiously positive about the PD campaign in the Stormont general election of 1969, with the reservation that PD at that time was very resistant indeed to raising the issue of partition. And contemporary statements from both Goulding and Garland go well beyond what was the stance of the communists in NICRA.

The organisational issue
In any factional dispute, there is always an organisational issue, and this takes on a slightly baroque aspect in Irish republicanism, which is simultaneously a political party and an armed conspiracy. Basically, we are talking about what might be termed dual subordination, where the armed wing was subordinated to political rather than military ends in its activity, while the party was organisationally subordinated to the armed wing. This didn’t prevent oppositionists like Mac Stíofáin acting independently, but it certainly complicated things, not least in the version of democratic centralism that would have the IRA making a decision internally, then voting en bloc within Sinn Féin to secure a majority for whatever the IRA had decided.

It’s tempting to read into this a precursor of how the WP came to operate democratic centralism, and chronologically that’s the case. But a more apt parallel would probably be with how dissenting Provisionals have characterised the Adams approach – Tony McIntyre will tell you that Sinn Féin has been running the Army Council for years, while recalcitrants in the political wing would complain about military discipline operating in the party, and they would both be right. In any case, this sort of management is bound to produce more grievances than strictly necessary.

Abstentionism
There’s no doubt, this was the line in the sand for the traditionalists. And when we call republicans traditionalists, we are talking about quite serious traditionalism. One of the leaders of the walkout at the 1970 Ard Fheis, quite aptly, was the 1916 veteran Joe Clarke. Joe must have been almost ninety at the time, and needed crutches to get about, but he was still sharp enough and fiercely attached to republican fundamentals. By this point, he had made it his personal mission to outlive the traitor de Valera, and that tells you all you need to know about the character of Joe Clarke. He, or Jimmy Steele, or Seán Keenan, may not have been great men for political theory, but they knew what traditional republicanism was, and they had an instinctive aversion to anything that smacked of reformist backsliding. (Not, I believe, that the Official leadership were reformists, but we’ll get onto that. We are talking here specifically about the trad-republican view that de jure recognition of the state was reformism.)

And yet, in the north this was less of an issue than you might suppose, at least as far as Leinster House abstention was concerned. Back in 1965, Seán Caughey of Belfast had resigned as Sinn Féin vice-president out of impatience at the failure to drop abstentionism and politicise fast enough. He later joined the Provisionals. At the beginning of 1969 six Tyrone republicans resigned from the movement in protest at Sinn Féin’s refusal to put forward an attendance candidate in the Mid-Ulster by-election. One of the six was a certain Kevin Mallon of Coalisland, which name might ring a few bells.

In fact, projecting backwards, although a split was probably inevitable at some point, it was far from predictable who would be on what side, unless you’d managed to predict in advance the exact combination of circumstances and relative weight of issues. Garibaldy was saying elsewhere that Brian Keenan couldn’t have been a member of the Workers Party. I think a more precise way of putting it would be that Brian Keenan, in terms of the man he became and the things we know he was involved in, could not have been a member of the WP as it subsequently developed.

Maybe Keenan is too incendiary a character to mention in a game of What If. I’ll say here, then, that in my opinion the best politician the Provisionals had was Dáithí Ó Conaill. He was arguably the sharpest thinker, certainly the most articulate speaker in a movement not overburdened by such, and had been an early advocate of a political turn in the Curragh debates during Harvest. Had he not been an ironclad abstentionist, it’s quite easy to imagine him having made a rather effective Workers Party TD. And we can reverse that, as Joe Sherlock always had more of the aspect of a traditional Sinn Féin politician than a Marxist-Leninist. (Perhaps this is why I could never quite buy Joe as a Labour politician in later years. He always seemed to look a little bereft, as if wondering where old Tom Gill had got to.)

For many participants, which side they chose in the split will have been determined by where they lived, by what their background was, who their friends were, who they were related to (especially important in Belfast, where the republican movement mostly consisted of six or seven extended families) and by which figures in the leadership they looked up to and/or had most contact with. Even if you rationalised it on political grounds, much was still contingent on the precise balance of pressures. Had there been a split on abstention without a crisis in the north, the Provos could have been as marginal as RSF today. Had it been the other way around…

The canonic figure for the confused nature of this process was Costello, who was both the most aggressive exponent of politicisation, the left turn and ditching traditionalist theology, as well as being a thoroughgoing militarist with a strong physical force line on the north. That the 1969/70 split didn’t finally resolve the issues at dispute was proved by the subsequent splits in 1974/75 and 1986. No, this was not a simple division between the politicos and the militarists. It was much more involved than that, and the logic behind the different factions’ evolution would take years to work out yet.

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