Category Archives: Current Affairs

A GOOD DAY IN THE RECLAMATION OF BASIC HUMAN MORAL DECENCY IN NORTHERN IRELAND.

Today in the courts sadly mistaken Judge Isobel Brownlie, drew a line in the sand from which the fight back for Civil and Religious Freedom and the defence of basic human moral decency, here in Northern Ireland begins. It took this Judge weeks to arrive at her, self proven flawed judgement, proved flawed by her statement that, “Baking a cake is merely obeying the law and providing the plaintiff with a service.”

Ashers bakery were not refusing to bake a cake, they were refusing to write upon that cake, a slogan supporting something which was spiritually and morally offensive, to both them and their sincerely held Christian Faith, as well as not being a legal practice here in Northern Ireland.

Regardless of this silly Judge and her flawed judgement, Ashers bakery have overwhelmingly won their case in the courts of Public opinion and in the courts of basic Human Moral decency. Thereby ensuring that the ordinary decent people of Northern Ireland, will no longer be willing to sit idly by, as their rights of Civil and Religious Liberty are trampled over by noisy, in your face, intolerant, minority exponents of an anything goes, morally bankrupt society.

Charlie Freel. 

(John Coulter, Irish Daily Star)

Irish republicans must follow their Scottish counterparts and form a single nationalist party if they want to snatch the coveted Stormont First Minister’s post from DUP boss Peter Robinson.

At the very least, republicans need to copy their Unionist counterparts and form a Pan Nationalist Front between the Shinners and Stoops.

Unionists have already proven in the recent Westminster election that a poll pact worked in Fermanagh South Tyrone and East Belfast.

And Tartan Nicola’s Scottish National Party romped to London with 56 of the country’s 59 MPs because nationalists fought under the banner of a single nationalist movement.

With the electoral rebirth of Mikey Nesbitt’s UUP in the Commons showdown, there’s already talk in Unionist branches of the need to reform the 1970s Unionist Coalition which represented at least four different Unionist parties.

 

But nationalists make take some comfort that while overall, its Westminster tally fell by one to seven MPs, Unionists are still split over the idea of electoral pacts.

Liberal Unionist Danny Kinahan’s victory in South Antrim was the result of a direct head to head between the DUP and UUP, while the UUP’s Tom Elliott and the DUP’s Gavin Robinson have the Unionist pact to thank for their seats.

Northern nationalism has to follow the SNP route – and that means Sinn Féin and the SDLP burying their rivalries and creating a single movement to represent all shades of mainstream nationalist thinking – The Nationalist Party.

Okay, for decades a party by that name was the lapdog to the Unionist majority government at Stormont.

But a merged SF/SDLP movement could mark the centenary of the Northern state in a few years’ time by becoming the largest party at Stormont, thereby laying claim to the First Minister’s post.

Maybe nationalists are a wee bit timid about suggesting a single nationalist party after what happened former SDLP MLA Declan O’Loan of North Antrim when he put forward that constructive idea in 2010.

The time has come for Shinners’ president Gerry Adams and the Stoops’ Big Al to initiate a Nationalist Forum with the long-term aim of a single party.

It’s only a matter of time before the Southern parties, especially Irish Labour and Fianna Fáil, begin contesting Northern elections.

With rumblings that the number of Westminster MPs and Stormont MLAs will be cut in elections to come, there is an urgent need for republicans to unite under the banner of a single party.

Such a single nationalist party could also have enough influence in the Catholic community to prevent radical republicans drifting to the political apologists for dissident republican terror groups.

The UUP’s Jim Molyneaux used to boast about it being a broad church. The new single nationalist party needs to be a broad chapel for all shades of republican thinking.

And it could spread into the Republic, swallowing up Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael to provide a majority Nationalist Party government in Leinster House.

But the real secret to making a single Nationalist Party project work is compulsory voting.

This article appeared in the May 18, 2015 edition of the Irish Daily Star.

(John Coulter, Irish Daily Star)

The Celtic Alliance of Northern Irish, Scottish and Welsh MPs must now be formed to prevent the Tories’ austerity bandwagon rumbling across the island.

With all the pundits’ polls predicting a hung Westminster Parliament now being flushed down the loo, the shock Conservative victory means the next five years will be among the most financially biting in the history of the British Isles.

And Stormont can provide a shining example of how former opponents can work together for the supposed benefit of the people of Ireland.

Southern Irish citizens can take a lot of comfort from these results and should prepare themselves for an eventual referendum on leaving the European Union.

Newly-elected Brit Prime Minister Dandy Dave Cameron will almost certainly re-negotiate the UK’s EU role plus implement an In/Out referendum.

Given Tory sceptics and 3.5 million votes for Ukip, British voters are on course to dump the EU in favour of boosting the role of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association.

And if the UK abandons the EU, Ireland must follow otherwise the economic nightmare suffered by the collapse of the Celtic Tiger will be a Sunday School picnic compared to the financial holocaust which the Republic will face if it does not run with Britain.

The Republic must take the view – we’ve milked the European cow dry, it’s time to move on with the Brits in the Commonwealth.

Comfort number two for Southern voters – even though Sinn Féin lost its prized Fermanagh South Tyrone bolthole to the Ulster Unionists, overall ‘draft dodger’ candidates did really well across the North, especially Mick Brady in Newry and Armagh and Catherine Seeley’s performance in Upper Bann.

So-called ‘draft dodgers’ are Sinn Féin politicians who have no known connection, or have never served an apprenticeship in the Provisional IRA.

With the Shinners on course to make gains in next year’s Dáil General Election, Southern voters can rest easy knowing that Sinn Féin is now a mature political movement which is capable of playing a sensible role in the next Leinster House coalition government.

The time has now come for Sinn Féin to dump its outdated policy of abstentionism and take its Commons seats if the Celtic Alliance is truly to work.

Sinn Féin has proven that it can run a Parliament with opponents such as the DUP. The Stormont power-sharing Executive is a beacon of how former foes can bond.

With the Scottish nationalists set to dominate the much-needed Celtic Alliance, that Alliance will need the experience and expertise of Sinn Féin and the DUP to keep the Tories in check.

As for the Unionist community, the scene has now been set with the Ulster Unionist revival of the reforming of the once-influential Unionist Coalition. The DUP and UUP proved that pacts work.

UUP boss Mikey Nesbitt may have saved his leadership ahead of next year’s Assembly poll, but in spite of winning two MPs, his new-look party now has two clear wings.

The traditional Right-wing Orange faction will be boosted by Tom Elliott taking Fermanagh South Tyrone on a Unionist unity ticket.

And the liberal Unionist wing will take heart from the election of Danny Kinahan in South Antrim.

As for the DUP, winning back its East Belfast jewel from Alliance means the Peter Robinson-led party has now firmly established itself in the centre ground of Unionist politics.

Indeed, looking at the 2015 DUP, the former Northern Premier Terence O’Neill been alive today, he would have made an excellent First Minister to lead the party years after the late Ian Paisley and Dessie Boal formed what they wanted to be a militant, fundamentalist Unionist movement.

May 12, 2015________________

This article appeared in the May 11, 2015 edition of the Irish Daily Star.

ON THURSDAY YOU ARE EITHER WITH US, OR YOU ARE AGAINST US.

Thursday will hopefully  see the long awaited removal of the treacherous yellow banner of the Alliance Party, which has for too long  disgraced East Belfast since the removal of the equally shameful  swish family Robinson, at the last Westminster election.         Peter Robinson made the fatal mistake of taking the Loyalist Working Class Unionists of East Belfast for granted and paid the price.

The Alliance party despite being gifted a seat, that they had never earned, has  made the same mistake and compounded it with treachery, by uniting with the enemies of Ulster, the IRA/Sinn Fein, to defy the overwhelming will of the people of Northern Ireland, as unanimously expressed in numerous equality commission conducted opinion polls, to restrict the displaying of the democratically chosen National Standard of the United Kingdom, at the Belfast City Hall, in the Capital City of Northern Ireland.

Thursday is also make your mind up time, for the East Belfast PUP. The out of control Trojan horse within their ranks, has spent the past few months covertly tweeting intolerant , anti-agreed Unionist, Hetrophobic and Christophobic  tweets to and from their fellow covert twitter twats, some of whom are devout Republican twitter twats, with the covert purpose of undermining United Unionism in East Belfast.

Now after months of pretending to be sitting impartially on the fence, while at the same time attempting to undermine agreed Unionism and United Unionism, these fraudulent Loyalists have now finally made it clear that, they will be betraying our National Standard and the sincere desire of the Loyalist Working Class for Unionist Unity, by  voting against the agreed Unionist Candidate in East Belfast.        These people attempt to excuse their treachery by proclaiming themselves to be conscientious objectors of the DUP, this would possibly have been a plausible excuse, if the Agreed Unionist Candidate had been one of the old DUP, Grand old Duke Of Yorkers.

He is not, he is an intelligent  and tolerant young East Belfast Man, who  the PUP have  no personal gripe with and who I believe deserves the chance to prove himself as the Agreed Unionist MP for East Belfast.

Despite my own militant Loyalist background, I have never due to the cowardice and the dishonesty, of the Grand Old Duke ever voted DUP.         On Thursday I and my family,( 10 votes) will be putting Country before party and conscientious objection of the DUP, in support United Unionism, our National Standard and as a mark of respect for my Fallen Comrades and every Ulster Volunteer that, ever took up arms in defence of the democratic right of the people of Northern Ireland to decide their own destiny.

FOR GOD AND ULSTER.

Charlie Freel.   

(John Coulter, Irish Daily Star)

The three Stoop Amigos of Big Al, Turkey Durkey and Wee Maggie could well be the real king makers of the next Commons coalition – and save the election-bashed SDLP at the same time.

Many voters are assuming it will be one of the two – or both – Nigels who will call the shots as to who gets the keys to Downing Street next weekend; Nigel Dodds of the DUP, and Ukip’s Nigel Farage.

But while the Northern Shinners have been regularly kicking the SDLP’s asses in many polls over the past decade, the Stoops possess a crucial ace card – their MPs take their Commons seats.

While it may require some tactical voting by Unionists, sitting Stoop MPs Alasdair McDonnell, Mark Durkan and Margaret Ritchie look safe bets to hold their seats.

The Stoops have pledged they will not support Dandy Dave Cameron’s Tories, and will join the so-called ‘Rainbow Coalition’ trying to get Red Ed Miliband elected Prime Minister.

People’s minds may be wondering which of the two main Westminster parties the DUP will deal with, and what impact the Shinners not taking their Commons seats might have.

But the Stoops are not dead and buried just yet. Granted, they are on course to take a real battering in at least a dozen other Northern constituencies.

If the Stoops Gang of Three find themselves as kingmakers, they need a deal which will secure the future of their party – namely, a seat in the British Cabinet, and the balls to merge with Fianna Fáil in the South by boosting the cross-border bodies and British-Irish institutions.

Irish politics have always been the art of the impossible – Sinn Féin TDs taking their Dáil seats, and Northern Shinner MLAs working a partitionist parliament at Stormont with the DUP.

If the Shinners’ ticket of so-called ‘draft dodgers’ put in a good showing, namely candidates who have no known links, connections, or served their republican movement apprenticeship in the ‘RA, abstentionism could finally be on the slippery slope.

Scotland’s modern-day version of Queen Boudica – Scottish Nats boss Nicola Sturgeon – could become a power-broker to persuade Sinn Féin to ditch abstentionism and join the Miliband bandwagon on the historic green benches.

If the DUP and Sinn Féin can work the Stormont Executive, Sinn Féin and the DUP can work together in Miliband’s Rainbow Coalition.

Draft Dodger Shinner MPs can also fuel the perception the party has matured enough for Southern voters to give Sinn Féin enough TDs to become Dáil coalition partners.

The Stoops will only remain standardbearers for moderate nationalism until the Shinners dump abstentionism and ‘retire’ all ex-IRA jailbirds as candidates. At this point, it will be time for moderate Catholics to launch a new Northern-based Nationalist Party.

As for the UUP, unless it wins at least two seats, the party is buggered. It’s only way forward is to join the DUP and become a Right-wing pressure group in the Robbo camp similar to the old Ulster Monday Club in the Ulster Unionists.

Or the UUP could play the liberal card, and become the ‘right-wing’ of Alliance. The UUP’s South Antrim runner, Danny Kinahan, is trying this tactic with his open support for gay marriage.

This will either get him tactical votes from Alliance to pip the DUP’s Gospel-singing cleric Willy McCrea, or the Christian vote in South Antrim will desert Kinahan.

My crystal ball tells me it will be ‘as you were’ in 17 of the 18 seats – with only the DUP squeaking home against Alliance’s Naomi Long in East Belfast. The Shinners will increase their grip in the nationalist community, but the UUP will face the long-awaited wipe-out.

As for the Dodds DUP bandwagon, it should remember that every time Unionists have pussy-footed with Tories in the past – Heath, Thatcher and Major – Unionism has been stabbed in the back.

Dodds has only one sensible option – form a Celtic Coalition with Labour, the SDLP and SNP. This is one rainbow where there could be a massive pot of gold for the North at the end off!

May 5, 2015________________

This article appeared in the May 4, 2015 edition of the Irish Daily Star.

THIS THURSDAY — “YOUR COUNTRY NEEDS YOU.”

Never in the history of Northern Ireland, have the sectarian terrorists of the IRA been in such a powerful position, both politically and militarily. Thanks to the undemocratic system of  gerrymandered Government  presently being operated at Stormont, the justice ministry has been entrusted without electoral entitlement ,to the Alliance Party. This is the same Alliance party which blatantly, misused, a gerrymandered equalities commission report  as an excuse to collaborate with the IRA/Sinn Fein, to restrict the displaying of our democratically chosen National Standard  at Belfast City Hall, in the Capital City of Northern Ireland.

As a result of this unauthorised treachery with regard to our National Standard by the Alliance Party, hundreds of young Loyalists have been dragged before the courts for protesting in defence of our democratically chosen National Standard.  The head of the Public Prosecution Service, who was once a paid legal  representative of the IRA/Sinn Fein, and instrumental in the production of the get out of jail free letters, for on the run IRA men, sees fit to prosecute young bandsmen for playing a flute, while at the same time neglecting to prosecute IRA man Gerry Kelly, for obstructing the police in the execution of their duty, while clinging illegally to the front of a police landrover.

In the Republic of Ireland, the IRA/Sinn Fein  are on the verge of becoming the Government of the Republic, with the entire wealth and military armed forces of the Republic at their disposal, meanwhile here in Northern Ireland, action by our own armed forces in defence of democracy can be completely hamstrung by the combination of , ludicrous motions of concern lodged by the IRA/Sinn Fein at Stormont, an Alliance party with at least one Irish Republican supporting senior member, and a totally unjustified Alliance Party, Northern Ireland justice minister who is the leader of an Alliance party which has declared impartiality with regard to the Union with the United Kingdom, even though this Union is the overwhelmingly democratically chosen will of the majority of the people, of North Ireland.
Unbelievably, at this moment in time Unionism has never been so divided.  Northern Ireland needs to immediately  return to the  original  United Unionism of our Forefathers, now is not the time for small minded petty squabbling amongst Unionists, now is not the time for small minded Unionists with hidden agendas, to use petty conscientious objection as an excuse, to put self interests and petty party interests before Country out of selfish spitefulness.
Remember that, at this crucial time in the existence of our Country and in the democratic defence of the democratic right of the people of Northern Ireland to determine their own destiny, every unused , spoiled, or small mindedly wasted vote for a no hope candidate, is a positive vote against the Union, and a betrayal of every Ulster Volunteer, that ever took up arms in defence of our Country.

FOR GOD AND ULSTER.

Charlie Freel.

Sinn Fein to review Westminster Abstentionist Stance?

The real kingmakers of the next House Commons coalition could well be the “gang of three” nationalists from the moderate left of centre Social Democratic and Labour Party.

The Tories have been screaming about the threat posed by the new nationalism, when in reality they are referring to the prospect of a Labour government propped up by the supposedly rampant and progressive left SNP with its friends in Welsh nationalism.

But Ed Miliband should not ignore Labour’s sister party in Northern Ireland, which has been fighting an electoral version of the Alamo against Sinn Fein.

What may save the SDLP from a predicted Scottish-style Labour wipe-out is that the party’s three MPs take their Commons seats, unlike Sinn Fein which is still maintaining its 1905 founding principle of abstentionism from Westminster.

Sinn Fein wants to pull the rug from the SDLP by eating into its traditional middle-class heartlands. Ironically, for some time it has been administering the sort of electoral drubbing to the SDLP which the SDLP once dished out to the now defunct Irish Nationalist Party.

While the Gerry Adams-Martin McGuinness peace strategy has propelled Sinn Fein into the power-sharing Executive at Stormont, the republican movement must inevitably prepare for the post-Adams era when that generation of Sinn Fein politicians are pensioners.

Sinn Fein has tackled this problem by grooming a brand of so-called “draft dodger” – candidates who have no known or open links to the IRA.

Initially, when Sinn Fein impacted on the Northern Irish political scene in the post-1981 hunger strike era, the majority of candidates were ex-prisoners who had served their republican “apprenticeships” in the Provisionals.

The jailbird ticket worked effectively in working-class republican heartlands. But if Sinn Fein was to be taken seriously, it needed young middle-class Catholics with no IRA past.

As these young, politically clean cut” republicans began to emerge, once-safe SDLP seats in the Commons, on councils and in the European Parliament were vulnerable.

In some cases, SDLP representatives in strongly Catholic constituencies only kept their jobs through the tactical voting of Unionists, determined to keep out Sinn Fein candidates.

Ed Miliband must know that he will have to cut a deal with Scottish, Welsh and Irish nationalists if he is to take the keys of Number 10 Downing Street from David Cameron. His tactic should be to negotiate first with the moderate left of the SDLP before dealing with the SNP and Plaid Cymru.

In public relations terms, the SNP has been wiping the political floor with Labour. The SNP is seeking to sell the idea of a progressive left alliance opposing any Tory-UKIP link-up.

In theory, Miliband should have no difficulty with the concept of a progressive left alliance, but he may find the SDLP more receptive to supporting him as Prime Minister. The more parties needed to send the Tories back to opposition, the more compromise will be required to establish a “rainbow coalition”.

While Sinn Fein is expected to win up to five seats compared to the SDLP’s three, abstentionism renders its MPs ineffective in voting terms – unless the unthinkable happens.

Miliband could offer offers such a carrot to Sinn Fein: abandon abstentionism, takes an oath of allegiance using a suitable wording, and use its votes in the House of Commons to secure a more progressive government than any Tory or Tory-led one.

Could it happen? Well, Martin McGuinness is already Deputy First Minister of the Northern Ireland Assembly, and Gerry Adams could well be Tanaiste (Deputy Prime Minister) of the Irish Republic after next year’s general election in the Irish Republic.

Sinn Fein has come a long way since IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands was elected MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone in 1981. Abstentionism has been ditched in both the Dail and Stormont. So could Westminster be next?

Sophie Long is  PhD candidate at the school of politics in Queens University Belfast, where she is reading International Studies and Philosophy.  As part of her research in 2014 she submitted a paper-” An Investigation into Ulster Loyalism and the politics of Misrecognition”.

Unheard Voices: East Belfast’s ‘Undesirable’ Working Class

Sophie Long.

On 27^th April, at the Strand Arts Centre, the local people of East Belfast gathered to discuss local politics, community needs and the necessary steps to improve the area,and the lives of its inhabitants. There was a  panel, composed of representatives from the business community, education sector, local politics, labour and community activism, who gave their perspectives on what East Belfast, and its working class, needed, in order to prosper.
The impetus for organising the event was that, 2 weeks prior, the East Belfast Hustings, run  by political bloggers Slugger O’Toole, had sold out quickly, leaving many local people disappointed, and unable to attend. Having attended the Hustings, I was surprised to see that the composition of the audience was markedly different from the general demographics of East Belfast, with 37.5% Unionists, 10% Nationalist and 52.5% Alliance/Green/Other.  For an area which voted in a DUP candidate for some 30 years, before ousting them in favour of Alliance in 2011, this audience was fairly unrepresentative.
There was speculation across some social media pages that the hustings was in fact a ‘secret debate’, carefully co-ordinated to keep disgruntled loyalists out of the audience, but for the most part, people accepted that the event was open to all, and simply very popular. The 27^th, then,was a grassroots response to the official hustings, with a serious, engaged discussion amongst the audience and panellists, and I feel that what was said deserves to be acknowledged.
Firstly, both Gavin Robinson and Naomi Long had been invited to attend the event. Both declined. The participants saw this as further proof that the ‘Protestant vote’ is taken for granted, and that the working classes had been cast aside, as political representatives assumed their tacit support. The discussions throughout the evening showed that such assumptions are out-of-date,and that the working class in East Belfast are critically examining how to advance the interests of their community, and re-orienting their allegiances accordingly.
One of the main issues highlighted by the audience was the much-discussed Unionist pact. For many,who had been canvassed by the UUP last year, and who had subsequentlyvoted for Sonia Copeland in the local elections of 2014, the pact was undemocratic, with the two unionist parties agreeing a deal over the heads of their voter base. Many people wanted the option to vote UUP, and to be deprived of this signalled the lack of respect which they felt politicians held for East Belfast and its people.  Indeed, these attitudes should be lauded. A desire for choice is perfectly reasonable, and a dissatisfaction with the DUP as the default unionist choice, reveals the growing chasm between the Party and the unionist working class.
Secondly, the non-attendance of Long or Robinson was met with critique. One panel member pointed out that both candidates enjoy generous salaries, and live comfortably in the suburbs, having been granted their mandates by the electorate. Contrastingly, the working classes of East Belfast, it was said, who were living in houses which were badly affected by damp, in an area with high unemployment, which would soon be subject to Welfare Reform. The audience were aware that they lived very different lives to those politicians who expected their votes.
These votes, it seems, won’t be willingly given to the DUP. Several participants noted that loyalists were often “told who to vote for”, and subject to the fear-mongering of the DUP, which provoked a tactical vote, “to keep someone else out”. One member pointed out that the DUP had traded constituencies with the UUP, with the former winning East Belfast, and the latter putting Tom Elliott forward in Fermanagh and South Tyrone. This casual trade-off suited the Parties, who adopted a pragmatic approach to the Westminster elections. But what it also did was further alienate an already disenchanted working class electorate, who felt they deserved a choice between Unionist candidates.
This is an important point, and one should be emphasised. The audience present on the 27^th were not apathetic. Nor were they pledging uncritical allegiance to Unionism itself. In fact, the Union, or the constitutional position, was not mentioned once. What was mentioned was can be grouped into two categories; material, and non-material resources. Firstly, the material: education, in terms of pre-school places, local primary schools,  and the problems of academic selection. Many parents were worried about their children being placed in nursery schools outside of the local area. In addition, the desire for more social housing, instead of ‘pocket parks’,was raised. It was clear that these residents were ‘experts’ in what their communities needed, and wanted someone to listen to those needs.
Representatives from East Belfast Football Club pointed out the benefits of sport for young people, and stated that funding was often difficult to come by. A young person in the audience said that he played football, but would like “something to do” the other 5 nights of the week. A local trading chairman explained that the unused commercial properties on the Newtownards Road could be run as a pilot scheme, where young people could set up their own small enterprises, and enjoy zero rates, and reduced rents, for a year, in order to regenerate the area. He added that the Department for Enterprise, Trade and Investment had thus far refused to implement such a project. His analysis was that the visible degeneration of the Newtownards Road area was a symbol of the low regard in which East Belfast was held.
In terms of non-material resources, the discussion turned to issues of community solidarity, respect, and political accountability. The recent attacks on a local Polish resident’s nail salon were raised. Members of the panel and audience pointed out the strong community response to the attack, with one adding, “rightly so, everyone should be able to live in peace”. What was then highlighted, and which I believe is something we all need to consider, were the vastly different responses which follow the regular sectarian incidents in Cluan Place, a small, loyalist enclave beside Short Strand. A local resident stated that hate crimes were wrong, whether racially motivated, or sectarian in their intent. Where, she asked,were the vigils, rallied and protests, for residents of Cluan Place? None of these conversations were remotely racist, as discussions over resources are often framed as being, but instead were the articulations of a people who feel utterly left behind. There were no ‘zero-sum’ attitudes on display, instead a desire for the ‘unheard’ to be acknowledged.
This leads me to my main point, which is that, loyalists, or the Protestant working class, have become the ‘undesirable’ component of the new Northern Ireland. The word ‘undesirable’ was chosen by a panel member, and echoed by the audience. This, to me, shows an awareness, within loyalism, that their community is seen as backward, sectarian and unthinking. Not just that, but the assumption, I would argue, from Northern Ireland’s ‘liberal class’ is that loyalists will give unquestioning support to political unionism, such is their distaste for Irish nationalism. Not only is this disrespectful, it is simply untrue.
Loyalism, as represented by the audience on the 27^th April, and by parties such as the PUP, is a form of critical unionism. They want politicians who will listen to their needs. They want a school system which will allow their children to flourish. They want to live in an area with real shops, not ghostly, insulting facades of the shops which once were. They want to be consulted on those political agreements which affect their democratic choices. These things, are not backward. They are not sectarian. They are not unthinking. Neither is loyalism, and it is time the ‘liberal classes’ and political left, examined their own prejudices and began to engage with the grievances of the Protestant working class.

Sophie Long

(John Coulter, Irish Daily Star)

The Auld Shinner jibe of ‘Vote Early, Vote Often’, will solve the apathy crisis across Ireland as elections loom, especially the Northern Commons poll on 7 May.

Now hold yer horses! I’m not advocating breaking the law, but providing the solution to getting more young people to engage with the political process.

While the Grey Brigade of elderly voters rule the roost when it comes to getting their asses into the polling booths, if we are not to face the embarrassing democratic nightmare of politicians being elected on only 30% turnouts, we need to mobilise our young people.

The voting age in Ireland – both in the North and South – must be lowered to 14, and schools have a vital role to play in making Voting Studies a compulsory subject on the curriculum. Shinner schools boss John O’Dowd please take note!

Likewise, it’s time for Westminster, Stormont and the Dáil to adopt the Australian system where voting is also compulsory.

The Shinners and Dupes are masters at getting their respective voters out and both parties have very active youth wings. But that’s not enough if the democratic process is to survive.

The more fanatical the parties, the better they are at getting their supporters out – just look at the rise of Nigel Farage’s hardline Right-wing Ukip, which could easily be one of the key parties along with the DUP and SNP holding the balance of power after the Commons General Election.

Young people should be encouraged to join a political party as soon as they leave primary education and move into secondary schools to prepare them for their first voting opportunities after they reach 14.

The fuddy-duddies will yap that kids are too young at 14 to understand the complexities of government. This will not happen if the schools grasp the nettle of voter apathy and teach young people how important it is to engage with the democratic process.

And new electronic systems of voting must be introduced. If we can have electronic banking and students can have their work assessed through electronic portfolios, then we can have electronic voting using the internet, social media and using mobile phones.

Just look at the millions of folk who regularly vote in prime time shows, such as The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent.

There’s quite a few candidates running in the North – and even across the UK – who would give their eye teeth to chalk up the responses.

I’m not suggesting the influential Grey Brigade are computer-illiterate, but many elderly folk still prefer the physical jaunt to the polling station. Supermarkets and shopping centres should also provide polling booths.

And if we lower the voting age to 14, the age of sexual consent must also be dropped to 14. But again, both the Christian Churches and schools must provide comprehensive sex education lessons.

I spent my teens in the Young Unionists, the UUP’s youth wing. But in all those years, I can only recall two meetings where the views of us Young Unionists were seriously considered by our elders.

I have always been an unashamed and unrepentant radical Right-wing Unionist. But in my teenage years, North Antrim Ulster Unionism was dominated by liberal Unionist views. Radical viewpoints were dismissed as quickly as a Celtic goalkeeper in a Scottish Cup match.

During election canvassing, we were sent to out of the way parts of the constituency where we could not cause any bother.

The politicians will only take young people seriously when they get off their asses and vote.

And if the MPs won’t listen, take a leaf out of Sinn Féin’s history and set up an alternative ‘House of Commons’ in Ireland, just as the Shinners used their 1918 victory to establish Dáil Eireann.

April 28, 2015________________

This article appeared in the April 27, 2015 edition of the Irish Daily Star.

(John Coulter, Irish Daily Star)

Invade the Republic with Northern candidates! That’s the only way Sinn Féin will guarantee it will be part of a Dáil coalition government after next year’s Leinster House General Election.

Southern Sinn Féin simply doesn’t have enough big guns based in the Republic to bust through the 20-TD mark which will blast open the Tanaiste’s door for party president Gerry Adams.

Cynics might argue that Adams was pushed out of his West Belfast Westminster bolthole and parachuted into Louth to escape the Jean McConville murder allegations as well as his family’s personal sex abuse scandal.

But the bitter medicine which the Shinners have to swallow is that the party’s ‘Southern Command’ simply lacks the experience of the Northern ‘Big Guns’ when it comes to running a government.

Adams and Marty McGuinness have transformed Northern Sinn Féin from pathetic apologists for dying hunger strikers and IRA death squads into a confident modern 21st century party which is capable of working a power-sharing partitionist Stormont with the DUP – that’s some leap!

Until Adams landed in Louth, Southern Sinn Féin was nothing more than an old boys club to remember the Rising, and what might have been if the anti-Treaty IRA had won the Irish Civil War in the 1920s.

But it’s only a handful of years until the centenary of the Treaty and that bloody civil war which saw more IRA volunteers killed by the Free State Forces than were killed by the Tans during the earlier War of Independence.

In the South, civil war scars still run deep in families. The divisions and wounds that the war inflicted have spanned the generations.

Just as Northern-based Irish Volunteers managed to not get their hands dirtied by the doomed Easter Rising, so too, Northern Shinners managed largely to keep their hands – and lives – out of the civil war.

If Sinn Féin is to be part of the next Dáil coalition, at least a dozen of its Northern ‘Big Hitters’ must follow Adams into the Republic and leave the safety of their Stormont, Westminster or super council heartlands.

Adams needs McGuinness, Gerry Kelly, Alex and Paul Maskey, Michelle Gildernew and Conor Murphy in Leinster House – not wasting their time pussy footing with the Brits.

While Southern Shinners can point to successes in Donegal and Dublin, as with Stormont, the party needs to be getting TDs elected all over the Republic.

Sinn Féin needs to recognise it has won the battle for Northern nationalist supremacy with the Stoops.

It is only Sinn Féin’s Commons abstentionist policy which is keeping the Shinners from electorally wiping the SDLP off the face of the Northern political map in the same way as the DUP has outgunned the Ulster Unionists.

Only by shifting serving Shinner MLAs and MPs into the Dáil can Sinn Féin hope to repeat the electoral success of 1918 when it captured over 70 of the 100 plus Irish Commons seats when Ireland was one nation.

While the Adams and McGuinness peace strategy refuses to let Sinn Féin MPs take their Commons seats, a united Ireland can only be achieved through the back door of Leinster House.

But Team Adams is not getting any younger. At some point Sinn Féin’s Grey Brigade will have to be ‘retired’. It’s about time Northern republicans taught their Southern fringe counterparts how to run a nation! Let’s see more Six Counties Shinners heading South!

April 21, 2015________________

This article appeared in the April 20, 2015 edition of the Irish Daily Star.