Monthly Archives: June 2015

Catholics should reclaim the Twelfth as part of their Irish heritage and 12 July should be a national holiday across the whole of Ireland like St Patrick’s Day.

   If you believe what the Prods-only Orange Order has unveiled at its new EU-funded ‘Museum of Orange Heritage’ in the heart of loyalist east Belfast, then Catholics have as much right to celebrate King Billy’s 1690 victory at the Boyne as Unionists.

If former Irish President Mary McAleese can grace the Order’s official museum opening, then Irish Catholics should embrace the 12 July commemorations.

While the Orange has its roots in the violent Prod paramilitary, the Peep O’Day Boys of the late 18^th century who were notorious for their dawn raids on Catholics, there was lots of ecumenical hand-shaking at the museum shindig.

The wee flute band from a local Belfast boys school expertly played tunes best associated with World War One, and there was not a peep of traditional loyalist ‘kick the pope’ marching tunes, such as The Sash, Holy Mary, or The Famine Song.

Just as the Orange Order has been trying to reclaim St Paddy’s Day from its stereotype that it is a republican festival, so too, Catholics need to smash the mindset only Prods can live it up each 12 July.

Nationalists should remember that if King Jimmy’s artillery had been a little more accurate on the morning of the Boyne battle, 12 July would have been a republican holiday.

Even before the Boyne kicked off properly, the Jacobites sneaked up on Billy during breakfast, wounding him with a salvo.

Perhaps republicans have forgotten their geography, but last time I checked, the River Boyne flowed through the Republic!

Indeed, one of the premier Orange parades to commemorate Billy’s battle is the famous Donegal Dander at Rossnowlagh when thousands of Northern brethren and band members join their Southern border counterparts.

There’s a real lesson here for the Order. Maybe it could defuse contentious Northern routes such as Drumcree and Ardoyne by decamping to isolated rural fields and seaside localities in the Republic?

Nationalists should also recall that it was King William’s elite Dutch Royal Blue troops – who were predominantly Catholic – who sealed his victory.

After the battle, the then pope, Alexander the Eighth, commemorated Billy’s victory with a special Te Deum event at the Vatican.

For the last 325 years since the Boyne, there has even been unsubstantiated speculation that Pope Alex actually blessed some of Billy’s troops before they went to Ireland to kick James’ ass.

Basically, Billy saved the Papacy from oblivion from the dictator of the day – Louis of France.

Folklore has it, too, that William even had two of his own Protestant troops executed for mistreatment of Catholic prisoners after the battle.

The Orange forces only won the battle because King James did not take advantage of the death of William’s top military commander, Marshall Schomberg, as he charged into the river.

Indeed, the Boyne would have been a Jacobite victory had their leading commander, Patrick Sarsfield, been in charge of the army – not the military incompetent James.

Sarsfield proved his worth after the battle by bashing the Williamites at Limerick.

The Orange Order dates from 1795, and it has only taken it just over two centuries to realise it needs to educate people about its true heritage.

The Order’s Orange museum is not about rewriting history; merely telling the truth.

Anti-Orange liberal Prods pose as big a threat to the Order’s future as republicans.

Could the Order’s project with Catholic schools really be a secret agenda to neutralise the strong influence of well-organised nationalist residents’ groups along contentious parade routes?

Dr. John Coulter

Islamic Nutters Can Strike Here.

Every responsible Irish Christian must throw their full support behind the Biblical state of Israel before Islamic radicals based in Iran manage to explode a nuke dirty bomb inside Israel’s borders.

Ireland should not dismiss this nuclear threat as Israel’s problem. In an ironic twist, it will soon become a major issue for the Emerald Isle.

The concept of a radical Islamic dirty bomb is not scaremongering. It was issued by one of Israel’s most senior UK diplomats, Mr Yiftah Curiel, who travelled to Ireland to give me this apocalyptic news.

Next to the gay rights and anti-abortion lobbies, the pro-Palestinian cause is one of the most vocal and active in Ireland.

The US State Department has already claimed up to six radical Islamic terror cells are based in Ireland.

Dissident republicans are known to be fostering terror links with Islamic militants in the same way the Provos and INLA built links with Palestinian terrorists during the Troubles.

Mr Curiel admitted his country had conducted research on the human cost if Iran used one of the militant Islamic groups to detonate a nuke dirty bomb inside Israel borders.

There is the very real possibility such a device would inflict death on the Jews on a scale not witnessed since the Holocaust in which six million were murdered.

Mr Curiel branded the concept of Iran making a dirty bomb as “mind boggling”, warning that “nuclear technology needs morality”.

Ireland is already high on militant Islam’s list of targets because of allegations Shannon Airport was used to allow US plans to refuel during the so-called rendition flights taking Islamic radical terror suspects to the US for interrogation.

But Ireland needs to be aware of how militant Islamic radicals think. These nutters are extremely homophobic and there is ample evidence of gay men being executed by beheading or being thrown off buildings.

The South has already voted comprehensively in support of gay marriage, and a pro-gay marriage march in Belfast attracted some 20,000 supporters.

Ireland may boast that it is a beacon for LGBT rights and gay marriage, but is it making itself a target for the violently homophobic radical Islamic terror groups.

The other danger which Mr Curiel warned about was that Iran could get its militant sympathisers in terror groups, such as Hamas in Gaza, Islamic State in Syria, and Hezbollah in Lebanon to carry the nuclear attack using suicide bombers.

“These organisations have no qualms about using civilians as cover. They are not interested in dialogue, but the destruction of Israel.

“In Gaza, the Hamas headquarters was under a hospital. Hamas used protected vehicles such as those for journalists and ambulances to launch attacks on our troops,” he added.

Bearing this in mind, Islamists would have little thought for civilian deaths, just as they did in the attacks on 9/11 in New York and 7/7 in London.

In Gaza, Hamas uses a network of tunnels to launch attacks on Israel, according to Mr Curiel.

This would be similar to how the Provos and INLA used the South to launch attacks on people and places in the North.

For the sake of all Irish citizens, include Ireland’s moderate Muslim community, the Irish Defence Forces and British Army must implement a joint operation to round up all Islamic militant suspects on the island and re-open the Maze prison site as an internment camp.

John Coulter.

Get Masons To Save Stormont

It’s time for the ‘Funny Handshake Brigade’ of Irish Freemasons to get their gloves off and save Stormont.

The Masons may be branded suspicious because of their secretive oaths, and ridiculed by fundamentalist churches because of their use of Biblical Old Testament characters in their rituals, but Irish Freemasonry knows how to get the job done!

At its height, Irish Masons numbered some 40,000 across the island and while the Protestants-only Marching Orders have become tainted with contentious parade disputes, the Masonic has remained above the controversy.

Irish Freemasonry is interdenominational and allows both Catholics and Protestants to sit together in Masonic temples and refer to each other as ‘brother’.

Indeed, the real power base behind the Unionist-dominated original Stormont Parliament was the Masons, not the more public Orange Order.

The most senior of the Protestant Orders, the Royal Black Institution, was often dubbed ‘the poor man’s freemasonic’ because of the expense in being a Mason.

Many of the symbols used in Masonry are shared with the Orange and Black. While Masons hold church services, they very rarely – if ever – hold parades.

The Masons have a great reputation for charity fund-raising, looking after members’ widows and at one time, building schools in Ireland.

The Masonic was seen as a link between the upper and middle classes in Ireland and the working men in the same way as the Orange Order was once the cement between the Unionist aristocracy and the working class Protestants.

So bring in the Masons to sort out the Stormont debacle over welfare reform. For generations, it has been rumoured a Masonic Lodge existed at Stormont.

There has been a constant stream of politicians and organisations trying to mend Stormont’s woes, but all to no avail as the institutions edge steadily closer to the abyss and total collapse.

So why can’t Ireland’s Masons have some more secret meetings and see if they can unlock the deadlock?

The Masons created lodges for all kinds of people – coppers have their own lodge, as did Ireland’s Jewish community and even the journalists at one time. Even the Vatican was reputed to have had its own lodge!

In spite of eight centuries of sectarian conflict on the island, the Masonic temple was the one venue where Catholics, Protestants and other faiths could meet in harmony and reach agreement on matters.

Surely this can still be achieved in the 21^st century?

In spite of the Bible holding a central position within each Masonic temple during a meeting, the order still has faced criticism from the fundamentalists in both Protestantism and Catholicism who branded Freemasonry as a rival religion to Christianity.

Supporters of Masonic rituals maintain they tell the tales of Biblical characters; opponents claim the rituals resemble Satanism or something from a horror slasher movie!

While Catholics can become Masons, many in the Catholic Church hierarchy have frowned on membership of the Brotherhood. Perhaps this is because Freemasonry would take away from Catholic holy orders or secret societies, such as Opus Dei.

But the principal reason for Catholic opposition was that many Protestants held dual membership of the Orange and the Masonic, giving the false impression Freemasonry was part of the Loyal Orders.

Rather than lock the politicians into intensive talks, get them into the Masonic, get trouser legs rolled up, chests bared, and get the business done of making Stormont work for the sake of all the people of Ireland.

Two Flags and No Clue: Is Post-Agreement Republicanism Politically Bankrupt?

On Wednesday the 5^th May, I emerged from conducting a series of interviews, and checked my phone for news and emails. I had been occupied for around five hours, which is a long time in Northern Irish politics. However, I was unprepared for the image of two, Irish flags flying from Stormont buildings, and the nuclear fallout which resulted.

‘Someone’, possibly contractors, had hung the Irish Tricolour, and a United Irishmen flag, from the flagpoles at Stormont buildings on Wednesday. Both flags flew for around ten minutes before being spotted and subsequently removed. As with many things on this island, the act itself was relatively banal, but what it symbolizes, and how it is interpreted, is important for understanding where we are at as a post-Agreement, yet deeply divided, society.

Firstly, the divergent reactions to the flying of these flags reveal much about the attitudes of political elites and indeed, the divisions within Northern Irish society. After the Belfast Telegraph ran the story, the majority of commentators derided Unionism for calling for an investigation, and stated that there were other, more important problems to consider.

The politicians can be demarcated in this analysis, as they are in Stormont itself, along sectarian lines. Unionists, united it seemed, for the first time in months, took great offence at the act, decried it as criminal and provocative, and demanded an inquiry.

Nationalists, contrastingly, shrugged off the flag issue as inconsequential and Gerry Kelly, that well-known moderate and mediator, accused Unionism of “hysteria” and as having an irrational focus on the “wrong issues”, given the salience of Welfare Reform, and resultant existential crisis, which the Executive is currently facing.

Two points are implicit in Kelly’s comments. The first is that flags do not matter, therefore anyone who does see value in respecting a flag, or experiences positive or negative emotions when faced with particular flags, is operating under misplaced, nationalistic delusions, and really ought to consider more pressing, economic matters, should they wish to be taken seriously. Linked to this is the belief that Unionists should not, therefore, be taken seriously.

The second is that Unionism as a whole is reactionary, and by extension of this, less politically mature and adept than Republicanism. Both of these things tell us a lot about Sinn Fein’s attitude towards Unionism as a political ideology, in that they see it as an unfortunate obstacle to the ‘Irish awakening’, which we will all, of course, undergo eventually, prior to our willing incorporation into a United Ireland.

This patronizing and demeaning disposition, whilst morally repugnant,  goes some way toward explaining Sinn Fein’s ungenerous treatment of Unionists, in the December 2012 Union flag debacle, in Wednesday’s provocative comments, and more broadly, since 2007, when the ‘new ascendancy’ of Sinn Fein and the DUP, clumsily took the reins of power. Not only do Sinn Fein dislike Unionism, they also fail to understand it, and consequently fail to recognize it as a legitimate, political position.

What is ironic however, is that for the Shinners, who have honed and crafted their own nationalist mythology, flags probably do matter. No doubt, if a vote supported flying the Tricolour at Belfast City Hall, we would see Gerry et al celebrating the symbolic victory of further ‘greening’ the former bastion of Unionist political and economic power, and consolidating Republicanism’s place in the new Northern Ireland.

Therefore, Kelly is being deliberately disingenuous, in order to present himself and his party as serious politicians, and Unionists as flag-waving imbeciles. I’m not sure if claiming you are better at politics than the DUP is anything to boast about, but the Shinners clearly need to take their victories where they can find them.

Indeed, there is some truth in what Kelly said. Viewing Unionist as reactionary is not an unreasonable position to take, given the lack of proactive and independent policy ideas emerging from the Unionist camp. Robinson refusing to sign the Haass Agreement because “McGuinness seemed very eager to sign it, therefore something must be up”, is a depressingly accurate example of how we do politics here. If ‘they’ want something, it must be bad for ‘us’.

Further, these perspectives on Unionist short-sightedness are voiced by the Unionist people, and fairly regularly. Much of the complaints which emanate from the electorate are that Unionism has no strategy, and tends to be pushed and pulled by the various crises which we manufacture for ourselves here in Northern Ireland. However, that should not distract us from the fact that a substantial number of those crises are engineered by Republicanism, and for reasons which I will now outline.

Sinn Fein willingly entered into government with the DUP, on the understanding that power-sharing was a pragmatic solution to the ethno-sectarian divide. Since then, there has been little evidence of the development of a respectful, healthy politics between the two.

The question I have for Republicans is: why the small-scale, amateur attempts at winding Unionists up? Is it, perhaps because, you have found yourselves in power, ten months away from the hundredth centenary of the Easter Rising, with no idea where to go from here?

I have heard much reference to a ‘New Ireland’, an ‘Agreed Ireland’, and an ‘Ireland of Equals’. These abstractions, with their implicit benefits, are regularly doled out to Republican voters, to reassure them that this is not it. McGuinness sitting alongside Robinson is not where the Shinner train stops. A United Ireland will come.

But how? And when? Who will vote for it? And what will it look like? Because, despite the demographic changes, which the esteemed and benevolent Gerry Kelly so graciously displayed in his electoral leaflets, support for the Union has increased steadily since 2007, when 48% of Catholics wanted unification, compared to 2013’s figure of just 28%.

Professor Peter Shirlow refers to this attitudinal change as down to the “settlement”, which gave Catholics the rights and opportunities which they desired, and so removing the need to alter the constitutional position of Northern Ireland. However, that figure of just over a quarter looks positive when compared with the Protestant support for a united Ireland, which was sitting at 2% as of 2013 (Northern Ireland Life and Times online).

How do Sinn Fein plan to persuade the reluctant, or downright opposed, 98% of Protestants, and 72% of Catholics? By continuing to pursue a schizophrenic, inconsistent approach to policymaking across the island of Ireland? Anti-austerity in the Republic, and, for the most part, implementing Tory austerity in NI? By taunting and insulting Unionists as a grouping, criticizing their attachment to the Union flag, and working, where possible, to block parades from progressing?

As a Unionist voter, I can only assume that life in a united Ireland, with Sinn Fein in power, would be very unpleasant indeed. Given their silence on what shape this Ireland would take, and how we, the irrational, but nonetheless resident, minority, would be welcomed, all we have to go on is their conduct towards Unionists to date.

In addition to this inconvenient survey data, the recent Westminster elections brought bad news for Republicans. Sinn Fein’s vote share dropped for the first time since 1987, with the Ulster Unionist Party emerging as the victors of the election. Furthermore, the votes for ‘other’ parties, that is, Alliance, the Greens, and People Before Profit, and UKIP, increased. These parties sit outside of the ‘Orange and Green’, and they too, would have to be persuaded of the merits of Irish unification.

Finally, there have been some symbolic blows to the Republican psyche in the past year, which have perhaps derailed their grand plans for 2016, and all it promised to bring. Firstly, Gerry Carroll took a West Belfast seat in 2014, no mean feat in Gerry Adam’s former fiefdom. The people of West Belfast, it appears, are disillusioned with what the Shinners have to offer the working classes, and would prefer to lend their support to a new, genuinely socialist, candidate.

Looking east, toward the mainland, it might also be worrying Sinn Fein, that for all their supposed political capital, their tight party discipline, and their elastic approach to “talking to the Brits”, the SNP brought the Union closer to dissolution through democratic argument and persuasion, than the Shinners ever did through force.

Switching from the Armalite to the ballot box has brought Sinn Fein into Stormont. But that appears to be the upper limit of political Republicanism’s reach. This might be why, then, such attention is paid to the ‘small victories’ of irritating Unionists, given that they have failed to achieve their objectives, and are now “the Establishment”, which they once criticized so fiercely.

Sophie Long