When I wrote my last entry, I didn't think that a week later that I would be writing a follow up piece, on an event that was still ongoing. Is that naive? Perhaps, but maybe I thought that Northern Ireland had moved past the days of violence and thuggery to achieve goals.
The last 8 days has seen more protests over the decision of Belfast City Council to change the number of days the Union flag is displayed to 17, in accordance with the Equality Commission and the objective of delivering a Shared Future. This was not an 'attack' on anyone's identity or culture or background, this was a genuine attempt to make Belfast City Hall a neutral and shared space for both Unionists, Nationalists and neither. We have also witnessed more attacks on the offices of political parties, the attempted murder of a PSNI officer and a slew of death threats target at MLAs and Councillors from Alliance, the DUP, Sinn Fein and SDLP.
This is not the reclaiming of identity or 'peaceful protests'. In fact those who are orchestrating the violence we have seen against community representatives and Police officers are not Loyalists, nor do they represent the communities they claim to represent. Moderate Unionists and ordinary working class Protestants do not want this, they reject violence and the cowards and thugs that issue death threats from behind a keyboard or on the end of a payphone do not speak for anyone but themselves.
Illegal road blocks and the disruption of traffic on the busiest shopping period of the entire year, when Belfast is suffering 25% vacancy rates is not something I agree with, however people are angry. The failure of Unionist leaders to reach out to their working class electorate has become apparent in recent days as Mike Nesbitt and Peter Robinson try desperately, even tonight, to bring an end to the protests and restore the rule of law.
The difficulty here is selling to people the idea of shared society, without having them believe that their identity is being taken away and dissected in favour of a more sinister agenda. I am not saying that such an agenda exists, however those who perceive there to be a sustained attack on their identity and their community will react accordingly, and it is the failure of 'moderate' Unionism (And I use that phrase lightly) to allay these fears and bring these communities with them after the St Andrews Agreement.
These protests are no longer strictly about a flag, they have become an expression of anger and frustration of working class Loyalists who feel that they have been left behind by the people they chose to elect them. It is up to all political parties, irrespective of political persuasion, to ensure that their concerns are heard and that they feel that they are listened to. If we don't take this seriously, we can't expect the bitterness and the divisions to go away. They will fester and they will manifest themselves as they have done since last Monday.
We have seen in recent days the PUP make a lot of political hay by expressing their intention to engage with the protesters on a grass roots level and that they can provide leadership. The dilemma of the UUP is that while it claims to represent the working class, it has found itself unable to adequately engage with it and its leadership in recent days has been somewhat lacking. Nesbitt has become more hard line that the DUP on the issue of flags, going so far as to remove the whip from Basil McCrea over his disagreement with him on that very point. Will this push more moderate Unionists towards the Alliance party or even the NI Conservatives? By trying to appeal to hard line Loyalists Mike Nesbitt runs the risk of alienating the more liberal and progressive factions of the UUP and also be seen as doing too little too late by those Loyalists he is trying to attract.
The next few days will be crucial if there is to be an end to these protests before someone is seriously injured or killed, it's only a matter of time. What then? I dread to think.
'The last 8 days has seen more protests over the decision of Belfast City Council to change the number of days the Union flag is displayed to 17, in accordance with the Equality Commission and the objective of delivering a Shared Future.'
ReplyDeleteAppeals to the Equality Commission are not self-justifying. It's also not true. The restriction on flying the Union flag was the decision of the council. Also, shared future language is hot air.
'This was not an 'attack' on anyone's identity or culture or background, this was a genuine attempt to make Belfast City Hall a neutral and shared space for both Unionists, Nationalists and neither.'
This overlooks the nature of the argument made by Unionists sitting on Belfast City Council. Whilst it might be true that Unionist cultural identify is closely bound up with flying the Union flag the two can be separated. That is to say the Union flag is not just - or even primarily - an expression of cultural identity but a symbol of the political Union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
This highlights an important distinction between the Irish Nationalist position and the Unionist position; the object of Unionism exists but the Nationalist one does not. And therefore the use of Nationalist symbols is always an assertion of community whereas the use of Unionist symbols is not, that is to say the presence of a Union flag is not necessarily an assertion of one community over another but could also be a symbol of a political fact; a political fact that, apparently, was accepted by SDLP, Sinn Fein and Alliance in the Belfast Agreement, one that cannot change without majority consent.
The 'shared space' argument is bogus because a flag stands in for what it symbolises. Removing the symbol does not change the fact but it does remove a form of its public affirmation. With respect to the former, that the fact does not change entails that Belfast is no more a 'shared space' after this decision was made than it was before. With respect to the latter, the restriction on the use of the symbol is an attack on what the symbol represents.
The Alliance Party's position on this is absolute guff. It strikes me no one in it really knows what they're talking about. What you've got to do, you see, is rollout meaningless terms like 'shared future' and 'shared space' and you're done. The object here is not to make a cogent argument (how could it be?) but to sound and be perceived a certain way. It's bound to be a form of egoism. This ties in well with the other prominent issue on this blog, 'equal marriage'. This time the Alliance Party orders in the arguments from GB and the United States, assembles them together and then repeats them in public as a considered opinion. But it's not about having considered opinions it's about being a soapy liberal and these days this is what soapy liberals believe. It's humbug.
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