So where did it all go wrong? In our own country today, despite the recent credit squeeze, our citizens have never been so wealthy. High-def TVs fly off the shelves at Tesco quicker than they can be imported. Whatever the latest technological innovation, most people can treat themselves to it. Eating out - a rare treat when I was a child in the ’70s - is as commonplace as going shopping. And when we do go shopping, whether for groceries or for clothes, we spend money in quantities that would have made our parents gasp.
We’re securer than ever, at least in international terms. There’s no equivalent of the Soviet Union threatening to bury is in a nuclear armageddon. The very real threat of terrorism hasn’t notably altered anyone’s patterns of behaviour or travel (which is as it should be). Job security is felt to be less than in the past, it’s true, but the corollary of that is the tremendous real-terms rises in incomes over the years and the consequent improvements in quality of life.
There are more two-car homes in Britain today than there are homes without a car at all. We live longer, eat healthier (if we choose), have better access to forms of entertainment never imagined a generation ago (satellite TV, DVD, computer games), the majority of us have fast access to the worldwide web, which we use to enable even more spending and for entertainment. Crime is down.
So why is everyone so bloody miserable?
Can’t speak for anyone else and I’m not so much miserable as frustrated...but I reckon it’s something to do with your miserable government’s miserable attempt to “Save the Union” when it was your miserable shower who created the threat to our nation in the first place with the commencement of your miserable Devolution Experiment in the late 90s.
But, anyway, great song, I’ll have to dig out another appropriate Smiths’ tune from OurTube
5 comments:
And what would have happened if the "just say no" approach had continued. Probably strengthened the hand of the SNP anyway.
Remember as I have said several times (which you have failed to answer) that the "say no" strategy worked fantastically well in Ireland - not!
Remember as I have said several times (which you have failed to answer) that the "say no" strategy worked fantastically well in Ireland - not!
You said this (that I haven't answered that particular point) last week, I must admit was surprised because I have on a previous occasion.
So, if Home Rule had been imposed on all of Ireland would I today have the priviledge of passing on my British citizenship to my children? Quite clearly the answer to that is "No."
As a base-line, which was giving as many as possible of British people in Ireland the right to remain British, those who set out to oppose Home Rule achieved their target.
Where Unionism made its mistake was accepting a poor alternative- what was effectively Home Rule for Ulster. Devolution has never worked in the UK.
Incidently you could also argue given the fact that the Free State and later the ROI was to all intents and purposes an economically-backward and socially repressive theocracy for much of the last 87 years or so, that for a long-time the rest of Ireland would also have been better off remaining a part of British family.
But they exercised their democratic right to choose to go their own way, the majority of Ulster simply exercised the same democratic right to remain part of the wider British nation.
Home Rule as presented by Parnell and Redmond was not independence. It was autonomy within the UK with Ireland still sending MPs to the House of Commons and Irish Representative Peers in the House of Lords.
As per provisions of the various Irish Home rule bills and the Government of Ireland Act 1920.
Therefore if those plans had been implemented it was likely that Dublin would be a British city today. Much of the sepratist extremism of the IRB would not have been given credit if die hard unionists had not set up the UVF.
Unionists to be blunt made the gun respectable in Irish politics. The Fennian Society up until that point was a joke with the 1848 and 1867 rebellions being a couple police shoot outs.
One the UVF was created the obvious reaction was the creation of nationalist rival which morphed into the IRA and of course still exists to this day.
Now we can argue the ins and outs of partition all day------
It has to be pointed out that the territory that was to become ROI was economically backward within the union. There was little industrialisation and the place was run in the view of some like a giant farm. Industrialisation was stunted by no natural resources (no coal deposits) and no doubt stunting in the early years of the industrial revolution by the economic consequences of the Penal Laws (restrictions on ownership of types of assets etc).
Not that the governments of the south are to escape censure. Once independent they screwed over their economic policy - the did not have an economic policy. William Cosgrave had few ideas and either did Dev who saw money making as a "Protestant obsession" and followed the protectionist dogma preached by Arthur Griffith (build up industries behind high tariff walls - except Dev decided not to build up industries)
Things only got better when Lemass implemented the necessary economic reforms when he took over in 1959. By that time he was on the verge of retirement. The urgent repair work he carried out wore him out and he retired in 1966. Basically for the good of the economy Lemass should have taken over ten years before when Dev was first kicked out of office.
Unfortunately Lemass was suceeded by Lynch who went back to Dev's style of keeping the farming vote happy and hange the rest.
The pieces had to be picked up Fitzgerald and (even his stauchest opponents grudgingly admit it such as Kevin Myers) in particular Charles Haughey had to sort out the mess. Haughey for his many, many faults could probably have died proud that he finished off his father-in-laws work. In turn Lemass claimed that many of his ideas came from Michael Collins' vision of industrialisation of the south as laid out in T P Coogan tome "The Path to Freedom" - but we all know what happened in 1922 in a part of rural Cork.
It is one of those "what if?" questons
Concerning the priests - the church did wield too much power and to be honest it took Fitzgerald to start breaking its hold (legalisation of homosexuality and contraception). The church itself had a good hand in its own downfall with sex abuse cases etc.
However your patch was not exactly glorious either. Catholics (after a promising start) excluded from influence - even middle class pro-union ones. My academic mentor Dr Maguire was from that background and lets just say that getting him talking about the UUP you could see the sparks fly and the thunder crack-
"Brookeborough - fascist thug!"
"O'Neill - as in Terry - shitbag!"
It was a question what he hated more - the Republic or the guarantors of the union in his own patch.
He strangely however admired Dev ("the best person under the circumstances to take the south through its Celtic Catholic nationalsim phase")
Apart from Sir Denis Henry, the first Chief Justice of NI, how many Catholics held high office in NI before Sunningdale? In the south of course there were influential protestants - Erskine Childers Snr and Jnr, Earnest Blythe and Lord Glenravy who served as the first chairman of the South's Senate. It was not perfect but I think the record was better in Dublin than in Belfast.
Home Rule as presented by Parnell and Redmond was not independence. It was autonomy within the UK with Ireland still sending MPs to the House of Commons and Irish Representative Peers in the House of Lords.
It offered a parliament with almost full control over “national matters”, far beyond what’s in place in Scotland or N.Ireland today. The influence the Irish Unionist MPS would have had Westminster would have been greatly reduced both in terms of numbers (reduced by almost 60%) and over those matters which they could discuss. Ulster Unionism would, in almost all those areas which really mattered, have been governed by a hostile administration in Dublin.
Therefore if those plans had been implemented it was likely that Dublin would be a British city today. Much of the sepratist extremism of the IRB would not have been given credit if die hard unionists had not set up the UVF.
Some hardline Irish ethno-nationalists argue that Dublin is still, to all intents and purposes, a British city! But I seriously doubt given the events of 1916 and the attempt to introduce conscription in 1918, that Unionists sitting within a Home Rule parliament would have been able to prevent the rest of Ireland breaking away. Remember Sinn fein swept the board electorally in the General election of 1918- in any Home Rule parliament (if they had taken up their places) they would have held a large majority.
Unionists to be blunt made the gun respectable in Irish politics. The Fennian Society up until that point was a joke with the 1848 and 1867 rebellions being a couple police shoot outs.
One the UVF was created the obvious reaction was the creation of nationalist rival which morphed into the IRA and of course still exists to this day.
Neither event which I mentioned as being the catalysts for the creation of the Free State, were connected with the setting up of the UVF 5 years or so previously; even without the UVF, we would have had the Easter Rising (and more importantly the botched response to it) and the attempt to introduce conscription in 1918.
However your patch was not exactly glorious either. Catholics (after a promising start) excluded from influence - even middle class pro-union ones.
I’ve argued that (as Sir Edward Carson foresaw) we would have been a lot better off if no part of Ireland had been granted Home Rule. Devolution for Northern Ireland in 1922, was, in retrospect, a mistake. However a comparison of the two population figures (ie the almost continual decline of the number of Protestants in the Free State/republic, and the steady increase of the number of RCs living in Northern Ireland) reveal two very contrasting stories.
My academic mentor Dr Maguire was from that background and lets just say that getting him talking about the UUP you could see the sparks fly and the thunder crack-
"Brookeborough - fascist thug!"
"O'Neill - as in Terry - shitbag!"
It was a question what he hated more - the Republic or the guarantors of the union in his own patch.
He strangely however admired Dev ("the best person under the circumstances to take the south through its Celtic Catholic nationalsim phase")
De Valera was a mirror image in many ways of the more ultra-wing of Unionism; in both cases, in my opinion, they caused a lot of damage to the respective causes they professed to be supporting. I can’t quite understand the antipathy towards O’Neill though- was it a class thing, a bit of reverse snobbery?
Maguire's background (I write in the past tense as he died of cancer in 2000 at the age of 41) was largely rooted in the south. Part of the family were well to do Catholic unionist farmers who were burned out by the IRA and fled over the border. When his family appealed for compensation from the south the application was "lost in the post" - and they were only told this after the cut-off deadline. Hence his hatred of ROI till his last months.
He felt that NI had a promising beginning as he put it a commercial-orientated fairly dogma free place. However he felt that the wealth-creators were undermined in their task by the landed classes that made up the establishment of the UUP who used the Orange Order to cause aggitation amongst working class protestants against all Catholics so they could stay in power.
The only two NI PMs he spoke with any admiration were John Andrews and Brian Faulkner. Andrews he said had been removed from office by the establishment for not being "one of them" whilst in his view the tragedy of NI could have been avoided if Faulkner had taken over Brookeborough rather than having to wait a few years.
His particular anger was vented at the UUP Establishment who rather than try to improve the declining post-Empire economy chose to play the Protestants off against Catholics for increasingly scarce jobs. And then when the shit hit the fan legging it across the water only returning to their estates during the shooting season.
I asked him about Craigavon since his background was in whiskey. He viewed Craigavon as someone who had inherited his money and was just one of the landed classes.
Maguire had an interesting life. He made contacts with paramilitaries on both sides and between degrees at Queens worked as a security courier round Belfast and the rest of NI shifting money and pharmacueticals about. He made a few a contacts that way, collected research and then went to Aberdeen and did his dissertation on NI "ethnic terrorism".
His criticism of ROI however changed in his last visit to the place in 1999 when he saw the changes. He said that the ROI had become like the what NI had once been, commerically driven whilst NI had become a religious-driven economic hellhole which veered from time to time like the south in the civil war at its worst points. Cest Plus Change.
He had some interesting stories - particularly about how the UVF kicked the National Front out of Belfast.
For the record whilst it was highly likely the 1916 would have taken place, the UVF bringing about the creation of a nationalist paramilitary force of several thousand gave conditions to a rebellion whose strength had not been seen since 1798.
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