The random ramblings of andrewg

March 1, 2012

NI local government reform

Filed under: Politics — andrewgdotcom @ 6:33 pm

Local councils in Northern Ireland are a joke. They are a ridiculously small size (compared to most other countries) so that more people can live in a council that is controlled by their “side”. The original seven-council plan with real devolution of powers was (despite some questionable boundaries) far preferable to the later insipid eleven- or fifteen-council proposals, which stank of communal carve-up and eventually came to a crashing halt due to a disagreement over the communal balance of Belfast.

If we believe in limited government, we should also believe in decisions being made as close to the citizen as possible. This does not mean that smaller is always better – sometimes economy of scale is inescapable. It is clear that local councils are at present far too small to play any meaningful role, and so increasing their size would (counterintuitively) support localism by allowing real powers to be devolved to them.

Six counties plus Belfast would be more sensible – with Fermanagh either partially or fully merged with Tyrone due to its small population, and with Armagh taking over bordering population centres in West Down (Banbridge and Newry). This has several advantages, not least the historical and cultural legitimacy of using traditional counties as a basis. The number and location of councils would then also match the proposed five or six acute hospitals, giving a possible role for councils in their oversight. This would seem to indicate that such councils would also be the right size for other public-sector oversight roles. They would be large enough to be able to raise and spend meaningful amounts of money on local issues such as rural roads and town centres.

The only significant argument against such an arrangement (and admittedly it is a good one) is that it would lead to one-community control of most councils. This however is already the case in the majority of existing councils. On the other hand, giving one “side” an overwhelming majority may (again counterintuitively) loosen up the political balance within the designations, as it would remove the motivation for block voting to keep themmuns out. With luck, we could eventually see the big parties within one community actively trying to woo voters from the other community to make up the numbers, rather than appealing to the core communal vote.

In order for goodwill to flourish though, local councils should be stripped of all powers in contentious policy areas. For example, currently we have very visible local community fiefdoms where the Irish language (and occasionally Ulster-Scots) is either prominent or completely absent, according to local council makeup. This reinforces segregation into Unionist and Nationalist areas of control. Instead, there should be an overall language and signage policy for all of NI. That does not mean that regional variations cannot be accommodated within such a policy, but it does mean that contentious matters are kept firmly within Stormont’s mutual veto system.

Of course, the danger of this is that nothing contentious ever gets decided, but that’s a problem in any case.

(This post is based on a comment I made a while ago on policyni.com. Normal service will be resumed shortly)

February 29, 2012

Rethinking “Irishness” – definitions and symbolism

Filed under: Culture,Pithy terminology,Politics — andrewgdotcom @ 5:44 pm
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We have already seen how the unique geography of Ireland rules out some of the usual political options for solving its ethnic dispute, by making the redrawing of borders to match the ethnic divide impractical. But it also leads to problems defining an Irish identity, because unlike most other countries in Europe, it is not the people who define political geography, but the geography that defines the people.

20th century political philosophy accepts the idea that nations have the right to self-determination, that ethnic geography should therefore define political geography. This has led to the current ideal, best exemplified in Europe, of state borders being drawn along ethnic dividing lines. The ethnic patchwork that has taken shape organically over thousands of years is therefore taken as the starting point, and (in theory at least) political geography derives its legitimacy from it. The Danes are defined by their cultural identity, and Denmark is defined as the homeland of the Danish people. When the people did not match the territory (in Schleswig-Holstein) the eventual solution was to redefine Denmark.

But Ireland works the other way around. As an island, its borders are fixed. The Irish people are themselves fixed by the territory, i.e. those people who live (or were born in) Ireland. If you try to define “Irishness” on the usual cultural basis you create a second kind of “Irishness” in conflict with the first. The only way to resolve this ambiguity is to let go of one of these definitions. If one prefers the cultural version, then one defines an “Irishness” that does not cover all natives of the island, so what then does one call the other natives? If we do not call them “Irish” then we implicitly question the legitimacy of their presence. But if we do call them “Irish” then we are guilty of forcing a cultural identity onto those who do not want it.

Alternatively we can choose the geographical definition of “Irish”, but then there must be several native Irish ethnic groups, of which the majority group is just one. We are not short of names for these groups, so long as we are not easily offended: Taig, Hun and Pavee. We thereby place the island’s majority ethnic community on an equal footing with the native minorities (and implicitly also with immigrant minorities), and reserve “Irish” to describe the whole.

Some things which are conventionally identified with Irishness may then be found to be relevant just to the majority Taig ethnic group. In particular, the novel symbols of nationhood deriving from the Home Rule and independence period have no meaning for Huns while older symbols, such as those deriving from the legend of St. Patrick, continue to have broad relevance to all Irish people. The Irish language also has a personal relevance to many Taigs that most Huns do not share.

We see therefore, that neither standard interpretation of modern Irish symbolism is entirely correct. The standard Taig view of independence-era symbols such as the tricolour and anthem is that they are the national symbols of Ireland (the island), even though this was an ideal that was never realised. The standard Hun opinion is that they are the symbols of the Republic of Ireland, despite the strong allegiance they continue to attract from inside the North. It would be more accurate to say that they are the national symbols of Taigs, for if we recognise the right of people to self-identify then we must also recognise their right to show allegiance (or not) to symbols of that identity. By a similar argument, most supposed Northern Ireland symbolism is effectively Hun symbolism in disguise.

It should not come as any surprise that political symbols now have de facto ethnic meanings not intended by their creators, nor should it be any cause for concern. Separating symbolism from politics is one way of defusing tensions – while even politically moderate Huns will balk at any symbolic suggestion that NI “belongs” to the Republic (as flying the tricolour is often viewed), acceptance of the distinct identity of Taigs is mainstream. If existing flags and symbols could come to be accepted as markers of ethnicity rather than political ideology, much of the heat could be taken out of the symbolism debate. This would also then leave the way open for new NI and all-Ireland symbolism to be developed that is free from ethno-political baggage.

February 28, 2012

The supposed fragility of “Unionist” identity

Filed under: Culture,Pithy terminology,Politics — andrewgdotcom @ 5:50 pm
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Alex Kane is on the warpath again:

Sinn Fein has been inviting all sorts of non-republicans to address their ‘uniting Ireland’ conferences.

They would have you believe that it’s part of their ongoing mission to persuade us that we would be better off outside the United Kingdom and that we would have nothing to fear inside a united Ireland.

Well, we wouldn’t have a political identity or a constitutional purpose. We would be denied a mechanism for reversing the decision at another time. We wouldn’t have any structures to protect and promote our core values, or determine our own destiny. Republicanism, it seems, can be given a voice and a chance to secure its end goals inside Northern Ireland: but unionism would never be given the same rights within a united Ireland.

I can think of no reasons or circumstances in which unionists in Northern Ireland would ever vote for a united Ireland. Even ‘turquoise unionists’ – those who indulge the fancy that you can be both Irish and British – would probably come to their senses and realise that once the border went, their Britishness would go with it!

Apparently it is the border that defines Huns, and without it they would cease to exist. The constitutional link with Britain is the sum total of Ulster-British-Protestant identity and is therefore a precious, fragile thing. This is a classic refrain, and one that is accepted by many without question. It is a negative, reactionary line that is born not of pride or self-confidence, but of fear and an assumption of weakness and inevitable failure.

It is a pernicious idea because it implies that an individual’s identity, his self-image, derives not from his own qualities but from an external source. It tells you that your identity can be taken away from you by others, that it depends on political permission. And this has historically suited the purposes of political Unionism, because it sustains the communal block vote.

Nobody argues that Scots ceased to be Scottish after 1707, just because a border was redrawn. Scots are currently an even smaller minority in the UK (8%) than Unionists are in Ireland (15%), yet Scots maintain an identity beyond mere politics, one that survived the loss of their independent state and is in rude health today. The “Unionist community” has never been defined by its own members in such a robust fashion. At times it seems to hang from a thread, its entire existence deriving from a line on a map. This is largely the fault of political Unionism itself, which invested all its energy in building defences against Irish nationalism, and precious little in working out who it was defending.

Ethnicity is not defined by politics. One can be a Scottish Unionist or a Scottish Nationalist, and still be equally Scottish. But political Unionism has not yet understood this. It does not believe that there can be a difference between political Unionism and its ethnic counterpart, as evidenced by Kane’s quote above. Four hundred years of Ulster-British-Protestant history, culture and identity are reduced to a single political issue barely a century old. If there were a united Ireland, political Unionism may well die. But the cultural legacy beneath it would continue to exist after Unionism, just as it existed before Unionism.

And this is where Unionism is failing those that it purports to represent. By framing the constitutional debate in apocalyptic terms it may galvanise the faithful, but it also gives unrealistic hope to its enemies. If one vote for a United Ireland will make the Huns disappear into the mists of history, then there are many who will cheer the process on. A political movement that survives by making its supporters fearful and its opponents confident is probably best described as parasitic. A significant proportion of its own voters believe Unionism will eventually fail, and this lack of confidence can be seen at the root of many of Unionism’s neuroses.

A healthy political culture would not constantly tell itself that it sat on the edge of a precipice. It would try to give its people confidence in their own future security, come what may. But would it still be Unionism?

February 27, 2012

The island of Ireland is a political straitjacket

Filed under: Geography,Pithy terminology,Politics — andrewgdotcom @ 5:54 pm
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One of the great ambiguities about modern Ireland is the confusion between Ireland the island and Ireland the independent state. Both officially go under the same name, although one can often avoid ambiguity by using prefixes (Republic of Ireland, island of Ireland). This actively contributes to Ireland’s political problems, because it closes one of the escape valves normally used to resolve ethnic conflict – redefinition.

When Austria-Hungary was divided up into its component parts after WWI, the border between Austria and Hungary was redrawn. A sliver of land which was traditionally part of Hungary had over the years become majority-German speaking. On independence, this area (today known as the Burgenland) was transferred to Austria so that the border more closely matched the ethnic divide. Effectively, the words “Austria” and “Hungary” were redefined to suit changed reality.

That option is not open to Ireland. Unlike land frontiers, coastlines cannot be altered at the stroke of a pen. The Ulster Unionist movement redefined the boundary between the UK and newly-independent Ireland by creating a Burgenland of their own, Northern Ireland. But the escape was not clean – the word “Ireland” stubbornly remained in use for the entire island, and was included in the name of the new state (despite the efforts of many to adopt “Ulster” instead).

To confound matters, the sea boundary between Ireland and Scotland also forced NI to be defined maximally so as to ensure a viable territory – by contrast, the Burgenland is only 5km wide at its narrowest point. If NI had been created merely as a two- or three-county state the ethnic balance would have been much more equitable, but politically it would have been less stable. Consider a counter-factual – if Scotland and Ireland were connected to each other by a land bridge, it is likely that the frontier between them would have shifted back and forth several times in history. The plantation of Scots in Antrim and Down would have been expansionism, not colonisation. An eventual redrawing of the Ireland/Scotland frontier a few miles further into Irish territory would likely have been (reluctantly) accepted as the price of peace, as it was in Hungary.

But the North Channel is an immovable frontier, and Ireland’s status as an island is thus a political straitjacket. Its extent is fixed by the sea in perpetuity, and an equitable repartition would leave NI as an unviable state. In addition, the island as a “natural” political unit has both an economic logic and a romantic appeal – it is no accident that ethnically-divided islands provide more than their fair share of the world’s intractable conflicts. Ethnic nationalism can sometimes work if practical frontiers can be found. But islands frustrate this process, and in Ireland no such practical frontiers are possible.

One cannot define an ethnic Irish identity, because the geographical Irish identity is in conflict with it, and cannot be altered to match. Ethnic nationalism is thus doomed to failure in Ireland, because ethnic-Unionists (“Huns“) cannot submit to an Irishness based on ethnic-Nationalist (“Taig“) identity, but neither can they escape it. Political and cultural neurosis is the inevitable result.

February 24, 2012

Ethnicity in Northern Ireland

Filed under: Culture,Pithy terminology,Politics — andrewgdotcom @ 6:15 pm
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In my previous post, I argued that the terms “Protestant community” and “Catholic community”, as used for fair employment monitoring in Northern Ireland, are merely proxies – it is not your personal faith (or even your personal political beliefs) that are being monitored, but your ethnicity. And the only words we have that accurately describe these ethnicities are the pejoratives “Hun” and “Taig”.

But what is an ethnicity, and how does this apply to Northern Ireland? From Wikipedia:

An ethnic group (or ethnicity) is a group of people whose members identify with each other, through a common heritage, often consisting of a common language, a common culture (often including a shared religion) and/or an ideology that stresses common ancestry or endogamy.

The “two communities” in NI obviously qualify in terms of self-identification, religion and endogamy. Common ancestry was also a key component of the Gaelic revival, as was the restoration of a dying common language.

But here we see a key difference between Taigs and Huns – while the former have a clear sense of their own ancestry, the latter sometimes appear to struggle. This may be due to the eclectic origins of Huns amongst English and Scots planters, Huguenot refugees and Penal Law converts – groups who have historically shared little in common except the Reformed faith. Contrast this with the older roots of Taigs in the Gaelic population, whose origins are shrouded in mist, spiced only by the Anglo-Norman aristocracy and the occasional Viking, both well-integrated come the time of plantation. Thus Taig identity draws heavily upon language, legend and location, while Hun identity focuses more on religion and politics, with King Billy being the closest approximation to a founding mythology.

But there is another native people who pass the ethnicity test, and that is Irish Travellers or (since I am decrying euphemisms) Pavee. Long neglected, there is an increased awareness of their distinct identity, with the census in NI now counting them as a separate ethnic group. Although Pavee are mainly Catholic and probably descend from Gaelic ancestry, they are strongly endogamous and maintain a nomadic culture equally alien to both Huns and Taigs.

So with this in mind, perhaps the next NI census form should read:

□ Hun
□ Taig
□ Pavee
□ English
□ Scottish
□ Welsh
□ Polish
□ Chinese
□ Indian
□ Black
□ Mixed
□ Other

And maybe instead of “Mixed” we should be allowed to tick more than one box? But that’s an argument for another time.

February 22, 2012

Whatever clothes befit the times…

Filed under: Culture,Pithy terminology,Politics — andrewgdotcom @ 8:52 pm

I found this a while ago and forgot about it. It seems apposite now, considering that I recently mentioned the fluidity of the labels “Unionism” and “Nationalism”:

Since its formation, the Orange has tended to undermine constructive unionism and bolster its regressive wing.  Indeed the Order, which might present itself as a stalwart of the Union now, took a while to be convinced of its merits.

Senior Orangemen were leading proponents of Dublin rule for the first part of the nineteenth century.  Government from Westminster threatened to introduce a modern form of citizenship which, they rightly feared,, might even extend the franchise to Catholics.

So the Order stayed neutral on the Union and a substantial section of its leadership actively advocated a return to a Dublin parliament.  British allegiance wasn’t allowed to trump anti-Catholic prejudice.

As I said earlier, the underlying ethnic conflict wears whatever clothes are befitting the times.

Are you a Protestant Jew or a Catholic Jew?

Filed under: Culture,Pithy terminology,Politics — andrewgdotcom @ 5:31 pm
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If you have ever been employed in Northern Ireland, you will have come across the following question:

Regardless of whether we practice religion, most of us in Northern Ireland are seen as either Catholic or Protestant. We are therefore asking you to indicate your community background by ticking the appropriate box below.

□ I am a member of the Protestant Community
□ I am a member of the Roman Catholic Community
□ I am a member of neither the Protestant nor Roman Catholic Community

If you do not complete this questionnaire we are encouraged to use the “residuary” method which means we can make a determination on the basis of information on file/application form.

Translation: we know this question is inaccurate and potentially offensive, but we are required by law to ask it anyway. If you refuse to answer, we will make something up.

It is inaccurate is because religion is being used as a proxy for something else, something it is afraid to name. That is why it does not ask if you personally are a Protestant or a Catholic, but whether you come from that-community-which-is-mostly-Protestant or that-community-which-is-mostly-Catholic. These are not names, they are circumlocutions. Replacing “Protestant” and “Catholic” with “Unionist” and “Nationalist” is not an improvement – they do not really want to know what your personal political beliefs are. They want to know which tribe you are from. It would be more straightforward – and honest – to ask the following instead:

What is your ethnic background?

□ Hun
□ Taig
□ Other

The words may be shocking, but they cut to the chase. We are not potential victims of discrimination because of our religion, but because of the ethnic origin that membership of a particular denomination implies. Our personal politics are no defence either – a Hun who professes to be a Republican merely invites increased suspicion from both sides.

The old story of the Belfast rabbi being asked “are you a Protestant Jew or a Catholic Jew?” is well worn, precisely because it contains an important truth. “Protestant” and “Catholic” in this context don’t actually mean Protestant and Catholic. What the questioners are really asking, in an inarticulate way, is “we don’t care what religion you are, are you a Hun or a Taig?” When expressed using blunt language, the absurdities are cast aside and the truth exposed.

Taigs and Huns – no better option?

Filed under: Culture,Pithy terminology,Politics — andrewgdotcom @ 9:28 am
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In my previous post, I argued that we need new words other than “Unionist” and “Nationalist” to describe the ethnic (as opposed to political or religious) divisions within Northern Ireland, and that we already had perfectly good words in “Hun” and “Taig” if we were willing to overlook their origin as tribal insults. But are these really the best options available?

“British” and “Irish” are completely unsuitable – a significant proportion of people in NI consider themselves both, to varying degrees. “Ireland” – and by extension “Irish” – is already an ambiguous term (“island of” vs. “Republic of”), and “British” can also mean different things to different people (“Brits out!”).

“Ulsterman” is not a tribal label, and its history as an inaccurate synonym for “Northern Irishman” is unhelpful. “Fenian” is a political pejorative, not an ethnic one. As an archaic synonym for “Irish Republican” it is still useful in a historical context; and in a modern context it is almost universally followed by “bastard”, from which it may be difficult to disassociate. “Jaffa” implies a connection with Orangeism, and thus has political undertones. Loyal Orders are a declining pastime amongst Huns, so it is also increasingly inaccurate. And it’s not even a good insult.

No, there are no good alternatives. The only option left is to invent completely new terms, so that we can avoid any personal discomfort. But in doing so we throw away the unique selling point of “Hun” and “Taig” – they convey the tribal divide clearly to the target audience without the need for footnotes or lengthy caveats.

And pejoratives are redeemable – minority communities often adopt the insults directed at them, as an act of defiance. But we must be careful to avoid the fate of the N word, which is acceptable for a black person to say, but must never cross the lips of whites. It is good then that “Taig” and “Hun” are both insults, for the sake of parity of esteem.

So it is conceivable that they might one day be adopted by their respective tribes. Perhaps they could even be allowed into respectable conversation. In this blog I will assume the latter, although I will be careful to use both terms in each post lest I be accused of bias. It is far too soon to utter them in the pub or on the street. One step at a time.

But the true test will be whether rehabilitating these words is useful. I hope to demonstrate in subsequent posts that it is.

February 20, 2012

In praise of pejoratives

Filed under: Culture,Pithy terminology,Politics — andrewgdotcom @ 5:36 pm
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I have complained before about the giant hole in NI cultural terminology. There are things that exist that do not have names, and because they do not have names we cannot discuss them. Instead we use euphemisms that mean different things to different people, and waste our breath fruitlessly arguing over semantics. To demonstrate, consider a recent exchange on Slugger:

unionists are for the union, pretty straight forward, Im sure there are some in the Alliance as well.

Unionism is a tribal identity and by using the term you are identifying with it.

The core of this is a fundamental disagreement over what “Unionist” means. To some it is a political ideology; to others it is a tribal marker. The two meanings have become confused because in recent history they have referred to (approximately) the same subset of people, but this does not mean that the same must be true always. “Unionism” and “Nationalism” no longer have universally-understood meanings, and so have outlived their usefulness as descriptive terms.

The problem with names

The name we choose for a thing can either illuminate its true nature, or obscure it. In particular, if we use the same name for two different things we implicitly obscure their differences. If these differences are not important, this can be very useful. But if these differences are crucial, then we have just hamstrung ourselves.

If we use the words “Protestant” and “Catholic” we imply that the core of the dispute in NI is a matter of religious interpretation. While this may have been true in the 17th century, it is an archaic dispute to most people today. If we instead use the terms “Unionist” and “Nationalist” it is in one sense an improvement, as it captures the surface detail of the conflict, but in another sense it is a step backwards, as it implies the disagreement is a rarefied, intellectual disagreement of individual conscience, not the visceral and tribal one we know it to be.

“Unionism” and “nationalism” are fluid terms that referred to different people in different ages – around the time of the Act of Union many Catholics were Unionist and Protestants Nationalist, because of the promise that the Union would bring about Catholic emancipation. Political labels mask the underlying problem, which has roots in plantation and confession, but which has survived for hundreds of years wearing whatever political clothes befit the times.

It’s worse than you want to admit

Imagine a country whose most lasting division is into two groups who rarely intermarry, and in some parts of the inner city barely even meet. Everyone brought up in one of these groups knows instinctively where this divide lies and what its history contains. They all know what side of the line they (and others) come from, no matter how hard they try to ignore it. Previous governments have used it as an excuse for repression, and the effects are felt even today in both politics and wider society.

I’m talking about blacks and whites in the USA, of course. But when we see this description applied to ourselves we put our fingers in our ears and insist it’s not an ethnic conflict. Aren’t we all the same race, after all? We may look the same, and yet I challenge you to tell the difference between a Greek Cypriot and a Turkish Cypriot if you passed them on the street. We speak the same language, but then so did Serbs and Croats. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

We already have a solution – but you won’t like it

Since we don’t have names for such an ethnic division in NI, we delude ourselves into thinking it isn’t real. If something doesn’t have a name, it doesn’t exist. But despite all I have said above, we do have such names. They are perfect names because they describe the ethnic divide succinctly and precisely. Everyone in NI knows exactly what they mean, and they are used every single day. They’re just not considered polite.

Huns and Taigs.

Wait, I hear you cry. We don’t need these ugly pejoratives. They’re just synonyms for more polite, more acceptable words; they don’t have a distinct meaning. This is understandable, but it is nonsense. To prove it to yourself, consider the following four questions carefully, and answer them honestly.

1. If a Hun joins the Hare Krishnas, is he still a Hun?
2. If a Taig converts to Buddhism, is he still a Taig?
3. If a Taig joins the UUP, is he still a Taig?
4. If a Hun joins the SDLP, is he still a Hun?

The ordinary folk who are suffering the most from this ethnic conflict know exactly what its nature is, and have come up with pithy, descriptive terms for their everyday experience. Polite society recoils from pithy, descriptive terms, but it does not have adequate “polite” alternatives – perhaps because polite society does not want to admit the truth, that the intellectual concerns of polite society are a polite fiction. It’s not about the Pope, or the structure of church governance. It’s not about the constitution, or the role of monarchy in a modern society. It’s about what tribe has the upper hand.

Might as well get used to it

So we have established that there exist things for which the only accurate names are insults. This may not be so important, were it not for the fact that the Hun/Taig divide in NI is the single most destructive flaw in our society. If we want to fix it, we need to talk about it directly, not through shifty euphemisms such as “Protestant” or “Nationalist”. The first step to recovery is admitting the depth of our problem, and that means straight talking. Since there are no polite alternatives, we must reclaim the pejoratives and be unafraid to use them when no other word will do.

I plan a series of posts to demonstrate how pithy terminology can aid clarity of thought when discussing the conflict in NI. Please feel free to throw in your suggestions.

December 13, 2011

God Save the National Anthem?

Filed under: Culture,Politics — andrewgdotcom @ 1:35 pm
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Ed Curran writes in the Tele today in support of playing a Northern Ireland specific anthem instead of God Save the Queen at NI football matches. It is a change that is long overdue.

In the orange corner however, Mervyn Storey MLA demurs:

Playing the national anthem for the national team was never a problem. Others are trying to make it a problem now.

There are two fundamental mistakes in this statement: firstly, it has always been a problem (to non-unionists at least) and to claim otherwise is simply denial. Secondly, the “national anthem” and the “national team” don’t refer to the same nation. Never mind the potential offence, playing the British national anthem for the Northern Ireland national team is a category error. While Northern Ireland remains part of the UK, its football team is not a UK-wide team, and should not use UK-wide symbols. Equally, England should get their own anthem, as Scotland and Wales have already done. As one commenter puts it:

This is my point, it was stupid, England played GSTQ, then two minutes later we played GSTQ? The funniest thing at Old Trafford was the confused look on all the English faces and you could actually hear them chatting to each other during the match, I can imagine the conversation of “here mate, why are you Paddy’s singing our song?”

God Save the Queen is a dirge, but it is the anthem of the UK and will remain so. It is entirely appropriate for UK-wide organisations, but not for those based in one of the constituent countries, which should develop their own symbolisms, even if only to avoid confusion like in the incident above. The possibility that this may ease the discomfort of nationalists is a welcome side effect, but should not be the prime reason for change.

A proper NI anthem would also be useful in for Irish rugby, where proper parity could be achieved through playing the team anthem (Ireland’s Call) and the local anthem (of the jurisdiction) at all matches, North or South – the current (equally offensive) fudge that Ravenhill is a “foreign” ground would then no longer be an issue. This may either prompt, or be dependent on, an acceptable Northern Ireland flag to go with it.

I have long been under the impression that Danny Boy was the (unofficial) anthem of NI, but the Tele only lists it as one of ten options (some of which are patently silly). I think this is a missed opportunity to promote what could be a fine anthem. From wikipedia:

Weatherly did, however, acknowledge that “Danny Boy” was sung “all over the world by Sinn Feiners and Ulstermen alike”, and noted that the song had “nothing of the rebel song in it, and no note of bloodshed”.

If we are to have anthems at all (and sometimes I doubt the wisdom of that) surely it is better that they evoke wistful nostalgia than echoes of conquest.

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