Green Union Flags: The Future for Right of Centre Politics in Northern Ireland/North of Ireland?
I attended the re-launch of the local Conservatives today. No sign of the Conservative leader – he’s giving evidence to the Leveson Enquiry about his LOL text messages to Rebecca Brooks (apparently she advised him that it didn’t mean ‘lots of love’ so much as ‘laugh out loud’. Here, of course, it means Loyal Orange Lodge).
Anyway…I digress. The purpose of today’s re-launch was to replace the words Northern Ireland with NI – and tweak the logo so that the local variant of the Conservative tree logo looks like a map of Northern Ireland. Oh and the launch brochure featured a green Union flag. Hmm.
Apparently the new Party is more autonomous – defining devolved policy positions etc. But that was the case before as well. So the organisational distinction was lost on me – and most of the journalists present. Sam McBride of the Newsletter asked Irwin Armstrong and Owen Paterson why this “new” Party would do any better than UCUNF and the answer from Paterson was that UCUNF didn’t do so bad – it was merely because of the vagaries of the electoral system that no UCUNF MPs were returned to Westminster. Sorry, Owen, wrong answer. UCUNF did badly – very badly. It did nothing to get the right-of-centre vote out. It discredited the Conservative Party. It showed the Conservative Party to be lacking in vision and ethics. It made the Conservative Party sectarian.
But Owen’s wrong answer clearly identified the problem with this “new” Party. The same faces and personalities were in the room – apart from a few defectors and potential defectors from the UUP. In the corner lurked Paterson’s adviser Jonathan Caine – the chief architect and communications genius behind the UCUNF debacle. The journos looked weary and bored with the lacklustre and uninspiring speeches – and the whole event started nearly 40 minutes late and no-one saw fit to tell the assembled audience why. The video technology failed when a recorded interview with a young person with an Irish sounding name espoused why the NI Conservatives represented the future – but her voice got out of synch with the pictures.
Frankly I think it’s all too little, too late. I think centre-right politics will emerge out of the sectarian swamp of Northern Ireland politics but I’m just not sure the NI Conservatives will be the voice of it. The talent, the passion, the personality just isn’t there – and I’m just a tad concerned that the last thing a ‘new political Party of the centre-right’ needs is to be shackled to the baggage of an increasingly sleazy-looking and discredited Conservative Party.
I’d agree whole-heartedly with many of the points made by Trevor Ringland and Irwin Armstrong and many others there today – many of whom were involved in the earliest moves to normalise and secularise Northern Ireland’s politics back in the 1980s. Northern Ireland does need normality and real politics. I’ll watch with interest if a new logo, banishing the name of the place to a mere acronym that could mean North of Ireland, and green union flags, will do the trick.
An unmitigated disaster from start to finish. No panache,no style, no imagination,poor planning and execution, lack lustre, boring and anti GB born NI Residents. On this subject if you are repeatedly unable to take the nuances on board then what hope does this augur. How do you launch a party with an unpaid bill since June 2011 for properly executed printing on to unseamed substrates properly railroaded and spend what was spent today on a most amateur performance.
But the silly old fool left before it began!
Georgie Anonymous. Whoever you are why do not give me a ring and ventilate your views.
The ‘young person with an Irish sounding name ‘ is called Eimhear MacFarlane. She is a member of Conservative Futures from South Down. This information was clearly visible on the screen. The NI Conservatives are welcoming many new members and young people who are interested in creating positive politics rather than tribal politics. Young people, women and people with names from all cultural backgrounds will be treated with equality and respect.
Lesley Macaulay (mature person with a Scottish sounding name)
Thanks for the clarification Lesley. I was involved in the earliest moves to have the Conservative Party organise in Northern Ireland in the early 80s. I was one of the first Constituency Association Chairs here – before CCHQ agreed to recognise the fact that people from Northern Ireland were being denied the right to vote Conservative. The lecture about inclusiveness is wasted on me. But the political correctness isn’t. Green Union Flags, embarrassment at the name Northern Ireland, obvious choices of people with Catholic names – all these things reek of the tit-for-tat Green and Orange posturing that has dragged Northern Ireland politics into the swamp. Conservatism has nothing whatsoever to do with nationalism or inane symbolism. I’m sure Eimhear is a lovely young woman – and will be a wonderful asset for any local Party. She shouldn’t be used as a point-scoring pawn. Why wasn’t she asked to speak to the audience live? I was born into a Protestant family but married a lovely young woman who also happened to be born into a Catholic family – indeed she was a Cardinal’s niece. Therefore, I don’t need – nor should the NI Conservatives – political correctness and tokenism to point out the uselessness of our political discourse. Conservatism is about ideology – and not about religion or nationalism or green or Orange or about embracing cultural diversity. It’s about passion and understanding of the needs of our people. It’s about small state, low taxes, laissez faire economics, the primacy of the individual.
Last week’s launch was a wasted opportunity. I was hoping that I would have witnessed the launch of a local progressive, centre-right, secular Party. Instead I waited 40 minutes for a meeting to start – because we were waiting for Owen Paterson’s arrival. Why? Surely an NI-flavoured centre-right Party could start a meeting without waiting for the Party apparatchik who oversaw and orchestrated the UCUNF disaster. Many of the fur-coat Unionists were in attendance – the same people who have failed to do anything to forward Conservatism here.
I have no doubt, Lesley, that you want to see change here. You made a move to distance yourself from the UUP. Well done. But the NICs are not the way forward. I’m still pondering what is.
Oh, and one other point Lesley, as far as names go I’d hope to have a Conservative sounding one. I’m not claiming a direct claim to Sir Robert Peel ancestry or anything but if the Peel name is associated with laissez-faire economics, establishing of the modern constabularies, creation of modern Conservatism, free trade, radical representation of the people reforms, and eradication of the rotten boroughs, that’ll do for me.
Thanks Jeff. It’s disappointing to hear that you don’t regard what Trevor Ringland and I had to say as progressive. Trevor and I first worked together on the One Small Step Campaign which is based on the idea of doing whatever you can (no matter how small) to help this society to move beyond sectarianism. We have both concluded that the NICs is the best way of making a contribution. We can but do our best and I sincerely hope we can prove you wrong.
Lesley, the challenge is not to move beyond sectarianism but to replace it with something else. We cannot be seen to reflect this society’s sectarianism back at it. We shouldn’t be like the Alliance Party. The Alliance Party is non-sectarian but it also has no policy positions on anything. It has no ideology. But Conservatism is an ideology more than a political party. We have to replace the politics of the tribe with the politics of ideology. Nationalism is not an ideology. That has always been the point of having the national political parties organise here – to replace the tribal with the secular. If we start droning on about embracing Irish and British we simply play the same game as the local non-Parties. I am a Conservative first and foremost. I’m hard-wired to be a Libertarian Conservative – and a secularist. It’s in my DNA. Had I been born in Madagascar I would have been a libertarian Conservative. Therefore our arguments, as Conservatives, need to be separated from the local parish-pump rubbish. We should not be rambling on about being Irish this, British that. Because that’s not the point. We are part of the UK. We need to start behaving like Conservatives – arguing the merits of replacement politics. And the great thing is that this is a radical agenda – it’s not about small steps.
I had made no comments on the contents of Leslie Macauley or Trevor Ringland’s contributions. The contents were reported to me after I left by my wife and several others.Jeff, you are totally free to publish the Email to me from Leslie Macauley which you have in your possession. I also belong to the Libertarian and Secular Wings of this great party which has been supported by my family for many generations. I am aware that exchanging tribal and sectarian religious strife is a tall order but the spokesmen here must not be solely people with Northern Irish accents. This engenders racism of the worst kind. it also illustrates a complete lack of self confidence in the perpetrators of this policy.We are all British and Unionists all bearing surnames which signify the line of our male parentage.My own is Nordic and Lunds settled in Airedale,Yorkshire,in the 10th Century. We learnt to settle our differences with our neighbours by laking them at Cricket, Rubgy and Soccer. .
John, I think you are spot on when you make the point by focusing on “Conservatism with a Northern Irish accent” it does a great disservice to stalwarts like you who have been so dedicated to the equal citizenship cause in Northern Ireland. It’s always a pleasure to talk with you. I especially enjoy your plain-speaking, Yorkshire common sense.
Jeff, was quite amused to read your comments regarding your surname!! As I am a Whitelaw, I guess that qualifies the two of us to consider ourselves ‘grandees’!
No, ‘amused’ was the wrong word. Not sure of the right word – agree that political views can be hard-wired tho’
Your position is self-contradictory.
You support “stalwarts” of the party, yet you accuse the local party of being full of the same people who have delivered nothing.
The very reason is inherent within your position. NI is not just another part of the UK – it has a unique constitutional position, a unique political culture, and a unique social history. It is actually for this very reason that the NI Conservatives have no role electorally.
For all that, I wish Lesley and co well. I hope they have a positive influence on political debate here, particularly economically.
You hedging your bets Ian just in case you switch parties again? You say that the Conservatives have no role – but this is a Party you joined. You were a Conservative candidate. You joined the Conservative Party having defected from Alliance – just weeks after you stood for election as an Alliance candidate for Europe. And now you lecture me on the unique character of Northern Ireland.
I have a very high regard for Lesley and others in the NI Conservatives. I am convinced of the merits of many of their arguments – largely because I wrote many of them. Indeed, I’d hope that some of the content on this site will be of use to the local Conservatives. I have never been a member of any political Party but the Conservative Party. However, I have every right to criticise when criticism is due. The launch was dreadful, the political correctness was cringe-worthy, and the green Union Flag was just silly. But these things can be fixed.
I think you need to do your research and realise young, Catholic people from Nationalist backgrounds have joined the party. Just because I have an “Irish sounding name” and come from a Catholic, Nationalist background does not mean that you should be so dismissive. Catholics have never before had a centre-right party to vote for that hasn’t been directly related to a religion. The NI Conservatives offer a fresh approach to NI politics and offer “One Future, One Community, One Northern Ireland.”. Give us a try and you might be surprised to see that we will change NI politics for the better.
Eimhar your religion is of no interest to me. I’m an Atheist. But I’m glad you want to move beyond the politics of the tribe. So do I. I was expelled as an Officer of the Conservative Party for opposing the Party’s merger with the Ulster Unionist Party. So I’m not supremely confident about the Conservative Party’s intentions in NI. Nor am I convinced that NICP has sufficient talent to make a difference. But I wish you every success. (Incidentally my wife is from a Nationalist/Catholic background).