Three Thousand Versts of Loneliness

The Shadow Justice Secretary is delivering a speech on human rights this evening in Belfast. He will criticise the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, pointing out that it has gone well beyond its remit. He will also repeat the Conservative party's commitment to include provisions, specific to Northern Ireland, within the framework of a new UK bill. And, you'll forgive the conceit, but I'm bound to point out that Mr Grieve has chosen to embellish his speech with a quotation from a leading authority on the topic. Or not. The NIHRC report, as has been widely acknowledged went a long way outside the remit that had been laid down for it. “Although I recognise its good intent, it produced a blueprint for a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland which if implemented would represent a fundamental constitutional change. So widespread a vision of justiciable rights is contained within it that it is difficult to disagree with the verdict of Owen Polley writing in the Guardian...

I mentioned in a previous piece Tim Montgomerie’s open letter to David Cameron, in which he urged the Conservative leader to place Britishness at the centre of the party’s election campaign. Conservative Home today carries Cameron’s reply . In it he argues that patriotic pride is a bottom up phenomenon, inspired chiefly by providing citizens with something to be proud of. It is a sound response to Montgomerie’s missive because it rules out the option of entering a ‘flag waving’ contest with Gordon Brown, whilst showing an innate understanding of the civic nature of Britishness, whereby institutions, history and certain common cultural coordinates draw a diverse nation together, rather than race, perceived ethnicity or a narrow prescription of culture. In the previous article I contrasted the conceptual nature of Brown’s unionism with Cameron’s genuine engagement as regards matters pertaining to the Union. By seeking to secure Northern Ireland’s full participation in national poli...

Recently, prompted by a speech delivered by Dominic Grieve, I posted on the subject of multiculturalism and suggested that successive Labour governments had adopted damaging policies in this area, to the detriment of British society. Ruth Dudley Edwards has penned an article pondering these very failures, provoked by protesting Islamic extremists who hurled abuse at troops returning from Iraq, at their homecoming parade. It is worth considering her piece, if only to develop a little further some of the themes which I had already touched upon in the first blogpost . The kernel of Dudley Edwards’ argument is that radical Islamists have been singled out by the government for special treatment and are handled with kid gloves in order to dissuade them from committing violent acts. The result is that moderate Muslims are sidelined and extremists are accorded prominence, within and without their communities, which they do not deserve. “(W)hy else would the Government throw £90 million a...

The shadow Justice Secretary, Dominic Grieve, is to deliver remarks about multiculturalism today which will suggest Labour’s wrongheaded approach to the issue has had a damaging effect on Britishness as a cohesive concept and the United Kingdom as a functioning society. He strikes a particularly pertinent chord by attacking the tendency to treat people simply as members of distinct interest groups, defined by race, religion or ethnicity, rather than as individual citizens who interact with society and communities on their own terms. “A decade of ranking people as members of neatly categorised ethnic, religious or social groups, rather than treating everyone as an individual in their own right; a decade of courting self-appointed heads of minority groups and pandering to special interest lobbies, ignoring the range of opinions and depth of diversity in modern Britain.” This is, of course, a tricky area, and a delicate balance must be struck between celebrating our diversity as a natio...

Perhaps I’ve been a little too zealous, pressing Ignited to specify issues which he fears candidates of the new Conservative and Ulster Unionist force might be reluctant to deal with, lest they ‘get their hands dirty’. If this is the case, it is only because I recognise that Redemption’s Son is a weblog offering a surer grasp of grassroots unionist opinion than that to which I would ever lay claim. I greatly respect Ignited’s analysis and I would like to fully understand the apprehension expressed in his article. If he fears Conservatives will be loathe to put their heads over the parapet on any contentious issue which divides people in Northern Ireland, I’m bound to say that I don’t agree. It is my belief that David Cameron’s party is fully committed to applying its principles to the particular circumstances of Northern Ireland. These principles are for the large part compatible with those of the Ulster Unionist Party. If that were not the case, then a deal would not have been co...