Three Thousand Versts of Loneliness

Some local bloggers make it their business to immerse themselves in ’sectariania’, forever compiling a list of grievances against ’themmuns’.  They seem to think it important to prove which ’side’ in Northern Ireland includes the most hate-filled thugs.   Generally I avoid covering hate crime and the squalid list of ’dissident’ attacks in Northern Ireland.  They are, after all, terrible topics to commentate upon.  Anyone with any wit knows that it’s inexcusable, it’s loathsome, it’s repugnant - what more is there to say?  The idea that these attacks have political content, which should be taken seriously, is itself beneath contempt. Sometimes, however, there is an incident which makes you feel so hopeless, which makes the bile rise in your throat to such an extent, that it’s necessary to contextualise it, somehow. Yesterday saw just such an event , as a group calling itself the Real UFF left two pipe bombs at Catholic Primary Schools in Antrim.  This ...

Well I'm now back in the country and a only a little knackered after a 2.30am start yesterday.  In time I will return to some of the developments in politics in Northern Ireland, including the UUP leadership race.  Hopefully I'll also share a few reflections on Istanbul, where I've spent the last nine days.  Any city which can simultaneously house a popular Ramadan festival and Gunther von Hagens Body Worlds exhibition makes an interesting subject! To be going on with, in my absence the Belfast Telegraph published this article , in which I attack the OFMDFM's consultation document on a CSI strategy. How best to set the mood for a Programme for Cohesion, Sharing and Integration in Northern Ireland? Not, ideally, by bickering for two years over the content of a discussion document. Still, we mustn't be churlish. At least the First and deputy First Ministers have finally published a text for consultation and now the public can have its say. Anyone with a passing in...

Tom Campbell, an Alliance party councillor in Newtownabbey, contributes the latest letter in response to my ‘eighteen candidate’ Belfast Telegraph article. It contains a line which arrested my attention. “At least he (me) was frank enough to admit that his cause is a ‘unionist’ one as opposed to the spin that the new electoral arrangement between the two parties is somehow a ‘post sectarian’ one.” A neat insight into the Alliance mentality, whereby actually taking a position on Northern Ireland's constitutional status deems someone sectarian! It’s rather an important question, don’t you think - which state ought Northern Ireland to form a part of? Yet one party ducks it entirely and levels accusations of bigotry at those who do have an opinion! The Conservatives and Unionists CAN move beyond ‘sectarianism’ by decoupling the political component of unionism from any religious and cultural baggage. It’s a simple enough concept. In time the pact’s unionism can be taken for granted...

Have a glance at this charming Facebook group entitled ‘No Pope Here’. It includes such heart-warming (and grammatical) sentiments as, “wats the point him goin ther its basicly a death wish for him its like him sayin KILL ME NOW LOL” and “no pope is welcum here keep him out fgau NO SURRENDER X”. Lovely, I’m sure you’ll agree. It should hardly be surprising, but a 3000 Versts reader has pointed me in the direction of the membership which includes – DUP MLAs Ian McCrea and Trevor Clarke, Councillors Ian Stevenson and Pam Lewis (who runs Sammy Wilson’s office), Gordon Lyons (Wilson’s researcher) and John Hussey. Less predictable is the adherence of Ivan Djordjevic from Serbia, or a fansite for Eric Bristow, the darts player. Make no mistake about it, this is a hate site, and DUP representatives and employees have gleefully signed up. This is the nature of the party with which the UUP are urged to contract an electoral deal. If the DUP does wish to strike an electoral pact it should...

You can tell the ‘silly season’ is almost upon us, because the Scotsman is reporting fascinating news that some kerb stones in Larkhall were painted red, white and blue. The paper informs us that this horror was perpetrated by a ‘sectarian girl gang’. Now I have no doubt that their actions comprise a wanton piece of vandalism and all the details in the piece suggest that some underlying sectarianism might motivate the youths in question, but the paper simply hasn’t mentioned circumstances that justify using the word in the article. We are told that this “is the latest example of sectarian behaviour in the Lanarkshire town known for its over-enthusiastic support of Rangers Football Club and the Queen”. Now I loathe both members of the ‘Old Firm’, I’m a bit of a sceptic as regards our Royal family and I deplore illegal graffiti, so I’m not going to defend the town or its inhabitants on any of the above counts. But are the above components really defining indicators, or corroborating...

I have struggled, over the past couple of days, to form a response to the ghastly sectarian murder of Kevin McDaid. Initially my feeling was that I would not write about it at all. Condemnation of a brutal and senseless killing should go without saying and theorising on the strength of a tragic event can sometimes lose sight of the individual grief which it has precipitated. In the aftermath of murder diagnoses of continued sectarianism in Northern Ireland are inevitably accompanied by words like ‘sickness’ and ‘cancer’. Although these descriptions describe the virulence of the hatred which still exists within our society accurately enough, familiarity deadens their impact. The very vocabulary which we use to express our abhorrence has been worn threadbare by repeated violence. Setting aside the predictable political exploitation of such events and the apportioning of wider blame , which no tragedy experienced by human kind has as yet been terrible enough to abate, the known facts...

It is difficult to know what to say about the horrible events which took place in Antrim on Saturday night. It is a struggle even to turn one’s thoughts this morning to Northern Ireland and its politics. The only words which are not freighted with futility are words of sorrow and sympathy for the men who were shot so mercilessly, and their families. Sad, indeed tragic events, unfold in our newspapers, on our television screens and occasionally in front of our very eyes, daily. To an extent we become inured or else we seek comfort in the mutuality of our revulsion. The nature of this weekend’s horror was somehow particularly difficult to stomach, accompanied as it was with the unedifying, hollow charade which masqueraded as condemnation from Sinn Féin. For fourteen hours the party remained silent. Its reaction, when it came, was laced with equivocation and qualification, heavy with the implication that republicans remain the troubles’ real victims. ‘Counterproductive’, ‘an atta...

You would not expect the SDLP to play dog whistle politics in the mould of Sinn Féin and neither has the party done so as regards Sunday’s homecoming parade for troops in Belfast. Instead the SDLP has urged nationalists to avoid Belfast city centre at Sunday lunchtime, but this in itself is a problematic intervention, because it implies that the event is exclusive to one community. Although many spectators who wish to attend the parade on Sunday will be unionists, there are nationalists whose family will be involved, no doubt there are nationalists who simply may wish to watch the event and by no means should politicians be invoking a communal imperative that they should stay away. The politics of Belfast dictate that the SDLP must continue occasionally to make sectarian shapes in order not to be outflanked by Sinn Féin. In contrast SDLP councillors in Ballymena, including veteran nationalist representative PJ McAvoy, will be in attendance as the town welcomes back RIR soldiers ton...

If reminder were needed of the tawdry sectarianism which characterises Sinn Féin, it is provided by the party’s intention to disrupt a homecoming parade for the Royal Irish Regiment, to be held in Belfast in two weeks time. Here we have a group of young Irish men and women, representing both of our main communities, drawn from either side of the border, whose bravery and safe return Sinn Féin would deny us the right to celebrate and acknowledge, simply because they have chosen to pursue careers in the British armed forces. Ironically, in Shropshire, where the regiment has been based, but a long way from most of the soldiers’ homes and families, Rangers will enjoy a ‘homecoming’ parade without contention. Shadow Secretary for Northern Ireland, Owen Patterson, pays tribute to the young men and women , who will be recognised in his constituency. The Royal Irish has been deployed in Helmand Province on Operation Herrick 8. Their task has been to, “mentor and assist the Afghan Nationa...

I’m perpetually amazed by the capacity of Northern Ireland to throw up an incident which can inspire even in the most inured of its residents, a refreshed sense of exasperation and shame. Of course it is inaccurate to believe that it is something peculiar to this country which makes its citizens declare periodically, ‘oh for god’s sake, I’d almost forgotten this place was so bad’, but in a league table for frustration and embarrassment, I’d imagine the benighted ‘decent people’ of Northern Ireland would not be found in its lower reaches. We are perpetually surprised by how low some of our compatriots can go. Attacks and abuse suffered by two youth football teams from Dublin who were competing in the Milk Cup, launched by a drunken rabble outside the teams’ accommodation in Coleraine, inspires in me those all too familiar feelings. I’ve enough faith in the readers of this blog to think that these words are not necessary, but in the unlikely event that someone is tempted to qualify ...

David Healy, a man known for his mild mannered self-deprecation and sportsmanship. Were the stories that he had been involved in an incendiary sectarian gesture toward Celtic supporters ever likely to bear much scrutiny? His agent has been outlining the events leading to the striker's mime of playing a flute which reportedly sent a section of the Celtic faithful into a rabid frenzy of outrage . As Sir Dave took to the touchline he was subjected immediately to a sustained barrage of abuse. A chant querying what Healy was doing on the Twelfth was struck up and he wryly mimicked playing an orange flute. In any sane person’s view it’s called responding to abuse with some good natured banter. Less excitable Celtic fans seem to agree. If Nil by Mouth, the ‘anti-sectarian’ football group has anything to investigate here, it is simply why a footballer playing for an English team should be subject to barracking simply because of his perceived background as regards Northern Ireland.

If a good dose of sectarian bile is what you’re missing in your life, then Brian Feeney’s weekly Irish News column is a godsend. It is puzzlement to me that a reasonably good newspaper persists in publishing his hate-filled rants. Perhaps they do so out of amusement value. Perhaps people are entertained by the vein bulging derision Feeney heaps on unionists week on week. Those of us with more discretion will feel that Feeney epitomises a type of institutionalised bigotry that already gains far too much exposure in Northern Ireland. That joke isn’t funny anymore. Feeney turns his attentions towards the Maze stadium debate and concludes that anyone who might prefer a national sports stadium to be in Belfast, does so only out of unionist bigotry. It’s not so much this contention that makes Feeney’s piece so offensive, because his entire output consists of making unfounded and sweeping allegations against unionism, but the abusive language which he then persists in putting into the m...

It is not a regular occurrence for me to agree wholeheartedly with a group of churchmen, but five Protestant clerics from north Belfast have identified rather neatly some of the most pressing concerns about the carve-up which Northern Ireland government has become. The article that the five signatories have produced identifies a distinct lack of emphasis on integration, community relations or sharing in the Draft Programme for Government. The shelving of the policy initiative A Shared Future is symbolic of this indifference to creating anything other than a divided society. Such a tendency has long been detected by those who view the DUP-SF twin nationalisms axis as little more than a sectarian partitioning of interests in Northern Ireland. Sinn Fein in particular is pursuing a policy of separate but equal. The motivation of republicans is simple enough. Shared and neutral spaces mean that dissatisfaction and disillusionment with Northern Ireland’s constitutional status dissip...

Earlier this season David Jeffrey lied about Ballymena United fans and gifted those with an agenda against local football and against perceived unionist fans . Unsurprisingly the fact that Ballymena's fans have been unequivocally vindicated with the IFA finding that there was " no basis of fact in the allegations made by Mr Jeffrey " has attracted less publicity. Mud sticks and the damage has already been done by the bald obese liar. Jeffrey and Linfield have been given offical warnings by the IFA - this is of course an ineffective slap on the wrist.