North & South Of The River

Those words, consistency and continuity convey a general sense that what was . . . is and will be. This is how we do things. May be a bit stupid, but it works. Call me old-fashioned, but. In my grandfather s time. All that.
But it also intimates conservatism. A tight arse. We don t like to do things different. We resist change. No new stuff here.
So, you could say that Ian Paisley embodies consistency and continuity. There s just the one way to do things. As was and will ever be. And he is not alone. Oho no, there s hundreds, if not thousands, like him. And Old Sinn Fein, the loyalists who style themselves Republican Sinn Fein, are among them. Paisley s counterpoints.
They re everywhere. But when you overlay all that shit with northern strictness and no-nonsense-ness, you get a very special breed indeed. Before speculating about this, though, I want to clarify (great word!) something.
Some people appear to believe that I have a thing about northern people . Well, I do and I don t. It s like this: in every country in Europe, and indeed America, and probably the world . . . certainly in India, Vietnam and China . . . the northern people look down on the southern. I don t know what it is, but I have encountered it everywhere. Germany, Holland, France, Italy (oh boy, and how!), Spain, Denmark, Europe. They think southerners are soft, lazy, corrupt snoozers and boozers. Anything goes in the south.
So it s the other way around. I like everybody. But people from the north of this island look down on me and my ilk. This is especially true of nationalists. They think southerners are . . . well, soft, lazy, corrupt snoozers and boozers! They do! And furthermore, they resent the fact that for sixty years we couldn t construct roads as good as Northern Ireland, buoyed up as it was by massive subventions from the imperial coffers. It meant that their unionist neighbours were laughing at them and their allegiance to a two-bit hillbilly country.
And among republicans, the tendency to compromise, to deal, to mediate, is seen as a particularly insidious form of southern corruption.
Which is partly why some of them want to return to bombs and bullets and to simple consistencies like hatred, and destruction. And why, I suppose, they call themselves the Continuity IRA.
Of course, many of their players are not northern at all. For sure. They re worse. They are Catholic Irish fanatics. They are pre-Reformation Gaels. They can probably tell you they would be chieftains of their tuath were it not for . . . ehhh . . . Dermot McMurrough, or whoever.
What I am getting at is this these people will never change and never learn. There is no reasoning with them for the simple reason that they do not reason as we do. Their solution is a simple one. If something is in your way, bomb it.
And so they did. A nationalist hotel. An easy target. Timed so as to embarrass Gerry Adams as he tried to negotiate his way out of a tight corner (some of it of his own making). But the CIRA bomb was also meant to derail the peace process. These hoors want the island to go back to war. They probably think that one big push would unite the country. In what? Blood?
They are, for the most part, also the kind of people who would favour turfing out the planters and sequestering their goods and chattels. Restoring the Irish language would also be high on the agenda not only free, but Gaelic as well.
What they make of the steady influx of foreigners into the country is an interesting question. I don t know. But I suspect they wouldn t like it, and would favour taking Ireland out of the EU. The Ireland for the Irish philosophy.
Which would align them with Jorg Haider, the leader of Austria s Freedom Party. This fellow is popular, and has unpleasant views on immigration and European solidarity. He numbers some very unpleasant people among his followers. Certainly, the presence of a far right party in the government of a fellow EU Member State poses all kinds of difficulties.
This much is clear from the pronouncements of the various other governments, ours included. I agree with their sentiments. But I think we need to be careful about sanctions and cutting the Austrians off, and all that.
Why? Because, it s possible that the next government of Ireland could be a coalition between Fianna Fail and Sinn Fiin. And it is not implausible that some other countries might object to having a party which is closely associated with a terrorist movement in government, particularly since members of that party have, from time to time, said things which were as reprehensible as much of Haider s comments.
Well, I think we d be pretty pissed off, wouldn t we?
Undesirable his views may be. As are some of Sinn Fiin s. But so far Haider is a democrat, and operates within the law. In demonising and ostracising him, we forget that his is not the only party with thuggish tendencies in Europe, not the only party that would run immigrants out of Europe, not the only party that would turn a blind eye to undemocratic methods and beliefs. And their supporters aren t alone either. Look north!
Maybe we should clean up our own stable before we start pointing the finger at others. Let s be consistent! n
The Hog