unity of reaction

Just finished watching an appalling BBC Northern Ireland political 'leaders' debate. Apart from phony wrangling, what is quite clear is that they are unified on their economic vision, especially the need to reduce corporation tax, despite the economic disaster which that particular policy had on the Republic.


 It was also amusing to hear Martin McGuinness applaud Finland's education system and as something that Northern Ireland should emulate. He is obviously unware that In Finland taxation of an individual's income is progressive. In other words, the higher the income, the higher the rate of tax payable. And that the standard rate of Finland's corporate tax in 2011 is 26%. 

Bluster and more bluster

Interesting recent exchange between SF's Gerry Kelly and the BBC's Martina Purdy.

BBC political correspondent Martina Purdy had been speaking to Sinn Fein’s Gerry Kelly.

He said dissident republicans should stop their violence as they are only hurting their own people.

She asked him if he thought his party was sending out mixed messages on violence by commemorating the IRA dead.

GK: Have you ever in your life, with respect to you, said to the Orange Order the same thing?

MP: Well, I’m asking you.

GK: Have you, no, well I’m asking you.

MP: I’m asking you.

GK: Because you’re, no, with respect, with respect.

MP: Well I’m talking to you.

GK: Have you ever, I’m asking you a question, have you ever asked that question of the Orange Order? Have you ever asked it of a unionist? Have you ever went to the British Army and asked them why they have a homecoming group? So what you’re doing is, with respect to you, you’re taking something which is a small group, these small groups who are putting out these statements and you’re trying to throw it back on Sinn Fein.

MP: Well now your party has often accused the Orange Order...

GK: It is a completely disingenuous question.

MP: ...of living in the past, so I’m putting it to you as a republican politician.

GK: It is a completely... we’re not living in the past, we’re not living in the past.

MP: There is no need to turn on me.

GK: I know what you’re going to do.

MP: ...but do you think it’s wise to continue with these kind of commemorations?

GK: I am not turning on you, it is fair of me to say to you that you are asking a completely unfair question, right. You’re asking a question which you would not, so I am attacking the fact that you are not being...

MP: Well you don’t know that.

GK: Well I do, well you tell me have you ever asked that question, have you ever asked that question of the...

MP: We should really get the Orange Order in front of the microphone, but I’m asking you.

GK: Have you ever asked the question of the British Army? It’s a simple question, have you ever done it? Have you ever asked the question of a British politician? Now we’re very clear, I am very proud of my history, I am very proud of it, I will always be proud of it, I will die a republican. And people in this area have suffered massively and you think that I should not come here and praise...

MP: I didn’t ask you that, I asked you should you rethink it.

GK: ...and praise. And you think that I should not come here and praise the people who stood against sectarianism? And the people whose families, now there’s 148 names there, you think that I’m doing something wrong in doing that?

MP: No, I’m asking you are you sending out mixed messages to young people?

GK: I am not sending out mixed messages. What are you going to do? You’re going to go through all this. I’ve been talking to you now for 10 minutes and you’re going to go through it all and do what? Pick out whatever suits you?

MP: Can I ask you whether you think that it’s time for Sinn Fein to take the justice job, and someone like yourself with a background in the republican movement, it’s time for you to face down the dissidents?

GK: I have faced the dissidents.

MP: Through the justice job.

GK: I face down the dissidents.

MP: ...through the justice job would...

GK: I would face, I would face down the dissidents whatever job I am in.

MP: Do you think that your party will seek it in the next term?

GK: I would face down the dissidents in whatever job I am in, and the party will make up its own mind, collectively, what ministries it

One thing is quite clear, Gerrry Kelly didn't answer her questions, especially in relation to the 'justice job'

Usual suspects

A picture from last week's trade union debate in Belfast with Sinn Fein, SDLP and the Socialist Party. Enjoyed the debate. Was tempted to use Photoshop but have resisted it. Looking forward to the day when SF and the SDLP merge and the Socialist Party agree to hold a debate on setting up the United Left Alliance in the North.

on the May Day march in Belfast

Took time out from campaigning to attend May Day march

hypocrisy on the march

Once again Sinn Fein and the SDLP turned up at the May Day march in Belfast. These two parties are in government, which has just approved £4bn in cuts. Where on earth do they get the gall to turn up at a workers march after kicking them in the stomach?

Not a new Dawn

Just read one of the softest interview I've seen in a long while in the Irish Times about Dawn Purvis and the PUP who are laughingly referred to as a left-wing grouping. http://www.dawnpurvis.com/?p=337

No where in the article is Dawn asked about her attitude to the Orange Order or sectarianism in general. She says she broke away from the PUP over the killing of Bobby Moffat, but does not outline her attitude to sectarian loyalist paramilitaries in general. She also applauds the memory of David Ervine who never once rejected loyalism. People may applaud the 'bread and butter' politics of Dawn, but she has a hard journey ahead of her if she is ever to be described as as a socialist, ie a person who rejects sectarianism in all its forms and the causes behind it.

reply to Eamonn McCann

In his column in the Belfast Telegraph Eamonn McCann takes us back to the killing of two soldiers at Masserine barracks and reminds us that, shortly before, the SSR, a special reconnaissance regiment closely associated with the shoot to kill policy and the death squads, was deployed in the North, breaking the deal A step too far

My thanks to Eamonn McCann for his thoughts on the revival of physical force republicanism. In my view he goes too far to accommodate the moral panic and, in the process, clarifies the issues.

on policing and provoking Provo outrage.

Eamonn argues that a political movement against this deployment were sabotaged by the militarists and forced the Provos to move quickly to unconditional support for the state forces.

That's nonsense. As Eamonn himself has argued in the past, armed actions speed up things that are already in the pipeline. The Provos capitulated on the issue of the SRR just as they capitulated on all the other shifts needed to placate the British and the unionists.

By carrying the argument too far, Eamonn contradicts himself and gives the physical force tradition the power to trump politics - a power he denies that it has.

He does one other useful thing. He reminds us of the mailed fist, the shadowy forces of the British military in the background.

They haven't gone away y'know.