A blog From our Friends over in Northern Ireland, the Alliance Party. Peter Stitt writes in a personal capacity about the recent flag riots in Belfast and across Northern Ireland.
First, a little background on the Alliance Party for those on the mainland who may not be aware: as stated on the Alliance Party's website "Alliance was founded in 1970 with the objective of healing the bitter divisions in our community".
Posted in Uncategorized
After yesterday’s rantier post about the trouble at Belfast City Hall I thought I should write something more in depth.
First, the background. The Belfast City Council (BCC) policy committee voted to remove the flag. The Alliance Party proposed an amendment that would continue to see the flag flown, but only on so-called “designated days” – the same policy used at Stormont. The vote took place last night and the Alliance amendment was accepted by a margin of 29-21 (Sinn Fein, SDLP and Allaince for, DUP and UUP against). (As has been pointed out by others, this technically means that Sinn Fein and SDLP voted in favour of flying the Union flag.)
Posted in Northern Ireland Politics
Tagged Alliance Party of Northern Ireland, DUP, Flags, nationalism, SDLP, Sinn Fein, unionism, UUP
In this part of the world you could be excused for thinking we’d very few problems. After all, if the thing that gets people most riled up is when a flag should fly over a building then there couldn’t be anything else to talk about.
Poverty? Nah, mate. Can’t talk about that now – there’s flags to be wavin’. Unemployment? Nah, mate. We’ve got to keep flying them flags. Pensioners dying in cold houses? Nah, mate. We’ve got to get on down to this flag business. Violence? Nah, mate… well, actually… that depends on the flag situation…
I hope we’ll see top Unionists calling this violence a disgrace. They have to condemn it in the strongest possible terms or else they’ll basically be condoning violence when it suits them. Nobody has the right to cause property damage and, worst of all, injury over issues like this. It’s a disgrace.
[A more reasoned post will follow. Just had to have a wee rant first.]
So Ed Miliband gave his conference speech today. It was delivered in a very impressive manner, without notes or auto-cue, and went some way to making him look more like a leader.
It also borrowed heavily from the Tory tradition of One Nation Conservatism. Odd, that. I can see where he was going with it but I’d be worried if I was a Labour Party member that the party has resorted to pinching traditions from their arch-rivals, even if if is a tradition the Tories have long since (wrongly) abandoned.
Leaving all the connotations of using Tory traditions to articulate Miliband’s vision for the party we’re left with the glaring fact that they are demonstrably not a One Nation party.
The only party to contend all of the regions of the UK is the Conservative Party. They may barely have a presence here but at least they are here. Ed Miliband’s speech simply highlights that Northern Ireland is an afterthought to the mainstream of British politics. Politicians constantly refer to “Great Britain” when they mean “United Kingdom”. I think it shows a complete lack of respect to the people of this province that consider themselves British (and must make those who consider themselves to be Irish to wonder why they don’t just give us up).
If Miliband really wants to be the leader of a One Nation party then he has to give the whole of the nation the opportunity to vote for his party and prove that he can reach out to all four regions in the UK. Until he does that the Labour Party can never be a One Nation party, only a Great British party.
Though I suspect he doesn’t care.
I haven’t written anything on this blog in a while. It’s been summer and therefore not much interesting going on in the political world (well, nothing I found interesting enough to write about) so I’ve kept quiet. My last post was about the start of Equal Marriage NI campaign and today there was a vote at Stormont. The motion was brought by Green Party MLA Steven Agnew.
The bad news is that the motion failed 50 to 45. The good news is that the result is really a lot closer than I’d have hoped. It certainly shows some potential for the future.
What disappointed me most was the fact that only 4 out of the 8 Alliance Party MLAs voted in favour of the motion, despite the Party adopting support for the idea as official policy at the start of September.
The four who voted in favour of the policy (Ford, Lo, Dickson and Farry) can be proud that they voted to enhance the liberty of our society without reducing the liberty of others. The four who were absent (Lyttle, Cochrane and McCarthy) and voted against (Lunn) have caused a certain amount of disappointment amongst liberal supporters of the party, if the Twitter reaction is anything to go by (let’s just assume it is for now).
I won’t criticise the four who did not vote in favour of the motion personally. The motion itself included protection for religious groups that don’t want to carry out same-sex marriages and I don’t think the MLAs should be lambasted for holding views opposed to equal marriage. But I do disagree with them and consider them to have failed to deliver on liberal grounds.
My problem isn’t that there are differing views in the Alliance Party on equal marriage. My problem is that only half of Northern Ireland’s liberal party voted for the liberal option (The three absent ones could have a good excuse not to be there, but isn’t it their job to turn up at the Assembly and vote?).
It is perfectly possible to disagree with equal marriage on religious, cultural (etc…) grounds but still to vote in favour of it as a liberal. Liberals should seek to extend the freedoms of everyone in society without reducing the freedom of others, even if they don’t agree with the viewpoint of those with new freedoms. I’m not religious (and that’s putting it mildly) but I wouldn’t want to stop people having the freedom to believe what they want. I may try and change their mind/views (since no opinion is beyond the right to be challenged), but I’d never want to ban their viewpoint unless it somehow caused harm to others.
Basically, it’s possible to be religious and believe in the liberal foundation of extending freedoms (in this case to equal marriage) but I don’t see how it can be possible to be a liberal and to oppose the extension of a freedom that harms no-one, even if one finds it morally objectionable (though, of course, I’d say that it’s not).
The big question I took away from the vote was this: what sort of party is Alliance, really? They are certainly the most liberal party in Northern Ireland. But that’s not necessarily saying much. Northern Ireland is not known for its robust liberalism.
Are Alliance really a liberal party that will fight against vested interests in government and in industry? Are they a party that will do everything in their power to extend personal, civil, political, economic and religious freedom to everyone in Northern Ireland? Are they a party that will resist paternalist urges to tell people what or how much they should eat and drink? Will they fight to provide true equality of opportunity to everyone in society so that anyone can rise (or fall!) depending on their merit?
I suspect the answer to many of these questions is “yes” but there are others I’m not so sure about. Along with today’s vote I’m not sure how deep liberalism runs in the Alliance Party. Another question that I’ve always wondered about that was once against thrown up today is:
Are they “simply” a non-unionist, non-nationalist party with views from all over the political spectrum and little concrete views apart from on that of the constitutional question?
Admittedly, if that’s “all” they are then I’m still glad to have them and to be a member, but I look forward to the day that I can be sure they’re the liberal party they claim to be, and not just a middle-of-the-road, little bit of everything party.
OK, time for what has become my monthly post. I’ve been pretty busy as of late but will try to do a bit more. Anyway…
Tonight was the first meeting of #EqualMarriageNI in the Lanyon Building at QUB. This meeting was aimed at starting a campaign to get equal marriage legislation in Northern Ireland. There were various group and speakers, from NUS-USI, QUB LGBT, Rainbow Project, political parties and more. I found it disappointing (but completely expected) that the DUP decline to come at all. SDLP, UUP and Greens sent their apologies but had intended to come, whereas the DUP seems to be maintaining its fundamentalist Christian conservative stance on these matters – as evidenced by Minister Poots’ continuing position on the blood ban.
Posted in Liberalism, Northern Ireland Politics, Religion
Tagged Equal marriage, state intervention
Every time I’ve turned on the TV this bank holiday weekend I’ve been bored silly. In case you didn’t know (and there’s no chance you didn’t so that is a silly way to start a sentence) this weekend is a celebration for the diamond jubilee of the Queen of England. As could be expected from a blog called ‘Liberal Meritocracy’ I’m not much a monarchist so this has not made for a weekend of my preferred viewing. Thankfully it can all be avoided with a single press of the “off” button.
I won’t get into a long rant about the monarchy here because there are plenty of other grumpy British republicans out there who’ve done that already. I just wanted to express my bemusement at the whole thing. I don’t understand why people are willing to subjugate themselves to another human being that they don’t even personally know. I realise this is far from the majority viewpoint in the UK but I really don’t get it.
