CAPITOL HILL. Monday, August 17, 2020— The popular and fast-growing internet Petition of the Capitol Hill-based Irish National Caucus is now being seen as a perfect response to the approaching 100th Anniversary of England’s partition of Ireland.
Fr. Sean Mc Manus, Caucus president, said: “Our 1974 founding motto, ‘Ireland, too, has the right to be One Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all’ —https://www.change.org/IrelandOneNation—serves as a perfect response for the worldwide Irish to England’s partition of Ireland. As of this date, the Petition has been signed by 14, 265 people.
December 23, 1920, is an infamous day in England’s long infamous history in Ireland. For on that day, the London Parliament imperially enacted its Government of Ireland Act (“Partition Act”). In an act of State-terrorism, this Act violently ripped six small counties—Fermanagh, Tyrone, Derry, Antrim, Down, and Armagh (about one-sixth of Ireland)—from the other 26 Counties of Ireland, with frightful and deadly consequences.
The new mini-state of the Six Counties/Northern Ireland came into existence later in 1921….But the racist/sectarian Act was done on December 23, 1920, in England’s Parliament—where all infamous deeds regarding Ireland were done (with some still being done, despite the Good Friday Agreement). It was not the Orangemen who enacted the Government of Ireland Act. It was the London Parliament, with the Royal Consent of King George V, and the buck stops there, and nowhere else.”
Fr. McManus explained: “ I use the term England rather than British because one can hardly blame Wales or Scotland—despite villains like Lloyd George or Lord “Bloody” Balfour— especially since Scotland now seems to be heading towards independence.
It was always England that was the major culprit; it just dragged Wales and Scotland along in its evil Empire that spread and institutionalized racism/sectarianism (the twin evils of the British Empire) across about one-quarter of the earth.”
Fr. Mc Manus continued:“This Act was criminal, undemocratic, racist (anti-Irish) and sectarian (anti-Catholic), cruelly and obscenely enacted two days before Christmas … England’s Christmas gift to long-suffering Ireland. The only way that England would be able to hold on to a part of Ireland was through the creation of an artificial, gerrymandered, anti-Catholic state in which Catholics would be systematically discriminated against and excluded from all power. Anti-Catholicism became, in effect, the State Religion of the Six Counties/Northern Ireland.
The Good Friday Agreement, thank God, mostly brought an end to the violence by all sides —British Army/police, Unionists, IRA, etc.— and showed the world that the sectarian, anti-Catholic state of The North/Northern Ireland was a failed State. It was founded on the deeply undemocratic predicate that the artificially created Unionist/Protestant majority —created by England’s damn Border— would endure forever. … The hubris of Empire!
Today, experts seem to agree that the 2021 Census will show that the 1920 two-to-one undemocratically created Protestant majority has vanished, with Nationalists/Republicans/ Catholics being numerically equal. Furthermore, the Brexit madness has changed everything, showing, among other things, that England cares little about Catholics or Protestants in Northern Ireland. As Lord Palmerston (1874-1865) said: ‘England has no eternal friends, England has no perpetual enemies, England has only eternal and perpetual interests.’ And as General de Gaulle said: ‘For England when she was stronger, there is no alliance which holds, no treaty which is respected, no truth which matters.’”
Fr. Mc Manus concluded: “Our motto—based, of course, on the American Pledge of Allegiance— offers the vision of The Beloved Community: unity, solidarity, equality, mutual respect, with ‘liberty and justice for all.’ The Irish National Caucus urges the worldwide Irish and all who respect international human rights and justice to please sign this splendid Petition—https://www.change.org/IrelandOneNation ’’
To understand what’s going on with the Postal Service, and whether President Trump is trying to undermine mail voting before the presidential election, we spoke with Michael Shear, a White House correspondent for The Times.
“Basically, two things are colliding,” Michael told us. The number of Americans who plan to vote absentee has spiked during the pandemic. “But at the same time,” Michael said, “post office officials who are allies of President Trump are taking actions — like limiting overtime —that seem to be slowing down the mail right before the election.”
States set their own rules on mail voting. But some fear postal delays could undermine those rules. “The concern from Democrats is that the president and his allies at the Postal Service could slow down the mail so that ballots from Democratic voters would not be returned in time to be counted,” Michael said.
But it’s unclear which side any delays would hurt most. Despite the president’s false claims of fraud, studies show mail voting doesn’t benefit one political party over the other. And while Democrats disproportionately say they intend to vote absentee this year, Trump’s criticisms of absentee ballots “could result in more of his own supporters failing to vote,” Michael said.
Given those uncertainties, what can states do to limit potential delays?
One option is to send absentee ballots early and encourage their prompt return, Michael said. “States could also provide more opportunities for voters to fill out absentee ballots and drop them off at official election drop boxes, avoiding any possible mail delays.”
More on mail voting:
White House aides have considered potential executive actions that Trump could take to stop the delivery or counting of mail ballots, Politico reports.The Supreme Court rejected Republicans’ request to block a trial judge’s ruling that makes it easier for voters in Rhode Island to cast absentee ballots.Delaying or discrediting mail ballots will help Trump only if he is ahead of Joe Biden on election night among voters who cast ballots in person, argues Jamelle Bouie, a Times Op-Ed columnist. “Going to the polls or bringing your mail-in ballot to a ‘drop box,’” he writes, “will be the best way to protect your vote.”
The Independent Loyal Orange Institution Demonstration makes its way along Main Street Portrush in 2006. Picture: Derek Simpson/Coleraine Times archives
On this day in 1935 the News Letter published in detail a manifesto which had been the Belfast County Grand Lodge of the Independent Loyal Orange Institution.
It read as follows: “That we, the Independent Orangemen of Belfast and district, call upon the Government of Northern Ireland to take immediate and drastic action to suppress all disloyal organisations in the Six Counties, as we are thoroughly convinced there are many members of these organisations at large whose sole object is to create a reign of terror and disorder, as evidenced by recent disturbances in Belfast.”
The manifesto continued: “We also ask the Government to make careful investigation of all Government departments to ensure that none but those who are loyal to the British Throne and Constitution are employed.” It further added: “We further strongly advocate that all known members of the Irish Republican Army who have come into the Six County area since the establishment of the Parliament of Northern Ireland be apprehended and deported as undesirable citizens.”
The manifesto concluded: “We, as an organisation, pledged to maintain and protect the Protestant religion, declare that we are determined to arouse Protestant opinion to such an extent that the subtlety and disloyalty of Romanists in our country be thoroughly exposed and counteracted.”
by Cameron Hilditch Aug. 4, 2020 SDLP leader John Hume walks towards Dublin’s Government Buildings before meeting the Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern on December 4, 2000. (FP/CLH/Reuters)
A few years ago, at a dinner party in Oxford, I was approached by a young English academic who overheard my accent.
“Are you from Northern Ireland?,” he asked nervously
Once I had confirmed his suspicions, he began to open up to me about the time his grandfather spent in my homeland as a British soldier during the Troubles, a half-century long nightmare of civil conflict in Ulster involving Protestant unionists, Catholic secessionists, and Her Majesty’s Armed Forces.
“He served in Iraq and in Afghanistan, but he always said that neither was even close to being as bad as Belfast was in the ’70s. Hell on Earth.”
It might surprise Americans to hear a seasoned soldier compare a country in Western Europe unfavorably with the Middle East in the context of security and civil strife, but the Northern Ireland conflict can give any global conflict in the last 50 years a run for its money when it comes to sheer and unremitting exhibitions of human depravity. Throughout the Troubles, the murder of pregnant women was often celebrated by the perpetrators as a two-for-one deal in the market of ethnic extermination, disabled children were executed as “collaborators” by paramilitary groups, and unhinged soldiers occasionally fired upon defenseless civilians for simply walking the streets of their own neighborhood.
John Hume, who died yesterday at the age of 83, is receiving praise and plaudits from around the world for the central role he played in the Northern Ireland “peace process” of the 1990s, for which he was jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In order to understand the life of Mr. Hume, one has to first appreciate the fact that the political landscape in Northern Ireland is dominated by four political groups. The Democratic Unionist Party is a socially conservative, ethnically Protestant party that espouses a blood-and-soil commitment to Northern Ireland’s historic status as a state within the United Kingdom dominated by Protestant power and interests. It was founded as a cult of personality around the firebrand quasi-fascist preacher Ian Paisley and has historically had loose ties to violent paramilitary groups. The Ulster Unionist Party is the friendlier face of Unionism, committed to protecting Northern Ireland’s position in the U.K. through peaceful and civil methods. Secessionist politics is dominated by Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army terrorist group and the most prolific mass murderers of the entire conflict, and by the Social Democratic Labour Party, which pursues Irish unity through non-violent constitutional means. 3
John Hume was the leader of the last of these four movements during the most important period in Northern Ireland’s history — the mid-to-late ’90s. He worked with all parties to secure the Belfast Agreement of 1998, which put an end to the Troubles and established the peace that I, as someone born in ’98, have lived under for my entire life. His resolute commitment to the peaceful pursuit of his political aims within the procedural constructs of the British constitution at a time when Ulster Catholics had many legitimate grievances against the British state is testimony enough to the man’s moral fiber. In that respect, he can serve as an exemplar of citizenship for Americans in the context of our own national conflicts, which do not even approach the scale of what was happening in Northern Ireland during the politically active years of John Hume’s life. His life and his example shame looters on the left and militias on the right in equal measure. His role in persuading Irish Americans to stop bankrolling Sinn Fein’s murder spree also singles him out as one of those rare politicians unwilling to take ethical short-cuts to reach ideological goals.
It would be nice to end this post here, and most obituaries of Hume so far have done just that, celebrating his life in terms of uncomplicated admiration. When writing about the death of someone so clearly possessed of inordinate moral courage, it’s indeed tempting to wrap their life up in a neat and tidy bow of warm words and leave it at that. However, I would be remiss in my duties as a journalist and as an author of the “first draft of history” if I did not record here the biggest and most fatal mistake of John Hume’s entire career, which was his decision to bring Sinn Fein into the mainstream of Irish politics and to make them into a “partner in peace.” At the beginning of the 1990s, when the momentum for peace was building, the two dominant political parties in Northern Ireland were the non-violent moderate ones: David Trimble’s Ulster Unionists and John Hume’s SDLP. British and Irish intelligence agencies had furthermore infiltrated the IRA to the extent that its ability to effectively carry out a prolonged campaign of guerrilla warfare was on life support. At a time when IRA Sinn Fein had been all but comprehensively defeated by the joint efforts of Westminster and the Daíl Eireann in Dublin, Hume chose to tie himself and the fortunes of Northern Ireland to the success of the most depraved political group in the Western World — an organization with a higher murder rate of its captives than ISIS. As a result of Hume’s association with Sinn Fein, which bequeathed to them an altogether undeserved respectability, political defeat was snatched from the jaws of military victory in the intelligence war against the IRA. The set of political institutions established in 1998 naturally reflects the interests of the unionist and secessionist radicals whose approval was made the condition of political progress in Northern Ireland by Hume and other weak-willed moderates. As a result, the Northern Ireland in which I now live is jointly governed by IRA Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist Party after the peaceful parties that orchestrated the peace of ’98 negotiated moderate politics out of existence in a fatal, flawed, and darkly ironic fit of misjudgment. The final verdict on the life of John Hume must then be that he was a gifted leader marked by extraordinary moral courage whose public life was tainted in the end by a tragic error in judgement that legitimized the violence he abhorred and ensconced it firmly in the heart of government.
Sarah Miler sorting ballots for Washington State’s primary last week.Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
SDLP leader John Hume walks towards Dublin’s Government Buildings before meeting the Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern on December 4, 2000. (FP/CLH/Reuters)