For St Patrick’s Day, the Irish Church Leaders released a joint statement which deals directly with how the churches have been implicated in the island’s troubled past. The Church Leaders Group consists of the Catholic and Church of Ireland Archbishops of Armagh, the Presbyterian Moderator, the Methodist President, and the President of the Irish Council of Churches.
The statement references 2021 as a year of important (and divisive) centenaries, then goes on to articulate what is in my judgement the churches’ most comprehensive confession ever for their historic contributions to division and violence:
We have an opportunity, in marking these events from our past, to be intentional in creating the spaces for encounter with those who are different from us, and those who may feel marginalised in the narratives that have shaped our community identity. This will require us to face difficult truths about failings in our own leadership in the work of peace and reconciliation. As Christian churches we acknowledge and lament the times that we failed to bring to a fearful and divided society that message of the deeper connection that binds us, despite our different identities, as children of God, made in His image and likeness. We have often been captive churches; not captive to the Word of God, but to the idols of state and nation.
I have long argued that the churches should publicly acknowledge their failures in peace and reconciliation, not only because it is the right thing to do but also because a failure to do so damages their current peace and reconciliation ministries.
You can read the full statement here, or watch a video of the Church Leaders reciting it:https://player.vimeo.com/video/524185127
The confession might have had more impact if it came earlier in the document (and the accompanying video): it is the sixth of nine paragraphs. Even so, it is important that the confession is there at all.
Of course, as the island secularizes, there are fewer people who expect the churches to contribute to public debates or bother to listen to Church Leaders’ statements. At the same time, the churches remain the island’s largest voluntary organizations, with potential for mobilization.
The Church Leaders frame their statement as an opportunity or invitation to help create spaces for encounter. It remains to be seen if their confession will facilitate this process. But at the very least, it is an important first step.
With so much guff, bluff and ritual about it, St Patrick’s Day is a poor bellwether for judging the state of affairs in Ireland remotely – and perhaps no better on the spot either.
One glance at privileged youff crowding Botanic Gardens in defiance of lockdown, you might have groaned with me: “ Not the Holylands again. “ However BBCNI’s news story was encouraging.https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=true&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1372267028933980170&lang=en-gb&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fsluggerotoole.com%2F2021%2F03%2F18%2Fbehind-the-paddys-day-rituals-how-deep-is-the-stormont-crisis%2F&theme=light&widgetsVersion=e1ffbdb%3A1614796141937&width=550px
..when officers were called to the scene on Wednesday afternoon, it took less than an hour for the area to be cleared.
The Botanic story may be a metaphor for the political scene. Two articles in the Irish News discuss the dire state of Assembly politics on either side of the divide, greatly aggravated by the protocol row.
The uncomfortable truth is we are a nation dangerously close to the precipice following England’s decision to take the United Kingdom out of Europe
And Boris Johnson knows the union is tottering.
The only person in these islands so lacking in political intelligence that he cannot see the new realities is An Taoiseach who this week dismissed calls to debate the future of this island, and the case for reunification.
Whatever Martin may think, people are in the trenches now. Irish unity is the best hope we have of getting them out of them.
Martin says he wants to work with the Northern Ireland Assembly and with the British government to build consensus.
The First Minister – toadying to loyalist paramilitaries – is unfit to govern, the executive is a shambles, the assembly is a joke; the British government is in breach of international law and its commitments to the Northern Ireland Protocol; and one of its leading ministers has repudiated Peter Brooke’s assertion that Britain does not have a selfish and strategic interest in Northern Ireland.
By their actions you shall know them. The British government is lobbing grenades at the peace process, and the taoiseach is kow-towing when he should be marshalling the support of Irish America, and President Joe Biden, to protect it.
The world has changed. Brexit has torn the bonds that once held the UK together. Northern Ireland and Scotland, let us not forget, voted remain.
A leader with vision would be acting now to promote a managed reworking of the constitutional arrangements in these islands.
Britain’s misfortune is to have Boris Johnson as prime minister. Ireland’s is to have Micheál Martin
The minutes of a DUP meeting have been leaked to the News Letter, revealing a party that knows how much trouble it is in over Brexit but has no idea what to do about it.
The meeting of the South Antrim constituency association, conducted online on February 25, was attended by MP Paul Girvan, MLAs Trevor Clarke and Pam Cameron and 15 other party members, mostly councillors. Five people sent apologies for their absence.. Clarke is recorded saying an “Irish Language Act will be delivered before next election”, two weeks before leader Arlene Foster revealed this in the assembly. Another note adds: “Arlene needs to sell it to the country!”
So the DUP has learned its lesson from the 2017 collapse of Stormont and the deal the following year that almost restored devolution, before Foster got cold feet over promoting language legislation to her party and its voters.
However, nobody in South Antrim extends this lesson to Brexit – another instance where the DUP has to swallow its pride and sell a difficult compromise. The comparison is valid. There is no reason why inspecting an occasional packet of ham at Larne has to be more contentious a few months from now than bilingual street signs were three years ago.
Perhaps the most revealing detail in the minutes might seem the most trivial. The association’s treasurer reveals that just 12 membership fees are fully paid up for the year in this DUP heartland constituency.
A crucial, little-appreciated fact about unionism’s largest party is that it is a tiny political organisation.
OK so two columns do not make a crisis. But they are supposed to have their ears to the ground.
Although a ritual occasion, ritual is not to be despised. The Biden administration doesn’t waver from the” no hard border” mantra that the GFA has become in all interested international capitals except London. It may not amount to more than moral pressure, but it is being exercised. With what effect? God knows. Britain’s foreign secretary Dominic Raab weighed in on the opposite side – opposite to Ireland’s as well as the wider EU – with a case that is too complicated for Irish America to be bothered to follow – apart from homing in on its fatal flaw, that it may have breached the international agreement they believe protects little Ireland.
The United States must be “equally robust” with the EU when it threatens to compromise the Northern Ireland peace process as it is with Britain, Dominic Raab has said. “Our argument has always been that it has been the EU, by trying to erect a barrier down the Irish Sea between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, that is the one challenging both the Northern Ireland Protocol and the Good Friday Agreement,” Mr Raab told the Aspen Security Forum, an annual US foreign policy conference.
On Wednesday Biden touted his Irish heritage and quoted the Irish poet Seamus Heaney. He added: “I’m speaking to you from a White House designed by an Irish hand, and a nation where Irish blood was spilled in a revolution for independence, and for union and freedom through the years. The story of the Irish Americans is the story of people who have weathered hard times, but always come through, spirit intact.”
Martin said he wanted to thank the US president for his “unwavering support for the Good Friday Agreement”. He added: “It has meant a lot and it has mattered, including as we negotiated Brexit.
Although Biden administration officials have struck a cautious note on the Northern Ireland protocol, US lawmakers on Capitol Hill have been more outspoken.
A senior administration official told reporters on Tuesday evening that the US viewed the dispute as “a trade issue to be resolved between the UK and the EU”. “The administration is interested in having strong relations with both the UK and the EU, and we hope that they’re able to find ways to work well together, particularly ways that are in the interest of political and economic stability for the people of Northern Ireland,”
Several lawmakers from both parties have also threatened to block a UK trade deal with the US if the Good Friday Agreement is threatened. Most recently, lawmakers including Bob Menendez, the chair of the Senate foreign relations committee, issued a resolution that said any new trade deals with the US should take account of whether the conditions of the peace deal were met. Northern Ireland deputy first minister Michelle O’Neill said a virtual meeting between herself, Northern Ireland first minister Arlene Foster, Biden and US vice-president Kamala Harris had been “hugely beneficial” and “provided a valuable opportunity to discuss how we can build on the progress we have made and continue working to protect the interests of all our people”.
The discussion on a New Ireland is often dominated by the question of how to best accommodate and respect different political and cultural identities on this island. However, the conversation is increasingly turning to our common economic interests.
That conversation has its modern roots in the early 1990s when civic and business leaders such as Sir George Quigley argued that regardless of how Ireland was governed, it made sense for such a small island to operate as a single economic unit.
All-Ireland trade subsequently flourished as a result of the EU single market and the cross-border institutions established by the Good Friday Agreement. Although this was to the mutual benefit of both parts of the island, economic performance diverged north and south. Average living standards soared in the south, while the north was tied to Britain’s economic model and its problems of low productivity and low growth.
In this context unionism could not credibly argue that being part of Britain’s economic model delivered a high growth rate. The best it could muster was that the fiscal deficit, which is created by the north’s dependency on Britain’s economic framework, would be unaffordable for the south.ADVERTISING
Sir George Quigley
A more rational response would be to improve the north’s performance through an all-Ireland economic framework. This scenario was modelled by the eminent Professor Kurt Huebner. He showed that the growth unleashed by reunification would very quickly eliminate the fiscal deficit, creating substantial net gains for both parts of the island and particularly for the north.
The discussion has taken a further turn following the British Government’s decision to leave the EU, the largest market in the world. The DUP used its leverage with Theresa May’s government to resist a ‘soft’ Brexit which would have avoided hard borders right across the islands. Given the unacceptability of a border on the island of Ireland, the only alternative was a border in the Irish Sea.
The protocol is only starting to come into effect and many businesses are already reorientating their supply chains from Britain to Ireland and Europe.
As Britain further diverges from EU regulations it will become increasingly sensible for the north to return to full membership of the EU through a united Ireland. The English nationalism which drove Brexit is also heightening the British Government’s economic focus on England, reinforcing the north’s peripheral status.
For example EU funding previously provided to the north is being controlled by Whitehall and diverted to northern counties in England.
The economic logic of reunification is increasingly apparent. Many people who previously wouldn’t have even contemplated voting for a united Ireland are now giving it serious consideration.
This is a positive development. The conversation started by Sir George Quigley 30 years ago is on course to bring us to a more prosperous society, in which the people of this island manage our own economy in our own interests.
Conor Murphy is a Sinn Fein MLA and Stormont Finance Minister
The Council of Europe is to reopen its examination of the case concerning murdered Belfast human rights lawyer Pat Finucane.
The decision, which was published on Friday, was made this week by the council’s Committee of Ministers.
Mr Finucane’s son John, the MP for North Belfast, said it was a “hugely significant move”, adding that the British government has been “criticised internationally for their failure to establish an inquiry and this level of scrutiny is vital to ensure truth can finally emerge”.
He called on the British government to “end their stalling tactics and fulfill the promise it made many years ago to hold a full and independent inquiry into the killing of my father”.
A spokesman said the British government noted the decision and remained “committed to working with the Council of Europe in upholding human rights standards and will continue to work with the committee in their scrutiny of the implementation of these judgments”.
Setting out the reasons for its decision, the council said it had decided to reopen the case “in order to supervise the ongoing measures to ensure that they are adequate, sufficient and proceed in a timely manner”.
It also invited the authorities to “clarify how the ongoing police and Oponi [Office of the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland] processes will proceed promptly and in line with convention standards, given the issues raised by both of those bodies in recent statements.”
In a previous resolution published in December 2020, the council – which oversees the implementation of judgments by the European Court of Human Rights (EHCR) – rebuked the UK government for failing to enforce judgments by the ECHR involving security force killings and suspected collusion cases in Northern Ireland, including that of Mr Finucane.
His case is being considered by the Committee of Ministers as part of the broader McKerr v the United Kingdom group of cases relating to deaths during security force operations or in circumstances giving rise to a suspicion of collusion by the security forces in the North in the 1980s and 1990s. https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.446.1_en.html#goog_419265806https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.446.1_en.html#goog_419265804
The 39-year-old lawyer was shot dead in front of his family at their home in north Belfast in 1989 by the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) with the collusion of British state forces.
Scrutiny
In November the UK government said it would not order a public inquiry into Mr Finucane’s murder “at this time”. It said it could fulfil its legal obligation to carry out an investigation compliant with Article 2 of the ECHR “through a series of processes”, a decision which was condemned by the Finucane family and Irish Government.
Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney in his statement to the committee said it was “entirely appropriate and welcome now for the committee to decide to take the next, necessary step and reopen supervision of individual measures in this case. This will facilitate full and thorough scrutiny of the steps to be taken in the period ahead, and to ensure that an inquiry that meets the United Kingdom’s obligations under Article 2 of the convention is carried out.”
The Minister also outlined his “strong concern at the continuing delay and lack of detail and timetable” regarding legislation to implement the 2014 Stormont House Agreement to deal with legacy issues in Northern Ireland.
However, he said there was “an opportunity in the period immediately ahead, to make genuine progress . . . on cases like that of Pat Finucane and in the establishment of the comprehensive agreed framework for all outstanding cases.
“It is essential that this opportunity be taken so that when the committee resumes its consideration of these matters later this year, we are able to register and welcome significant progress.”
In its decision, the council also noted its “profound concern” over the lack of detail around legislation to address legacy and acknowledged delays to the holding of legacy inquests caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, saying that it “strongly encouraged the authorities to step up their efforts to accelerate as far as possible to meet their target of the conclusion of all inquests within five years”.https://fdae4402bdfbabb06382a51e576a8cf3.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html
Amnesty International’s Northern Ireland programme director, Patrick Corrigan, said it was a “welcome move” by the Council of Europe. But it was “deeply regrettable that the UK Government’s shameful refusal to open a public inquiry into the murder of Pat Finucane has made it necessary. Given the failure to properly investigate this killing, previously identified by the European Court of Human Rights and the UK supreme court, it is appalling that the government continues to shirk not only their duty to the Finucane family but also their obligations under international law.”
He added: “The government must get the Finucane inquiry under way without further delay and heed Council of Europe calls for a human rights compatible approach to dealing with all outstanding legacy cases.”
