Monday 25 January 2010

Beyond The Fringe

An interesting programme on Radio Four today about the Welsh language activists of the Sixties and Seventies. They were right about English ignorance of Celtic matters. But it was a shame that they all seemed to Plaid Cymru types. In 1977, North Wales voted No to devolution by the same colossal majority as did South Wales. And in 1999, the split was east-west, whereas the split on the language is north-south.

Leo Abse's warning against rule by a bilingual elite is now an only too obvious reality for the overwhelmingly English-speaking majority in South Wales. But that elite is no more a friend of the people of the Welsh-speaking areas; on the contrary, it consciously refuses to live in such places, where its utterances would be understandable by waiters, bartenders, shop assistants and taxi drivers. Opposition to, or at least grave doubt about, devolution remains relatively strong in Gaelic-speaking areas and absolutely strong in Welsh-speaking areas, far as these are from the centres of power in Scotland and Wales respectively. On occasion, even Lib Dem MPs from the Highlands and Islands express it publicly, albeit in nuanced terms from which it is not hard to guess what they really think.

Other than those in Patagonia who are completely bilingual in Welsh and Spanish, native speakers of the Celtic languages are all completely bilingual in their native tongues and in English. Just as the existence of a common tongue understood by all, whether or not they happen to speak it at home or in a given town or village, is how there can be a government of the United Kingdom, so it is how there can be a Scottish or Welsh devolved body, or for that matter a government of the Irish Republic; the problem with the devolved body in Northern Ireland is not this. It is also the reason why London is permitted only the trappings, and very little of the power: London is the only city in these islands where it is no longer possible to assume that anyone in the settled, permanent population has English.

Speaking of Northern Ireland, what to say about the use of "dissident Republicans" (who would be dead if they were actually any such thing) to speed along the Unionists over the devolution of policing and justice? Or about the staggering complacency of Sinn Fein, no longer faced with any serious opposition in its own community, as the Tory-brokered consolidation on the other side offers to remove the SDLP from Belfast South and Sinn Fein itself from Fermanagh & South Tyrone, to do the Tories considerable good in the coming hung Parliament, and to give their UUP inner and DUP outer allies, even allowing for losses to Jim Allister, enough seats between them to secure the position of First Minister after all, doubtless in the person of Arlene Foster, embodiment of the takeover of the DUP by integrationist Tory refugees from the UUP, even down to her membership of the Church of Ireland?

Well, why say anything, beyond that last point about the staunchly Unionist Conservative Evangelical wing of the C of I, predominant, or at least still very substantial, within that body's Northern Irish half (it is now much more liberal in the Republic)? Whereas early Nationalist leaders were often highly scornful of the Irish language as a bar to progress, no small contribution to saving it was made by enthusiastic C of I clergymen who were staunchly Unionist and who would now be classified as Conservative Evangelicals. Douglas Hyde, the son of an County Sligo rector and born in an Ascendancy "Big House", became the first President of the Republic while remaining an observant Protestant, a dedicated Irish-speaker and educator in that medium, and an adherent to a political position fundamentally Unionist rather than Nationalist (which was probably why Fine Gael, pushed into declaring a republic by a coalition partner, gave him the job).

Sinn Fein may be creating a network of publicly-funded Irish-medium schools in order to banish the Catholic Church from the education, first of the Green side in the Six Counties, and then of almost everyone in the Twenty-Six. But at least as sterling, in its way, is the work for the language being done by the The Reverend Dr Eric Culbertson, country parson in County Tyrone, Honorary Clerical Vicar Choral of Armagh Cathedral (not the Catholic one), Deputy Grand Chaplain of the Orange Order, member of the Council of the Evangelical Protestant Society, and outspoken critic of the Good Friday and Saint Andrews Agreements. He stands in a long, long line.

8 comments:

  1. I bet this Orange rector speaks it better than Adams, and I say that as deep Green myself.

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  2. When he was Minister of Posts and Telegraphs, Conor Cruise O'Brien, arguably the only Unionist ever elected to the Dail, used to let out a mellifluous flow of it whenever he didn't want a questioning TD to understand his answer. Of course, that answer was then on the record, and indeed in the only official language of the state. But that was far too late for the cut and thrust of a parliamentary context.

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  3. Whatever

    "Opposition to, or at least grave doubt about, devolution remains relatively strong in Gaelic-speaking areas"

    Which is why the SNP hold in Holyrood constituency seats of Argyll and Bute, Western Isles and Inverness East as well as the Westminster Western Isles seat. Also the SNP have two of the seven regional seats for the Highlands and Islands.

    "On occasion, even Lib Dem MPs from the Highlands and Islands express it publicly, albeit in nuanced terms from which it is not hard to guess what they really think."

    Really

    http://www.dannyalexander.org.uk/news_detail.asp?newsID=96

    Is this the Danny Alexander you are always claiming is against devolution?

    More the Danny Alexander who was on the BBC saying that the implementation of Calman was a condition for Lib Dem support for either Labour or Tories in a hung parliament after the next general election.

    And this is John Thurso's take a few years ago:

    http://www.johnthurso.org/news/000031/thurso_criticises_tories_two_faced_approach_to_westminster.html

    Thurso has spoken out in favour of fiscal autonomy.

    And Kennedy's record of support on devolution is above reproach. So do not go there.

    As for the late Mr Hyde, it should be pointed out that Dev was in charge at the time - it was Hyde 1938 he took office with the support of Dev and W T Cosgrave, the Fine Gael leader.

    By the time the Fine Gael-Labour-Clan na Phoblachta coalition took place, Hyde was out of office. He had been replaced by Sean T O'Kelly, veteran of the Easter Rising and first chairman of the Dail (1918). He was challenged for the election in 1945 by Fine Gael candidate Sean McEoin, the Blacksmith of Ballinalee, who had been sentenced to hang by the crown for killing a cop during the independence war.

    O'Kelly was returned unopposed to office in 1952 and was replaced by Dev in 1959.

    Of course it should be pointed out that one of the Sinn Feinn negotiators of the Anglo-Irish Treaty was Protestant landowner Robert Barton - the only one of the negotiators to repudiate the Treaty once back in Ireland.

    His cousin was Erskine Childers.

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  4. Indeed he was.

    Cosgrave fixed the Presidency for Hyde, as much as anything to avenge for having being forced into a republic at all. Dev insisting on Hyde would have been rather more of a story, but, alas, it never happened.

    You know perfectly well, both the extent of devoscepticism in all areas remote from Holyrood or Cardiff, although people are resigned to the thing but nothing more than that, and the strength of the Lib Dem vote in such areas, both in Scotland and in Wales. Among other places: there was a high No vote to the regional assembly everywhere in the North East, not least including areas with strong Lib Dem presences such as Newcastle (where they run the Council), Durham City (where they ran the then City Council), North Northumberland, and the Wear Valley.

    You also know perfectly well that the Scottish seats to which you refer are often four-way marginals, in which half the voters are either Tories or Brian Wilson Labourites, and another quarter are Highland Liberals, no fonder of devolution than of the EU or of social liberalism, but local communitarian populists, rural battlers, or simply hereditary, tribal Lib Dems. Much as in North Northumberland or the Wear Valley, only more numerous.

    At least one Lib Dem MP from the North of Scotland, I have it on unimpeachable authority, literally will not allow the words "devolution" or "West Lothian Question" to be uttered in his hearing. Assuming that the Lib Dems mattered in a hung Parliament (and there is no reason to assume that they would, but they might), what if a Westminster Government secured the votes of Highland, Island and Border Lib Dem MPs, as well as two or three from Mid-Wales, by simply delivering whatever they wanted locally, entirely regardless of devolution? What would the SNP or Plaid Cymru say? That those MPs' constituents shouldn't have whatever it was that they were thus given? As much as anything else, they would have to explain why the devolved bodies had never delivered those things.

    But the SNP and Plaid Cymru certainly are not going to matter in the coming hung Parliament. Not only is each untouchable to at least one of the two main parties (which the Lib Dems, as a party, are to both), but, for example, the Tories are even talking about taking Banff and Buchan. I don't think they will. But it is notable that they are saying they will.

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  5. Dev looked up to Hyde as the founder of the Gaelic League (which he founded with Lady "up the rebels" Augusta Gregory - widow of a former viceroy of Ceylon). Indeed De Valera through the Irish language movement met his teacher and future wife Sinead O'Flannagan.

    Cosgrave was not angry at the creation of the Republic. Because it was not a republic at that time. What merely happened was the constitution created the office of President who would be the person of highest precedence in the state. The 1937 constitution to this day does not say specifically the president is the head of state.

    (All references to the crown were removed by Dev using the soveriegnty of the Dail under the Free State constitution - referenda for constitutional amendements was only introduced from the present one - after the abdication crisis)

    Both wanted Hyde in office as he was a politically neutral figure who was a protestant.

    As for this thing about Highland MPs, the public evidence is to the contrary. As the Northern MPs make up about a third of the Scottish Lib Dem caucus, surely they should be using their "anti-devolution" influence.

    Thurso has a problem with the West Lothian question. He wants to end it by giving devolution to England and equal devolution to Wales.

    The Inverness has traditionally been four way. Otherwise the others are usually two fights.

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  6. Yes, yes, I know all of this about Ireland, although Hyde certainly wasn't "politically neutral". He had twice lost his Senate seat precisely because he wasn't.

    Nor was the Gaelic Leage a Nationalist organisation; Hyde was horrified by such infiltration. Nationalists hadn't historically cared much for the language, and many had actively hated it. Dev's affection for it was in no small measure because he was, as George VI put it, "hardly an Irishman at all", but he rather over-desperately wanted to be.

    In the coming hung Parliament, the Scottish rural Lib Dems may very well do exactly as you suggest. Along with the Mid-Welsh ones. And then there is the strong body of Lib Dem MPs from fishing seats, or the fact that, for example, they hold every seat in Cornwall, where UKIP has now topped the poll for Strasbourg twice in a row. Social attitudes in their safest areas are often decidedly on the conservative side. And so on.

    There may by definition be only one reason to vote for or to join the SNP, but that is not the case with normal parties. There is no reason to assume that all Lib Dems are in favour of the sort of federal Britain proposal that comes out of party policy committees (they might be more sympathetic if it were for some sort of devolution within, rather than to, Scotland and Wales - watch that space?), are are enthusiastically pro-EU, or are social liberals, among other things. Indeed, there is every reason to assume, and more than assume, that many of them are anything but.

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  7. Don't worry about it! The Muslims & Hindus will be taking over Britan in the next 50 years.

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  8. It'll happen in America first, and that isn't anything to do with Obama, or only tangentially.

    But Americans seem genuinely blind to it, rather like the class system.

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