Opinion

Newton Emerson: Unrealistic to expect a Christmas miracle on flags

Loyalists at Belfast City Hall in December 2012 during a protest against the removal of the union flag from the building except on designated days. Photo: Alan Lewis/Photopress
Loyalists at Belfast City Hall in December 2012 during a protest against the removal of the union flag from the building except on designated days. Photo: Alan Lewis/Photopress Loyalists at Belfast City Hall in December 2012 during a protest against the removal of the union flag from the building except on designated days. Photo: Alan Lewis/Photopress

The SDLP and Alliance have both said it is a “farce” that a report into Northern Ireland’s ‘culture war’ issues was published four years late with no plans to implement its recommendations.

The Commission on Flags, Identity, Culture and Tradition was due to conclude in December 2017 but took until June 2020. The collapse of Stormont explains much of that delay.

The report was handed to the DUP and Sinn Féin, who took until March this year to set up a working group to consider its 44 recommendations. Covid explains much of that delay.

Other parties then demanded the report’s publication but Sinn Féin wanted to wait until it and the DUP had agreed an implementation plan. That explains the delay until this week, when Sinn Féin agreed to release the report, saying the DUP would not agree a plan. The DUP says it wants the public to see the report first. The working group continues to meet.

So the key complaint here is that in the nine months since March, Sinn Féin and the DUP did not devise a complete set of practical solutions to address all Northern Ireland’s disputes over flags, bonfires, murals, memorials, language, art and sport.

What a Christmas miracle that would have been.

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Teachers’ union the NASUWT says student teachers should not be used to cover the temporary shortage of substitutes because it would “devalue teacher training”.

This is a ludicrous stance when student teachers already spend lengthy periods in the classroom, when many have missed out on that experience over the past two years and when student teachers have been used successfully in the Republic to cover the same Covid-related problem. In reality, the value of teacher training has risen during the epidemic, unlike the reputation of teachers’ unions.

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Irish-language campaigners at Queen’s University Belfast have proposed dedicated accommodation for Irish speakers, as is offered at all universities in the Republic and by Ulster University at Magee.

This would be “segregating and siloing”, according to an internal staff discussion document. As an institution, Queen’s couldn’t care less about silos: it houses overseas students together, has denominational church accommodation and washes its hands of the fiasco in the Holyland. Nor would the gaeilgeoirí be much of a silo, as only 20 places in halls are being sought. Potentially far more contentious is the £500 grant campaigners also want for each student for “organising conversation circles” and “holding awareness campaigns”. Southern universities do this but Ulster does not and Magee students have never requested it. Of course, everyone in Derry talks for free.

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Shadow secretary of state Louise Haigh has been reshuffled one week after saying a Labour government would be neutral in a border poll. This cannot have been a punishment, as her new post as shadow minister for transport is a promotion.

Questions are still being asked about an apparent contradiction with party leader Keir Starmer, who in July said he would campaign for the union. However, Starmer said he would do so “personally” and “as leader of the Labour Party”, not as a Labour government. He and Haigh both said they were unionists but the question was for the people of Ireland to decide. Although the Good Friday Agreement does not actually require government impartiality during a border poll, that has been Labour policy for 24 years. In a final note of consistency, when Conservative former secretary of state Theresa Villiers was sent here in 2012 from the Department of Transport, it was seen as a punishment for contradicting David Cameron over a third Heathrow runway.

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Someone who does appear to be struggling with the neutrality requirements of the agreement is Michelle O’Neill. The Sinn Féin deputy first minister told an Ireland’s Future event that her party wants a border poll in five years and a date should be set to “concentrate minds” of those not engaging with the debate. That may be a valid tactic for republicans but it is not a valid reason for a secretary of state to call a poll. A vote is to be held when it appears likely nationalism would win, not scheduled speculatively years in advance to help nationalism win.

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The new Glider route in south Belfast is opposed by many businesses who have “serious concerns” it will prevent deliveries, stop customers arriving by car and cause “a major loss of trade”.

That is according to media reports quoting the Ormeau Business Association. Yet the association’s social media accounts have not been used since 2017 and state it has been “dormant” since 2014. Eric Hanvey, Alliance councillor for the area since 2019, says he has never heard of it.

Although Glider routes have proved disruptive during their construction, making inner urban roads like the Ormeau more pedestrian-friendly almost always increases trade - for non-dormant businesses, anyway.

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UUP leader Doug Beattie has been meeting politicians and influencers in the United States, who he says “want to hear the unionist message”.

Beattie’s engagement has been praised at home and abroad but it does recall the put-down earlier this year by Irish-American congressman Richard Neal: “I often get told by unionists that they never got a hearing in Washington. They did, just nobody agreed with them”.