There are two contrary forces at work in our tormented little statelet. One is the pull to have the institutions of Stormont run again, the other is to ignore Stormont. In the long and maybe medium term something’s gotta give.
Responsible people feel the need for Stormont restored. They say we need ministers to oversee a health crisis, with shortage of beds, shortage of staff, impossible working conditions and waiting times. Would these conditions exist if a minister were in place? I don’t know but I doubt it. I suspect that the health service is in the state it’s in beause it’s being deliberately run down by our Tory Westminster masters who have privatization plans for health, among other things. For example, Boris Johnson was on radio this morning lamenting that Britain wasn’t the force it should be in space, where wars of the future would be decided. But he ha plans to retify that.
The opposing force at work in our tormented little statelet and throughout Ireland is the desire for unity and self-determination. In The Irish Times this morning there’s an article mulling over the increasing drive towards self-determination in Scotland. Clearly prime minister plans to take the UK out of the EU, and the more urgent his planning, the more converts there will be to Scottish self-determination as a continuing member of the EU. Scotland at the moment is making the running in terms of leaving the UK, despite our thirty years of armed conflict during which we tried unsuccessfully to do the same thing. If push comes to shove, will Johnson use military superiority to keep Scotland within the UK? I doubt it, but it’s hard for anyone to know, including Johnson, what the British prime minister will do next.
That’s why the people of Ireland north and south who call themselves nationalist should seize the moment and contruct assemblies and forums in which a self-determining Ireland can be thrashed out in advance, unlike the bumbling bellicose balls-up that the British prime minister has foisted on us all. If Scotland can stand up to a bully, so can Ireland. But like the Scots and unlike Johnson, let’s first work out what in practical terms it is we want.
Comments are closed.