Sometimes it’s the small things. I’ve been peeking into a library book called Ever the Diplomat that’s found its way onto our coffee table. It’s the memoirs of a man called Sherard Cowper-Coles, who worked in the British Foreign Office all his life. The writing style is dull and I have no ambition to plough through its 300 pages, especially in view of what I found in the first chapter. In it the magnificently-named Sherard Cowper-Coles talks about Trevor Mound, a fellow-labourer in the diplomatic vineyard:
“Trevor Mound was a minor hero to my generation in the Foreign Office…Trevor never ever panicked. And he always saw the funny, often absurd side of everything”.
Trevor, Sherard tells us, had come to the diplomatic service after a military career in the Paras. He was famous, apparently for his limericks: “One of the best [limericks] celebrated the IRA ‘dirty protests’ in HM Prison Maze and the involvement of the Roman Catholic Primate of All Ireland, Cardinal Ó Fiaich (correctly pronounced O’Fee). One couplet had the Cardinal’s name rhyming with ‘dabbling in IRA muck”.
Those among my older readers will remember the live TV interview with Cardinal Ó Fiaich when he emerged white-faced from Long Kesh after visiting the prisoners on the blanket protest:
“I was shocked by the inhuman conditions prevailing in H Blocks 3, 4 and 5, where over 300 prisoners are incarcerated. One would hardly allow an animal to remain in such conditions, let alone a human being…The stench and filth in some of the cells, with the remains of rotten food and human excreta around the walls, was almost unbearable. In two of them I was unable to speak for fear of vomiting”.
Meanwhile back at the British Foreign Office, Trevor was amusing his juniors with witty limericks. It’s that amused, aren’t-the-Irish-ridiculous attitude that makes me want to reach for the bucket. Or something.
But that was yesteryear. Today and in the coming weeks, we’ll all be hearing more and more about BREXIT, the possibility of the UK leaving the EU. Behind all the talk of jobs and payments to Europe and money coming from Europe, beyond all the hysteria about an excessive number of immigrants coming to the UK, there lies a simple, silly notion: putting the Great back into Great Britain.
The British don’t mind making laws for other people – at one point they did so for about a quarter of the globe – but they don’t at all like others making laws for them. So led by the shambling Boris Johnson, Britons are being encouraged to put all the compromise and tedious red tape of the EU behind them and break free, reassert themselves, make Britain great again. Which explains why the DUP is fully behind the notion of BREXIT. That party has always lived with a notion of Britain’s greatness. Faced with someone who’s saying that golden age can return, they’re jumping into the same boat.
People mocked de Valera when he talked a long time ago about Ireland as a nation of manly youths and comely maidens. Nothing Dev came up with could begin to match the mirage that Boris and his chums are selling to the British people. We’ll have our own laws, we’ll decide who comes into our country, we’ll form trading agreements with whomever we please. Honest, it’ll be great.
Like Trevor with his witty limericks portraying Cardinal Ó Fiaich as a clerical clown paddling about in a pig-stye, Boris and chums (and the DUP) want to sell the notion that Britain is presently hobbled by a bunch of foreigners and if the electorate will trust them, they’ll break the chains and walk away upright and victorious, EU-less and glorious.
The EU certainly needs a top-to-toe revision, to make it an association where free nations come together for the mutual benefit of all. Sniggering about foreigners or painting glowing pictures of money saved from the EU going to build dozens of hospitals, is schoolboy thinking at its toffee-nosed worst.
And yet in the end, I’m a teensy bit conflicted. If Boris does manage to yank the UK out of the EU, that’s OK with me. Because such an exit will be followed by a surge in support for two more referenda: one in Scotland and one here in the north. Both will do more damage to the notion of the UK than a half-million conspiring commissioners in Brussels.
May I ask a question?
What is the legal status of these Six Counties I live in?
Is it a Province it certainly is not Northern unless you leave bits out especially the most Northerly bit(Donegal)
It is not Ulster unless again you you leave out 3 Counties( perhaps they are in Limbo!!
Most assuredly it is not a Country.Even though many politicians, media pundits,football fans and Unionists in general try to promote “Our wee Country”
Is it just me who is totally confused?
Please tell me the answer? I am Irish and live on the Island of Ireland.
It’s a state, an illegal state, but, a state none the less, so no, it’s not a country those you mention are trying in vain to convince everyone else that it’s a country.
Ha ha , Jim I had a wee rant a few weeks ago and created much mischief and mileage….http://www.judecollins.com/2016/05/biggest-radio-show-country/
Perhaps that particular Limerick was not for downward dissemination as it is a poor reflection of time spent reading classics. The author of the limerick gave a lecture in 2012 with the title:
“What the Arabs really want”
In the lecture he stated:
“…Britain’s moment in the Middle East. Our Mandate over Palestine; our decision to help create the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan; our engagement with the Persian Gulf, or the Arabian Gulf as I should say here, which had already begun with the Bombay Presidency of the East India Company nearly one hundred years earlier. And what is happening today is, in my view, unfinished business from 1917. What flowed from those two acts, Mr Balfour’s letter to Lord Rothschild, Allenby’s successful campaign up through Ottoman Palestine, on to Damascus eventually in 1918, the seizure of Jerusalem, everything, or almost everything we see today flows from that removal of Ottoman power and the process of Western occupation and interference that has lasted nearly a century. Western engagement and interference that has addressed our wishes and needs rather more often that it has addressed the wishes and needs of the Arabs of the peninsula, and the Levant, and beyond. What Elizabeth Monroe called “Britain’s moment in the Middle East” is long gone. It ended perhaps in 1948 when we marched on the 15th May out of Palestine without leaving behind a political solution…”
In the same lecture a patronising quotation from James Craig was used suggesting that:
“the problems for Saudi Arabia were “incompetence, insularity and Islam.”
Cowper-Coles countered with the suggestion that Arabs wanted what all human beings wanted:
“…education, engagement and emancipation.”
He concluded his lecture by saying:
“… it is not about Kings and Presidents, and governments, the people who are flocking into the refugee camps in Turkey, the wretched, uncounted, unnamed millions in the suburbs of Cairo, who see what is being played out in Tahrir Square, but don’t actually have the time, or the money or the means to get down there, but what they really deserve, and what they really want, is what every human being wants. Which, as I said at the beginning, and will say again and again, is a decent life, a decent living and, above all a better future for their children…”
Sherard Cowper-Coles assessment of Britain’s role in the Middle East did not find favour in British political and military circles and his views led to a slow waltz from diplomatic circles. His limerick concerning the Hunger Strike and Cardinal Ó Fiaich is a poor reflection on Cowper-Coles given the accuracy of his assessment of Britain’s role in the Middle East. His thought remain valid in relation to Britain’s role in Ireland.
That says it all.
For clarification, Cowper-Coles delivered the lecture, Mound delivered the limerick, the opinion of the Colonel-in-Chief of the Parachute Regiment on lecture and limerick will no doubt remain redacted in the interests of national security.
Back in the depths of the H-Block deadlock , Esteemed Blogmeister, then as now there were two British Embassies in Dublin: the official British Embassy and then there was the real British Embassy.
The latter, of course, used a nom de laissez faire which was/ still is the (gulp) Irish Department of Foreign Affairs. Staffed, then as now, with stuffed shirts with a pink gin in one hand and a plump cigar in the other, dreaming of becoming one day , erm, Our Man in Havana.
You could spot them a file marked top-secret away.
It does not take a huge leap of the imagination to visualize these would be Edward Leers gleefully exchanging Limericks between the Foreign Office West and the Foreign Office Central.
Sands across the Border, not
The colonial roadblock of the H-Block
Round the clock tugs of the forelock
Haich Crimes
Near rhymes
Cell walls daubed a la Shan Van Gogh
For Trevor, Narrow water and Mullaghmor!
I think you will find Northern Ireland is certainly recognised as a country by the rest of Europe and the World. Every bit as North and South Korea are recognised as 2 countries. I appreciate that you might not like it but you cant deny the facts. Suck it up and move on.
You may have to “suck it up” in the wake of a vote in favour of Britexit after which the Scottish electorate may throw a very damaging spanner in the UK constitutional works.. The whole edifice will inevitably fall just like the gerrymandered structure called “northern ireland” which was built on rotten foundations from the start. Man made constructions have a finite life which will be the reality of the Uk in the short to medium term.
I think Irish Rover you have sucked up one too many tipples on your last trip in the other parts of Europe. The British occupied 6 counties are not even recognised as a country by half the population living there never mind the rest of Europe and further afield!
Irish Rover,
What kind of country doesn’t even have its own official flag? the Ulster Banner hasn’t been the official flag since the fall of Stormont in, I believe, 1972. Its only used now as a default flag. And no, the Union flag is the flag of the UK, not NI.
What kind of country has a population where 50% (and soon to be the majority) don’t want it to exist? Who refuse to say its very name?
What kind of country has an economy that is a cesspit, where the political structures nearly collapsed because of a flag being reduced to designated days and where democracy cant be implemented because one section of the community simply cant be trusted to govern in the interests of everyone?
Even many Unionists say NI isn’t a country but a “province”…..
If NI is a country, then its an absolute disaster….
Irish Economist David McWilliams said that DUP support for a #Brexit could be the DUP “signing their own death warrant”, and I 100% agree with that. I don’t think Unionists here fully understand the dangers to the Union itself if there’s a #Brexit, it would certainly cause a political earthquake here in the North, and that’s not counting the serious likelihood of Scotland leaving the Union and going Independent. Indeed many opinion polls in Scotland show that a majority would vote for Scottish Independence if there is a #Brexit. Compare that to the odd 1 or 2 opinion polls before the 2014 Scottish Referendum.
So why are Unionists taking such a huge risk? Well as I said most don’t understand the dangers. But there is a minority, such as the DUP, that want to portray themselves as “More British than the British themselves”.
There is a case for Britain (England, Scotland and Wales) for leaving the EU. I think its utterly nonsense to say Britain wont have access to the single market if they leave, the Swiss and Norwegians have access and they aren’t even in the EU. In theory Britain could control their own borders outside the EU and control immigration.
But is there a case for NI leaving the EU? absolutely not, we receive billions from the EU in grants, peace funding and investment. That would all vanish if the UK leaves the EU. And some Unionists delude themselves in thinking the UK Govt would replace that funding lol there’s not a chance of that, even Theresa Villiers made that clear and she supports a #Brexit. Will there be checkpoints along the border? There has to be if the UK wants to control immigration but that would be even more destructive for the NI economy. If there is a #Brexit there will definitely be a referendum on Irish Unity and Scottish Independence.
Various opinion polls indicate that the vast majority in NI want to remain in the UK. I expect that to change dramatically, especially with Catholics, if the UK leaves the EU. Sinn Fein and Republicans will advocate Irish Unity in order to remain in the EU and I don’t think Unionists will be so confident about remaining in the UK when that vote comes along, quite the opposite, in fact.
PS: Some facts about the ROI and NI economies:
The average wage in the ROI is DOUBLE what it is in NI.
In 1916 NI was the powerhouse of Ireland, it exported 10 times as much as the rest of Ireland. Today the Republic exports 15 times as much as NI.
Exports in the South total nearly £100 Billion a year. NI’s exports every year is just £6 billion….despite its workforce being just below half of the South’s workforce.
NI’s economy will grow just 1% this year. The Republic’s economy is due to grow a massive 7%, the highest in the EU.
The ROI ranks consistently in the top 10 in the World (and ranked 1st in the World in 2005) for Best Quality of life for its citizens. The UK and NI usually rank around 20-15th in the World.
As David McWilliams said: “The British Union has been a disaster for NI and its people”.
The myths about the Union need to be exposed and the facts told….
https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/reports/lmp/gor/2013265932/report
Why would NI want to leave the 5th largest economy in the world?
This is a line that I have often heard from unionist leadership. The above link is directly to the office for national statistics and shows quite clearly the impact of where living standards are in relation to NI position within that economy. By any measure of output we have ALL been failed by membership of the U.K as we are below the average in every single measure of the survey. Better off? My backside. And no amount of persuasion will convince me otherwise
https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/reports/lmp/gor/2013265932/report.aspx
Try that instead
An entire nation labelled patronising on the basis of anecdotes about some foreign office buffoon.
Thick? The Irish? Surely not.