Almost exactly 100 years ago there was a general election in which Sinn Féin won a huge majority – 73 of the 105 seats involved. In their manifesto, Sinn Féin had promised to abstain from the Westminster parliament. After their election, they set up Dáil Éireann. So what happens next? You guessed it, Virginia. Unionists refused to recognize the Dáil, seeing it as undemocratic for the Irish people to elect their representatives to their own parliament.
This, of course, was in striking contrast to 1912, when tens of thousands of unionists signed the Ulster Covenant, defying the will of the mother parliament in Westminster which wanted to bring Home Rule to Ireland. “Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right.”
Fast forward 100 years and you have our dear little statelet voting in the referendum on whether or not to leave the EU. In our TGC, 56% of voters made it clear they preferred to stay in the EU (in Scotland, the Remain vote was 62%). When this majority in the TGC is pointed out to Arlene Foster or other DUP politicians, they explain patiently that this was a UK-wide vote, so it doesn’t matter that there was a majority in our TGC for Remain.
That is what you might describe as an a la carte approach to democracy. In 1912, it was all about the will of the people of Ulster. In 2016, it was all about the will of the people of the UK.
Do unionist politicians see this contradiction? Probably. But it’s an inconvenient truth, and people who speak inconvenient truths have to be either silenced or ignored. This would appear to include most mainstream journalists, since I can’t remember a sustained media effort to confront unionist politicians with their own self-contradiction.
But then self-contradiction is near to becoming a way of life for some. When the BBC journalist Gareth Gordon walked down the street in Ballymena with Ian Paisley Jr, he asked the North Antrim MP if there was anything similar to his Sri Lanka holiday coming down the pipe to embarrass him. Something else? Oh no, Ian Jr told him. You’re sure of that, Gareth Gordon asked him. Oh yes – definitely. Now Mr Paisley faces explaining an almost identical holiday he had in the Maldives, again with his family, and him the recipient of astonishing generosity from an unnamed source.
So democracy is whatever we say it is, and luxury holidays are just a question of having nice generous connections. I can’t wait for DUP reaction to the RHI report.
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