On this day one hundred years ago, King George opened the Northern Ireland parliament in Belfast City Hall. His opening sentence was “For all who love Ireland, as I do with all my heart, this is a profoundly moving occasion in Irish history.” Beggin’ your pardon, sir, I couldn’t disagree more.
If you really loved Ireland, you would have stayed at home and opened parliaments for your own people. Personally, I’m against people getting life-long jobs because they happen to have a father who did the job and passed it on, but the English people have odd tastes in their acceptance as subjects of a monarchy, but that’s their affair.
You’re right that the opening of a Northern Ireland parliament was “a profoundly moving occasion”. Along with many of my fellow Irishmen and women, I feel deep emotions of resentment and apprehension. You are lending your royal shoulder to the Partition wheel, cementing a division of Ireland into two different states and setting in train one hundred years of bigotry, sectarianism, gerrymander and violent death. Hardly the actions of a man who says he loves Ireland.
The end of King George’s speech was of a piece with its beginning.
“For this [a parliament in the South] the Parliament of the United Kingdom has in the fullest measure provided the powers; for this the Parliament of Ulster is pointing the way. The future lies in the hands of My Irish people themselves.
May this historic gathering be the prelude of a day in which the Irish people, North and South, under one Parliament or two, as those Parliaments may themselves decide, shall work together in common love for Ireland upon the sure foundations of mutual justice and respect.”
Geographical fact, Your Maj: the NEI parliament never was and never will be the Parliament of Ulster. If you’re going to announce yourself as king of a region, at least get the geographical facts right.
“The future lies in the hands of My Irish people themselves”.
“MY Irish people”? Irish people don’t belong to an English monarch any more than he belongs to them. As for the future lying in the hands of the Irish people: what royal poppycock. The Irish nation as you acknowledge was sliced in two under threat of terrible and immediate war by your prime minister. That’s what the Irish question is all about: will England allow the Irish people to rule themselves without interference from a platitudinous royal or a threatening English parliament.
Should Irish people be attending today’s ceremonies in Belfast City Hall? Should a man sharpen and polish the memorial axe that amputated one of his four limbs?
Comments are closed.