‘Like Clouds over fields in May’
...Raglan Road, lyrics by the Dubliners
Unlike the poetic overtones of the song Raglan Road, the prosaic and soon to be cemented relationship between the DUP and May's Tories, all wrapped up in a Faustian pact, have led to the remnants of Victorian Bulwer-Lytton’s great unwashed, the English public, to squawk loudly as to just who this DUP malaise is.
The answers they discovered have caused them more anxiety than anticipated or pre-planned for.
Misogynist crackpots, Creationist cranks, homophobic Neanderthals, thieves, fraudsters and Unionist terrorists are just some of the less colourful depictions of the DUP.
Setting aside the more flowery descriptions of the DUP and their history, as expressed on the various social media platforms, aspects of this Faustian pact that should concern Irish Nationalists, is not the English reaction of abhorrence to the DUP being in government nor the DUP's vaunting of their dirty little pact with May and her brood of hard Brexiteers. No, Irish Nationalists have abhorred them for decades so that comes natural. An abhorrence that the English didn’t listen to and condescendingly dismissed away as an inter-communal fall-out. What Irish Nationalists need to be fully aware off is these few small aspects of the pact:
‣ The complete contempt that the British government has shown to an international agreement, The Good Friday Agreement – GFA, by flagrant abandonment of a gentleman's understanding to uphold their now exposed fraudulent former position of neutral broker.
‣ The complete contempt and disdain that the British government has shown to all participants of the GFA by secretly agreeing a pact with one of those participants several years before the recent British general election and before the fall of Stormont. ‣ In particular, the complete disdain that the British government has shown to the mandate of Irish Nationalists by agreeing a deal with Unionists while Nationalist MPs were present and sitting at Westminster.
‣ How the impartiality of the British government as an honest broker in the Good Friday Agreement has been publicly shot to pieces by the deceit and desperation of May and the Tories to cling to power. Responsibility for and inclusive of their old chums in Unionism, the DUP.
DUP connivance with the Tories began long before the fall of Stormont as they had already willingly agreed to step in to the breech. Thus privately undermining the principles of the GFA while publicly and deceitfully swearing fealty.
DUP connivance with the Tories began long before the fall of Stormont as they had already willingly agreed to step in to the breech. Thus privately undermining the principles of the GFA while publicly and deceitfully swearing fealty.
‣ That the restoration of the GFA, Stormont and the assembly is not only now completely defunct but absolutely pointless to pursue.
‣ The repugnant expectation that Irish Nationalists have to share power at Her Majesty's government’s insistence with a people who continually swear loyalty to an institution, Britain, that in turn, the same institution now finds it repulsive the prospect of this same people being in Downing Street.
‣ How this ‘new’ found pact has laid bare the extremely poor state of journalism in the North with particular reference to Northern journalism’s lack of focus on Unionist behaviour in general and their more deliberate focus on reporting the more tedious and nauseous ‘whataboutery’. A profession that now seems to lack in investigative journalistic pursuance but abounds with submissiveness to Unionist malpractice that borders at times on the defensive. It looks like the boys and girls across the water have much more journalistic integrity than the bhoys and lassies in the North.
Aspects that should be to the fore of this Faustian pact but are lightly touched upon and deliberately held in the background by a compliant northern media.
But let us also reflect how inadvertently, the pact, demonstrates the powerlessness of representation of Irish Nationalism at Britain's Westminster.
How Tim Farron, having resigned as leader of the LibDems due to conflicts of party policy with his religious faith, May find succour in the Creationist DUP.....but at least he resigned!
And lastly, the DUP, like heavy rain clouds hanging over May and her Brexiteers, and a party whose nationality, and much to their own chagrin, has within a week moved from British to Northern Irish to Irish. Who says a week in politics isn’t a long time!
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