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With the setting up of the assembly in the 6 counties, the partitionist Bertie Ahern has declared in a partitionist Dail Eireann that the constitution in Northern Ireland is now off the table. It is easy for Bertie to say that in a cosy, Catholic, foreign, 26 county Republic. Federal Unionism - Early Sinn Fein invites the Taoiseach to visit the 6 counties and look around, and he will find his wishful thinking about the constitution is misplaced. In the 6 counties, he will find that for the people, the constitution is at the centre of the table and remains at the heart of the matter. He will find in Catholic estates the kerbstones painted green white and orange, the flag is the tricolour, the anthem is a Soldier’s Song and the passport is Irish. In Protestant estates he will find the kerbstones painted red white and blue, the flag is the Union Jack, the anthem is God Save The Queen and the passport is British.
So what is Bertie talking about when he says that in N. Ireland the constitution is off the table? This typifies the flannel that comes from politicians in Ireland. What now is the flag to be flown at Stormont and what is the anthem? Is it the Union Jack and God Save the Queen? If it is, then Late Sinn Fein are 1801 Unionists and should fly the Union Jack at headquarters and end the Ard Fheis with God Save the Queen. Could both flags be flown and both anthems sung? If that were the case then Stormont would clearly be the constitutional monstrosity that it has become. Perhaps the parties could agree not to fly any flag or have an anthem, in that case the 6 counties, as a constitutional non–entity, would be a non–state.
This seems to be the constitutional position adopted by Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair and being urged by the media. The people of the 6 counties are being told to deal with bread and butter matters only. In other words, the people are being told to think about their bellies and about nothing else. But to have a buoyant economy, it is vital to have a stable state and a stable state must have a democratically accepted constitution which the 6 county statelet doesn’t have. Mr Ford of the Alliance Party has suggested that the 6 counties should have its own flag – a green flag with a circle of blue flax flowers – and its own anthem, Danny Boy, but that is typical of the silly shallow nonsense that comes from Alliance.
Ian Paisley keeps insisting that he is a democrat, that the 6 counties is a democracy and is within the United Kingdom but never explains what ‘democracy’ or ‘united’ are supposed to mean. Since the U. K. constitution is unwritten the validity of these words can be tested in acid in this way. Ian should invite the Queen to make a Royal tour of the 6 counties and Ian, Martin, and Bertie should escort Her Majesty on a walk about up the Falls Road and have the people of the Falls greet the Queen with Union Jacks. The Royal visitor should then attend a Royal Fete in Casement Park to be serenaded by a Falls male voice choir crooning in four part harmony, "God Save the Queen," with Ian Paisley jr conducting. The Queen should then make a similar Royal tour of the Bogside and Creggan in Derry and finish off the visit with a similar Royal tour of Crossmaglen. When all of that comes to pass Federal Unionism – Early Sinn Fein will concede to Ian that the 6 county statelet is democratic, that he is a democrat and the United Kingdom is united and will agree with Bertie that the constitution is off the table in N. Ireland. But, all of that is not a scenario of the immediate future but may happen light years from now. In the mean time when the Crown visits Belfast, the Crown is hijacked by Right Wing Union Jack Unionists, is corralled into Protestant districts and is seen as a Protestant Crown for Protestants. If that is ever to change that can only be done in the National Government of Ireland Act by Federal Unionism – Early Sinn Fein.
To look at the constitutional surrealism of the whole island, recently I saw Ian Paisley jr on T.V. make a visit to Dublin where he was greeted by the Irish foreign minister Mr Ahern. It looked like Ian jr was arriving from Timbuktu, not from Belfast a hundred miles or so up the road. It amazes one how these two men can keep straight faces when involved in such a surrealist constitutional farce.
Zealotry is the curse of Irish history and while the farcical constitutional nature of the island goes back to ancient religious wars in ancient times, the modern farce began with the zealotry of Wolfe Tone and the United Irishmen. Their zealotry drove the Irish ship of state off course. Prior to the United Irishmen, the Patriots in the Irish Parliament were pressing for a parliament which was separate from, but co- equal to, Westminster under the Crown and this is the first and best concept of Irish nationhood in Irish history. In this concept the Irish ship of state was on course, but in reaction to ’98, the Irish parliament was ripped out of Ireland and with it the island’s constitutional centre, this being spearheaded by a zealotry of Irish Protestant landed gentry, and the Irish ship of state was driven off course. In the 19th century attempts were made by Butt and Parnell to steer the ship of state back onto the course of the Patriots but this was frustrated by Right Wing Union Jack Unionism. In the 20th century Griffiths, in the notion of a dual monarchy, tried to steer the ship of state back on the central course of the Patriots but the sectarian zealotry of 1916 put paid to that in 1916, and the ship of state was driven totally off course into the doldrums of partition. How many Protestants were in the leadership or in the ranks in 1916? Now, in a 30 year zealotry of violence, Late Sinn Fein is not only off course but is lost at sea in Stormont.
Zealotry is normally found in religion but there exists the zealotry of two secular religions in Ireland, i.e. Late Sinn Fein and Union Jack Unionism. These secular religions have secular saints and secular martyrs, a one true faith based on contradictory dogmas about Ireland and on two conflicting and contradictory truths about Ireland. The adherents of these two apostate religions have gutted one another in the past but are now joined together at the hip in an unholy, ungodly, and unhealthy union at Stormont and these zealots now rule: on the one hand, the religious and political zealot, Ian Paisley and on the other, the political zealot Martin McGuinness. In the past in G.B., the racist zealot Oswald Moseley was put out of politics because he was anti-Jewish; but in the 6 counties the religious and political zealot, Paisley, has remained in politics and now rules even though he is known to be anti-Irish and anti-Catholic. He does this in company with the anti-loyalist zealot McGuinness.
All of this is bound up with the morality of government in the assembly. A government in a genuine democracy has a moral basis. In a genuine democracy the government governs in the belief that what it says and does is right and the opposition opposes in the belief that what the government says and does is wrong. Profumo was sacked because of a sexual impropriety and for lying to the House; Nixon was sacked for lying to the nation; Clinton was faced with impeachment, not so much for a sexual impropriety as for lying; Bertie Ahern’s fitness for government is called to question over his personal finances and all of this is due to the moral basis of the democratic governments concerned.
This is not the case with the assembly at Stormont. There the basis of government is amoral. Amorality and immorality are different. To be immoral one must have a sense of right and wrong and infringe one's sense of right with a sense of guilt. To be amoral one is devoid of a sense of right and wrong and the person is devoid of guilt. This is characteristic of a psychopath. For all Early Sinn Fein knows, and for all the general public knows, those who were involved in the most heinous of crimes, like the Enniskillen bombings and those who condoned such criminality now rule over us in an amoral assembly. This is not directed at Republican criminality alone but is directed at the counter criminality of Right Wing Union Jack Unionism, such Unionism stretching from the UUP, to the DUP, to the police, to the British military and then to the UDA and to the UVF. All of these are, constitutionally speaking, the one sow’s pigs and condone a criminality that extends from Bloody Sunday to the murder of innocent Catholics and to collusion between the police and loyalist paramilitaries. Thus the assembly rests on amoral deals done between zealots behind closed doors in the Belfast/Scottish agreement. Thus the zealots rule.
In Dublin, Bertie Ahern has said that in Ireland, the two constitutions are now set in stone. In Bertie’s mind that is the way Ireland is, and has to be. There is no other way. Federal Unionism Early Sinn Fein refutes that flatly. There is another way for Ireland and the Irish, in the way Ireland ought to be. This can be expressed in the National Government of Ireland Act. If the Act is examined as published in The Blanket, it will be seen that the joining of the two historic traditions in Ireland is symbolized in the union of the Irish Tricolour with the Cross of Saint Patrick and the Crown, the Harp and the Shamrock. This is a more realistic and rational approach to unity than having two irreconcilable zealots sit beside one another in a partitionist Stormont. As a symbol of unity, the new flag should be named in the Act as the Royal Flag of Ireland and defined as the national flag of Ireland and as the co-equal symbol of the United Kingdom of the sovereign Nation of Ireland and Great Britain. This is a synthesis of the two historic political traditions in Ireland. The joining and synthesis of the two cultural traditions in Ireland, the Irish and the Loyalist and of the two Christian traditions, the Catholic and the Protestant, is symbolized in the Crown Irish Representation given in the Act which should show a picture of the Crown wearing the Irish Crown Jewels standing beside a Celtic Cross and underneath should be written in Irish and English:
An Coroin Criostuil Gaelach
Banrion Eilis a do
The Christian Crown Irish
Queen Elisabeth the Second
The full synthesis of the two historic traditions in Ireland is given in the 22 articles of the National Government of Ireland Act published in The Blanket. In this way there lies a united Ireland that is peaceful and stable and in no other way but Ireland divided will never be at peace. This is only achievable in Federal Unionism – Early Sinn Fein.
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