Lockhart published her resignation letter to DUP leader Gavin Robinson on Facebook accompanied by a personal statement which set her reasoning to the public.

Today I informed the party leader, Gavin Robinson, that I have resigned from the Democratic Unionist Party. I have included below a copy of my letter.

I will sit in the House of Commons as an independent Unionist.

My first responsibility remains to the people of Upper Bann. You placed your trust in me, and I will continue to work every bit as hard for you, your family and our community.

My leaving is on a point of principle. I stood in front of in or around 15,000 people and said this lady was not for turning. I have said Michelle O’Neill should be removed from office whilst allowing the Assembly to continue to function, as provided for in the legislation. I stand over that.

I cannot stand idly by whilst Sinn Féin wilfully ignores the rule of law and the promised profound consequences fail to materialise.

Today in the Assembly Michelle O’Neill again stands defiant, declaring she is as much First Minister this week as last week. This simply is not tolerable. A line in the sand needed to be drawn in unionism long ago: today I am drawing my line.

For over twenty years, the DUP has been my political home. This is a sad day and a deeply personal decision. Many good people within the party remain my friends. That will not change.

I do not intend to give a running commentary on its inner workings. I seek no conflict with any of my friends in the DUP.

From Scarva in June this year right through to Drumcree, I have felt the onslaught of lies, abuse and attempts to make this about me as a person. But on both occasions I stood with the community that elects me. I stood up for them, and I stand over everything I did. I still do.

Their courage, conviction and support strengthened my determination. I wouldn’t change a thing about standing with them.

My principles have not changed. When I say I will take a stand, people should be able to trust that I will follow through.

I am standing up for what I believe and I will continue to serve Upper Bann as your MP. At the next Westminster election, rest assured the name Carla Lockhart will be on the ballot paper.

I am not establishing a new political party. I want to help build a grassroots movement, opening doors for young people, encouraging women into leadership and bringing Unionists together around shared principles and practical action.

I look forward to working with all shades of Unionism, elected or not, to advance the cause we love and give our time to preserve.

Included in the post is a link to a document in which she sets out her own vision of Unionism’s future, and you can find that here.

The DUP have issued a statement in response

We regret Carla Lockhart’s decision to resign from the Democratic Unionist Party. We thank her for her service to the Party and recognise her work on behalf of the people of Upper Bann.
 
“The only winner out of further divisions within unionism is Sinn Fein.
 
“We share the anger felt across unionism at Michelle O’Neill’s actions. Our disagreement is over the course of action that will secure accountability and best serve Northern Ireland.”

Lockhart’s departure brings the DUP to the lowest number of MPs it has held in Westminster in 25 years, falling below the 5 seat tally it won at the 2001 General Election.

Four arguments

Dawson, a visiting professor at Ulster University’s International Conflict Research Institute and a founding member of the MNHRC, opened by laying out four arguments at the heart of the book.

The first challenges the idea that societies simply “move on” after a conflict — that the Troubles ended, and Northern Ireland stepped out the other side into something called post-conflict. That framing, he argued, is a political convenience, not a description of how people actually live.

The second argument gives the book its title; borrowing the concept of the “afterlife” from historian Marek Tamm, Dawson describes how the past continues to inhabit the present. It does not recede; it resurfaces, often when least expected, in the texture of everyday life.

Third, rather than focusing on trauma as a clinical or psychiatric category, Dawson attends to feelings: how emotions persist, return, and interrupt the stories people try to tell about their own lives. A memory does not arrive in sequence, it breaks in. He calls this “associative diffraction”, the way feeling cuts across the flow of a narrative.

His fourth point follows directly: policymakers and legislators, working to electoral timetables and political deadlines, consistently underestimate how long this process takes. Memory does not move at the speed of a peace agreement or a legacy review. The book argues that failing to understand this has real consequences for how societies attempt to deal with the past.

Róisín Higgins: Permission and attentiveness

Professor Róisín Higgins opened the panel by reflecting on what the book had given her permission to do. Growing up working-class and Catholic during the Troubles, she had found it difficult to bring her own experience into academic work. Dawson’s method — taking people’s stories seriously, attending to ambivalence and contradiction — showed that healing through heritage and storytelling is more complicated than it might appear, and that this complication is the point. She recalled Thomas Hardy’s poem “Afterwards”, with its image of someone who notices what matters to others. For Higgins, that attentiveness defines Dawson’s scholarship.

Claire Hackett: Place, memory, and the Garvaghy Road

Claire Hackett connected the book directly to her work at the Dúchas Oral History Archive. She described Paul Seawright’s photographic exhibition Sectarian Murder series (1988) — images of the locations where people killed during the 1970s were found — as a prompt for reflection on place-based memory: the presence of informal commemoration, the absence of public remembrance.

She turned to the Drumcree and Garvaghy Road dispute in Portadown. An Orange Order parade through a Catholic area had been refused for 28 years. When the Parades Commission permitted it this year, local residents resisted, and a two-week standoff ensued; the parade did not take place. Hackett argued that greater attention to the community’s traumatic memories of place might have helped decision-makers understand the likely rupture. The effects of conflict, she suggested, cannot be neatly separated into “conflict” and “post-conflict” periods.

Dawson’s close analysis of Dúchas interviews had given her a deeper understanding of material she knew well. She highlighted two accounts: an interview with Sandra, conducted by John, in which gentle questioning allows memories to surface as the interviewee seeks composure; and the story of Olive McGuire, displaced from her home in 1971, whose experience continued to shape her life decades later.

Anne Rigney: Subjectivity, affect, and storytelling as action

Professor Anne Rigney situated the book within memory studies, the interdisciplinary field that emerged alongside transitional justice research in the 1990s. She critiqued what she called the “reconciliation script”, which is the belief that specific practices such as tribunals, monuments, and apologies can resolve conflict, provide closure, and allow societies to move on. Dawson’s earlier work had already challenged this by showing how reconciliation practices can reinforce the very boundaries they seek to overcome.

Rigney identified three key contributions of the new book: (1) its argument that closure cannot be imposed from above, that memory work proceeds on its own timescales rather than those of policy or election cycles; (2) its attention to subjectivity and affect, connecting personal experience to collective processes through object-relations theory and Raymond Williams’s concept of “structures of feeling”; and (3) its treatment of storytelling as action, not only evidence about the past, but a performance through which change can happen. She welcomed the book’s call for greater recognition of community-based storytelling.

Discussion: Composure, hope, and the present moment

The discussion ranged widely. One exchange focused on how people manage difficult memories when they tell their stories. Oral historian Alistair Thomson developed the concept of “composure”, which is the way people shape a version of their past that they can live with. Dawson drew a distinction between two kinds. “Defensive composure” is when someone tidies the story up, keeps the lid on, avoids what is too painful or too complicated to say. “Transformative composure” is when the telling goes somewhere different, when a feeling breaks through the rehearsed account and something that was previously unsayable finds its way out. That rupture, Dawson argued, is where storytelling can become genuinely healing rather than merely managed.

A question about recent race-related unrest and the redirection of historical grievances toward migration led Dawson to observe that current events shape how people return to the past. He did not suggest that recent unrest simply reproduces the structures of Troubles-era violence, but argued that it has a relationship to them. The television drama Blue Lights, he noted, offers one example of popular culture engaging with continuity and change in Northern Ireland.

Anne Rigney described hope as a present-day practice of possibility, pursued in defence of values without knowing its outcome, and connected to storytelling as a small but potentially transformative act. Claire Hackett said she had come to trust Dawson with the Dúchas archive through a gradual working relationship, and that his analysis treated interviewees with respect and care. Dawson reflected on the importance of bringing academic and community knowledge into dialogue, in the spirit of the History Workshop movement.

A question near the close of the event quoted the photographer Gilles Peress on time in Northern Ireland: “Today is tomorrow, tomorrow is yesterday or ten years ago.” It is a description that Dawson’s book, 15 years in the making, sets out not just to explain but to take seriously, as the lived reality of everyone whose story it holds.

Afterlives of the Troubles, by Graham Dawson, is available from Manchester University Press.

There were three proclaimed innovations in the ‘Safeguarding the Union’ deal which foolishly persuaded the DUP that the Irish Sea Border problems had been resolved, such that they could return to Stormont in February 2024: the formation of Inter-Trade UK, the formation of the East West Council and the Internal Market Guarantee verified by the Independent Monitoring Committee.

In a context where rather than pretending to remove the Irish Sea Border, i) Inter-Trade UK existed to promote trade between NI and GB despite the border and ii) the East West Council provided a new platform from which Northern Ireland could express its views within the UK, despite the border, the only provision which suggested any change was being made to the border was the Internal Market Guarantee.

The impression given by the commitment was that under Safeguarding the Union at least 80% of goods movements between GB and NI would be Internal Market movements. Although on other occasions the DUP and Rishi Sunak implied that the Irish Sea Border had effectively been removed, this gave grounds for the assertion that it had been removed with respect to at least 80% of its effect.

The commitment was deemed to be of such importance that it should be verified by a specially created body that would be independent of government, ‘the Independent Monitoring Panel (IMP)’. It would report every 6 months on whether the Internal Market Guarantee had been met. Later that year the Government announced that the IMP would start work with the first six month reporting period of 1 January 2025 until 30 June 2025.

Two major problems have since emerged which mean that the Safeguarding the Union deal is now being breached by the Government.

1. No IMP Reports

While it was disappointing that the Government did not publish the first IMP Report until 5 November 2025, more than four months after the conclusion of the first reporting period, the report was published. Allowing for the same time gap, one would have expected the IMP report on the second reporting period (July to Dec ‘25) to be published in May 2026. However, May passed and no report was published.

On 1 July 2026 we then moved into a completely new 6 monthly reporting period, without having received a report for the second reporting period or the third reporting period (Jan – June 2026). As things currently stand more than 16 months have passed in relation to which no IMP report has been published on whether or not the Internal Market Guarantee has been met. In this context the Safeguarding the Union deal, on the strength of which the DUP returned to Stormont, is now being breached.

1. A Different IMP Report

In truth, however, Safeguarding the Union was actually breached in the publishing of the first IMP report on the period Jan – June 2025, because it did not do what Safeguarding the Union committed to do, namely demonstrating ‘that more than 80% of all freight movements from Great Britain to Northern Ireland take place under the UK internal market system.’ (Safeguarding the Union page 18). Instead of measuring the proportion of goods by volume moving from GB to NI under the UK Internal Market System, it instead measured the proportion of goods by value moving from GB to NI in relation to which duties were paid.

Quite apart from the fact that this approach ignores all aspects of the border and border frictions that defy the reality of an internal market beyond the payment of duties, e.g. the burden of having to complete customs and SPS forms and being subject to documentary and identity checks etc, this was in any event an absurd thing to do given that the UK has a Free Trade Agreement with the EU. In this context when goods move duty free subject to rules of origin, the production of such a report not only breached the Safeguarding the Union agreement; it was also completely pointless.

Given that today Stormont’s position has never been so fragile since its restoration in February 2024, it is extraordinary that the Government should be so brazen in withdrawing the assurances that were made in order to get a First and Deputy First Minister. Why? What is the problem with the Government publishing the IMP reports for the second and third reporting periods?

In truth, however, in looking at the Internal Market Guarantee we are confronted by a far more serious breach, a breach not simply of Safeguarding the Union, but a breach of faith with the people of the United Kingdom through Safeguarding the Union, because the Internal Market Guarantee is not and never has been an Internal Market Guarantee.

Goods moved under the ‘Internal Market Guarantee’ are goods moved under the so-called ‘UK Internal Market System’ which necessitates their having an export number and having to complete a customs declaration, subject to 100% documentary checks. Moreover, SPS goods must also be subject to international SPS forms, subject to 100% documentary checks, and 8% identity checks at Border Control Posts.

Some of the forms may be shorter than those applying to goods moving outside the so-called ‘UK Internal Market Scheme’ but you don’t need an export number or to complete any customs or international SPS paperwork to move goods within an Internal Market. This is not an internal market arrangement but an alternative trade border arrangement. Moreover, people are not simply offered shorter customs forms under what is really the Alternative GB-EU/NI Trade Border System.

They are only given this in return for accepting other additional border frictions, including legal liability if goods inadvertently end up in the Republic, which is one of the reasons why so many GB small businesses have ceased trading with NI. Calling the current arrangement the ‘Internal Market Guarantee’, does not amount to a slight massaging of terminology for political convenience but a full-frontal Government attempt at deception that rather than treating UK citizens with respect treats us with complete contempt.

In response to the above some might conclude that my recommendation is that the IMP is simply abandoned. Its provision certainly provided no basis for suggesting that the DUP had sorted the Irish Sea Border, such that claiming a win and returning to Stormont was appropriate. There is no great virtue to move goods from GB to NI via one trade border arrangement rather than another.

Both present us with the division of the UK by the EU and the fact that far from removing the Irish Sea border for 80% of movements, these arrangements mean that 100% of goods moving from GB to NI encounter the border and must have an export number, complete customs and, where necessary, SPS forms and be subject to at least 8% identity checks at border control posts.

Going forward the answer must be to remove the Irish Sea border and to create a genuine Internal Market Guarantee that all goods moving within the UK move without encountering any trade borders. To this end the EU Withdrawal Arrangements Bill which has its Second Reading in the Lords on 20^th November is the answer.

In the short term, however, if the Government wants to show us that the vast majority of goods are moving by means of the alternative rather than the standard border arrangement it should start being honest with UK citizens.

First, the Internal Market Guarantee must be redesignated the GB-NI/EU Alternative Trade Border Guarantee and the UK Internal Market System/Scheme must be redesignated the GB-NI/EU Alternative Trade Border System.

Second, IMP reports must measure what proportion of goods by volume move under the UK Internal Market Scheme, (redesignated the GB-NI/EU Alternative Trade Border System) as promised by Safeguarding the Union.

Third that the report must be produced every 6 months.

But I am a simple person in many ways (maybe that’s the Ulster Presbyterian in me!), and I believe in the presence of good and evil in the world. With last week’s election result in Israel deadlocked, meaning the warmonger Benjamin Netanyahu stays in power, and with the possibility of Donald Trump’s Republican sycophants in the US Congress facing a defeat in the midterm elections tomorrow, I feel I have to speak out in a tiny way against the forces of evil.

Because I believe Donald Trump (along with Vladimir Putin) is currently the most powerful evil force in the world, a champion of ‘might is right’ in international relations and an enemy of social justice, European democracy and international humanitarian organisations . His rise to power has seen ‘copycat’ far right leaders in Latin American countries like Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Ecuador (it was a wonderful surprise to see Brazil’s ‘Lula’ – Luis Inacio Lula da Silva – bucking this trend). Similarly he and his supporters have promoted the rise of extreme right-wing parties in most of the major European countries, notably Germany and France – with the likelihood of the neo-fascist Marine Le Pen becoming French president next spring greatly increased by the street violence in that country in recent weeks.

David Remnick, the distinguished journalist who edits the New Yorker, wrote last month¹: ” the President of the United States has the impulse control of a toddler, though most toddlers have neither the authority nor the inclination to spark an insurrection, destabilize the Western alliance, live-stream an execution, or threaten to end ‘a whole civilization.’ We are subjected daily to the caprices of a mind both unregulated and amoral. As Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said, the Commander-in-Chief is “fascist to the core…”

“In the passage from lame duck to pensioner, Trump still has plenty of time to inflict further damage on the Republic while milking it for profit. He is the sum of his whims and his rages, and, a change in Congress or not, he will likely go on flouting the law, tightening the screws on universities, cultural institutions, and the press. What he seems to value most of late is the humiliation of his enemies and, even more, the accumulation of vast wealth. Since the second Inauguration, the Trumps and their satraps have operated with all the commercial cunning of the Corleone family; the White House is their front, their Genco Pura Olive Oil Company. The Attorney General, Todd Blanche, is an obedient Tom Hagen. Recently, Kristen Welker, of NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’, asked Blanche, “If the President asks you to do something that you feel crosses an ethical or legal line, would you do it?” Blanche replied, “The President will never ask me to do something unethical or illegal. He never has. He never will.” Not a wartime consigliere, perhaps, but Blanche understands the expectations of his Don.

“What more and more voters are coming to understand is how profoundly they have been betrayed. And this is not just about the price of gas and groceries, though ‘affordability’ is scarcely the joke the President thinks it is. Vladimir Putin long ago set out to mock the United States for its hypocrisies. You are no better than us – that was his message and his cover to crush dissent at home and the liberties of an independent Ukraine. When Trump threatens Greenland and Canada or greases a media merger in his interest, he is proving Putin’s point. When the titans of tech obediently line up at Trump’s Inauguration and fund his ballroom, Putin smiles. Who are we to lecture him about oligarchy? This is the ethos of the era defined by Putin and Trump: morality in politics is for dupes; all that matters is interests. Because Trump is simultaneously an autocrat and a performance artist, because Americans tend to cling reflexively to the fraying notion of national exceptionalism, it is difficult to reckon with the idea that a President might be not merely shambolic and incompetent but something far darker, even evil…

“But if we are uncomfortable using a word like “evil,” how else are we to describe the spectacle of the President unleashing Elon Musk, the wealthiest person in the history of humankind, to slash the budget of the US Agency for International Development? According to an article in The Lancet and the intensive research of Atul Gawande, a surgeon, a former assistant administrator for USAID, and a writer for this magazine, the agency’s support – focussed on fighting malaria, polio, malnutrition, tuberculosis, and HIV – saved at least ninety million lives in the previous two decades. Researchers estimate that the cruelty-by-budget-cut has been responsible for the loss of as many as seven hundred thousand lives.”

Trump’s ringing pre-election endorsement of Benjamin Netanyahu was no accident. They are birds of a feather: Trump waging war on Iran abroad and inflicting terror on immigrants at home; Netanyahu waging war on Iran and genocide on Palestinians at home.

Another type of evil was displayed recently in NAZA (‘collateral damage’ in Hebrew), the deeply shocking documentary by two extraordinarily courageous Israeli film-makers, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, about the integration of AI and surveillance in military targeting by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) in Gaza. It features interviews with 24 anonymous IDF soldiers and intelligence personnel (seen only in silhouette) discussing how many civilian casualties are permitted in every AI-targeted strike on that benighted territory.

Each potential target, a Hamas member, was assigned a NAZA ‘value’ representing the expected number of civilian deaths from an airstrike aimed at him. “We say 15 NAZA. We don’t say 15 people killed, and certainly not that 15 children and women will be killed,” said one soldier. According to another interviewee, targets with NAZA ‘values’ below 20 required no special authorisation, while approval could be granted for high ‘values’ – up to 500 in one case.

‘Annihilation zones’ were designated from Tel Aviv, and Palestinians learned their boundaries by being shot when they entered them. “Whoever you decided to kill was considered a terrorist,” one man explained. Another interviewee recalled Israeli snipers firing on starving people at a food distribution point and illustrated the incident with a stick-figure drawing. A female soldier recounted how when injured people were left lying on the ground, she would drop another bomb on them to kill them.

Most interviewees described killing from a distance as routine office work and themselves as merely ‘cogs’ in a machine. They said: “If I hadn’t been there, someone else would have done it.” Or: “I trust the system, and I do my job as part of the system.” Or: “My role is technical. I’m not supposed to express any moral or principled position.”

They said the most reliable targets were often not Hamas fighters themselves but their homes, where their families lived. Every building in Gaza is numbered and the storeys of each building are recorded. The relevant buildings were identified by AI surveillance of communications systems in Gaza, through a system known as ‘Lavender’. This analyses vast amounts of data from the Israeli-controlled phone network to extrapolate the likelihood that any given individual is a ‘Hamas operative’ – thus creating potential targets for elimination, each with a NAZA number of victims. An interviewee said the system has an accuracy rate of 85%. One interviewee called this system a “factory of targets”.However, the Lavender system also made mistakes; among the 70,000 phones it had earmarked, “it once marked an 80-year-old woman. They bombed her house with her entire family in it.”

An interviewee explained that intelligence personnel were able to access the cameras and microphones of any phone in Gaza, including those of children. The phrase “Where’s Daddy?” refers to hacking into a child’s phone to determine when their father will be home, enabling an airstrike to kill the entire family. The name came about because checking children’s calls for words like “Daddy” and “return” had proved a particularly effective strategy. An interviewee described the practice bluntly: “You hack her [i.e. the child’s] phone and then kill her.”

One soldier said that while Hamas sometimes does use human shields, it is absurd to speak of human shields when airstrikes are used to kill them at home alongside their families. “We bomb them in houses because that’s how we find them,” he said. “They just come home to sleep. That’s where we catch them.” In one case, a father had gone out, inadvertently leaving his mobile phone at home; as a result, the missile aimed at his flat killed his daughters, aged 3 to 6, while he himself was spared. The officer recalled listening in on the phone as one of the daughters burned alive and her mother called for help. An interviewee said the ability to hear everything happening inside people’s homes made him “feel like God”.

Several interviewees said the mass killing of civilians was not only accepted but viewed as a duty, reflecting the widespread belief in Israel that there were ‘no innocents in Gaza’ in the aftermath of the October 7th 2023 attack. The IDF has made its own rebuttal film (NAZA: The Real Story).

Is this horror not the latest appalling example of ‘ the banality of evil’, the phrase the philosopher Hannah Arendt used to describe the actions of Nazi apparatchik Adolf Eichmann at his 1960 trial in Jerusalem for organising and overseeing the murder of millions of Jews? What she meant by that was how horrific atrocities can be committed by ordinary people, not through malicious intent, but through thoughtlessness, careerism and blind obedience to bureaucratic rules and orders (and failing to question the moral consequences of those orders). And isn’t it the most terrible irony that it should be the Jewish state, founded out of that Holocaust, that is committing this latest high-tech ‘banality of evil’?

Evil is also approaching in that most civilised of nations, France. I have been reading my former Irish Times colleague Enda O’Doherty’s superb book about the far right in that country, The Dark Side of France. He recounts how Marine Le Pen has been working for many years to ‘de-demonise’ her party, the Rassemblement National (formerly the Front National), to make it more morally acceptable to the French electorate. The main ‘demon’ in this instance was her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, a Holocaust denier who was eventually expelled from the party.

In a chapter entitled ‘Renouncing the Devil,’ O’Doherty recounts – quoting Louis Aliot, a senior RN official who is also Le Pen’s partner – how this has not involved softening its racist, xenophobic or Islamophobic image, but only its anti-semitism. It remains entirely legitimate for the party and its members to target people from an African background, Muslim and Christian, and to open them up to threat and insult, particularly through online abuse.

We have our own evils in Ireland. A fine recent film, The Lost Babies of Tuam, recounts the determined campaign of Catherine Corless – a County Galway housewife – to uncover the grim story of the secret burial of the bodies of nearly 800 ‘illegitimate’ babies by a Catholic religious order, the Bon Secours nuns, in a sceptic tank and other underground structures in that town. Corless’s husband calls what the order has done ‘evil’. In their eventual apology the nuns resorted to that politicians’ euphemistic term ‘unacceptable.’ No it wasn’t – it was evil.

Most people instinctively recognise evil when they see it. And there is a lot more of it around in the world of Trump and Putin and Netanyahu. Please God there will be a little less in the US after tomorrow’s congressional elections.

¹ ‘Donald Trump after the Midterms’, New Yorker, 11 October

In one definition of a tragic struggle, that of right against right, the winner must make amends to the loser for resolution to occur. But this advice is rarely followed. As we know all too well in our local inter-communal difficulty.

In Greek drama, ‘tragedy’ is never an unfortunate accident; rather, it’s defined by hubris, or some personal fatal flaw that leads to downfall, carving out paths that seem almost inevitable, predictable.

In such drama, someone is always gifted to foretell the future, even one where unhealed trauma, if taken to a place of refuge or supposed safety, might be visited upon another people, those not responsible for a near two-millennial European-inflicted wound.

The seer, the truth teller in this case, was Edwin Montagu, the only Jewish member of the British Cabinet. His prescient words relevant still. Voicing core values now being rediscovered in the resurgent tradition of Jewish Anti-Zionism – firmly grounded in commitment to the concept of Liberal Democracy based upon Citizenship Rights rather than Ethnic Identity.

On 12 July 1917, an historic turn was set in motion with a draft proposal from the Zionist Organisation to the British Cabinet. A movement in search of a sponsor, a movement that had achieved little traction after multiple lobbies of the Ottoman, German, and Russian Empires, offering not only to clear debts, but to solve the Semitic ‘problem’ of the Jewish presence in Europe.

They urged that ‘His Majesty’s Government, after consideration of the aims of the Zionist Organisation, accepts the principle of recognising Palestine as the National home of the Jewish people and the right of the Jewish people to reconstitute Palestine as their National Home. His Majesty’s Government will use its best endeavours to secure the achievement of this object and will discuss the necessary methods with the Zionist Organisation.’

Prior to this official request, discussions between the Zionist Organisation’s British representative, Chaim Weizmann and members of the Cabinet had taken place on multiple occasions. With a head of steam built up, confidence grew regarding a favourable outcome.

But, over the remainder of the Summer and early Autumn, Montagu raised a series of objections.

Judaism, he contended, ‘was a universal religion and not a nationality; ‘There is no Jewish nation; there was only a Jewish religion and tradition. Palestine is not the National Home for the Jews, for the National Home of every Jew depends on the country he or she belongs to – and of which they are citizens.’

Zionism, he argued, ‘is a creed that tends to shed doubt on the loyalty and patriotism of the Jewish citizens of the United Kingdom. Something inconsistent with British Citizenship.’

Palestine had, of course, ‘played a large part in Jewish history, but it had also played an equally important role in the history of both Christianity and Islam. Its future should depend on the free exercise of the principle of self-determination.’

He questioned the authority of the Zionist Organisation to represent the Jewish people, pointing out that they’d bypassed the British Board of Deputies of Jews, the majority of whom were opposed to what they saw as a schismatic project.

In one memo, he outlined his assumption that the proposed declaration meant that ‘Muslims and Christians are to make way for the Jews and that the Jews should be put in all positions of preference and should be peculiarly associated with Palestine in the same way that England is with the English or France with the French. Turks and other Muslims in Palestine would be regarded as if they were foreigners, just in the same way as Jews worldwide would be treated as foreigners in every country but Palestine.’

Something that Zionism’s founding father, Theodore Herzl, was comfortable with, as his project presented a solution to the Jewish presence in Europe. ‘Antisemites,’ he correctly predicted, ‘will be our greatest supporters.’ And certainly, Balfour and others had ‘form’ on this issue. (See his 1905 Aliens Act, explicitly aimed at keeping East European Jewish migrants at bay.)

However, Montagu recognised that, as the weight of Cabinet consensus was against him, and, as fait accompli hung in the air of smoke-wreathed chambers, he shifted focus towards a damage limitation exercise to amend, rather than strike down the Declaration, by inserting some degree of protection for both the indigenous Palestinian community and world Jewry.

Hence, Palestine should be recognised as a home, not the ‘National Home’ of the Jewish people; and that home would be in Palestine, rather than possessing all of it. He also managed to insert a wording that might offer some degree of protection of the rights of both the indigenous residents of Palestine and Jewish individuals living outside of it:

‘Nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.’

The final text, below, even with its vagaries, could have been even worse.

November 2nd, 1917. Dear Lord Rothschild,

I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet.

“His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.” 

I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.

Yours sincerely,

Arthur James Balfour.

But, as has been pointed out, there is mention merely of the ‘civil and religious,’ but not the political rights of existing Arab communities (Muslim or Christian), their framing only in the negative – as ‘non-Jewish.’

Prior to the publication of the full text in the Times Newspaper on the 9th of November, Montagu submitted a final memorandum to the Cabinet, which remained private and confidential until 1961.

‘I wish to place on record my view that the policy of His Majesty’s government is antisemitic, and the result will prove a rallying ground for antisemites in every country in the world.

‘Zionism has always seemed to me to be a mischievous, political creed, untenable by any patriotic citizen of the United Kingdom.

‘When the Jews were told that Palestine is their national home, you will find a population in Palestine driving out its present inhabitants, taking all the best in the country.

‘I have always felt that to bring the Jews back to form a nation in the country from which they were dispersed, would require divine leadership. I’ve never heard it suggested even by the most fervent admirers that either Mr Balfour or Lord Rothschild would prove to be the Messiah.’

Though not an observant Jew, Montagu’s arguments reflected many core tenets of Rabbinic Judaism: that it was pacifistic, that identity was Torah-defined, and that its central commandment was the sanctity of life. It was a transnational religion, not a nation; a return to the Land must await the Messiah’s appearance and leadership, part of a much wider redemptive programme.

So, as has been lucidly pointed out by Yakov Rabkin, in ‘Israel in Palestine,’ ‘While antisemites yearned to get rid of Jews from European societies, Zionists would encourage them to emigrate. Both, in different ways, envisioned Jewish departure from Europe.’

Perhaps Balfour’s Declaration was the tipping point for the almost Tolkienian-type ‘Long Defeat’ of Rabbinic Judaism. As in Middle earth, there was an encroaching sense of an inevitable slide toward decay, loss, and the rebounding of evil.

Something seen in an ongoing veneration of violence, seemingly everywhere. And mirrored in the ideology of the new ‘Muscular’ secular Jew: militant, militaristic, defined by Eastern European pogroms, who’d heed the injunctions of the Russian Empire’s underground revolutionary societies: to ‘Learn how to Shoot.’

Then came strict adherence to the doctrine of ‘Hafrada,’ separation. Separate Development – from the Palestinian Fellahin. Zionism’s intent, from day one, was not integration, but a drive for majority status and statehood, then expansion, occupation, and eventually, seemingly ‘forever war.’

A transformation exemplified by Josef Haim Brenner, a post-1917 settler in Jaffa, who rewrote the most famous verse in the Jewish prayer book: ’Hear, O Israel, God is our Lord, God is One!’ To become: ‘Listen, O Israel! Not an eye for an eye. Two eyes for an eye, all their teeth for any humiliation.’ The birth, in 1921, of the doctrine of disproportionate response, nearly a century before the ‘Dahiya’ Doctrine of General Gadi Eisenkot, today’s ‘moderate’ Israeli politician.

But, in November 1917, all that lay ahead, from seeds baked into Zionist ideology. For as Yuval Noah Harari recently concluded: ‘It can’t be that you rely only on force. If you see others only as threat. If so, then someday you have to conquer the whole world.’

Perhaps, as Rabbinic Judaism prophetically pointed out, Zionism’s mission to transform a religious identity into a national one had, so to speak, excised its heart, elevating the ‘secular corpse,’ or a version of a Golden Calf, ‘to the throne.’

Yet in any version of The Long Defeat, be it the Liberal, Humane Values of Citizenship Rights over Ethno-Nationalism, or justice-oriented Pacifistic Judaism, none are absolved of the responsibility to struggle to retain or restore some element of the good society – no matter the uncertainty of success. In an often-tragic struggle, the duty was to resist nihilism, entropy ensured when good men do nothing.

Yet, from a place of seeming defeat, a slow turn is occurring: the rediscovery of the two-millennia tradition that rejected Maccabean-styled ethnic-state violence: a Jewish Anti-Zionism (now both secular and religious), reiterating the Post-Holocaust imperative that ‘Never Again,’ meant ‘Never Again – for Anyone,’ and repudiating the State of Israel’s Imperial claim that it represents all Jews. Reminder that the primary values of Torah are justice and the sanctity of all life.

Something in unexpected alliance, in strange symmetry with the values of an unlicensed Galilean Rabbi, who, in his Olivet discourse, also wept over Jerusalem, pleading that they turn from their addiction to violence.

Something in empathy with modern-day prophets such as Yakov Rabkin, Peter Beinart, Benjamin Moser, Illan Pappé, Avi Schlaim, Molly Crabapple, Rabbis for Human Rights, B’Tselem, Moaz Inon, Standing Together, Breaking the Silence, Gideon Levy, The Jewish Anti-Zionist Congress (JAZIC) and countless, countless others.

– –

But back in 1917, it was no coincidence that just over a month after the Balfour Declaration’s publication in the Times, General Allenby, like every Caesar before him, entered Jerusalem mounted on a war horse, bringing what every Empire brings: self-serving duplicity, contradictory promises, expropriation, and inevitable catastrophe for indigenous populations.

Just two rules. Keep it civil and no man/woman playing.

Comments will close at 12 pm on Monday.

So discuss what you like here, but no politics.

Comments will close at 12 pm on Monday.

In this FT  extract from  his introduction to Patrick Radden Keefe’s Say Nothing about the disappearance and murder by the IRA of the alleged informer Jean McConville, Paul follows the track of reasoning from that brutal and unresolved cause celebre to a comprehensive lament about the state of Northern Ireland from the beginning.

More often than not, to live in Northern Ireland is to live a lie. To begin with, Northern Ireland is a politically convenient construction that was allowed to come into being in May 1921 specifically because of the threat of bloodshed by Ulster Unionists, who rejected Irish Home Rule. The British government was, and is, unwilling to call their bluff. In other words, the place is intrinsically flawed.

In the early 1970s in the hectic atmosphere of the early Troubles we were colleagues in BBCNI, he a Radio Arts producer searching for wider enlightenment and diversion ( with great success I may say), I  at the other end of the spectrum as a news reporter of the bombs and bullets.  Paul’s  version of “Say Nothing” with its obvious reference to Heaney is nonetheless a far more pointed analysis than Heaney’s  infinitely subtle yet vivid  characterisation. Much less does it follow reform from within, championed by another friend he mentions, the eminent Catholic civil servant Maurice Hayes. This a graphic lament full of anger and frustration on our history and identity which offers little hope for the future – unless  we all speak out.  He is as much at fault as anybody ; he admits joining  in the reticence himself. As I’ve reflected later, the Irish linguist in Paul is affronted by the bogus equal status accorded to Ulster Scots in the GFA for clunky political   “equality” reasons. Whereas our common culture is of course, English in slightly different varieties, any of which we can deride or enjoy navigating around, according to our  preferred heritage.

I hadn’t realised he had followed events and maintained old relationships so closely from his permanent base since 1987 in Princeton University and New York, obviously interrupted by many visits home and with establishment access enhanced by his growing fame as a poet. His poetry ‘s themes and images range worldwide across many cultures and ways of life but the tug of the roots survives. There is the indirect connection between  the McConville murder and his friend the actor Stephen Rea, once married to Dolours Price.  As Paul rightly observes, ” it’s a tight little world” and  part of it is full of dark secrets.

This  is not a political manifesto and works better as an introduction to the theme of “telling lies” whether of IRA murders or state collusion.

But the drift is clear if not the destination and how to reach it.

Failure of government in Northern Ireland is not a phenomenon to be relegated to the distant past. That the present government has a history of repeat subsidence, including a two-year period between February 2022 and February 2024 when it collapsed completely, doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. So adept are we at self-delusion, however, that we have persuaded ourselves things are pretty much OK. This Northern Ireland Assembly, or as it’s styled in Ulster-Scots, the Norlin Airlan Assemblie, has become such a byword for dysfunction that there must be some who sigh for the relative straightforwardness of good old sectarian Stormont. At least there was no linguistic pretzelisation, such as coming up with a madcap concept like Norlin Airlan Assemblie.

Woe to the citizen who might nowadays suggest that Ulster-Scots is not a language per se but the orthography of an accent.

Woe to the citizen who might suggest that the music associated with Orange marching bands is less an art form than a mode of intimidation. Woe to the citizen who might suggest that the response by Unionists, flying the Israeli flag, to Nationalists flying the Palestinian flag is indeed an example of meshugaas, might even be farkakteh. To make such a suggestion, indeed, would be perceived as throwing into jeopardy the long-cherished “peace process”, nowhere more embodied than in the “peace wall”, all 21 miles of it somehow yet again attesting to the idea that everything is hunky-dory. …

Whether we happen on an arms cache or a peace process, we all look the other way. As Gerry Adams himself is quoted as saying, “I learnt a long time ago if you don’t ask, you can’t tell.” Among the others I met over the years was Gerry’s compadre, Martin McGuinness, also footnoted in Say Nothing. He and I had a private breakfast in Washington on March 17 2009 while he was deputy first minister in the Assembly. We had spent the previous evening in Barack Obama’s White House, where I had read some of my poems. We discussed salmon fishing and the plight of Native Americans. Did we discuss whether or not he had ever been armed with a Thomson submachine gun? Most likely not.

The very cows standing about in their little border fields know it is not always going to be like this. Deep in the bones of every person living in Northern Ireland is the sense that what I’ve described elsewhere as an “eternal interim” must one day come to an end.

What you need to know

DUP blocks First Minister from UK economic summit as Drumcree row deepens
The DUP has blocked First Minister Michelle O’Neill from attending today’s (30 October) National Economic Council meeting with Prime Minister Andy Burnham in Glasgow. This follows a week of growing pressure inside the party over her part in the Garvaghy Road protests. Following a meeting of DUP party officers on Thursday (29 October), party leader Gavin Robinson confirmed that deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly would not take part in joint engagements with Ms O’Neill and that the First Minister would not be allowed to attend alone, according to BBC News. Mr Robinson said Ms O’Neill’s “arrogance will have consequences”, but he maintained that the party would not collapse the Executive. The decision follows calls from Upper Bann MP Carla Lockhart, who resigned as a party officer last week, for Ms O’Neill to be removed from office. She was joined by MLA and party officer Diane Forsythe on Monday and by veteran DUP peer William McCrea on Wednesday. Ms O’Neill described the move as “reckless and irresponsible”, while Northern Ireland Secretary Sir Chris Bryant said it was “deeply frustrating”. The Belfast Telegraph reports that Ms Lockhart is set to quit the DUP within “days, if not hours” and sit as an independent MP.
What Next: Ms Little-Pengelly has asked for a separate meeting with the Prime Minister to discuss “the urgent budgetary and funding challenges facing the Executive”.

No £100 energy payment for NI until Stormont agrees a budget
Chancellor John Healey’s first Budget on Wednesday (28 October) announced a £100 energy payment for households in England, with equivalent funding for Stormont. However, Sir Chris Bryant warned that the Executive would not be legally able to deliver it without an agreed budget, according to the BBC. Northern Ireland will receive an additional £270m, of which £131m can be spent this year. The Budget also brings funding for an investment summit and for Queen’s University’s Centre for Secure Information Technologies, the removal of a 4% tariff on imported heating oil, and an extension of the electricity VAT cut. Finance Minister John O’Dowd said the Budget would bring “cold comfort” to workers’ families and that a “significant gap” remains. Earlier in the week, Infrastructure Minister Liz Kimmins had urged Sir Chris to “get real” about Stormont’s “shoestring budget”.
What Next: Sir Chris told the Belfast Telegraph that the £131m depends on a budget being in place, “whether it’s provided by me or it’s done by the Executive”. He said he hopes to see one agreed “in the next few days”.

High Court upholds Drumcree parade ban
On Wednesday (28 October), the High Court in Belfast dismissed a judicial review brought by a Portadown Orangeman against Sir Chris Bryant’s decision to ban the Drumcree parade, according to the BBC. Mr Justice Scoffield ruled that the decision was “lawful”. He noted concerns about respect for the rule of law among “some elected representatives” because they took part in the unnotified protest. Sir Chris said the ruling was “not a cause for celebration”, while Carla Lockhart called it “damning”. Separately, Finance Minister John O’Dowd confirmed he had attended a police interview over his presence at the Garvaghy Road protest. Economy Minister Caoimhe Archibald is also due to be interviewed.
What Next: Portadown Orange District has confirmed it will appeal

Stakeholder Watch

John Finucane MP (Sinn Féin, North Belfast): “People want to see political leadership, & First Minister Michelle O’Neill & all Sinn Féin Ministers will turn up for people every day. The DUP’s actions are economic sabotage, caused by their internal divisions & turmoil. The people will decide who represents them as First Minister. Not the DUP.”

DUP leader Gavin Robinson MP: “Whilst the outcome of today’s case is not what we would have wanted, the judge starkly said: “The law does not apply only when you agree with it”. Michelle O’Neill and Sinn Fein take note. The rule of law must and will apply.”

Sorcha Eastwood MP (Alliance, Lagan Valley): “Have to say sitting listening to some of the measures in this budget, particularly the support for High Streets and small businesses paid for by increasing tax on gambling, it’s galling that we have no budget in Northern Ireland to actually be in a position to give our town centres & high streets that support immediately. This is a measure that will exempt 70,000 businesses in GB paying any rates at all. That would really help my local shops. What we have in Northern Ireland isn’t politics, it’s a national shame. Not delivering for people in the slightest.”

UUP leader Jon Burrows MLA: “A UK economic forum, chaired by our Prime Minister, with only UK nations represented. How does keeping Northern Ireland away punish a republican First Minister who still receives every penny of her salary? Boycotting a British event to make a unionist point makes no sense.”

Leader of the Opposition Matthew O’Toole MLA: “It was certainly an underwhelming Budget but note here the complete absence of any acceptance of responsibility or even urgency in setting a Budget locally. The dominant, in fact the only imperative, is to pass blame elsewhere.”

TUV leader Jim Allister MP: “The DUP’s sham response today was beyond pathetic. No joint appearances with O’Neill, but sustaining O’Neill in office, is neither profound nor a consequence. It is as pitiful as it is pointless. No photo calls with the lawbreaker they continue to enthrone as First Minister barely even cuts it as a stunt. What a contrast with the principled stand of Carla Lockhart MP, who again today has laid out what needs to be done, but the DUP is interested only in clinging to office, not principle.”

NI Secretary Chris Bryant MP: “It is deeply frustrating that the NI executive will not be represented at the important meeting on economic growth with the PM [Friday]. I understand feelings are running high but it must be in the interests of the people of Northern Ireland that everyone gets round the table.”

Other Stories

Details of new paid Safe Leave entitlement announced
On Monday (26 October), Economy Minister Dr Caoimhe Archibald set out how a new right to 10 days of paid Safe Leave for victims and survivors of domestic abuse will work. Under the plans, the leave will be available from day one of employment, paid at the normal rate and can be taken flexibly, with no requirement to disclose the reason. The regulations are expected before the end of the mandate, and Safe Leave would take effect in April 2027.

Proposals to pedestrianise parts of Belfast city centre unveiled
The Department for Infrastructure’s draft Eastern Transport Plan 2035 proposes “pedestrian-priority” zones on parts of Donegall Square West, Botanic Avenue and Victoria Street. It also proposes a citywide 20mph limit, an expanded segregated cycling network and an extension of the Glider to north and south Belfast, according to BBC News. The consultation runs until 25 January 2027.

Sinn Féin support rises to 30% in new poll
Sinn Féin support has risen five points to 30% amid the Drumcree dispute, reported by the Irish News, citing new polling by More in Common. The DUP rose one point to 18%, while Alliance fell two points to 9%. 53% of those surveyed backed the parade ban, and only 27% thought the dispute justified collapsing the Executive.

New strategy launched to tackle nature decline
DAERA Minister Andrew Muir launched the Nature Recovery Strategy, which aims to restore habitats in what has been called the “most nature-depleted part of the UK”, according to BBC News. Environmental groups welcomed it but asked how it would be funded, while the Ulster Farmers’ Union said it remains “a bit sceptical”. A Nature Recovery Forum and a biodiversity finance plan will follow.

Viable device delivered to Derry hotel
On Wednesday (28 October), police confirmed that a package delivered to a hotel at Ebrington in Derry was a viable explosive device, according to ITV News. Justice Minister Naomi Long condemned the attack. DUP MLA Julie Middleton said those responsible “hold no regard for human life”, and UUP Foyle candidate Darren Guy said he was “totally disgusted”, noting that Ebrington Square was busy with families ahead of the city’s Halloween celebrations.

Gerry Kelly U-turns as parties firm up Assembly election line-ups
On Thursday (29 October), Sinn Féin’s Gerry Kelly announced he will seek re-election in North Belfast in 2027. In July he had said he would stand down, but he said he reconsidered after being “approached” by his party. Alliance confirmed the re-selection of Andrew Muir and Connie Egan in North Down and of Deputy Leader Eóin Tennyson in Upper Bann. Tennyson said the election was a chance to move “beyond the cycle of political crises”. The UUP selected Ian Irwin in Mid Ulster, arguing that boundary changes mean unionism can return two MLAs there, and the TUV selected Stevan Patterson in West Tyrone.

Invest NI secures Ebrington for new North West office
Economy Minister Dr Caoimhe Archibald has announced that Invest NI’s new North West regional office will be at Ebrington Plaza in Derry. She said it will make the agency “more visible, accessible, and embedded” in the local community. UUP Foyle candidate Darren Guy welcomed the move but said it must bring a “fair share of jobs and investment” and end “Invest NI’s Belfast centric approach”.

Across the Border

New government body to examine options for Irish unity, says Taoiseach
A new government body is to be established under the Department of the Taoiseach to examine models and challenges for different potential “constitutional futures” for the island of Ireland. Taoiseach Micheál Martin told the Irish Times the body would examine three potential scenarios: a unitary 32-county all-Ireland state, the continuation of the status quo, and a united Ireland in which Northern Ireland would remain a devolved entity. Martin said that by keeping the option of maintaining the union with Britain as part of the project, he hoped unionists would engage on the basis that they could make the argument for the union. He plans to bring a memo to Cabinet outlining first steps for the new body before Christmas.

Over 10,000 new dwelling completions in Q3 2026, up 10% on last year
On Thursday (29 October), the Journal reported on new CSO statistics, showing that there were 10,154 new dwelling completions in Q3 2026, 10.4% compared to the same period in 2025. The total number of completions for 2026 as of September was 26,883. Minister for Housing James Browne TD described the figures as “greatly encouraging” and “demonstrates that our policies are translating into real progress on the ground, delivering more homes and putting keys in people’s hands”. However, Sinn Féin housing spokesperson Eoin Ó Broin warned that the Government will still fall short of “the annual average of 50,000 required to meet the overall target out to 2030”.

Public sector pay deal will include reform and productivity measures
Discussions between government and public sector unions continued at the Workplace Relations Commission this week. Minister for Public Expenditure Jack Chambers said the government “want to have a fair deal for public sector workers,” that is “sustainable and affordable for the taxpayer as well”. According to the Irish Times, he confirmed that there will be discussions on reform and productivity measures as part of any pay deal.

What We’re Reading

Brian Lavery: Andy Burnham, growth funds and Belfast
In Monday’s Irish News, Brian Lavery, managing director at CBRE NI, looks at how Andy Burnham’s premiership may impact housebuilding in Northern Ireland. As mayor of Manchester, Burnham established the Greater Manchester Good Growth Fund. Lavery writes that this model “uses public funding as risk capital”, inviting collaboration with the private sector and generating a return for local authorities “that can then be recycled into future projects”. He notes that attracting private co-investment is important for NI where public finances are constrained. Lavery writes that the three key lessons from the Manchester experiment are “that housing delivery is far more a financial challenge than a planning one”, that “how public money is allocated is just as important as the level of funding available”, and that “targeted intervention using public funding can unlock much wider economic benefits”. He concludes that if we are “serious about creating a supply of new homes in Northern Ireland, the focus must now shift from how much we invest to how effectively public capital can be deployed to unlock growth”.

Forward Look

Wednesday 4 – Monday 9 November 2026
Commons in Recess

Wednesday 11 November 2026
NI Chamber- Energy Forum, Riddel Hall, Belfast. Read more here.

Wednesday 18 November 2026
North West Future of Energy Conference & Exhibition 2026, White Horse Hotel- Read more here.

Thursday 19 November – Friday 20 November 2026
NIFHA Annual Conference 2026, Slieve Donard Hotel- Read more here.

Saturday 21 November 2026
TEDxStormont, Parliament Buildings- Read more here.

Wednesday 25 November 2026
Housing Rights Private Rented Sector Conference, Skainos Centre, Belfast. Read more here.

Tuesday 8th December 2026
Energy Seminar and Christmas Connect (RenewableNI and A&L Goodbody). Read more here.

Thursday 10 December 2026
NIFHA Housing Finance Conference, DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Templepatrick- Read more here.

Thursday 10 December 2026
NI Chamber- Public Affairs Forum: Autumn Budget Briefing, Pinsent Masons, Belfast. Read more here.

Monday 14 December – Friday 1 January 2027
Assembly in Recess

Thursday 17 December – Monday 4 January 2027
Commons in Recess

Monday 21 December – Thursday 14 January 2027
Oireachtas in Recess

Wednesday 13 January 2027
KESS- Small Scale Renewable Energy in Northern Ireland: Considerations when legislating. 13:30-16:00, Parliament Buildings, Long Gallery. Read more here.

Thursday 11 February – Sunday 21 February 2027
Commons in Recess

Thursday 18th February 2027
RenewableNI annual conference. Read more here.

Monday 15 March – Thursday 25 March 2027
Oireachtas in Recess

Monday 22 March 2027 – Dissolution
Assembly in recess

Thursday 25 March – Sunday 11 April 2027
Commons in Recess

Thursday 29 April – Monday 3 May 2027
Commons in Recess

Monday 3 May – Thursday 6 May 2027
Oireachtas in Recess

Thursday 6 May 2027
Deadline for next Assembly election

Thursday 27 May – Sunday 7 June 2027
Commons in Recess

Monday 7 June – Friday 11 June 2027
Oireachtas in Recess

Monday 26 July – Friday 30 July 2027
Oireachtas in Recess

The body will examine three scenarios: a unitary 32-county state; a united Ireland in which Northern Ireland keeps its own assembly, executive, civil service and police; and the continuation of Northern Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom.

Each will be assessed under the same headings: legal and constitutional implications, public services including health and education, the economy and the cost of unity, security and defence, and flags and symbols.

Why plan for more than one outcome?

Much of the debate so far has centred on a border poll. That is understandable give the immense marketing resources that have been dedicated to talking about it, but it depends on a single event whose timing is outside the Irish government’s control.

Under the Good Friday Agreement, the decision to call a poll rests with the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. The criteria for calling one are not spelt out in detail, other than to suggest that a unity outcome should seem likely to him/her.

Preparation built only around a poll has an obvious weakness. If the poll is years away, or never called, much of that work loses its purpose. Research across several scenarios avoids this, because it remains useful whichever way events go.

Besides, work on health services, the economy or policing has a bankable value under any constitutional arrangement.

The approach also reflects how Northern Ireland’s population sees itself. In the 2021 census, 45.7% of people had a Catholic background, but 33.3% identified as Irish. Some 31.5% identified as Northern Irish, alone or alongside another identity.

The share with no religious background rose from 2.7% in 2001 to 9.3% in 2021. Many voters do not fit the traditional categories, and they are likely to weigh detailed options rather than respond to campaign messaging.

Continuity with Shared Island

The proposed body should follow the approach of the Shared Island initiative. Since 2020, that initiative has concentrated on practical cooperation and dialogue rather than the timing of a vote.

It has funded cross-border projects such as the Narrow Water bridge and the Ulster Canal restoration, and run a dialogue series with people across communities.

The new body applies the same method, evidence first and open to all traditions, to the constitutional question itself.

Potential objections from other parties

It is a way of delaying. Sinn Féin, among others, argues that the government has avoided serious preparation. But research itself is a form of preparation, and Sinn Féin’s own bill began with a Green Paper. The fair test is whether the body has a clear work programme and publishes its findings in full and on schedule. Those commitments would answer the charge directly.

Unionists will see it as unity planning under another name. Including the status quo as a full option is clearly intended to address this. It gives unionists a formal place to make the case for the union rather than only respond to proposals for change. Whether they take that option up remains to be seen.

It dilutes the case for unity. Nothing in the initiative affects the consent principle or the provisions for a poll. A case for unity that has been tested against realistic alternatives is likely to be more credible with undecided voters, not less.

Why should Dublin study the union’s continuation? Governments plan for the outcomes they may face, not only those they prefer. Understanding what the current arrangements need in order to work well, including cross-border services, is useful in any case.

Ending cultural deafness with a pluralist inheritance

The writer Ann Voskamp tells the story of a small town where so many people were deaf that everyone had learned to sign. The hearing majority took on the effort to include their neighbours, and found it enriched their own lives in ways they hadn’t expected. As she puts it, disadvantaging themselves turned out to be their advantage.

The debate on the island’s future has too often relied on assertion: unity described as inevitable, most recently (and most comically) by Donald Trump in Dublin, or change ruled out entirely. Martin’s approach replaces assertion with evidence.

Progress no longer depends on a single date. Cross-border cooperation continues regardless of any vote, Stormont reform proceeds on its own merits, and every option is examined before anything is put to voters.

It also takes a longer view. Martin’s term ends next November, but the body’s remit should continue to frame the debate well beyond even this administration’s full term. By setting it up formally within his department, he is leaving future taoisigh, of any party, a lasting set of tools for tackling a question that will outlast any single government.

Its value lies less in headlines than in keeping the debate open to several futures rather than one.

This month’s Drumcree stand-off is a reminder of just how fragile progress remains and how a gaping maw can open up if sectarian tensions are let get out of hand. Given independence, a credible membership and a firm commitment to publish its findings, the new body offers the island a shared basis of fact from which to decide its future.

A shared future requires shared facts, rather than competing sectarian half truths and downright lies which pit community against community, and so obscure any opportunity to coalesce individual powers around agreed shared purposes.

After Chancellor John Healey’s Budget yesterday, Northern Ireland Secretary Sir Chris Bryant said agreeing a budget was now “a no-brainer”. The Budget brings Stormont an extra £131 million this year, including funding to extend a £100 cost-of-living payment to lower-income households.

Bryant says none of it can be spent without an agreed budget. John O’Dowd’s reply was that a “significant gap” remains.

A precondition, not a negotiation

The Sinn Féin minister set the terms of this stand-off himself. In August he said a budget could only be agreed after a fair funding deal with Westminster. That turned more money from London from a goal into a precondition. Since then the Treasury has put a little over £1.5 billion on the table over three years, and Bryant has said there is no more.

To be fair, the refusal is collective. Every Executive party signed the letter to Andy Burnham calling London’s funding insufficient, and none has yet accepted Bryant’s offer. But it is the finance minister who brings the budget, and O’Dowd has chosen not to bring one until London moves.

Even the nationalist opposition is not buying it. The SDLP’s Matthew O’Toole accepts there is a case to make to London, but says that “wanting a better deal from Westminster cannot excuse the extraordinary irresponsibility” of failing to set a budget.

What it costs

On Bryant’s terms, signing up is worth about £631 million this year and more than £1.6 billion over three. Not signing means departments stay capped at 95% of last year’s spending, while the think tank Pivotal estimates shortfalls of around £250 million in education and £800 million in health.

If Westminster has to set the budget instead, there is no guarantee any of the offer survives. The last time it stepped in without an Executive, in 2017, it simply used civil service figures.

A shaky premise

The case for holding out rests on the claim that Northern Ireland is underfunded. The independent evidence is less obliging. The Fiscal Council puts the region’s need at about 124% of England’s spending per head, and FactCheckNI’s reading of its work is that funding has generally been at or above that level.

On the comparison with Scotland and Wales, the Council’s answer is that they should get less, not that Northern Ireland should get more.

The Council does warn of a genuine cliff edge this year. But its way through includes water charges and a higher regional rate, but Sinn Féin has ruled water charges out, a position which has stymied house building right across NI just as the demand in its growing economy increases.

Inside the Executive, the Ulster Unionist leader Jon Burrows has put it more bluntly: more money must come with greater responsibility, and a cycle of crisis followed by another demand for cash is not a real budget process.

Nowhere else works like this

When the Dáil rejected a budget in 1982, the government fell that night. When Holyrood rejected one in 2009, it passed a week later. The Senedd has never failed to pass one, and at Westminster a defeated budget would bring down the government.

At Stormont, Westminster has had to set five of the last ten budgets: three during the collapse Sinn Féin triggered in 2017, two during the DUP’s boycott. Nobody resigned, and no election was forced. Mandatory coalition means no vote can bring the Executive down, and no deadline forces a decision.

Meanwhile, in the real world

While ministers argue about the size of London’s cheque, the services that cheque is meant to pay for keep getting worse.

Health. At the end of June, more than 81,000 patients were waiting for hospital treatment, and over a third had waited more than a year. The target is that nobody waits that long.

Housing. Almost 51,000 households are on the social housing waiting list, nearly 40,000 of them in housing stress. In the three months to June, another 3,900 households presented as homeless.

Infrastructure. About 15,000 homes are held up because the sewers cannot take them, with development stalled in more than 100 towns and villages and NI Water facing a £2bn funding gap. Nearly 2,000 planned social homes are among them.

The Scottish writer Darren McGarvey has a name for this. In The Social Distance Between Us, he argues that much of what goes wrong in UK public life comes down to the gap between the people who make decisions and the people who live with them. Stormont, where the system is built so that nobody pays a price for failure, may be the purest case of it.

None of this gets fixed by winning an argument with London. Each needs a budget, a plan and someone willing to take a decision. The stand-off is conducted in letters, briefings and press releases; its consequences land in waiting rooms, on housing lists and on building sites that cannot open.

This is a choice, not a crisis

Sinn Féin has held the Department of Finance since 2016 without agreeing a multi-year budget; the SDLP and DUP never missed a budget in theirs. This year there is no collapse, no boycott, and an offer the Secretary of State says is final. If the Executive turns it down, Westminster will set the budget instead, on a Sinn Féin minister’s watch and as a result of a position he chose.

“The fact that all of this was happening in virtual space made no difference.”
— Douglas Adams

Well, here I go again on the campaign path to help end our system of academic selection as the next round of tests is looming: it’s a part of our current education system that the DUP refuse to look at: I was so pleased to be part of Reclaim the Enlightenment’s Education Reform Group when we appeared as witnesses before Stormont’s Education Committee in November 2025 where it was agreed that the need to review academic selection was put back on the agenda. It was also agreed that we as a group, would capture all available evidence and research highlighting the harm that academic selection causes to children and society as a whole: The Negative Effects of Academic Selection at 11 has recently been published by Reclaim and forwarded to the Committee to inform them in their Forward Work Plan. We hope to launch this in January 2027 at Stormont, that’s, of course, if it’s still open for business mind you, but that’s another matter!

For the DUP, academic selection is the elephant in the room; Transform Ed (DOE, 2025) has recently been launched with not much mention of this major fault line in our system; the research to show its damage at all levels, from harming children’s self-esteem to creating more division in our society between the haves and have nots, could be stacked up to the beautifully decorated ceiling of Stormont’s Great Hall but it always seems to be ignored.

The DUP choose anecdotal evidence such as the recent A level results: I nearly had to be worked with when seeing them on TV at that time, doing their usual grandstanding on how great an education system we have. Contrary to their little parallel delusional Universe is the hard-core evidence to suggest otherwise: here’s an example: December 2025 saw a publication by Queen’s highlighting that NI is one of the most educationally deprived part of the UK (Donaldson et al, 2025). Translated, this means we as a country, have the highest number of young people leaving education with little or no qualifications. Something is wrong somewhere isn’t it: the DUP are great at papering over the cracks but seem to miss the main one: academic selection. They should be ashamed of themselves for refusing to join up the dots and consider seriously the compelling evidence on how much this high stakes, unregulated test contributes to our current overall poor performance. Givan even admits himself that this test is not aligned to the whole curriculum. Another more recent example of research, again published by Queens and which I am happy to say I took part in as a parent, highlights the test’s negative effects: little evidence to suggest that academic selection improves educational outcomes or social mobility (Hughes et al., 2026). On the contrary, it concentrates advantage: families who have greater financial, cultural and social resources are better able to navigate the system and access extensive tutoring. The report also touches on children enduring stress and anxiety and that selection serves to narrow the primary curriculum. In short, our current system serves those more privileged and fairness for all is a joke.

I can vouch personally for the impact of academic selection on myself and my family. As a child I spent the last few years of primary school worrying about the transfer test and as an adult and parent I have had to navigate 5 children through the current system:  the main DUP fight-back on this is that I, as a parent, have a choice. All I can say is parental choice is a myth; at the end of the day, a parent’s right to express a preference for a school is NOT the same as having a genuine choice; this argument is less than robust. My youngest child did not get into the local grammar school along with his twin brother and this had a devastating impact on his self-belief and confidence; as he described it himself, the system reflects ‘a game of winners and losers’ where he was one of the losers. Paul Givan, from what I know, failed his transfer test; he did comment that his parents did not make him feel a failure. I am very glad of this…what good parents. However, the question I would like to have asked him during this Assembly debate on 3^rd February 2026 (NI Assembly 2026a) when he announced this in his argument that parents, not the children, over-react and use the language of failure, is, did HE feel a failure regardless of his parents’ reaction? I wonder what truly the answer would be. In my opinion, you can’t kid a kid: children are perfectly capable of forming their own thoughts and opinions about themselves distinct from those of their parents’.

All of this leads me to one conclusion and one conclusion only: since the evidence against academic selection is piling high as I said, yet seems to be continually ignored, I am convinced that the DUP’s intransigence on this matter is one based on ideology and not fact. Are they trying to keep the less well-off in our society at bay? Is it a case of ‘The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate’ as Cecil Francis Alexander wrote in one of her hymns? I have always been interested in Cecil Francis Alexander mainly because the school I went to, was her ancestral home: I’ll forgive her this time given she was writing to the backdrop of 19th Century Victorian values that promoted a rigid and unchangeable class system where God’s divine plan was for you to know your ‘place’. As much as these words are left out of All Things Bright and Beautiful, they still feel alive and well in this wee part of the world. I work as a coach and therapist with many people who deem themselves from the working classes and the key themes that come up time and time again, are lack of confidence and not doing well at school. There are of course, exceptions to this rule, my father-in law being one of them, coming from the back streets of Ballysillan and going on to achieve a degree and have a fulfilling career. But, by and large, the echoes of Alexander’s words still reverberate today, and academic selection has played its part.

I think I can be easily forgiven for having this train of thought given how much evidence there is against the transfer test. After all, the DUP made sure they walked away from the St Andrews’ Agreement (Northern Ireland office 2026) with exclusive rights to maintaining it: ‘We are pleased to have secured the retention of academic selection’ were the exact words of Ian Paisley Junior (Paisley, 2006). Perhaps, though, there is a little glimmer of hope: Paul Givan’s recent comments are worth noting when he stated during Ministers’ Questions on 27^th April of this year that ‘If I were to start with a blank canvas, I do not think we would have Academic Selection in Northern Ireland. I think we would be able to find a better way’ (NI Assembly 2026b). Well, I am happy to go and find Paul Givan that blank canvas which he must think is beyond our grasp. His Transform Ed reforms refer to promoting equity, tackling disadvantage and learning from high performing international educational systems. Can I point out to him that none of the latter use academic selection at such a young age, and it again just seems like the usual lip service and nothing more to effecting positive change where that elephant in the room sits gagged and unseen.

References and Links:

https://www.reclaimtheenlightenment.net/

file:///C:/Users/paula/Downloads/AcademicSelection11reportOnline%20(1)%20(1).pdf

Department of Education (2025) TransformED NI Strategy for Educational Excellence. Belfast: Department of Education, Northern Ireland. Available at: https://www.education-ni.gov.uk/articles/about-transformed-ni (Accessed: 6 October 2026).

Donaldson, R., Jordan, D., McDonald, S. and Turner, J. (2025) Northern Ireland Productivity Dashboard 2025. Belfast: Northern Ireland Productivity Forum, Queen’s Business School, Queen’s University Belfast.

Hughes, J., Loader, R., Hadden, J. and Fargas, M. (2026) Exploring Academic Selection and Grammar Schools in Northern Ireland. Belfast: Queen’s University Belfast/Nuffield Foundation.

Northern Ireland Assembly (2026) Official Report: Tuesday 3 February 2026 – Academic Selection. Belfast: Northern Ireland Assembly. Available at: Northern Ireland Assembly Official Report (Accessed: 6 October 2026).

Northern Ireland Office (2006) The St Andrews Agreement, October 2006. London: Northern Ireland Office. Available at: GOV.UK – The St Andrews Agreement (Accessed: 6 October 2026).

Paisley, I. (2006) Statement by Ian Paisley following the talks in St Andrews, Scotland, 13 October 2006. Democratic Unionist Party. Available at: CAIN – Statement by Ian Paisley (Accessed: 6 October 2026).

Northern Ireland Assembly (2026) Official Report: Monday 27 April 2026 – Question Time: Education – Academic Selection. Belfast: Northern Ireland Assembly. Available at: Northern Ireland Assembly Official Report (Accessed: 6 October 2026).

So, back in August, we met in Maddens in Belfast, along with Brian O’Neill. We still disagreed about a fair bit, but it was a good conversation, and we ended up talking about writing something together.

When Drumcree flared up again in September, we realised we had found our subject.

We both support Irish reunification, but it became clear that Hughie and I didn’t see Drumcree in quite the same way. I thought it would be interesting to explore these differences, so I put together some questions for us both to answer.

When you watched events unfold at Drumcree in 2026, what was your immediate reaction, and did anything about that reaction surprise you?

Macha: My first reaction was real annoyance at something so provocative and potentially inflammatory being reopened after such a long time. I was frustrated that the Parades Commission had left itself so exposed by failing to do its job properly, allowing someone like Jamie Bryson to exploit the situation.

I hadn’t realised that the Orange Order had maintained a token protest every Sunday since 1998. And having grown up in a very religious home, I can understand something about deeply held convictions that don’t necessarily make sense to outsiders.

I understood why the prospect of the parade caused such distress among residents, given Drumcree’s history, and why they were so strongly opposed to it. But I was surprised by how uncomfortable I felt with aspects of the nationalist response.

Hughie Beag: My immediate reaction was one of incredulity. I literally couldn’t believe that they had come to such a decision in what was obviously a toxic attempt at opening old wounds, and I think that many, many people thought similarly. When the initial feeling of shock had worn off, I began to feel angry that the Parades Commission were prepared to subject the residents to such provocation in order to save face over being caught short in their decision-making process

Do you think the dispute in 2026 was fundamentally about rights, identity, historical grievance or political power?

Macha: I think it was fundamentally a clash of rights rooted in identity, which reopened deep historical wounds. We’d perhaps convinced ourselves that those wounds had healed, when in reality we’d only put a sticking plaster over them. It didn’t take very much for all that old bitterness and sense of grievance to come back to the surface.

But we shouldn’t overlook the fact that, unlike the Drumcree disputes of the past, this one didn’t descend into violence. That is significant, and something we shouldn’t take for granted.

Hughie Beag: I think the primary reason for revisiting Drumcree was fundamentally about identity. The OO, at its core, is a group based on religious identitarianism, but I also think that the dispute itself is a rights-based dispute, the OO’s right to assembly against the residents’ right to live free from harassment.

I also feel there’s an internal struggle for the hearts and minds of unionism. I believe that the minority party in unionism saw it as an opportunistic vehicle to upset the wider unionist status quo while Jamie Bryson almost certainly saw it as an opportunity to consolidate his influence within the wider unionist family.

Can something be legally permissible but politically irresponsible? And can a protest be morally understandable but politically damaging?

Macha: Yes, absolutely, and I think Drumcree demonstrated both.

The Orange Order had a legal right to proceed, but I think they made a serious political mistake in trying to exercise that right. They should have taken their legal victory and chosen not to march. To me, that would have demonstrated real strength and moral courage, and sent a powerful message about unionism’s ability to retain its traditions while adapting to the world around it.

Equally, I completely understand why the residents opposed the parade, given the history of Drumcree. I fully support their right to protest and to challenge the decision through the courts.

But I disagreed with physically obstructing a parade that had been legally authorised, particularly with elected politicians involved. The rule of law underpins our society, and independent institutions exist to resolve disputes because we cannot always agree. If people lose confidence that those decisions will be respected, we risk returning to a situation where disputes are settled through confrontation rather than through the proper legal processes.

We’re asking people from a unionist background to trust that their rights won’t simply depend on the wishes of a nationalist majority in a united Ireland. But what reassurance can we offer if we’re only prepared to respect independent decisions when we agree with them?

Hughie Beag: It of course completely can, we’ve seen the example before where internment without trial was completely legal yet disastrous both politically and morally. In terms of the march, the loyalist blogger made it clear that this was only a test case and had the march went ahead then next year it would have been a full march and every other contentious march route was to be contested.

My own opinion is that the march should have been legally suspended pending a full Appeal Court hearing. I don’t think that the emergency sitting of the AC less than 48 hours before the march was due to begin was sufficient time to cover all issues involved. However, I believe that the residents were essentially correct in preventing the march proceeding given the precedent this would have set and the stated aims of the march organisers.

What the marchers did was the very essence of civil disobedience, the non-violent, if illegal, protest at an unjust decision. I’d remind people of David Trimble’s ‘bad law’ criticisms and that the anti-violence colossus, John Hume was convicted of obstruction also.

Who, if anyone, demonstrated leadership during Drumcree 2026?

Macha: I think Micheál Martin showed the kind of judgment and restraint I was looking for. He made it clear that he thought the decision to allow the parade was wrong, but rather than simply piling in behind calls for the Secretary of State to intervene, he appealed for calm and encouraged dialogue. When the parade was eventually banned, he warned against triumphalism and acknowledged that unionists would see the outcome very differently. He seemed conscious of the wider consequences of his words, rather than simply expressing solidarity with one side.

I also thought Jon Burrows demonstrated some political judgment. He supported mediation, urged a more pragmatic approach within unionism, and warned that the Orange Order’s legal victory could become a strategic defeat for unionism. Given how things unfolded, I think he deserves credit for recognising that.

I understood why nationalist politicians wanted to stand with the residents, but I had hoped for a more measured response from those who have long argued for reconciliation. Drumcree was repeatedly described as a culture war deliberately stirred up by Jamie Bryson, yet some of the reactions seemed to feed into that very confrontation. Surely recognising the provocation was all the more reason to be careful about how they responded.

Hughie Beag: Nationalist politicians did what they were supposed to do, they supported and showed practical solidarity to a beleaguered electoral constituency that vote for them. I really don’t see what else those Nationalist representatives were supposed to do as the abandonment of the Garvaghy community would have been politically and morally disastrous. I for one applaud the Nationalist leadership and representatives in the stand they took.

Burrows seemed to stay on the legal aspects of the circumstances while not offering any broader analysis while Micheál Martin did what Micheál Martin does.

Did either of you find yourselves defending people or positions with which you would normally disagree?

Macha: Some folks from my unionist background contacted me in good faith to ask what I thought about the nationalist response. These were people who had respected my decision to join the SDLP and pursue reunification, and I think they were genuinely taken aback by some of what they had seen or heard.

Ordinarily, I’d have been inclined to defend people on my own side politically, but on this occasion I struggled. I found some of the absolutist language about the Orange tradition particularly difficult to defend, especially coming from politicians who have spent years arguing for an inclusive new Ireland. I was also uncomfortable with some of the public displays of solidarity, particularly when I considered how they might be received by people from my background. The residents are entitled to choose their own representatives, of course, but I think politicians also need to consider the wider implications of such public associations.

Hughie Beag: No, I don’t think I did. I was very impressed at unionists like Sarah Creighton going to Garvaghy to support the residents and Arnold Carlton unambiguously making his opposition clear, along with the open letter written by individuals within the wider Protestant and unionist community. While these people’s politics differ from mine I of course agreed with them on their stance on the issue.

I was particularly impressed with the solidarity shown by the Rev Karen Sethuraman. The Rev Sethuraman is a true humanitarian and a credit to her spiritual beliefs.

What damage, if any, have the events of Drumcree 2026 done to trust between communities, particularly among people who might be open to considering Irish unity?

Macha: I do think Drumcree has damaged confidence in the promise of an inclusive new Ireland, certainly among some of the people I spoke to, and to some extent my own confidence too.

I think nationalism sometimes underestimates how these things are received within the Protestant community. You don’t have to be an Orangeman, or even particularly sympathetic to the organisation, to have family or friends who are members. I understand why many nationalists see Orangeism through its history of sectarianism and intimidation. But for many Protestants, it is also part of ordinary family and community life.

I’ve argued for some time that the SDLP has the potential to reach people who might otherwise be reluctant to engage with the idea of a united Ireland. It’s one of the reasons I joined. I had hoped to see more of the understanding and restraint that might give people from my background confidence in the future we’re asking them to contemplate.

I still support reunification. But Drumcree left me questioning whether some of the promises of inclusion I’ve been making to others are as deeply understood as I’d hoped. It reminded me just how much difficult, uncomfortable work still needs to be done if we are serious about building a genuinely inclusive new Ireland.

Hughie Beag: I think that the reopening of an old wound has caused considerable polarisation and what’s more, I think that this was one of the aims of the organisers. I also think that this saga is going to be pretty elongated.

The Nationalist community see the insistence of the OO in imposing some of their marches, which celebrate a religious battle that signalled massive religious persecution of Catholics in Ireland, in or close to areas with a high density of Nationalist residents as jingoistic supremacism. That’s the bottom line. There are thousands of OO marches a year which pass without incident, indeed, I write this after thousands of the OO and their supporters held an unhindered rally in Portadown town centre a few miles from Garvaghy.

Why do the OO feel the need to do this? In my opinion ‘tradition’ simply isn’t a good enough argument, there was a time when things like witch trials and slavery were traditional too, No one would argue that such traditions be maintained today.

The OO are free to practice their right to assembly in the overwhelming utterly vast number of their marches. As a proclaimed Christian organisation why would they want to march where they know it offends their neighbours?

As for what these rights would look like upon unification, we’ve already seen what they would look like. We see it at Derry and Rossnowlagh every year and we saw it at Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann 2026 in Belfast City Centre.

Is there a difference between winning a dispute and winning someone’s trust? And if so, which matters more in Northern Ireland today?

Macha: I think there’s a huge difference. Winning a dispute might give you a sense of satisfaction, but it can still erode trust. I think of small acts of restraint or generosity as putting money into a trust bank. You don’t get the immediate satisfaction of winning an argument, and you might not see any benefit for years. But you’re building something that could matter enormously further down the line.

We’re asking people to place an enormous amount of trust in an uncertain future. That trust won’t suddenly appear when we need it for a border poll. It has to be built over time, through the way we treat one another now, particularly when we disagree. That’s why, for me, winning someone’s trust matters far more than winning any individual dispute.

Hughie Beag: There’s a massive difference, however, for me the priority of both weighs upon the magnitude of the dispute at hand. For example, Drumcree is infamously toxic and bitter. Indeed, I think that’s the symbolic reason that the dispute was opened up again after so long. When we have such a contrived, manipulated sum zero situation I’m not exactly sure whose trust has to be won much less how it should be won.

For me ‘winning’ a dispute isn’t important, what is important is the logic, veracity and integrity of the issue at hand. If someone is able to make me see the validity of their argument then I’ll accept that and amend my position accordingly. I’m not so sure that winning a dispute and building trust are an either/or but would suggest that if any probity is deliberately sacrificed in the cause of building trust then that trust is based on a false premise.

Does asking nationalism to consider unionist concerns place an unfair burden on those who believe their own rights have historically been disregarded? How should those competing concerns be weighed?

Macha: I understand why it might feel like an unfair burden, given the history of discrimination and intimidation experienced by nationalists. And I fully support the right of the Garvaghy Road residents to oppose the parade.

But nationalism is asking people from a unionist background to contemplate an enormous constitutional change. If we’re serious about persuading them that their rights, identities and traditions would be respected in a united Ireland, then surely we have a responsibility to demonstrate that now, particularly when it’s difficult.

I don’t think it’s my place to decide how those competing rights should be balanced. That’s why we have an independent body to make these difficult judgments. People are entitled to disagree with its decisions and challenge them through the courts, but we also have to be prepared to accept outcomes we don’t like.

Hughie Beag: I think Nationalists very much respect unionist rights and think that the only time those rights come into contention is when they’re blatantly illegal and/or sectarian bonfires, deluges of flags and a microscopic number of contentious march routes. I’m not sure what unionist concerns are.

If their concerns are the continuance of their cultural traditions in the Unified Ireland, I’ve stated more than once that I think these traditions should absolutely continue in areas where there’s a demand for them and as long as they’re done within the law. As I’ve said previously, we’ve already seen this in practice at Derry, Rossnowlagh and the Belfast Fleadh.

As for asking unionists to accept massive constitutional change, the only thing unionism is being asked to accept is democratic integrity.

If a future united Ireland faced a dispute involving a minority community’s cultural traditions and the objections of local residents, what principles should determine the outcome?

Macha: I think a new Ireland has to be prepared to accommodate the whole history of this island, not just the parts that fit comfortably into a nationalist understanding of it. The Orange Order is part of that history. I understand why many nationalists regard it as sectarian, but I also know that for many Protestants, Orangeism is a very ordinary part of family and community life. We are all products of our backgrounds and of the history that formed who we are. I don’t think we can simply write out the parts we find uncomfortable.

I would want a future united Ireland to approach these disputes with a genuine willingness to accommodate minority traditions, even when they are deeply unpopular with the majority. That doesn’t mean every parade should be permitted, or that residents should have to set aside their own rights and concerns. But neither should opposition to an organisation automatically determine the outcome.

These decisions should be made independently and fairly, taking account of the rights of everyone involved, the history of particular routes and the impact on local communities. And those independent judgments need to be respected, even when we strongly disagree with them.

Hughie Beag: I’ve said here repeatedly that in terms of unionist traditions, that their rights, culture and traditions should be respected both by the ECHR and by constitutional guarantee. In a unified Ireland the minority should absolutely have the same equal rights as any other citizen with an added layer of constitutional guarantee. The Orange Order are a quintessentially Irish organisation and the marches, bonfires etc associated with them should continue where they are wanted and within the law. Bonfires should have a defined, identifiable committee who are responsible for liability insurance, adherence to bylaws, clean-up, etc.

In the instance of a dispute such as Drumcree arising, the bottom line is that residents and property rights should always come first. The marchers don’t live there and always have an alternative of another route or place to go. The residents don’t.

Northern nationalists and republicans have long aimed to differentiate themselves from unionists through a strong commitment to social, as opposed to legal, justice. These respective commitments have been on clear display throughout the recent disputes at Drumcree. Whilst unionists claim to have stood on the side of law and order, the SDLP reinstated its commitment to civil rights through peaceful protest, and Sinn Féin stood shoulder to shoulder with communities resisting potential state violence in the name of self-determination.

This commitment to social justice has long provided nationalists and republicans with a sense of confidence, that they stand on the ‘right’ side of history. After all, as the modern father of civil rights Martin Luther King once put it, the arc of history always ‘bends towards justice.’ For some, the decision of Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Bryant to ban Orangemen from marching down the Garvaghy road proves this historical rule correct. Social justice, from this perspective, has won the day. Nationalists and republicans are, from this perspective, once again on the right side of history.

But is the Secretary of State’s decision really a victory for social justice? Or is it closer to victors’ justice?

Answering this question properly requires recognising that social justice is a big term which means very little without context. This means that as contextual conditions change, the practical meaning of social justice does too. Like the end of the proverbial rainbow, as we move towards a more just society this goal shifts, and we must adjust our course appropriately. This is why the struggle to realise a more just society is never complete, and why we must continually revise our understandings of what it is, and what it might take to work towards it, on the basis of present political conditions.

In Northern Ireland present political conditions are, of course, markedly different to those which existed in the late 1960s, when the terms ‘civil rights’ and ‘social justice’ first arrived on the province’s streets. Political conditions have also shifted profoundly since the late 1990s, when the last battle over the Garvaghy road occurred. Back then, social housing was still relatively plentiful, emigration was a more significant political issue than immigration, abortion was a very long way from being legal on this island, and climate change – never mind climate justice – had barely been defined.

More specifically, in the past three decades political Unionism has withered, as counterbalanced by the growth of political republicanism, which is now bearing ever richer political fruit. Put in the blunter terms of Northern Ireland’s streets, the IRA may have lost the war, but their political progeny are increasingly winning the peace.

Many hoped that, given their historical commitment to supporting oppressed communities, republicans might display magnanimity with this victory, protecting and respecting minority rights, in the way that past unionist Northern Irish governments often did not. In this regard, early evidence from Michelle O’Neill’s tenure as Northern Irish First Minister was promising. She quickly declared herself a ‘First Minister for all’, whilst standing shoulder-to-shoulder with her unionist counterpart, Emma Little-Pengelly, with whom she worked to resolve the many social issues Northern Ireland currently faces.

But things changed on Sunday the 27th of September. Standing in the rain with protestors blocking the Garvaghy road, Mary Lou McDonald stated that the decision to allow the Orange Order parade was, ‘in fact, primitive treatment of any community in the year 2026. It is intolerable, and it will not be tolerated’, adding that ‘we will not be drawn back into the past.’

There’s a bitter irony to her use of this kind of language, especially for those of us interested in moving towards a future beyond Ireland’s settler-colonial past: this is the kind of language unionists once used to describe the island’s Catholic, Irish communities. This language is, in other words, not actually the language of the future but an echo from the worst of Northern Ireland’s past, where unionists used the state to supress minorities, on the basis that they were primitive and backward, and so could not be tolerated in public life if the province were to progress politically. Is this, in fact, what Sinn Féin really mean when they say they stand on the side of progress towards a more just society?

If so, Sinn Féin are taking the first steps down a path common to many ethno-political movements, who gain power through (post-)colonial nation states; a path which ends with the oppressed becoming oppressors. All ethno-political movements contain this possibility. The first step towards it comes with the arrogance to presume that one always stands on the right side of history, and so won’t fall into this political trap, like so many have before.

None of us will ever have the privilege of knowing whether we stand on the right side of history, and we should never have the arrogance to begin our politics from this presumption. Instead, those of us who want a more just, democratic, and ultimately decolonial Ireland must continually update our political thinking, ensuring it remains relevant to the ever-changing challenges facing the society we’re a part of. Fail to do so, and all too quickly the oppressed may become oppressors, the colonised colonial, and democrats’ demagogues.

This morning More in Common published one of the largest studies yet of public attitudes in Northern Ireland to Drumcree, based on a poll of 1,019 adults carried out between 9 and 20 October. It covers four areas: the dispute itself; what it means for politics here; the wider debate about respect for culture in Northern Ireland today; and what the public expects on the rule of law, justice and policing.

For an organisation called More in Common, it might be truer to say there is rather less in common on Drumcree. On question after question, the gap between people from Protestant and Catholic backgrounds can be more than 50 points. Northern Ireland is divided on this, but the story is not simply one of two camps split down the middle. Many people would give some ground on Drumcree, but what they doubt is that the other side would too.

Drumcree and parading

A majority (53 per cent) think the Secretary of State was right to block the march; 30 per cent say he was wrong. Sinn Féin, Alliance and SDLP voters strongly back Sir Chris Bryant’s decision. Unionist voters oppose it, in a pattern that runs through the whole study: TUV voters most opposed, DUP voters strongly opposed but less so, and a majority of UUP voters opposed as well, though a minority (26 per cent) think it was the right decision.

Asked whose side they are on, the public are almost twice as likely to sympathise with the Garvaghy Road residents (38 per cent) as with the Portadown Orangemen (21 per cent). Two in five say both, neither or don’t know. But sympathy is not the same as blindness. Most people can see why the Orangemen want to parade, and most can see why the residents oppose it – including majorities of both Protestants and Catholics in each case. Almost half (46 per cent) understand both sides at once.

Many would also meet the other side halfway. Almost half (48 per cent) say a fair outcome means both sides giving some ground, against 41 per cent who say only one side is right at Drumcree and a fair outcome means that side getting its way. Protestants lean towards compromise (58 to 33 per cent), whereas Catholics lean the other way (51 to 38 per cent).

However, there is a lack of trust between communities at this moment. Only one in five (18 per cent) think the other community would give ground if theirs did, and 45 per cent think it unlikely. Even among people who want both sides to give ground, that figure is no higher than 18 per cent.

We tested seven possible resolutions. Only one had positive net support among voters of every main party: confirming the Portadown Lodge’s right to parade, with the Lodge then choosing not to exercise it. Of the other six, any resolution that lets a parade go ahead without the residents’ agreement is unacceptable to nationalist voters, and those that stop it or give the residents a veto are unacceptable to unionist voters. The next closest is the so-called ‘one and done’ parade: acceptable to unionist and Alliance voters, while SDLP voters lean against and Sinn Féin voters are opposed, but less so than to other parade options.

Beyond the specifics, what matters most to people is that this ends without violence. That is what ‘no going back’ means here. Four in five (82 per cent) say it matters a great deal or a fair amount; only 13 per cent say it is not important, and the view holds across both communities. That is twice the number who say it is important there is no parade down the Garvaghy Road, and almost three times the number who say it is important that one does go down it. Three in four also see the threats and intimidation directed at politicians, activists and lawyers on both sides as a serious issue.

With notifications now going to the Parades Commission for parades and counter-protests beyond Portadown, three in five (60 per cent) would leave existing arrangements in place, even if one side feels they are unfair, rather than risk reopening them. The same proportion say the Portadown Lodge should accept that the decision has been made and not apply again.

The politics of Drumcree

Today we are also publishing our first Assembly voting intention. We polled in July and again this month, so we can see what has moved. Changes since July in brackets.

• Sinn Féin 30% (+5)
• DUP 18% (+1)
• UUP 13% (nc)
• TUV 11% (–1)
• Alliance 9% (–2)
• SDLP 9% (nc)
• Independents and others 4% (–1)
• Green Party 3% (–1)
• People Before Profit 1% (–1)
• Aontú 1% (nc)

The main beneficiary of the dispute so far appears to be Sinn Féin, up five points. Political unionism has held its voters: the three unionist parties together are on 42 per cent, the same as in July and slightly up on 40 per cent in 2022. The DUP are steady on 18 per cent; the UUP and TUV are broadly flat since July and up on 2022. Alliance are down again, from 11 to 9 per cent and from 14 per cent in 2022. The SDLP are where they were in 2022, on 9 per cent, and the nationalist parties together are level with 2022 (38 to 39 per cent). More in Common will be conducting more analysis on the movement between parties and within voter blocs in forthcoming polls.

But vote shares only tell part of the story. Asked for the first word that comes to mind when they think of Stormont, the public’s most common answer is ‘useless’. Almost two in three (64 per cent) say having an Assembly and Executive makes little or no difference to their own life, against 27 per cent who say it makes a great deal or a fair amount.

That disillusionment runs across the whole of politics here, but it is deepest among unionists. Three in four Protestants (75 per cent) say Stormont makes little or no difference to them, compared with 54 per cent of Catholics; 57 per cent of Protestants lean towards Northern Ireland being no worse off without it, compared with 41 per cent of Catholics. Among TUV voters, 85 per cent say the institutions make little or no difference to their life; among DUP and UUP voters it is three in four.

Which raises the question of whether Stormont survives this dispute. Asked whether Drumcree is a strong enough reason for any party to pull out of the Executive, the public say no by 49 per cent to 27 per cent, with a quarter unsure. Asked how they would feel if the institutions collapsed, 39 per cent would be concerned, 32 per cent would not, and one in five would feel neither. Within unionism, the same gradient that runs through the whole study runs through this question. Seven in ten TUV voters (72 per cent) think Drumcree is reason enough to pull out of the Executive. DUP voters say so by 53 per cent to 31 per cent. UUP voters lean the other way, 45 per cent to 31 per cent.

Whose culture is respected?

The public are slightly more likely to say Irish or nationalist culture is well respected in Northern Ireland today (61 per cent) than say the same for British culture (56 per cent). But asked whether their own tradition is respected, Catholics are more likely to say yes than Protestants.

Three in five think Orange culture would be unlikely to be respected in a united Ireland. Only 11 per cent of people from a Protestant background think it’s likely (2 per very likely), against 46 per cent of Catholics who say it’s likely and 38 per cent who say it’s unlikely.

The Fleadh shows what respect for different cultures can look like in practice. The public are overwhelmingly positive about what it did for Belfast: 72 per cent say it was good, including 58 per cent of Protestants. One in four went this year and almost one in two plan to go next year, including one in three Protestants.

Seven in ten think it was a good thing that loyalist and Ulster-Scots bands played at the Fleadh – 75 per cent of Catholics and 68 per cent of Protestants. Flip it round and ask about Irish traditional musicians playing at the Twelfth, and support is lower (47 per cent), but still twice as high as opposition.

Who gets held to account?

Taken as a whole, the public are neither confident nor unconfident that anyone will be held to account over Drumcree. Split by community, however, a different picture emerges. The public are confident that someone on their own side will be held accountable, and not confident that anyone on the other side will be. On what should happen to those who broke the law, two in five (38 per cent) say all of them should be prosecuted, a third (33 per cent) say only those involved in violent or serious offences, and a fifth (21 per cent) want a line drawn under it.

The public back the PSNI’s decision not to remove protesters from the Garvaghy Road, by 50 per cent to 30 per cent. But broader confidence in the police is slipping. Fewer than half (42 per cent) think the PSNI treats everyone equally regardless of community background, down from 50 per cent in June. Twenty-five years on from its creation, the public are more likely to discourage (36 per cent) than encourage (28 per cent) a close family member from joining the PSNI. Catholics would discourage rather than encourage by almost two to one (42 to 22 per cent), but people from a Protestant background are split (35 per cent encourage, 31 per cent discourage).

Underneath this sits a more basic question about respect for the rules in the first place. On that, the public lean towards obedience: 56 per cent say laws should be followed come what may, 38 per cent that it is acceptable to break laws you believe are wrong, with big differences between Protestants and Catholics. The Parades Commission is the exception. Half think you are entitled to resist a determination you believe is wrong, against 37 per cent who say it must be followed. On the broader question of respect for the rule of law, three in five say it is under threat in Northern Ireland today.

What next?

On Drumcree, the verdict is less in common rather than more. But several things cut across the divide. Most people can see the other side’s point of view. Almost half would give some ground, but few believe the other side would be willing to do the same. There was one ending that voters of every party could have lived with. And above everything, people want this to end without violence. That’s the ground leaders wanting to take Northern Ireland beyond this dispute can build on.

To a large extent the results will not provoke much surprise. In general, the picture is one of hardening opinions and deeper divisions, but it is also worth noting that not all opinion is black and white, or orange and green.

Polling took place between the 9^th and 20^th of October and it is worth noting that the wording of a couple of questions suggest that they were asked at the hight of the events. As such it is probably sensible to view the results as reflecting immediate reactions. Whether, or how much, these will endure over the coming months remains to be seen.

To provide some context one of the questions demonstrated that people said they were far more concerned about health and prices than division and community relations. Issues relating to the constitutional issue came well down the list.

At the same time peoples’ perception of the historic divisions had jumped dramatically since the same question was asked three months before.

Possibly as a result some, particularly unionists, felt less safe.

61% felt that Northern Ireland had not moved on much since the 1990’s compared to only 30% who thought it had. And the pessimists were stronger in their opinion than the optimists.

When it came to voting intentions all the ‘Other’ parties had lost ground since More In Common conducted their first poll three months ago. In total their support had dropped from 17% to 13%. Nationalist parties were up from 35% to 40%, with the entire increase being registered by Sinn Féin. Total Unionist support was unchanged at 42%. Independents and smaller parties were down by 1%.

When it comes to the rights and wrongs of Drumcree the division of opinion is largely predictable. Nationalist and Alliance voters strongly hold that the Parades Commission were wrong to permit the march. DUP and TUV voters were equally convinced they were right.

The UUP was the only party whose voters were almost equally divided.

Opinion was equally predictable concerning the Secretary of State’s decision to prevent the parade.

Of course, backing or not backing the Parades Commission decision or the SoS’s decision are both zero sum questions. The Report reveals that peoples’ feelings are more nuanced than that:

“Almost three in five (57%) Protestants say they understand why the Garvaghy Road residents feel as they do, and over half of Catholics (51%) understand why the Portadown Orangemen feel as they do.”

“46% of people in Northern Ireland can understand both how the Garvaghy Road Residents and the Portadown Orangemen feel as they do.”

But this does not prevent them knowing who they back.

“Nationalist voters side with the Garvaghy Road residents. Four in five (81%) Sinn Féin voters and half (54%) of SDLP voters sympathise more with the residents, and almost none with the Portadown Orangemen.

“Unionist voters are more divided. TUV voters are as supportive of the Orangemen (79% sympathise more with the Orangemen) as Sinn Féin voters are of the residents. Three in five (59%) DUP voters side with the Orangemen.

“UUP voters are more torn: half don’t pick a side, 41% back the Orangemen, and 9% back the residents. Among Protestants as a whole, more do not pick a side (44%) than those who back theOrangemen (42%). One in seven Protestants (14%) sympathise more with the residents.”

As for what should be done. People believe that politicians should solve problems like this only Sinn Féin voters believe that politicians should become involved in person.

Only TUV voters and a slim majority of DUP voters believe that the Assembly should be pulled down over the issue.

The Report finds that:

“Of the seven ways to end the dispute that we tested, only one is acceptable to voters of every party: the Portadown Lodge’s right to parade is confirmed, but it chooses not to use it.

“Half the public (50%) say it would be an acceptable way to end the dispute, against 16% who say unacceptable – and the figures are the same for Catholics and Protestants (51% and 52% acceptable).

“By voters of different parties this proposal is acceptable to a majority of Sinn Féin (56%), Alliance (75%), UUP (62%) and DUP voters (55%), and a plurality of SDLP (44%) and TUV voters (45%). For SDLP voters, it falls short of a majority mainly because more answered “don’t know” or “neither acceptable nor unacceptable”.”

“The other six options tested are unacceptable to one side or the other. Unionist voters reject the ‘no parade’ options, while the ‘parade ahead in some form’ options are unacceptable to nationalist and Alliance voters.

“Alliance voters are the swing voters on what is acceptable on ending this dispute. They reject almost anything that lets the parade down the Garvaghy Road and accept anything that stops it.”

There is more in the Report than I have covered here and if you want to see it there is a link at the top of this piece.

Starting as the de facto hereditary town clerk of mainly Catholic Downpatrick  and a passionate supporter of Gaelic games and language, Maurice Hayes triumphed over institutional discrimination by skirting his way round rather than  knocking his head against the many obstacles set in his path.  By the mid 1970s perhaps to his surprise, he was often knocking at an open door.  Later after stints as a servant of both states  he became a witty and  sometimes unsparing  commentator on what followed his main career north and south of the border.  Throughout his career he  refused to hold people especially politicians to their own stereotypes and approached  them with an open mind

The following extracts give glimpses of his achievement  from the beginning of  the Troubles career  which still hold powerful lessons for today.

Hayes was critical of older administrators who privileged cultural revivalism over sport and, by transacting business in Irish, excluded contributions from those not fluent in the language.

Hayes’s work on housing allocation brought him into contact with the local Stormont MP, Brian Faulkner (qv); despite Faulkner’s opportunistic use of Orangeism to secure advancement within the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), Hayes regarded him as generally fair-minded and a man of outstanding ability.

Hayes was appointed – through Faulkner’s influence – as chair of the Community Relations Commission (CRC), a new part-time body intended to promote reconciliation, particularly in local government. Hayes privately regarded the CRC as indecisive and ineffective, but it allowed him to develop further media, administrative and political contacts in Britain as well as Northern Ireland. As one of the most prominent and experienced Catholic administrators in Northern Ireland, Hayes was a prime candidate for advancement as proof that progress was being made against discrimination. He was sensitive to the possibility that he might be perceived as a token collaborator, and was himself suspicious of many self-professed Protestant liberals as hypocritical, self-righteous, or sincere but ineffective. He was critical of O’Neill’s failure to follow up his rhetoric with sufficiently swift and radical reforms, and regarded his successor, James Chichester-Clark (qv), as a nonentity who made the situation worse by keeping the more capable Faulkner out of the premiership for almost two years. (In contrast, Hayes displayed a certain respect for extremists with leadership abilities, such as Ian Paisley (qv).)

While Hayes attributed the principal responsibility for the Northern debacle to Protestant/unionist discrimination and incompetence, he thought Catholics/nationalists had contributed to their marginalisation by self-segregation, and favoured working for reform from within; he proclaimed firmly that discrimination never justified the taking of a single life.

 He maintained that the public service (in its widest sense) preserved Northern Irish society from disintegration during the Troubles. While Hayes thought many socio-economic measures enacted by Margaret Thatcher’s government were necessary and beneficial attacks on vested interests, he was fiercely critical of her suspicious attitude towards the public sector ethos and her exaltation of market forces. He also criticised her handling of the H-block protests and 1980–81 hunger strikes.

Stormont civil servant

Hayes always regarded Sunningdale as a major achievement whose central principles established the template for any future settlement, vindicated by the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement and the 1998 Good Friday/Belfast Agreement. He attributed its failure in part to excessive nationalist emphasis on a cross-border Council of Ireland, regarded in some quarters as a vehicle for eventual Irish unification, which exceeded what Faulkner could sell to unionist opinion.

Hayes bitterly denounced the failure of British authorities to intervene early and decisively against the May 1974 Ulster Workers’ Council strike, whose success he attributed to naked violence and intimidation; he compared the willingness of the Protestant professional classes to cooperate with the strikers to the collapse of the Weimar Republic (though he also admitted that the Executive was indecisive).

Elder statesman: the Patten Report and member of the Seanad

In 1990 Hayes became a non-executive board member of Independent News and Media, retiring in 2009. He wrote extensively for the group’s papers, and was greatly respected by the proprietor, Tony O’Reilly; Hayes was credited with influencing the newspaper group in favour of John Hume’s controversial attempts to bring Sinn Féin into the peace process. Until a few months before his death Hayes continued to comment on public affairs in print media, made frequent radio and television appearances, and reviewed books for the Belfast Telegraph and the Irish Independent (mostly twentieth-century Irish history and Northern Ireland fiction).

Hayes published three volumes of memoirs. Sweet Killough, let go your anchor (1994) and Black puddings with slim: a Downpatrick boyhood (1996) are evocative but unsentimental depictions of the changing Lecale of his childhood and adolescence. Minority verdict: experiences of a Catholic public servant (1995) is a deceptively simple text combining illustrative anecdotes with an analysis of the expansion and development of managerial public service in post-war Northern Ireland.

Hayes was asked to serve on numerous public commissions and inquiries. Perhaps the most significant of these was the Independent Commission on Policing for Northern Ireland (1998–9), established under the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement and chaired by Chris Patten. Hayes was seen as a major influence on aspects of the commission’s report which were unpopular among unionists, including changing the name of the Royal Ulster Constabulary to the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), the removal or downplaying of British symbols, and the institution of 50:50 Catholic–Protestant recruitment to the PSNI to rectify Catholic under-representation. Although Hayes was indignant at claims that he was a nationalist representative and that he influenced the commission’s advocacy of an end to the GAA’s exclusion of members of the British security forces (repealed in 2001), many otherwise moderate unionists complained that Hayes tilted the balance too far and provided anti-agreement unionists with an effective weapon against David Trimble.

Hayes personally believed Trimble was too reluctant to make a positive case for the agreement, and that Peter Robinson was more effective in this respect after becoming first minister in 2007. Hayes was increasingly concerned at the tendency for the population of the Irish Republic to assume that the post-peace process North could be ignored, with northern nationalists in particular seen as aliens. In his last years Hayes criticised the failure of the Northern Ireland executive to move beyond peace maintenance by developing a sense of shared identity and a wider strategy for the co-ordinated pursuit of the common good; he believed that while it was important not to neglect victims of the Troubles, it would eventually be necessary to close the book and move on.

Downe Hospital, Downpatrick, on 23 December 2017 after a short illness. At his own request, as an expression of communal reconciliation, he was buried (after funeral mass in St Patrick’s Catholic church, Downpatrick, on 27 December) near the alleged grave of St Patrick (qv) in the graveyard attached to Downpatrick’s Church of Ireland cathedral.

At the weekend Carla Lockhart told the crowd: “Michelle O’Neill must go…” and “this lady is not for turning.” Both famous lines borrowed from the dim and distant past. One from Ian Paisley when he had a rising movement behind him.

The other was Margaret Thatcher in 1980, with a Commons majority at her back. Each spoke then from a position of relative strength. The borrowing of old words from the past is no sin, but truthfully anti Agreement unionism is weaker now than it has ever been.

But Lockhart is only answering the easiest question that unionists can ask, ie whether O’Neill deserves to be First Minister (I must say my own personal confidence waivers considerably), rather than the much harder one: what would removing her cost?

So, as if to prove the point, to remove O’Neill the DUP would have to withdraw Emma Little-Pengelly as deputy First Minister. That would take O’Neill out with her, but it also stops the Executive, exactly as the still Anti Agreement TUV wants.

If it were done now as Lockhart, Forsyth (and Jim Allister) are all commanding, Assembly parties would then have up to 24 weeks to renominate before an election is forced. That runs almost to polling day on 6 May.

However, no Executive means no budget, and the penalty for that would hit twice over.  Firstly departments would be held to 95% of their current spending, which means a real-terms cut in services already under strain.

And, as the SDLP’s Matthew O’Toole has warned repeatedly on social media and the mainstream, Northern Ireland would miss out on any boost to the Barnett consequential from today’s UK Budget, since no Executive could allocate the money.

If you take an intelligent unionist view any budget failure currently belongs to the Sinn Féin Finance Minister. But if the DUP is daft enough to pull the deputy First Minister this fiscal screw up will belong almost entirely to the DUP.

And for what? By every poll this year Sinn Féin is still the largest party. If O’Neill goes now, she will walk back in as First Minister in May (the same cannot be said even about Emma Little Pengelly’s attempt to actually get elected in Lagan Valley).

In addition, the DUP would pay an extra penalty for the frozen budgets and lost money over a gesture the nationalist electorate is an odds on certainty to reverse just six months later. This most pointless of gestures won’t even open the Garvaghy road.

Gavin Robinson knows this, which is presumably why he’s holding the line against a tiny minority unionist party (the TUV) that has nothing to lose. Robinson’s choice is between a cul-de-sac from which he knows there’s no exit or the more open road of government.

Sinn Féin’s poll numbers slipped from 29% in 2022 to 22% in July, but this TUV-powered row could give it momentum right up to the May elections. If the DUP cowpe, and government collapses, the only issue in the news will be one that unionism cannot win.

Of course most voters won’t follow the mechanics of a stalled budget. But they will feel a 95% budget and new money stranded in London. And in those circumstances only the DUP would get the blame rather than the party which is failing (yet again) to set one.

Robinson’s problem is that some colleagues are listening to the TUV, a party which is big on nostalgia and short on solutions, more than him. But as noted on Monday a unionist leader who puts culture above the wellbeing of NI will pay heavy price for such recklessness.

Lockhart, camped out on a cold lonely rock all of her own, has come up with the “genius” idea of asking Robinson and her own party to pay the whole bill. But it’s the pressure from Burrows and the broader middle to which he and his party should pay most attention.

This week, a ‘Derry Girls’ joke.

However ‘Blue Lights’ remained no laughing matter as the show reached the penultimate episode of its fourth series.

Before we get into that.. well, you know the drill by now.

Don’t give away any plot spoilers from the remainder of the fourth series in the comments section if you’ve seen it all on the iPlayer.

Please also bear in mind that this review will inevitably contain plot spoilers from previous series and episodes.

So if you haven’t watched them yet, maybe park reading this until you’ve caught up.

(SPOILERS ALERT!!!)

After last week’s flashback episode revealed Constable Gerry Cliff had compiled a dossier about the running of informers inside the McIntyre gang and also on the willingness of the security services to overlook their crimes, this week’s instalment began with Constables Annie Conlon and Grace Ellis playing ‘Would You Rather?..’ as they kept an eye on the migrant centre.

Grace and Annie’s game was interrupted, however, when a car pulled up outside the centre and an unidentified man opened the boot and hovered around it suspiciously.

Going with her gut that it just didn’t feel right, Grace sounded their car’s siren and sped towards his vehicle only to find the man was wearing a mask and holding a petrol bomb.

Throwing it at them, he fled on foot as Grace smashed into the car.

After checking they were okay, Grace radioed for backup as Annie chased him up an alleyway.

However he was nowhere to be seen.

Picking her way carefully through the alley, Annie was attacked from behind after the masked man emerged from someone’s back yard.

He delivered a blow to her stomach and delivered more blows as she lay on the ground and fought back.

As they wrestled, Annie did manage to gouge his right eye.

Groaning with pain, her attacker fled the scene.

As her PSNI colleagues struggled to handle this incident, Sergeant Sandra Cliff was at home, trying to make sense of the collapse of the court case against Mo McIntyre and Anto Donovan for common enterprise in the murder of her husband.

Turning to Gerry’s dossier for answers, she summoned former colleague turned lawyer Jen Robinson for help.

Before Jen arrived, Inspector Helen McNally turned up on Sandra’s doorstep to sympathise with her about the collapse of the case.

But despite her protestations that she had no knowledge why the case against was withdrawn, Helen was met with a frosty reception.

At the McIntyres’ house, Tina cooked a fry for her son Mo who asked her what the collapse of the case meant for them.

“We just get on with it,” she told him, explaining the ending of the trial would lead to his father being released soon from jail.

Then they’d have decisions to make about potentially moving abroad.

“It’ll blow over like it always does,” Tina added.

Helen returned to Blackthorn for a meeting with her boss Chief Superintendent Nicola Robinson to discuss what happened in the Cliff case.

Explaining the trial risked exposing an intelligence asset, the Chief Superintendent heaped even more pressure on her colleague by telling Helen that she was about to receive an email about the fate of Blackthorn.

As she processed the news, Annie and Grace picked Colly’s brains about who the masked man at the migrant centre might have been, asking for his thoughts.

This prompted a classic Colly retort.

“I’m Special Branch. If I told you all my thoughts I would be Ordinary Branch. Wouldn’t I?”

As Sandra pressed her for some insight on Gerry’s files, Jen was reluctant to get involved because of her mum Nicola’s signature being on some of the documents.

Appealing to Jen’s good nature, Sandra observed that Gerry was driven mad by intelligence chiefs putting their own needs first and turning a blind eye to the criminal activities of the McIntyres and the Dublin based Ginley gang.

That swung it for Jen.

With Jonty Johnson also turning up on Sandra’s door, it was clear she meant business about exposing the McIntyres.

Would Sandra persuade Jonty to join them and be able to expose the activities of the “sneaky beakies,” as her husband used to call military intelligence?

With Ginley gang associate Dana Morgan piling pressure on Tina to keep the flow of drugs going from Dublin to Belfast to Britain, would her eagerness to take risks lead to their criminal activities being exposed?

And with Helen deciding to bin her drive to tackle low level crime, declaring it was back to “business as usual” for her officers, was that a signal Blackthorn would close?

Penned by the actress Bronagh Taggart of ‘The Fall’ and ‘How To Get To Heaven From Belfast‘ fame, this episode accelerated the sense from last week’s instalment that ‘Blue Lights’ creators Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson are bringing to a conclusion the show’s principal storyline about the McIntyres and the impact of past policing on the present.

That determination, however, to end that plotline is not without its risks.

Because while audiences outside Northern Ireland might swallow a neat wrapping up of the story, local audiences might not be as forgiving.

So depending on your perspective, the dossier storyline will either be interpreted as gripping or completely Scooby Doo.

Ultimately Episode Six will determine which audience has the most sway with the writers.

However if you were putting money on it, it would have to be on satisfying the non Northern Irish audience.

What most people should be able to agree on is that Andi Osho has had a very good series as Sandra Cliff.

Sian Brooke, Frank Blake, Joanne Crawford. Katherine Devlin, Nathan Braniff, Dearbhaile McKinney, Michael Smiley, Andrea Irvine, Seamus O’Hara and Abigail McGibbon have all been pretty solid.

However for two series Martin McCann has felt a little bit wasted like a decent Premier League striker being relegated to the bench for 80 minutes.

Keeping him back at base in Blackthorn as Acting Skipper has felt like a waste of his talent when it would have been fun to see his character Stevie Neil back on the streets, just cutting loose.

The return of Hannah McClean and Jonathan Harden as Jen and Jonty has worked well.

Cathy Tyson, though, has been saddled for two series with a one dimensional part as the drug kingpin Dana Morgan and poor old Tabitha Smyth has suffered a similar fate as the vlogger Katie Close.

There was one delicious piece of casting this week, with the appearance of Paul Mallon as a friend of Grace’s who did detective training with her.

“This is Dennis,” Grace explained, without delivering a knowing wink to camera.

Ardent ‘Derry Girls’ fans will know Mallon’s character in Lisa McGee’s sitcom was Dennis, the unhinged shopkeeper.

With Patterson, Lawn and Taggart holding out the possibility that next week’s episode of ‘Blue Lights’ might well be its last, fans of the show might be forgiven for going into a Dennis the Shopkeeper-style rant if that actually turns out to be the case.

(Series Four, Episode Five of ‘Blue Lights’ was broadcast on BBC1 on October 27th, 2026 with all episodes available on the BBC iPlayer)

It’s probably fair to say that, at the time, hardly anyone from NI knew what or where Nagorno-Karabakh was, including myself.  But there too, the problem concerned the co-existence of a majority and a minority.  It was soon to be the same in the Balkans, where one Vladimir Grigorov asked, “Why should I be in the minority in your state, when you could be in the minority in mine?”  (Woodward, S. 1995, Balkan Tragedy, p 108.)

But I’ll start in Belfast.  On my arrival here in 1975, I was asked – inevitably I suppose – was I ‘this’ or ‘that’?  Well, as it happens, mum was an English Catholic from Cheshire, and dad, an Irish Protestant from Cork.  But the question was binary; so my answer had to be either neither or both.  Something was wrong with the question.

1976 saw the peace movement, and I was soon in both the local one and NI’s small part of the wider international anti-nuke movement.  The latter was also based on a closed, binary question: “Are you communist or capitalist?”

Next, in 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev took over in Moscow.  The (then) Cold War was starting to thaw and, as Peter Brooke was to make clear in 1991, Britain had “no selfish strategic or economic interest” in NI; he spoke retrospectively.  But the immediate consequence of the change in the Kremlin, I would argue, came in November ’85: the Anglo-Irish Agreement.  To which, of course, at Belfast’s City Hall, Ian Paisley shouted, “Never, never, never,” under the slogan “Ulster says ‘NO’!”   In response, one week later, six of us stood there in silence, with a banner, “We have got to say ‘yes’ to something.”

Now what that ‘something’ could be was an open question.  But just as I was neither ‘this’ nor ‘that’ but a bit of both, so too, surely, the constitutional status of NI did not have to be either British entirely, or Irish entirely.  In theory at least, it could be under a joint authority, administered by the EU or UN, or maybe the best idea was for ‘these islands’ to form a W-I-S-E Wales-Ireland-Scotland-England federation.  Accordingly, in practice, we could at least have a multi-option debate, with all possible options ‘on the table’.  And if there are lots of them, maybe a citizens’ assembly could formulate a short-list of, say, 4 – 6 options, and the border poll could offer the voters a choice of not only the two stark ‘opposites’, but also a possible compromise or few, on which we the voters could cast our preferences.

___________

So let’s look at decision-making.  Admittedly, many problems are binary.  And if the question is indeed binary, there are only the two ways of voting: ‘yes’ or ‘no’, A or B.  The system is adversarial.  In some instances, those involved argue; at worst, they fight.

If, however, the question poses three possible answers – A, B or C? – and if it asks the voters for their 1^st-2^nd-3^rdpreferences, then there are six ways of voting: A-B-C, A-C-B, B-A-C, B-C-A, C-A-B and C-B-A.  With four options, 24 nuances and/or opinions may be expressed.  And with five, we may relish the diversity of our species.

And let’s be fair: there may not be too much difference between, let’s say, 1^st-2^nd-3^rd-4^th-5^th preferences of D-B-E-A-Cand those of D-E-A-B-C.  In a nutshell, in binary voting, we tend to vote ‘for’ or ‘against’ each other; in contrast, with multi-option, preferential voting, we can vote more ‘with’ each other.

And after all, democracy is for everybody, not just a majority, and definitely not just the majority (of Unionists, or of Russians/ Serbs/Hutus/Jews/Sunnis/Shias etc.).  While majority voting is always ‘win-or-lose’, a preferential points system can be ‘win-win’.  If those involved cast full, or nearly full ballots, then the option with the most points is also the option with the highest average preference… and an average, of course, involves every voter, not just a majority of them.  This particular methodology is inclusive, literally.

It’s called a Borda preferendum or, its technical name, a Modified Borda Count MBC: in a ballot of n options where the voter casts m preferences, (and obviously, m < n), a 1^st preference gets m points, a 2^nd gets (m-1), and so on.  So if you cast only a 1^st preference, your favourite gets only one point.  If, instead, you cast preferences for all five options, then your 1^st preference gets 5 points, your 2^nd gets 4, and so on.  The difference is always 1 point; the MBC is unbiased.  It just encourages all concerned to cast full or nearly full ballots, to recognise their neighbours’ aspirations, to be inclusive.

___________

Binary voting was first used in Greece, some 2,500 years ago, and in China, about four centuries later; there were no political parties anywhere in those days, and majority voting worked fairly well.  It came unstuck in Rome in 105 in a murder trial, when there were three options on the jury’s table, and none had majority support.  Hence multi-option voting, and in 1433, the first form of preferential voting.  The MBC came in 1770, but majority voting remains very popular among both politicians who like majority rule, and business people with majority stakeholdings.  I concentrate on its use in politics, where it is ubiquitous even though its use is often iniquitous.

• In the USSR, majority voting was used when the Bolsheviks were founded; indeed, the very word – большевики, bolsheviki – means ‘members of the majority’; it led to countless deaths in the gulags.
• In China, Máo Zédōng’s anti-rightist movement was binary; it led to the Great Leap Forward and the famine, with again multiple casualties.
• In Rwanda, the 1994 genocide was initiated when Hutu extremists rallied round the slogan, “We are the majority,” ‘Rubanda nyamwinshi’.
• In Yugoslavia, “all the wars started with a [majority vote] referendum,” (Oslobodjenje, Sarajevo’s famous newspaper, 7.2.1999); the same is now true of the farcical and unrecognised poll in 2014 in occupied Crimea, which initiated today’s conflict in Ukraine.
• And in the Middle East, a huge part of the problem was and still is Israel’s majority coalition, its most extreme administration ever.  Israel is roughly 20% Arab; it’s parliament is about 10%; but the government is 0%! Sadly, majority coalitions are regarded as democratic, even when as in Britain in 2017, a tiny minority called the DUP with 8 seats was thereby able to exercise an influence, while parties far larger in size like Labour with 262 and the SNP with 35, or the Lib-Dems who also had 8, were excluded from power.

Despite this international and appalling history, and despite the existence of a few multi-option voting procedures, many politicians stick to majority voting; why? it’s easier to control.  So now, if I may, I’ll add a little maths based on a hypothetical example, to show that majority voting is not only often bad in practice, but also inaccurate in theory.

Imagine a committee of 14 persons debating four options – A, B, C and D – and let’s assume they have 1^st-2^nd-3^rd-4^thpreferences as follows:

5 go for           A-D-C-B

4 choose          B-D-C-A

3 opt for          C-B-A-D

and                  2 prefer           D-C-B-A

In this scenario, their democratic choice depends upon the ‘democratic’ voting procedure:

Same voters, same preferences: four procedures, four different winners.So the winner might be A or B or C or D!  The outcomes, the social rankings as they’re called, are all democratic, but all different!  What’s more, the result with plurality voting – A-B-C-D – is the exact opposite of that produced in an MBC analysis – D-C-B-A.  They can’t both be right!

As Jozef Stalin is supposed to have said, “It’s not the people who vote that count, it’s the people who count the votes.”  (But he didn’t change the procedure; he just cheated: and doing nothing, i.e., adding a zero, can increase a value by a factor of ten!)

___________

In olden times, many societies had wisdoms different from some of our modern, often western practices.  Not slaves but citizens could own what they had made, though land was common; today, alas, it’s nearly all owned.  Another example relates to usury; in days now gone, it was a vice, but it has now morphed into the virtue of credit.  Thirdly, in Asia, both Hindu and Buddhist traditions have questioned binary thinking.

After all, you cannot have a majority vote on “Yīn or Yáng?” – the two are both part of one and the same, a unity.  In 1991, the question in Croatia’s referendums was, in effect, “Are you Serb or Croat?” – yet they are both Slav, Yugo- (or southern-) Slavs; and both are Christian albeit of different denominations, Orthodox and Catholic, (if that mattered, which it did, for it defined their nationalities).  Furthermore, that question ignored the many who were in, or adult children of, mixed relationships, as well as those and others who wanted peace, a compromise, a third or other options.  That binary vote provoked a war.

Yīn and Yáng are not a duality; Serb and Croat also refer to what is almost a unity; and the 2016 binary vote on Brexit, where there were four options ‘on the table’ – EU, EEA, CU and WTO – was also not a duality but a plurality of options.

Basically, a majority vote may be fair if the two options are indeed a duality, if the second is the only possible alternative to the first, as in the question, “Shall we drive on the ‘left’ or ‘right’?”  There are only those two options, the question was fair, and it was posed in 1955 in a referendum in Sweden (where, as it happened, a third option – ‘blank’ – catered for the indifferent).

Alas, Christian Europe includes Matthew 12:30, “He who is not with Me is against Me,” and things are often binary, body and soul, heaven and hell, day and night, land and sea… male and female.  But these pairs are not opposites; in each twosome, one is defined by the other; furthermore, to take the two genders for example, they can only be (pro)creative when they complement and compliment, ideally when they love, each other.

In like manner, as we said earlier, democracy is not just for a majority, and definitely, not just the majority.  A democratic voting procedure should be egalitarian, identifying that option which best represents the common good.  So this article concludes with the coming together of two concepts, one European and psephological, the other Asian and philosophical:

THE DE BORDA RULE: Majority voting may be fair if, and only if, its dichotomy is a duality.