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Colonial Mindsets

July 10, 2014, 11:43 am
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The Independent reports on a Donegal priest who has made some embarrassing comments about yoga. Unfortunately, it calls him "Padraig O'Baoill", when, as any good student of Irish knows, his actual name is likely to be "Pádraig Ó Baoill". Is that important? Well, if quality newspapers can get the accents right on French words — often French words that are close to being assimilated — surely they can get them right with folk's names.

To treat an unanglicised Irish name as its English equivalent smacks of a colonial mindset. It's bad enough when BBC newsreaders get coaching on how to pronounce the difficult names of Middle Eastern politicians but prove incapable of pronouncing the everyday Gaelic and Scots word "loch".

Indeed, perhaps the Irish and the Scots are just not foreign enough.
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You Couldn't Make It Up

July 15, 2014, 9:27 am
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The television cameras were filming outside the former site of Kincora Boys' Home this afternoon, and small wonder. Clint Massey, who was abused at the home during the 1970s and has waived his right to anonymity, has called for the hostel's inclusion in the current UK inquiry into child abuse.

For that inquiry the newspapers continue to furnish a veritable surfeit of fresh material. Former Conservative activist Anthony Gilberthorpe has claimed in the Daily Mirror that he procured underage rent boys for the benefit of top Tories at conference parties held at hotels in Blackpool and Brighton, one of which also featured a "table of cocaine". Those "said to be present at the parties included Keith Joseph, Rhodes Boyson, Dr Alistair Smith and Michael Havers", all of whom have since died. While the gay age of consent was then set at the discriminatory level of 21, Gilberthorpe claims that some of the boys "were clearly only about 15 or 16 years old". Of one party at the Grand Hotel in Brighton he said:
"It was held on the night before the bomb went off and afterwards one MP crudely joked that it was a good job it was, or there would have been rent boys falling through the floor."
Now perhaps best known as father of the actor Nigel, Michael Havers was also the Attorney General for England and Wales whose handling of child abuse allegations has been thought controversial enough to compromise his sister, Baroness Elizabeth Butler-Sloss — a circumstance that has now led her to step down from the planned inquiry. Not only that, but in his parallel role as Attorney General for Northern Ireland, Havers also wrote the terms of reference for the original inquiry into Kincora Boys' Home, which explicitly excluded the investigation of any potential offenders except the staff of the hostel.

Further historic allegations of paedophilia have been levelled by the Scotsman at Sir Nicholas Fairbairn, a former Solicitor General for Scotland once memorably described as a "tartan muppet".  An RP-speaker with a penchant for the trews of a clan chief, Sir Nicholas, who drank himself to death in 1995, has been tentatively identified as the "N. Fairburn" listed as a guest at the Elm Guest House in Barnes along with the late Cyril Smith and other politicians who cannot be named.

That visit took place on 7 June 1982, a matter of months after Fairbairn's mistress had attempted suicide at their London flat.
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Sectarian Jokers

July 16, 2014, 11:05 am
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The Belfast Telegraph reports on a picture of a five-year-old girl posted on social media. The girl in question had the letters "KAT" ("Kill All Taigs") written in red, white and blue on her forehead.

So far, so depressing, but what really struck the Blether Region was the headline, "Young girl (5) has sectarian slogan painted on face: Police investigating image showing child with anti-Catholic slur". Quite apart from the fact that readers should be able to make up their own minds about whether a five-year-old girl is "young" (one suspects that they would agree), "Kill All Taigs" is not a "slur". According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a "slur" is 'a deliberate slight; an expression or suggestion of disparagement or reproof'.

When the Blether Region was a hauflin, the word "slur" referred very specifically to the nudge-nudge, wink-wink variety of defamation. In recent years, however, it has come to be associated with racist language, probably for phonaesthetic reasons — "racial slur"— regardless of its subtlety and regardless of whether there is any defamation involved. "Taig" has a quite clear etymology, being a respelt version of "Teague", which itself derives from the Irish forename "Tadhg"; in Scotland, a shortened form of its English equivalent, Timothy, is used in the same sectarian way.

While offensive and, one would hope, attracting the full force of the law, using the word "taig" is clearly not a slur in the dictionary sense, being neither subtle nor defamatory. In particular, "Kill All Taigs" is, to call a spade a spade, an exhortation to genocide — to call it a "slur" is to diminish greatly the degree of criminality involved.
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The Ring

July 16, 2014, 11:21 am
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Perhaps the most obvious question surrounding the allegations of paedophilia swirling around Westminster — assuming that even half of them are true — is how so many individuals with the same minority criminal predilection managed to find themselves rubbing shoulders together.

Thus far, we can determine the following about those suspected: 
  • Most of them are Conservative, although there have also been allegations against the late Liberal MP Cyril Smith, and a living Labour peer first accused while an MP in 1991 and reportedly now too senile to prosecute;
  • Far from any stereotype, many of them are, when they want to be, conventional in their sexual tastes. Keith Joseph and Rhodes Boyson were both married twice, while Nicholas Fairbairn, who boasted of his enormous sexual appetite, had both a wife and a mistress;
  • Most attended boarding school;
  • While it may not be relevant, they were of a wartime generation and thus familiar with both violence and long periods away from women.
There are perhaps three possibilities about how they were able to conspire together: 
  • That the old clichés about boarding schools are — or, until recently, were — true, i.e. that sexual abuse of boys by masters and older pupils was common and, since a substantial minority of victims go on to become perpetrators, self-perpetuating;
  • That, being a secretive "club", they helped each other in the same way as is sometimes alleged in the case of the Freemasons or, in Northern Ireland, the British-Israelites;
  • That they were helped by another power, perhaps MI5, which was almost certainly either blackmailing them or seeking the potential to do so, or a more senior political figure, probably in the Conservative party.
The first two possibilities are almost certainly true on some level, but it would be difficult to prove to what extent.

The third possibility is supported by two suggestions. First, the Elm Guest House visitors' register included a man with a Protestant-sounding name who was said to be in Sinn Féin. That name was almost certainly a pseudonym, while "Sinn Féin" is likely to be a euphemistic reference to the IRA. In all likelihood, the man was either being given a treat by his MI5 handlers, or they were gathering information in order to increase their hold on him. Probably a bit of both.

Secondly, lurid allegations going well beyond paedophilia have been levelled at the former Prime Minister Edward Heath— with whom, coincidentally, Cyril Smith wanted to form a new centrist party in 1978.

Allegations have now been made about Rhodes Boyson, Nicholas Fairbairn, Michael Havers, Edward Heath, Charles Irving, Keith Joseph, former Scottish Conservative Chairman Alistair Smith, and Cyril Smith, along with numerous living politicians.
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Nelson McCausland and Tara

July 16, 2014, 11:40 am
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While the Blether Region has long suspected it, Chris Moore's article in the Sunday World is perhaps the first reputable published source to link Nelson McCausland with William McGrath, as well as neatly summing up some of the other strands in the Kincora case. The Blether Region had heard from another journalist some months ago that Mr. McCausland was a member of McGrath's legal paramilitary group Tara.

In recent years Mr. McCausland has also attended events organised by the British-Israel World Federation. As an Ulster-Scots activist, at one time heading the Ulster-Scots Heritage Council, he has worked with fellow British-Israelites Clifford and Anne Smyth, as well as Lord Laird, who is also named in Moore's article as having links with McGrath.
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Farewell, farewell

July 17, 2014, 1:40 pm
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Slugger O'Toole has some interesting quotes from former Fianna Fáil Senator and TD Martin Mansergh. Much discussion has been taking place in Northern Ireland about the possible knock-on effects of Scots independence. Comments on Slugger tend not to be particularly informed, with undue weight accorded to the scare stories and biased poll analysis of the mainstream media and an unwarranted focus on the Orange Order, which, although clearly able to embarrass the "no" campaign, is fairly marginal to party politics at a national level in Scotland.

The Blether Region's interest had previously focussed on the effect on Catholic voting patterns, its assumption being that Protestants will continue to vote solidly for the Union but that Catholics' Unionism will be nipped in the bud — at a time when they are on the verge of forming a majority.

More recently friends have pointed out that Unionists are likely to be disconcerted by Scots independence and as a result move to the right — which will of course do even more to alienate Catholics from the UK.

Now, however, Martin Mansergh has made a very interesting point, and one that the Blether Region has to admit didn't occur to it.
"First Minister Peter Robinson has made it clear that if Scotland voted Yes, Northern Ireland would remain in the UK with England and Wales. While it might lead to some rethinking of Ulster-Scots as a pillar of unionist identity, it is unlikely republicanism would gain new traction, despite any initial flurry of excitement."
Given the fact that Ulster Scots remains an extremely problematic emblem of Unionism, with many ordinary Protestants opposed either reflexively or on the basis of the movement's clear lack of linguistic professionalism, there could be pressure for the Ulster-Scots Agency and similar bodies to be scrapped. Were that to happen, though Ulster Scots would be diminished, it wouldn't disappear as a phenomenon. Even the more extreme activists in a linguistic sense, regardless of what inspired them in the first place, are likely to have internalised their aims and probably don't know how mad they are — umlauts and graves can seem very normal after a while if you're writing them every day — and there are of course also Catholics and non-political enthusiasts interested in Scots.

Against disestablishment, one would also have to consider the economic benefit to the many non-linguist Unionist politicians with both a large and small "p" who have inveigled themselves into publicly funded posts and expenses regimes on the basis of Ulster-Scots "culture".

What we could see, therefore, is the linguistic aims of the Ulster-Scots movement being scaled back. However, an equally plausible result might be a re-alignment of less ideological Unionists behind the more extreme elements that aim to make Ulster Scots into a distinct language — an angry farewell to Scotland and to moderation.
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Kincora and the Covenant

July 17, 2014, 1:52 pm
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The Belfast Telegraph is carrying a series of articles about the Kincora scandal. In one of them, former PSNI Assistant Chief Constable Alan McQuillan says that the claims of involvment by the intelligence services "may be credible" and calls for a full investigation. In another, framed psy-ops specialist Colin Wallace promises to "reveal the secrets":
"Since leaving the Army he said he had been told that boys from Kincora were being taken to Brighton to be abused. 
While in the Army he believed well-connected paedophiles were using the home, including Sir Knox Cunningham, who was parliamentary private secretary to former PM Harold Macmillan.
The abuse allegations in the home centred around a secretive loyalist paramilitary organisations known as Tara, which met in Clifton Street Orange hall at the time and was largely made up of Orange Order members. Some, like William McGrath, who was later jailed for child abuse at Kincora, were in an Orange lodge known as Ireland's Heritage."
Other deceased Northern Ireland movers and shakers sometimes mentioned along with Sir Knox are Joss Cardwell and Sir James Kilfedder, although rumours about them may concern homosexuality as much as paedophilia.

If boys were taken from Northern Ireland to Brighton, it would strengthen suspicions that there was a link between the Kincora and Elm Guest House scandals, perhaps with some of the same personnel involved, in which regard those suspects with known connections on both sides of the water, people such as Anthony Blunt, Knox Cunningham, Lord Mountbatten, and Maurice Oldfield, are likely to be of interest. That calculation would also apply to any Northern Ireland politicians elected to Westminster during the period and falling under suspicion, as well as to some military personnel.

It is noteworthy that the article states that "abuse allegations [...] centred around [...] Tara". Although some takes on the scandal hold that McGrath was spared simply because of his (separate) usefulness as an agent provocateur, and although fellow paedophile John McKeague of Red Hand Commando was also involved with the organisation — along with, at one time, numerous members of the UVF — the claim that Tara was central to the abuse is, as far as the Blether Region is aware, new.

In that context, the third article, by political editor Liam Clarke, provides interesting clarity.
"Not all members of Tara were involved, but within its ranks there operated a ring of outwardly respectable and born again Christians who were also child abusers. They were ripe for exploitation by intelligence agencies and William McGrath, the leader of Tara, often boasted to other members of his links to the intelligence service."
Tara was once memorably described as a "bizarre homosexual army", a tag that has caused some consternation. In Chris Moore's book The Kincora Scandal, he states that "it has never been alleged nor is there any suggestion that any other members of Tara were homosexual" (p. 9). As we have seen, however, paedophile abusers of young boys may come from a "heterosexual" as well as a "homosexual" background. Moreover, the confused mixture of liberalism and bigotry that constituted 1970s attitudes to sexuality may not adequately have distinguished between being gay and being a pederast — something, one might argue, also true of Chris Moore's book in parts. To the Blether Region's knowledge, William McGrath was the only member of Tara ever to be convicted of child abuse. Whether he and McKeague, who was assassinated in January 1982 and whose membership of Tara is disputed, together could constitute a "ring" is open to question.

That suggests that other abusers, insofar as they are still with us, have not yet been brought to book.
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Who was in Tara?

July 18, 2014, 12:17 pm
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Given the renewed media interest in the membership of Tara, it might be a good time to gather up what we know. Although, as the Blether Region reported yesterday, the Bel-Tel's Liam Clarke has implied that a meaningful percentage of Tara members were involved in the abuse of children, that is highly unlikely to be the case, since for most of the period in question the organisation was simply too large for that. As its Wikipedia entry confirms, "by 1974 Tara had an estimated 300–400 members, which was significantly less than the group had at their 1969 peak".

Among McGrath's more prominent colleagues in Tara were, according to Wikipedia:
Davy Payne is listed as "an associate". Whether John McKeague was a member of Tara is disputed, but since he was a paramilitary, a known friend of McGrath and an active abuser of boys, the distinction is perhaps academic.

One website lists Rev. Robert Bradford as a member. Since Tara was a legal organisation and Bradford a known British Israelite, that would be unsurprising. It would also lend credence to suggestions that Bradford was investigating Kincora (rather than an RVH corruption scandal) at the time of his death.

As the Blether Region recently reported, a journalist informed it some months ago that Nelson McCausland was a member. The fact that he was not mentioned as such in The Kincora Scandal can therefore be ascribed to his not yet having attained a high profile when the book was published in 1996.

Chris Moore also states that "Sir Knox Cunningham, Jim Molyneaux, Sir Reg Empey, Lord Laird, Ian Paisley and Nelson McCausland" were at one stage linked to McGrath, but without stating if any of them were members of Tara.

A more interesting question is perhaps who was in Ireland's Heritage LOL 1303, the much smaller private Orange lodge that McGrath founded. The group was known for its Irish-language banner, which earned it the nickname "the Fenian lodge". The banner was made by Tommy Robinson, with the Irish translated by the father of someone who is now a well-known Irish-language academic (in the event it emerged in a somewhat imperfect form). The family lived in Mountainview Drive, not far from Clifton Street Orange Hall, where Tara held its meetings.

The Kincora Scandal lists some of those in attendance at the lodge's last meeting, from which it is possible to reconstruct the following list of members.
  • William McGrath
  • Worthington McGrath, "Worshipful Master", McGrath's son, who is now a North Down businessman active in Ballynafeigh Walkers. As an aside, McGrath's other son, Harvey Andrew McGrath, is a former chairman of the Prudential and a supporter of integrated education; he was awarded an honorary doctorate by QUB in 2008.
  • Clifford Smyth
  • John McKeague
  • David Kerr, "Pastor", presumably the same David Kerr involved in the National Front, the Ulster Independence Movement, and Third Way
  • David Hanna
  • R. Stewart
It is important to stress here that no one is making any allegations relating to child sexual abuse about any of the living members of Tara listed here. Neither was it a proscribed organisation. Neither was it involved in violence.
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Polemical Alignments

July 21, 2014, 10:56 am
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It is a fact that some people grow more right-wing with age. Sometimes it's to do with changes in their lives: parenthood; the achievement of a modest sort of prosperity; bewilderment at a world of never-ending change and collapsing verities. In other cases the reasons are more complex. The journalist Melanie Philips, for example, used to be staunchly left-wing in her views but migrated to the right, now colourfully describing herself as a liberal "who has been mugged by reality" (others call her "Mad Mel"). Perhaps the Blether Region is doing her a disfavour by suggesting that Melanie may be one of those people for whom a single issue, in her case her support for Israel through thick and thin, has been allowed to define her politics, the establishment of an archipelago of colonies on land seized in 1967 having occurred hand in hand with the rise of the free marketeers of Likud— followed, for both reasons, by a revolution in attitudes to the country among the European left.

Some years ago the Blether Region encountered Aidan Doyle, an Irish-language academic who held strong views on the North. The civil conflict there was, in his view, the product not of history but of the sheer badness, both personal and communal, of Northern Nationalists. Now Dr. Doyle has penned a confused article on the Irish language subtitled "No amount of campaigning can transform the situation of a weak language". That comes as something of a surprise, since it goes against much of what we know about minority languages, i.e. that the provision of services, achieved by just such campaigning, is the key to their survival.
"A minority takes article 8 of the Constitution seriously, maintaining that it has a right to State services through the medium of Irish. What is interesting about this group is that it consists for the most part of non-native speakers, people who have decided that Irish is an important part of their identity, but whose first language is English.
This is a rather uncomfortable fact. One can sympathise with a native speaker of say Flemish in Belgium demanding that their children be schooled in their native language, but it is more difficult to grant victim status to a native English speaker from Dublin demanding the same service for their offspring. The fact that something is enshrined in the Constitution does not necessarily mean that it is morally justified."
It is a true that there are unenforceable and embarrassing provisions in the Irish Constitution, but those concerning Irish are not (or at least need not be) among them. One wonders also where the talk of moral justification has sprung from. Creating and enforcing linguistic rights has a sound practical rationale, and one that most Irish people understand and support. To suggest otherwise is to adopt the reductively utilitarian attitudes of Northern Unionists. But of course, that may be the attraction, since according to Dr. Doyle the appointment of two clueless Béarlóirí to the Department of Arts, Heritage and Gaeltacht Affairs has led to "the usual flurry of protests from Irish-language organisations and Sinn Féin Deputies". In fact, although it would indeed now be difficult for anyone who feels that the Irish language is very or fairly important to vote Fine Gael, such protests were by no means limited to the Shinners.

Dr. Doyle's view of how many people are fluent in Irish is just as peculiar.
"Every year a few dozen students graduate from third-level institutions with an impressive command of the language, and I know many foreigners who speak Irish really well. But most people simply don’t have the time, dedication and plain linguistic ability to achieve that level."
The Blether Region recently marched from the Falls Road to Belfast city centre with 6,000 people to protest at the absence of a language Act in the North, and, although virtually all of them spoke Irish, the majority had never been to university and never will. It is true that the Irish of learners is not always grammatically or idiomatically perfect, but they are Irish-speakers nonetheless. The same is true of English-speakers in Ireland, who are similarly the product of language shift.

If Dr. Doyle thinks otherwise, he should try explaining to an Englishman or American that the Fine Gael Shoneens are after leaving Irish in the ha'penny place and see how they react.

But, of course, for whatever reason, he probably wouldn't say that.
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Willie Mullan

July 24, 2014, 11:55 am
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The Belfast Telegraph continues to provide evidence suggesting that there is much more yet to emerge about the Kincora Boys' Home scandal. This time the finger is being pointed at Willie Mullan, a friend of Ian Paisley and former homeless alcoholic who became a preacher after successfully turning his life around.

Mullan committed suicide at the age of 79 in December 1980, using a legally held firearm. At the time, his death was thought to have been the tragic epilogue to that of his wife, but it has now emerged that he had been questioned about Kincora shortly before. He was a friend of both the convicted paedophile William McGrath and Joss Cardwell, who the Bel-Tel is now openly stating "preyed on kids at the home", and who in 1983 followed Mullan in taking his own life, likewise after being questioned by the RUC about Kincora.

The revelations appear to confirm long-held suspicions that some sort of prostitution ring was operating at the boys' home. They also confirm Ian Paisley, in whose church both William McGrath and John McKeague were at one time active, as a key figure in the scandal. As the Belfast Telegraph points out, however, although Paisley expelled McKeague and was alleged to have ignored warnings about McGrath, "There is no suggestion Dr Paisley knew anything about claims linking Mullan to Kincora."
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Dubious Dark Alleys

July 31, 2014, 11:48 am
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Henry McDonald has an illuminating article over at the Belfast Telegraph in which he describes how the fraught circumstances of the 1970s "took the State down some morally dubious, highly questionable dark alleyways, one of which was the Kincora Boys Home scandal."
"Both [Chris] Moore [author of the book The Kincora Scandal] and myself are confident that one loyalist extremist, who is deeply mistrusted even by the UDA and UVF, has connections to Kincora as well as being a suspect in a number of other paedophile-related incidents.
This character, however, has never been seriously investigated or questioned by police over what he knew about Kincora or any of the other allegations that were made about him during the 1980s. 
We are equally convinced that this individual was a state asset and long time "agent provocateur" within extreme loyalism for decades and that the role meant he was also a protected asset.
One of his former associates was John McKeague, an ex-leader in the terror group the Red Hand Commando, who has also been linked to or had at least knowledge about the abuse regime at Kincora."
Those who have been following the Kincora scandal may well have their own ideas of who might fit the bill. One man in particular — like McGrath, a long-time British-Israelite preacher who has straddled the line between evangelicalism and Loyalism for most of his life — has been bitterly denounced by former protégés who have fallen foul of the law. He is also someone on whom Henry McDonald has reported, in veiled terms, for many years.

Quite apart from the question of whether the guilty are to be brought to book, or the calumniated vindicated, through a formal legal process, the fact that the suspect is also an alleged agent provocateur raises some interesting legal questions that could conceivably result in the convictions of his one-time acolytes being quashed. If that were relevant only to Northern Ireland, where peace is now well established, it might not be a problem. However, similar tactics are almost certainly still being employed against others, ranging from animal-rights activists to anti-fracking campaigners — and, most notably, British Muslims. For that reason, the state security apparatus will be loath to let the matter get to court.

If it does, expect an unofficial plea bargain of the kind that William McGrath enjoyed 30 years ago.
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Zany Analyses

August 20, 2014, 11:40 am
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Most Scots will by now have noticed that English-based commentators' takes on on the prospect of independence can leave something to be desired, what with their insistence that Scotland's is a "romantic nationalism", their quaint belief that England subsidises the country, and their glib acceptance of Unionist politicians' declarations about everything from the desirability of a shared currency to Scotland's continued membership of the EU and NATO. That the above statement can be true of otherwise experienced and thoughtful journalists of course comes as a shock to the many Scots who had hitherto enjoyed their work. But it sums up much of the unequal relationship. Why on earth bother swotting up about 8% of the population?

Not that England's journalists are alone (or even the worst) in that context. After all, England is, still, the same country, so there is a limit to how ignorant one can be. Irish pieces on independence can be spectacularly bad. Thus Aonghus Ó Ceallaigh claims both that the three Unionist parties have all signed up to devo-max and that independence agitation might lead to the emergence of sectarian warfare in the west of Scotland:
"The doomsday scenario of course is that a close referendum result in Scotland leads to violence on the streets and underlying sectarian fault lines in particular in the west of Scotland merge with increasing dissatisfaction with the direction of events in Northern Ireland, unlikely as that may seem at this juncture."
Ahem, yes.

Almost as weird, however, are the opinions of Northern Ireland Protestants, people for whom political union is part of their identity and who might be expected to be a little better informed about their near neighbour.

In a BBC website article, East Belfast community worker Gary Lenaghan states that ""If [independence] happened I think an influx of people might move from Scotland to the remaining part of the UK to stay in the union, and their first choice of residence would probably be Northern Ireland".

Obviously, like.

Meanwhile "fellow Rangers supporter" Jim Wilson can envisage Scots politics beginning to mirror those of the North: "Not in a physical violence way, but I can see it turning into saxonised [sic] politics — voting for pro-union candidates in the future," he says. 

Whether he intended to say "polarised", "radicalised" or "balkanised" is anyone's guess, but one could hardly imagine that independent Scots Unionist parties might form along the lines of the DUP and UUP. After all, the integration of Labour and the Lib-Dems into the well-oiled — in both financial and beverage terms — Westminster system is in all likelihood a large part of what is keeping them Unionist.

And we still have a month to go.
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The Language of Political Identity

September 8, 2014, 11:20 am
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Wilson McLeod has a thoughtful article over at Bella Caledonia discussing "The non-issue of Gaelic in the indyref debate". Of course, Prof. McLeod — a diaspora Scot whose facility and dedication comprehensively put the rest of us to shame — draws embarrassing attention to our lack of cultural nationalism even before he embarks upon his analysis.

While concentrating on Gaelic, he also reminds us that the low profile of the language, which has traditionally not been linked to party-political or constitutional issues in Scotland, is probably still superior to that of Scots, whose activist circle has been strongly Nationalist since at least the time of MacDiarmid.

The more the Blether Region thinks about it, the clearer the affinities between Scots and Ulster Protestants become. At first glance, of course, they seem very different. The former are nowadays an increasingly secular and moderate group; the second, not so much. And while Scots can have a wide range of constitutional and cultural preferences while remaining Scots, Northern Ireland is very much in the business of cultural and political packages, whether about Highland dancing or Palestine-Israel.

On the other hand, the predominant lack of interest in language among Scots Nationalists would very much find an echo among Ulster Protestants, who generally view Irish as an inward-looking waste of time and have been sceptical about accepting Ulster Scots into their cultural portmanteau — as would the conditional, somewhat picky nature of their loyalty to the state.

Perhaps the chief differences on that front are that in Scotland 1) there is no longer any ethnic antagonism to Gaelic, which is nowadays an uncontroversial, if neglected, source of national symbolism and 2) Northern Ireland, or at least the Protestant half, clearly needs England a great deal more than Scotland does.

Whether attitudes change after independence remains to be seen. But apart from anything else, there is a referendum to win first.
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BBC Ee-jits

September 11, 2014, 11:25 am
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The BBC has an interesting report on the finding of a 300-year-old gold "posy" ring near Newtownabbey.
"The delicate ring, which has been dated to the late 1600s and is 85% gold, bears the Old English inscription 'I noght on gift bot gifer'.
That translates as: "Look not on the gift, but the giver"."
If the quotation has been correctly transcribed, the "I" is presumably a form of the verb "ee", in this case used with the preposition "on".

People with a modicum of linguistic knowledge, of course, refer to the speech variety in question not as "Old English" but as "Middle" or, less precisely, "Older" Scots. Indeed, going by the picture of the ring on the BBC website, it may even read "nocht" rather than "noght", which would reduce its "Englishness" yet further. Here, of course, the BBC's ignorance is unfortunately only a part of the much wider ignorance of the Scots leid in Northern Ireland.
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Tweaks and Pique

September 11, 2014, 11:39 am
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The University of Ulster's Alan Trench has penned a long and rather melodramatic article on negotiations in the event of a "yes" vote — with the focus perhaps unsurprisingly on what he sees as the dire uncertainties of independence.

But do independence-supporters really have grounds to get worked up? For example, Prof. Trench asks why the UK should continue to dole out pensions to Scottish citizens after independence, it being borne in mind that UK pensions are of course not paid out of a pensions fund, which would be far too sensible, but rather from the proceeds of general taxation.

Presumably in this case he is talking about the administration of pensions payments to those living in Scotland rather than the right of Scots citizens to receive them in England; if the UK's arrangements with Ireland are anything to go by, Scots are likely to be retain all the rights of British citizens under the law. Indeed, for many people on both sides of the border, the choice of nationality will, as in Northern Ireland, merely be a choice of passport.

Prof. Trench claims that "the obligations of the UK Government to its citizens living in Scotland are not ended immediately, but they are attenuated". But could the UK Government simply stop administering the pensions of people living in Scotland regardless of the fact that Scotland has had no chance to establish a pensions system of its own and is willing to finance them? They certainly couldn't if Scotland, as most neutral observers expect, remains in the EU. Nor could they realistically do something so obviously against the interests of natural justice. After all, Scots pensioners have paid national insurance too, and many of them will have worked in England at some point. And while people living in Scotland do not have a vote, almost half of Scots have relatives on the other side of the border. Suppose the UK Government did stop administering pensions to people living in Scotland. The English 10% or so, along with many others, would probably move south, and the UK Government would then have to pay for them until they died. Indeed, the likelihood is that legally any Scot would have the right to move to Berwick-upon-Tweed and receive a pension there.

Another hole in Prof. Trench's argument is to assume that independence-supporters actually want a common currency with England and membership of NATO. Indeed, some of them may not even wish to be part of the EU. The Blether Region is not part of the "yes" campaign and not privy to its thinking, but one cannot avoid the conclusion that at their heart these are referendum stances aimed at winning over the doubters. Once the referendum has been won, they become far less pressing. It has been stated, for example, that a common currency would entail limits on borrowing and perhaps tax rates, and that, while Scotland and England are currently an optimum shared currency area, their economies would be likely to diverge, eventually causing the kind of stresses seen in the eurozone. It may, therefore, be attractive only as a temporary solution, allowing Scotland the time to prove its fiscal rectitude as an independent state and England to do something about its huge balance-of-payments deficit — which Prof. Trench signally fails to mention.

There is also obvious potential to tie the issue to that of Trident. Prof. Trench is absolutely correct when he points out that the SNP has little room for manoeuvre when it comes to the ultimate aim of removing the subs; suggestions to the contrary from some quarters are pie-in-the-sky stuff, since the party would split if it tried to strike a long-term deal on English nuclear weapons. If England could bring itself to suffer a currency union for ten years or so, however, Trident could stay that long too, which would at least enable them to adapt Milford Haven or Falmouth (both, incidentally, on the Celtic fringe). The alternative for Restukanien would be bleak: it would be perfectly legal for Scotland to start laying mines around Faslane on the day of independence. As many independence-supporters don't want Scotland in NATO, there would also be scope to link negotiations to the country's continued membership. No currency deal, no NATO, and some very angry Americans for England to deal with. After all, Scotland has no enemies — except, perhaps, as readers of Prof. Trench's blog might well infer, the auld one.

Nor have even the staunchest Unionists suggested that Scotland would be permanently shut out of the EU. If England is so hard on Scotland in negotiations, what likelihood is there that Scotland will not veto its constant childish demands for opt-outs and re-negotiation at EU level? Is it not therefore in England's interest to have a fair settlement? And is England's only concern that Scotland not become a failed state? Surely it is also in England's interest to protect its trade links — and part of that will mean avoiding recession in Scotland.

He also raises the issue of a common travel area, which he states is "much more marginal to rUK, and much more important to iScotland". Living as he does in Northern Ireland, Prof. Trench must surely be aware that a common travel area with Scotland is hugely important to people here, both economically and socially, and much more so than vice-versa. But as usual, the North seems to have fallen off the radar. In any case, if Scotland remains in the EU, there would be much less of a case against a common travel area, since any Scots citizen would be entitled to work in England anyway (indubitably so if, as expected, they retain the right to UK citizenship).

Similarly, Prof. Trench doubts that the BBC would agree to the re-broadcast of its services in Scotland. It currently allows the Irish to watch for a small charge. Presumably Scotland would be required to pay only slightly more. The Scottish Government has suggested that Scotland and England allow each other their programming for free, which would be an even better deal for England. Even in the unlikely event that there were no deal, it's worth remembering that many supporters of independence in any case now have serious misgivings about the BBC and, if there is a "no" vote, may soon stop paying their licence fees. For those who do not share their concerns, there are always satellite dishes.

Overall, Prof. Trench's analysis smacks of wishful thinking and pique, perhaps conditioned by the fact that his lucrative work as a planner of "enhanced devolution"— or "tweaks" as one might also say — will be severely curtailed by the advent of independence. Creating an imperfect and unstable devolutionary settlement well short of devo max and in periodic need of review and reform, on the other hand, is clearly in his interest.
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Gideon's Bible

October 1, 2014, 10:00 am
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Many people will have been incensed at George Osborne's plans for an absolute freeze on working-age (and child) benefits until 2017-18. His reasoning, that their development should mirror that of wages since the beginning of the great recession, is obviously flawed, since most of them have been frozen since 1980, while, even with the current difficulties and another planned freeze for the public sector, wages are now much higher than they were then (indeed, MPs' pay, which seems not to be subject to restraint of any kind, is set to rise 11% in a single year).

Be that as it may, students of Northern Ireland politics will have gleaned something completely different from his announcement. It is now absolutely certain that Stormont will fall and that, for a period at least — and probably a long one at that — there will be direct rule from Westminster. Indeed, even had there been no plans further to reduce the welfare bill, that outcome would have been quite likely, since the DUP and Sinn Féin have failed to agree on replicating earlier welfare cuts in Northern Ireland — to which, Scots Nationalists take note— the competence is devolved. The result has been a budget squeeze and the imposition of mounting fines from Westminster.

All ill and bad, but what relevance has any of this to language? Well, apart from the fact that language, like many parts of government, is suffering from the slump (and apparently also from the recovery), renewed direct rule from Westminster raises again the question of the language Act promised under the St. Andrews Agreement.

While there may or may not have been some excuse not to legislate during devolved government, there is clearly none when it is Westminster itself that is calling the shots.
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Past, Present and Kincora

October 1, 2014, 10:06 am
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The simmering scandal of Kincora has once again bubbled its way into the newspapers, with the News Letter arguing for its inclusion within the remit of inquiries into other serious instances of child sex abuse, and a Private Member's Motion debated at Stormont.

And it is a suave piece of news management on the part of UUP leader Mike Nesbitt during that debate that is perhaps the most interesting tidbit to emerge.
"So, there remain key questions, despite all the inquiries to date. When did the abuse begin? Who was responsible for it? Who knew about it? When did they know about it? Why was it not discovered sooner? Was there a cover-up? If there was, in whose interests did it suit people to cover up what was happening? What was the nature and extent of any involvement or knowledge of unionists, the Orange Order, the business community, military people and senior civil servants, including the secret services?
For decades now, there has been speculation that senior politicians were involved, including members of the Ulster Unionist Party. If the Ulster Unionist Party is implicated through individuals or corporately, I stand here to say that I will accept that guilt. The time has come to find out what really happened.
In a previous life, I worked with journalists, including Chris Moore, who has dedicated himself to exposing the abuse at Kincora as well as the Father Brendan Smyth case. I have been very critical of the Catholic Church and the way that it covered up members who abused children. I have been critical of political parties in the House whose senior members and family members were involved in abuse, and they did not do the right thing. So, if it is our turn as the Ulster Unionist Party, so be it. If any of our members were guilty, let us expose that, and I will acknowledge our guilt. There should be no hiding place because, if this is true, it is a national scandal. If it had happened in Birmingham, Swansea or Glasgow, it would be a national scandal. If it happened here in Belfast, it is a national scandal. Therefore, it needs a national investigation."
Does Mr. Nesbitt know something that we don't, or at least strongly suspect it?

As an aside, the Blether Region notes that Nelson McCausland, now on the back benches, spoke about the Kincora scandal as if it were something to which he had not even the most tangential connection. It is true that Northern Ireland is a small place, and links of some kind or other are to be expected and thus might not always be newsworthy, but why the silence over the fact that he knew the most egregious abuser William McGrath and was — according to one journalist — a member of McGrath's legal-but-loopy paramilitary band Tara? A reference to McGrath "having fooled me too" would surely have been appropriate.

Of course, Mr. McCausland, much of whose electoral support must come from conventional evangelical Christians, may simply be loath to draw attention to his belief in British-Israel theories, his membership of the BI-tinged Cross of Saint Patrick LOL 688 (co-founded by McGrath) or his speaking engagements at events hosted by the British-Israel World Federation, in which fellow McGrath acolyte and professional Ulster-Scot Clifford Smyth is an office-holder.
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"Scots English"

October 6, 2014, 10:11 am
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The Guardian has an article on what it originally called "Scots English" that unfortunately regurgitates some of the commonest misunderstandings about the speech variety. For a start, if it's English, as many academics quite respectably believe, the national adjective might just as well be "Scottish". The use of "Scots" in this case is no doubt influenced by the native name, but it all rather puts the Blether Region in mind of those many people here in Ireland who habitually say "Scottish" except for some reason in the case of "Scots Gaelic", i.e. just where it's most liable to confuse.

Of course, not everyone will agree: a lecturer friend said he rather liked "Scots English" as a name because it captured the hybridity of how most Lowlanders now speak and the uncertain status of their tongue. Nevertheless, standard terminology it ain't. In fact, the Wikipedia entry on Scottish English states up front that it is "not to be confused with Scots language".

The difference between dialect and slang is another area where the paper could do with going back to school. The word doo is clearly the former (being a geographically delimited cognate of Standard English dove) but not the latter (i.e., not a jokey or familiar low-register synonym for the initiated).

And then there's the title of the article, which the Guardian changed as a result of comments from readers. Apart from anything else, half of it's not about Scots at all but about Scottish Gaelic — which, as the comments section confirms, had to be re-written. And it's still not right: gràidh should surely be a ghràidh, whether the hearer actually registers the fricative or not. Oh dear.

Of course, at the risk of going off topic, the fact that the Guardian appears to know so little about the languages of Scotland may also go some way to explaining its reporting of the country's recent independence referendum ...
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Mocking Convention

October 14, 2014, 12:38 pm
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Outrage has been expressed in many quarters about the UK Government's apparent decision to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights— which may even result in its being ejected from the Council of Europe while some far less democratic states in eastern Europe (notably Russia) remain. Should current plans ever come to fruition, it would raise a number of issues:

The ECHR was made directly justiciable through British courts by an Act of Parliament. In Northern Ireland, however, that justiciability is guaranteed by agreements that the UK Government cannot breach without extremely serious political consequences, conceivably extending to renewed civil strife.

If Northern Ireland keeps its right to have the ECHR directly justiciable, which it probably will owing to the fact that the current system is itself underpinned by an international treaty in the form of the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement, will post-referendum Scotland be allowed to do the same?

If Scotland can, in relative isolation, make the ECHR justiciable, can it do the same for other Council of Europe treaties and protocols, such as the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages? At present the Charter has no legal status in the UK, and its provisions are in any case a "shopping list" rather than an iteration of binding rules. There is surely scope, however, to give legal backing to some of those provisions, such as by introducing an absolute right to Gaelic-medium education. Although GME is coming from a low base, the more pupils attend, the greater the practicality of copperfastening such a right in law, and the greater the pressure to do so.
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No More Language Cuts

October 14, 2014, 12:44 pm
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Although the need to find a settlement on social security may be a little less urgent now, following the agreement of an emergency £100 million loan from Westminster that will surely never be repaid, it's nice to read that there will be no cuts to the Northern Ireland budget for autochthonous languages.

Apart from anything else, of course, much of that budget would be going on the cross-border language bodies anyway — with little room for last-minute one-sided tweaking.
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