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Showing posts with label Matt Treacy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Matt Treacy. Show all posts
Matt Treacy ✒ Former world UFC Champion Conor McGregor has tweeted support for the people of East Wall who are continuing to protest against the placing of a migrant accommodation centre in the area.


I stand with the people of East Wall. And no I do not want to be a politician. Just that they have to answer to me. https://t.co/AGHSBrrrPi

— Conor McGregor (@TheNotoriousMMA) December 17, 2022

His declaration of support for his fellow Dubs has garnered a considerable, and climbing, number of likes and the many comments on the post are overwhelmingly supportive. One of the responses led to his informally throwing his hat into the ring as a possible successor to President Michael D. Higgins who must depart Áras an Uachtaráin in 2025 unless the NGOs stage a coup and reinstall him as President for life.

Having cast my eye on any of the other likely contenders, if the bould Conor does manage to secure a nomination, and his support for East Wall will not have boosted his chances within the Party – apologies, the parties because of course they all differ fundamentally on, em,…. – then he may have the tentative vote of growing numbers of people who feel increasingly unrepresented by their TDs.

I’d fancy my chances of correcting that. https://t.co/oTqQJQPWss

— Conor McGregor (@TheNotoriousMMA) December 17, 2022

Meanwhile the protests have continued, with another successful blockade of the Port tunnel having taken place on Friday evening during rush hour traffic, against leading to considerable traffic disruption across the city centre and approaches.

The resilience of the protestors over the past weeks has led to evident unease among the political establishment.


This week a report in the Phoenix which regularly publishes stories that seem to reflect the internal views of senior Sinn Féin figures commented on the fact that some of the party’s “less sophisticated support base … may be susceptible to crude nationalism.” Pretty pathetic given where Sinn Féin are coming from historically, but reflective of the disjunct between the left liberal staffers and leadership and many of their traditional voters in Dublin and elsewhere.

Meanwhile, one of the participants in the East Wall protests has challenged Conor McGregor to put his money where his mouth is.

Well if u stand with us here in East Wall come down and stand with us on the cold night's on the streets


Matt Treacy is the author of Houses Of Pain

Conor McGregor Stands With East Wall As Protests Continue

Matt Treacy ✏ If we have learned one thing about the Irish elite over the past week it is that they treasure the concept of privacy. 


What a chap does on his night out is his own business and nobody has any right to be interfering or even commenting on it. After all we do not want to go back to the days of the “Valley of the Squinting Windows.”

Now, the sincerity of all of this might be easier to accept if we did not have the experience of 2020 and 2021 to reference when the same people, almost to a man and woman, poo-pooed any notion that a person had the right to privacy when it came to decisions about their own or their family dependent’s health.

Some of the same people – and I will resist the temptation to juxtapose one or two of their contrasting takes on individual privacy and freedoms – had no hesitancy in advocating measures against private citizens that would not have been out of place in Shanghai or Beijing.

Enough said. Other than it forms a convenient segue into another area of private behaviour that the state seeks to regulate. And once again, it is the left who are predictably seeking to extend that regulation just as they did during the Covid Panic. I am referring to the Gambling Regulation Bill (2022) that reached its second stage in the Dáil last Tuesday.

The Bill, as introduced by Minister of State James Browne, seeks to amend the legislation governing betting in order to “protect people from falling prey to addiction.” Which begs a number of questions; firstly, whether it is the business of the state at all to protect people from themselves, which is what they are proposing to do.

It also raises the question as to what constitutes addiction in the first place or whether such a concept is valid. As someone who drank to excess, I can pretty much claim to have some “lived experience” in this area and believe that drinking too much is a bad habit, and that like all bad habits it is something that the individual, if they so choose, can change.

I certainly don’t believe that anyone else was responsible for my bad habit and certainly not that the majority of people who drink without it becoming a bad or harmful habit ought to be punished by charging them more, closing pubs, banning advertising or even making them feel guilty about their drinking or responsible for those of us who could not drink sensibly.

The same applies to betting. Huge numbers of people bet in Ireland and throughout the world, even in totalitarian states such as China where it is illegal. Indeed, the fact that that monstrous regime regards betting as another area of human activity to be controlled and banned ought to give pause for thought. Maybe even to the devotees of an allegedly “kinder” version of the same ideology.

Of the numbers who bet in Ireland, the Health Research Board, as quoted by several TDs during the Dáil debate, estimate that there are 12,000 problem gamblers. That, in the wider scheme of things, is a small number of people. Less than 0.25% of the population. No one doubts that such individuals may cause misery for themselves and their dependents when that problem is of major dimensions, but as with my and others bad drinking habits, their situation is not going to be changed by anyone other than themselves. It is not anyone else’s responsibility, neither the state’s nor betting folk in general, to change other people’s bad habits.

To put the problem into wider context, the British Gambling Commission which has driven a similar campaign against betting there, found that problem gamblers account for 0.7% and cited statistics from the United States of 0.4%. Significantly, there is a much higher, although still small, proportion of problem gamblers among those who use slot machines and various other electronic or online games of chance.

Sports betting is different and while Deputy Alan Farrell believes that it is only recently become a “ubiquitous part of sport in Ireland” he might check out the many references in both Irish popular culture and world culture to discover that betting has always been an intrinsic part of sport. Indeed, it is quite likely that the first organised sports were for the purposes of some wager or other.

There was also some confusion on the part of contributors to the Dáil debate who appear to be under the impression that all of the money spent on betting represents a loss. (Well, as the chap said, I wouldn’t mind laying their selections on the exchange.) Which of course is not true. As evidence of this, while billions of Euros are cited as losses here, the main Irish bookmaker Paddy Power posted profits of €91 million in 2021 and their reach goes well beyond Ireland.

In horse racing, the bookmaker can expect to make an average profit of around 10%. That is based on the built in % that theoretically guarantees that the “bookie always wins.” Of course as with all other statistics the average over the famous long run can cover all sorts of short term anomalies. If the favourite wins the Grand National, and the next three horses in the betting fill the places, then the bookie will lose, often heavily. Likewise, as when last year at Aintree this year the favourite got chinned late by a 50/1 outsider, then they make way more than 10%.

The same applies to punters. Most punters are small stakes players and win or lose a small amount. Then there are a small number of people who lose a lot – usually people who can well afford to and who bet in large sums as a form of pleasure, and a small number of people who make a good living out of betting. Others make smaller profits. Others slightly larger losses than the Saturday Lucky 15 punter who is bound to lose because it is a stupid bet if you are serious about making a few bob over the long term.

As is the lottery and yet the National Lottery here is going to be given exemptions from most of the legislation for no other reason than that the state benefits from it. So do local communities, but that is not the point. For as John McGuirk pointed out here last month, not only are the chances of winning anything abysmally small compared to sports betting, but the sums spent on the lotto are huge and the vast majority of that does constitute a loss to the punters, way out of proportion to the % losses of people who bet on horses or soccer or rugby.

Finally, and to return to where I began, all of this relates to the new puritanism of the sanctimonious liberal left. They viciously approve of libertarianism when it applies to things they approve of. When it comes to other things, like betting, their tone as evinced by some of them in the debate is of condescending disapproval.

Louise O’Reilly loftily declared that she failed to see what relevance betting has to sport but that she supposed that “it has some relevance for some people.” Well, that is all she needs to know. The lesson she ought take from that is to mind her own business. No TD was ever elected to tell people how to manage their betting, or their drinking or their eating. The sooner some of them realise that the better. Especially given all the other exemptions they allow for a person’s private business, even when conducted in public.

Matt Treacy has published a number of books including histories of 
the Republican Movement and of the Communist Party of Ireland. 

Gambling Bill Provides Another Outlet For The New Puritans

Matt Treacy ✒ In a book I published five years ago, I referred to the danger that Sinn Féin’s placing all its hopes for the achievement of a united Ireland on a possible border poll involved the risk that one day they would be exposed like Han Christian Andersen’s Emperor.


Many readers will be familiar with the phrase and with the plot which revolves around two conmen who persuade the Emperor that only he is smart enough to see something that is completely impossible to achieve. Anyone who wished not to be thought stupid went along with the pretence until it all rather embarrassingly fell apart.

That is not to claim that the achievement of a united Ireland is a fantasy. The fantasy and the pretence is that it can be achieved through a border poll – or even that such a poll is likely to be held any time soon, as within even ten years, in the first instance. (The only valid poll, in my opinion, would be a 32-county poll asking exactly the same question north and south on same day.)

I borrowed the title of that book, A Tunnel to the Moon, from former H-Block blanketman and presider over the discussion site The Pensive Quill, Anthony McIntyre, who likened the probability of a united Ireland being achieved through the Good Friday Agreement to the prospects of reaching the moon through a terrestrial tunnel.

Today’s Ipsos poll published in the Irish Times once again, and for the umpteenth time, proves that this is so. 50% of those polled in the Six Counties stated that they support Northern Ireland remaining in the United Kingdom. Just 27% said they favoured Irish unity. Another 18% said that they did not know, and 5% that they wouldn’t bother voting at all.

There is little comfort to be garnered by Sinn Féin from the poll, particularly given the significant numbers of Catholics (more than 20%) who are effectively unionists, whatever party they may vote for. The only crumb is that 55% of those surveyed in the north said they would like to see a referendum, or border poll, on the issue.

Unfortunately for Sinn Fein a poll remains in the gift of the British government – as the party know well themselves from the deal they signed up to in 1998.

For a party so much devoted to the Good Friday Agreement and its partitionist institutions, they don’t appear too well acquainted with the actual text.

Certainly not with the relevant section, Annex A, Schedule 1(2) which sets out that:

Subject to paragraph 3, the Secretary of State shall exercise the power under paragraph 1 (to hold a poll)if at any time it appears likely to him that a majority of those voting would express a wish that Northern Ireland should cease to be part of the United Kingdom and form part of a united Ireland.

There is no such evidence and there has not been such evidence over the past quarter of a century. In 1998, the combined vote for parties who supported a united Ireland in the Stormont Assembly was 40%. In May last, this had risen by less than 1% to 40.8%. There is virtually no chance that that figure will reach close to 50% and convince the British government to call a poll.

Likewise, while some nationalists have resorted to the distinctly unrepublican hope that the Fenians will outbreed the Orangies at some stage – deeply ironic given the strong support for abortion within Sinn Féin and the SDLP – the recent Census provides little solace either.

While persons identifying themselves as Catholics or from a Catholic background now comprise the largest religious group, at 45.7%, that is not synonymous with those who identify themselves ethnically as Irish. Interestingly that figure of 29.1% is remarkably close to the 27% in the Ipsos poll who support Irish unity. It is also close to the sort of support Sinn Fein get in elections, 29% in fact last May. Similarly, the vote for unionist parties was over 53%.

The almost 60% who identify as British, Northern Irish or ‘British and Northern Irish’ is likewise not too far from the number who state that they wish Northern Ireland to remain part of the UK. Indeed, some of that number are likely to support the other, albeit marginal, option of an independent Northern Ireland.

So on what possible grounds are Sinn Féin claiming that either a referendum/poll on unity is likely, or that it would lead to a vote in favour of Irish unity? Mind you, as one Twitter wag has observed, their hyperactive social media brigade has been unusually quiet today.



No doubt they will come up with a new directive from the Politburo in the coming days that will allow the believers to continue to hone their shovels for another assault on the moon. Many of their activists believe pretty much anything anyway, as was also recently pointed out by Anthony McIntyre when he observed that the only people he knew in Belfast who believed that Gerry Adams was never in the IRA were people who had been in it at the same time.

But do they even believe in it themselves? Or is the border poll an essential comfort blanket and a never never promise designed to provide the ongoing and perhaps perpetual illusion that a movement that effectively surrendered its core objective a quarter of a century ago is still on course for victory? Except that their victories now are on par with setting out to climb Everest and raising your flag on Cave Hill.

What the figures do show when assessed on a national basis is that there is a majority in favour of a united Ireland. Just as there was in 1918, the last time there was a 32-county vote on the issue. The entire point of Partition, which republicans opposed, was that it blocked the establishment of a 32 county stat, through every means including state terrorism.

How to bring that about, with protections for the currently other main national/ethnic group on the island, remains the key.

If things proceed as they are, this question will be irrelevant within a generation. “Irish unity within the EU” – as is the “vision” of Sinn Féin – is as meaningless as the “vision” of those who sent young men to charge at German trenches for Home Rule.


Matt Treacy has published a number of books including histories of 
the Republican Movement and of the Communist Party of Ireland. 

Unity Poll Pours Cold Water On Sinn Féin Border Poll Fantasy

Matt Treacy ✒ I was watching a BBC film about Boris Pasternak, the great Russian novelist and author of Doctor Zhivago, recently. 


What was interesting was that when the regime decided to go after him in the late 1940s they did not initially send the NKVD to kick his door down.

What they did instead was to use the allegedly independent Writers Union and the officially approved Novy Mir literary journal to first refuse to publish Pasternak and then denounce him as a “black sheep.” In typical Stalinist fashion all of this was used as a pretext to imprison Pasternak’s mistress Olga Invinskaya and only the death of Stalin himself probably saved both herself and Boris from death.

It is admittedly stretching the analogy on my part, but do certain people in RTÉ consider themselves to be tasked with a similar role to the Writers Union and the press “organs” of late Stalinism? Do some of them regard themselves as gatekeepers for the government or official line on certain issues?

Certainly, that is the impression that might be garnered from ther RTÉ tweet last night in response to the claim by Fianna Fáil Clare TD Cathal Crowe that perhaps his own Government might consider a cap on the number of Ukrainian refugees taken in to Ireland. The RTÉ News tweet both highlights the fact that Crowe was speaking “contrary to official Government policy” but also, and probably more importantly from a particular perspective, that he was questioning, perhaps even advocating a breach of, “EU law.”


And if there’s one thing that we learned at our granny’s knee it is that no good comes from questioning EU law. It is the modern Irish liberal elite’s version of playing hurling in the fairy ring.

The law in question is Council Directive 2001/55/EC that was approved in July 2001 in response to the refugee crisis in the former Yugoslavia. It was triggered for the first time on February 24 this year in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Article 25 of the Directive refers to the “capacity to receive such persons” on the part of each member state, so there is no legal obligation as is implied by the RTÉ tweet to agree to take unlimited numbers.

As the Article states:

The Member States shall receive persons who are eligible for temporary protection in a spirit of Community solidarity. They shall indicate – in figures or in general terms – their capacity to receive such persons.

Even though the Irish government and all of the Dáil opposition parties have stated that there ought to be no limit, that is a political decision and not one that is legally binding. Other states, including France, have clearly some notional idea of what that limit is given the proportionally smaller numbers they have taken in.

Therefore, when Deputy Crowe states that it is his belief that his own county of Clare and Ireland as a whole has reached that capacity he is perfectly within his rights to do so. The stretching of that capacity is indicated by the enormous pressures being placed on accommodation, schools, health and other public provisions.

It is a crisis that is not helped either by the fact that a large number of people – better described as economic migrants – from other countries, including those who are not considered to be unsafe such as Georgia, are clearly taking advantage of the current situation and indeed the ambiguity around the Directive to stake a claim to being provided with asylum and all that goes with it in Ireland.

Other members of the Oireachtas, including Senator Sharon Keoghan, who yesterday claimed that the Irish state simply does not have the “structural capacity” to sustain the current demand, and Tipperary Rural Independent TD Mattie McGrath who echoed the widespread public unease at what is taking place within communities, have elicited condemnation and even heckling from both government and opposition Senators, TDs and Ministers when saying similar things to Cathal Crowe.

Minister Roderic O’Gorman yesterday defended his government’s decision to accept unlimited numbers of people from countries other than Ukraine on the basis that “Ukraine is not the only war on our planet right now.”

It may not be, but what we do know, and this is supported by the official statistics, that the majority of people presenting themselves for asylum here are not from countries where there is a war, or indeed any other internationally recognised human rights crisis that would justify such numbers.

There is no war in Georgia. There is no war in Albania. There is no war in Algeria, nor Nigeria, nor South Africa, nor Zimbabwe. This is where the majority of non-Ukrainians seeking asylum here, many of whom present no documentation on their arrival in Dublin airport, originate. It is simply unsustainable and unjustifiable that any state be expected to take an unlimited number of such economic migrants, while also fulfilling its commitments to persons genuinely fleeing the war in Ukraine.

The pile on against Crowe is remarkable not just for the reason that he is the first TD in good standing with one of the coalition parties to question the state’s capacity, but that it also highlights how few opposition TDs and Senators, other than those referred to above as well as a small number of others, have posed such legitimate questions.

Indeed, when Sinn Féin TD Aengus Ó Snodaigh was asked for his reaction to Deputy Crowe’s statement on Raidió na Gaeltachta this morning his only response was to reiterate his party’s belief that there ought to be no limit on asylum seekers, and that the only issue seemingly is the need to ensure proper provision.

Which of course avoids the obvious paradox that there is a limit to any state’s capacity to do this. As indeed is recognised, at least formally, in the EU Directive governing the current situation. Cathal Crowe and other elected representatives are raising questions that are within the letter and the spirit of the relevant “EU Law” so revered across the political and media establishment.

Matt Treacy has published a number of books including histories of 
the Republican Movement and of the Communist Party of Ireland. 

Cathal Crowe And Others Are Perfectly Entitled To Question Ireland’s Migrant And Refugee Capacity

Matt Treacy ✍ In March 2021, at the height of the embarrassing kneeling tribute to the corrupt Black Lives Matters organisation, I pointed out the utter hypocrisy in relation to the soccer association of Ireland (FAI) insisting that League of Ireland and the international teams indulge in that ludicrous and meaningless gesture.


The hypocrisy I alluded to was that the FAI had not made one single comment regarding those who were protesting at the hosting of the World Cup by Qatar due to human rights abuses and the alleged corruption that had seen the event awarded to that country. 

The Norwegian equivalent of the FAI had seriously debated whether to take part in the event if they qualified, and other national teams including the Germans had made some form of protest.

As it happened, Norway’s participation was decided by their not having won a place. That had never been an issue with the FAI team of course, but to compound matters they played Qatar in a friendly match in the Aviva. And yes, of course they kneeled before it.

Who were they kneeling for? Certainly not for the 4,000 slaves who the Global Slavery Index estimated were living as chattels of the Qatar elite in 2018. Nor for the more than 6,000 migrants workers who are believed to have lost their lives during the construction of the stadiums and facilities to host the World Cup.

The FAI are not unique of course. You will find little or no reference to human rights abuses in Qatar if you search the accounts and statements of our own hyperactive commentators on what is happening in Poland or Hungary where the exercise of the sovereign and civil and legal rights is still maintained. One of the reasons for that has been Qatar’s support for Hamas and its alleged role in bankrolling the international Palestinian solidarity movement which of course is run by the left.

Qatar has vast funds at its disposal, and while small in population this provides it with a large degree of clout not only among the extreme Islamist groups and their leftist allies, but through its other donations including to respected bodies such as the Brookings Institute.

The western left has always maintained a hypocritical silence on the abuse and terror directed by this state and other Islamist allies against their own political opposition – including left-wing activists in Gaza, as well as gay people, women’s groups, trade unions and journalists. Then again, much of the left accepted all of that over the generations when it was taking place in the police states of eastern Europe and Cuba.

Qatar and the World Cup provides a fascinating insight into where late-stage rampant consumerism – of which professional soccer and its best known teams and players is one of the leading totems – clashes with the reality of how corporate finance operates. The Qatari ruling class of a small number of vastly wealthy families is a key player in finance and regional politics, as underlined by its ability to “buy” the World Cup, the audience for all of this is conflicted.

That conflict comes not only from the fact that there are slaves in Qatar and that thousands died so that billions of people could watch soccer on their TVs, but that the Islamic nation offends against some of the other totems of western consumerism. Chief amongst those concerns is the whole LBGBT+ thing – as well as the treasured right to get trollied while watching a match.

Both are rights of course. As are the right not to be owned by another person, or to face the prospect of falling to your death every day you go to work. But then, the liberal left has been too busy with pushing extraneous and petty matters in open societies where slavery ended 200 years ago, and which provide full legal and civil rights to construction workers and gay people, to bother overmuch with the actual slavery and terror and abuse of gay people in places like Qatar and China and Cuba and Iran, which in the infantile imagination of your average western leftie are “progressive.”

All of those things will still exist when the World Cup ends and after some soccer player maybe becomes a Warholian 15 minute hero for wearing an armband in front of some billionaire who is laughing at them. They can stop fooling themselves: the complicity is in being there. Resistance is not some virtue signalling after the deed has been done and the bank account topped up.

Matt Treacy has published a number of books including histories of 
the Republican Movement and of the Communist Party of Ireland. 

The World Cup In Qatar Highlights Hypocrisy Of Western Left

Matt Treacy ✍ It is not every day that Sinn Féin pays homage to someone who has worked for the British Home Office (stop sniggering down the back ….)


But one such former servant of Whitehall and leading anti-racism guru, Dr. Lucy Michael, managed to get name checked on several occasions in contributions made by Sinn Féin TDs to the love in on the proposed “hate speech” Bill.

I say TDs advisedly as very few TDs write their own Dáil speeches and Sinn Féin is now top heavy with left activists on one part of the NGO circuit. The left- liberal NGO business is to the post bellum post-nationalist Sinn Féin what the ITGWU once was to the Workers Party. Which explains the Shinners’ almost total surrender of policymaking in key areas to “advocacy” companies, and the clear lack of historical self-knowledge on the part of the staffers.

No better illustrated than by the fact that it was left to Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín to point out the total incongruity of a party that was once banned under Section 31 of the Broadcasting Act now indicating that it is supporting a Bill that “will encroach on people’s ability to speak freely and respectfully about issues of real importance.”

 

Now, others might claim that Section 31 was required because Sinn Féin at the time it was in force supported the Provisional IRA before it surrendered as part of Sinn Féin’s house training. However, as was pointed out by other opponents of Section 31, the atmosphere put in place by such state censorship – backed by the sacking of the RTÉ authority in 1972 following an interview with IRA Chief of Staff Seán Mac Stiofáin – led to much wider restrictions.

Soon it became the norm for RTÉ in particular, pushed by the same type of left activists now behind the current “hate” legislation, to cast suspicion on anything that they considered to be even vaguely nationalist, or reeking of “hush puppy” Provoism. We have exactly the same mentality now deployed against critics of a wide range of establishment holy cows. If this Bill is passed it will have the imprimatur of the state and the enforcing powers of some new form of political policing.

And all enthusiastically backed by Sinn Féin. It would be amusing were it not so pathetic.

Their enthusiasm for censorship is indicated by the fact that of the 13 speakers in the debate, 6 were from Sinn Féin and all basically parroting the same NGO script. Several of said NGOs got a mention including the far-left Far Right Observatory which was referenced as an alleged authority by Kildare SF TD Patricia Ryan.

Ironically, some might say, because it was not that long ago that Deputy Ryan herself was the target of a pile on by similar characters when she referred to a modular housing project for refugees in Newbridge. Indeed, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that had the legislation which is being pushed by the far left and supported by Sinn Féin was in place when she made her remarks that she might even have had her own collar felt by the Diversity Cheka.

Lest I be accused of exaggeration here, Ryan was accused of being one of “those who take advantage of vulnerable people to further their hateful agenda” when she rightly referred to concerns that her constituents had in relation to housing and the seeming priority given to refugee accommodation. Although perhaps after a visit to the FRO Room 101 she is now one of those “susceptible to this hateful messaging” who has taken advantage of the means she now recommends to “educate to prevent reoffending.”

Tóibín also pointed out to the ideological underpinnings of the proposed Bill and that it has specific targets. Not least being that persons who “adhere to the scientific understanding of gender” are potentially targets of this, as they have already been – and he referred to J.K Rowling and to the hysterical backlash against women who recently articulated that view on RTÉ’s Liveline – informally through the left liberal control of much of the means of cancelling dissenters.

He bluntly asked the Minister if she believes, as do many of the supporters of this Bill, that “women saying that a woman is an adult female is transphobic and hate speech?” We shall await her response with interest.

The whole problem with the Bill was similarly illustrated by Minister Helen McEntee in her opening speech. She referred to tackling “crimes motivated by prejudice, hate or bigotry” as the motivation of the Bill. Attacking people is already a crime, as are a whole range of other offences that in many cases are obviously motivated by hate. Presumably most murders, other than those carried out by professional hitmen, are motivated by some degree of antipathy to the victim.

Which leads one to question why there is a need for any other legislation, especially given that many actual crimes go undetected and leniently treated in the view of many, including the victims of such crimes. Would Urantsetseg Tserendorj have been less likely to have been murdered had this legislation been in place? Hardly. The person charged with her murder claimed that his intention was to rob any person he presumably believed to be less likely to be able to defend themselves.

Nor is there any reason why there ought to “protected groups” in Irish society who have their very own laws to protect them. Groups which the Minister defines on the basis of “race, colour, nationality, religion, ethnic or national origin, descent, sexual orientation, gender, including gender expression or gender identity, sex characteristics or disability.”

Pretty much everyone could be included in such a wide ranging definition, but of course they are not. What chances would Enoch Burke have were he to take a case against the avalanche of hate he has been subjected to in many quarters, not least the social media which the left liberal pearl-clutchers are so angsted about, were he to claim he was being hated on for being a white, Irish, heterosexual, Protestant male? None.

The reason being of course is that there is no NGO which has decided to set itself up as the self-appointed defender of such a minority. There is no money in culchie prods with Biblical names. There are hundreds of millions in claiming to be the protector of other minority groups, most of whom probably are not even aware of, and certainly do not benefit from, the existence of some of the groups reverentially referenced by leftie TDs.

The only other TD to place their opposition on the record was Paul Murphy who amidst a ream of slogans and crèche Marxism pliants about racism and fascism and capitalism – all of which are “disgusting” – did at least recognise that sections of the Bill provide the state with potentially sweeping powers to prosecute legitimate forms of protest and expression, including from the left.

Unfortunately, Sinn Féin have so immersed themselves in the Marxoid waters of resentment and victimisation while expelling any remnant of the republican defence of free speech, that they no longer even see that.

As Peadar Tóibín noted republicanism ought to mean that “each individual has and should have an equal right to that articulation of views and the equal articulation of speech.”

Something, of course, which the people who told Peadar to “fuck off out of this office before something happens” have never believed in.

Matt Treacy has published a number of books including histories of 
the Republican Movement and of the Communist Party of Ireland. 

Hate Speech Bill Is Section 31 For Our Times

Matt Treacy ✒ A report published by the UNESCO Education Centre on the school system in Northern Ireland has come to the somewhat predictable conclusion that having children from the two main ethno-religious communities in the same classrooms will foster greater understanding and presumably solve the centuries old division that still eludes resolution.

28-October-2022

The report, “How education needs to change: A vision for a single system” was authored by Dr. Matt Milliken and Dr. Stephen Roulston of Ulster University. One of the sponsors of the report, Brian Dickie who is on the board of the Ireland Funds, has made no secret of his belief that “integrated education” is “a fundamental prerequisite for lasting peace and a healthy society.”

Which sounds all very well and good, except that involuntary integration tends not ever to be the solution to deep-rooted historical problems, particularly in a colonial context. It has long been the siren song of Irish and British liberals of course, and in February of this year President Michael D. Higgins made it the theme of a speech he delivered in Enniskillen in which he decried the separation of children based not only on religion but on the languages taught in schools and the sports they play.

On the following day, an Irish Times op ed lamented the fact that “two decades after the Belfast Agreement, 93% of schools remain segregated by religion.” Which they are, and the reason they are thus divided is mostly because most parents choose to send their children to such schools.

Just as many of the middle class readers of the Irish Times choose to send their children to schools which are socially and economically segregated, even where that is not reinforced by fees.

If it is the right – and it is – of a prosperous south Dublin liberal bourgeois family not to send their children to the same school as the people from the local authority estate, or children from the Direct Provision Centre or Traveller accommodation who are highly unlikely to be in the catchment area of the better rugby schools, then it is similarly the right of a Tyrone or Fermanagh nationalist/Catholic or unionist/Protestant to make the same choice.

In common with a lot of aspirational stuff deemed to be good for people, there is a disjunct between polling in which people express a desire to see “every school integrated” or “climate change” and what people do in practise.

Even Sinn Féin, while obliged to namecheck the need for “secular education and multi-denominational schools,” also referred in a submission on integrated education to the need to respect the existence of an “option for parents.” Indeed, just last year Sinn Féin MLA, and former Stormont Minister for Education, John O’Dowd criticised the integrated schools for their lack of provision for the Irish language and Gaelic games.

A large part of the reason for “segregated education” is of course connected to historically embedded and enforced demographic and geographical factors.

For example, in another Ulster University report published in 2021, it was found that a majority of people in the north live at least three miles away from either an integrated primary or post-primary school. Perhaps the most telling aspect of the maps illustrating this is that the shorter distances are found in Belfast and in east Ulster towns, where of course spatial segregation and indeed inter communal tensions and occasional violence are most prevalent and where there is little demand for integration of any kind. Quite the opposite as the “peace walls” indicate.




TEUU-Report-08-Parental-Choice.pdf (humanists.uk)

Anyone who believes, therefore, that integrating schools is the solution to solving all of the other problems is being rather naïve. They are also neglectful of the fact that historically, the segregation even of workplaces has been imposed by violence by unionists. There were regular instances of mass expulsions of Catholic workers from the Belfast shipyards and large engineering works right up until the 1970s.

The insistence that communities in the north ought to take part in some ill-conceived involuntary integration for their own good, also contrasts with the overweening and, dare one say it, overbearing insistence by many of the same people on promoting “diversity” and “multi-culturalism” in other contexts. In the case of education it often involves voluntary segregation.

Even where an integrated approach is favoured it is most often of course, as noted above, a case of Not In My School Yard (NIMSY). There are not too many middle class children of primary school age in south Dublin whose own learning is dependent on the needs of immigrant children who cannot speak English, as it is in the inner city.

Some immigrant families prefer to send their children to separate schools and if it is okay for members of minority religions such as Islam to have their own faith-based schools, and it is, then why is it not okay for members of the Church of Ireland? And yes, both are entitled to the support of the overall state education system if that is the desire of a sufficient number of families.

The conclusion of the UNESCO sponsored report makes it clear that the authors are about far more than simply changing the education system. They obviously see it as a means to radically alter the overall shape of society in the north of Ireland.



In an interview, one of the report’s authors, Dr. Matthew Milliken, laments the fact that most students attend “schools that are dominated by a Catholic ethos, present a particular image of Irish culture and identity or they attend schools that are influenced, if not controlled, by Protestant denominations and propagate a particularly British view of society.”

Well, so what? These are fundamental distinctions within Northern Ireland and the two largest communities and their political and other leaders, for the time being at least, clearly believe them to be important enough to preserve, and that the best way in which to do so is to maintain their own educational and cultural institutions.

There may come a time when the great big melting pot will distil all of this into some inane trans global anti-culture – which does not appear to have eliminated societal divisions much less violence in its Athens of Los Angeles and San Francisco – but in the meantime perhaps people ought to engage with reality rather than aspiration.

As an Irish nationalist I can recognise that the belief that one day Ulster prods were all going to wake up and start speaking Irish and wielding hurleys was utterly naïve. Equally naïve is the belief that the final solution to the out-workings of colonialism in Ireland is to force everyone to be some updated version of the objective of the 1831 National Schools system; with a “Happy European” or “TransAtlantic Child” replacing the previous Anglophone pedagogical ideal.

A future united Ireland will have to recognise and accommodate the most ancient and fundamental diversity on this island before it leaps headlong into a multi “cultural” dystopia. The fact that these remain central to the politics of the country might also provide food for thought for advocates of the latter.

Matt Treacy has published a number of books including histories of 
the Republican Movement and of the Communist Party of Ireland. 

Is Forcing Integrated Schools The Solution To The Northern Problem?

Matt Treacy ✒ Yesterday, October 27, marked the 55th anniversary of the granting of Royal Assent to the British 1967 Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act. 

28-October-2022

The provisions of that have subsequently been extended to Northern Ireland with the support and complicity of Sinn Féin and the SDLP.

Since that time there have been over ten million abortions carried out in England, Scotland and Wales. The annual figure is now over 200,000 compared to 35,000 in England and Wales in 1968.

The statistics for the first years of legalised abortion appeared to indicate that the number of illegal abortions – estimated at up to 200,000 by the Liberal MP David Steel whose private members bill formed the basis of the Act – had been grossly exaggerated.

Ending “back street” abortions and alleviating the pressures on working class families were the two main reasons given by those who spoke in favour of the legislation. Curiously, the current narrative that abortion is somehow part of the liberation of women was little rehearsed, in Westminster at least.

Nor was support for abortion a default option for all of the left. While only a small number of MPs voted against the Bill, it should be noted that among those who did support it was Margaret Thatcher, while several of the most powerful speeches opposing were given by left wing Labour MPs, two of them from Irish backgrounds.

One of these was Simon Mahon who was the Labour MP for Bootle who said that his previous support for abortion had ended when he had met the parents of one of the “subnormal children” whose destruction it was assured would help to make them more prosperous and happy. Mahon, who had been in the British army in World War II, pulled no punches in making the comparison between abortion and what that war had been about.



Another Labour MP, William Wells, stated that abortion “undermines respect for the sanctity of human life,” and dismissed as a canard the claim that it was part of creating a “progressive society.” Kevin McNamara, one of the few Labour MPs who consistently supported Irish unity, pointed out that the experience of other countries including Japan, Sweden and Hungary, was that legalising abortion did nothing – as was being claimed – to reduce the actual numbers of abortions.

The Labour MP for Pontypool in Wales, Leo Abse, declared that passing the Act would represent “a proclamation of defeat on behalf of the community,” and place them philosophically alongside “the great life deniers” of the National Socialists in Germany against whom he had fought. Referring to those on the left who regarded abortion as something to do with socialism, Abse said:

I am not impressed by the argument that because the rich do something stupid working class people should follow their example…. Some of my Friends should not think that they are waging the class struggle . . . 

While supporters avoided the triumphalist rhetoric of many of their later Irish imitators – including those TDs whose highpoint of their political careers was the copying of British abortion legislation – some of the key devices were similar. There was a focus, for example, on the danger to a woman’s life through the possibility of mental health issues leading to suicide.

Supporters within the general community both highlighted this and in many cases claimed that doctors would so rarely recommend an abortion on “mental health” grounds that the overall incidence of abortion would decline. Now of course, the vast majority of abortions in the UK are facilitated on that basis – so more than 9 million abortions have been carried out on that ground.

The main philosophical argument was typical of the liberal left of that period – and shared more cynically by utilitarian free market “conservatives” – was that aborting children likely to become a social burden would reduce both the pressure on working families and reduce the overall economic costs of supporting them.

I think the latter position, which was evidently shared by Thatcher and other Tories, was adequately answered by William F. Buckley in his response to libertarian novelist Ayn Rand’s support for abortion which led her to oppose Reagan because of his stated intent to curb the impact of Roe versus Wade. Buckley considered the Randian libertarian right’s support for abortion to be part of what he agreed with Whitaker Chambers was an “unfeeling meritocratic” individualism.

The left liberal position was best put by Dr. David Owen who was then a Labour MP and later leader of the Social Democratic Party. Owen clearly believed in something called “social medicine,” which was part of the “progressive and inevitable” improvement of humanity under the benign watch of societal engineers.

Owen claimed that legalising abortion would give doctors the power to deal with the problems which he claimed led to women seeking such a recourse, and that through the enlightened intervention of chaps such as himself and the promotion of better sex education and the greater availability of contraception, that maybe the incidence of abortion would actually be reduced.

Of course, Owen’s naïve belief in our capacity to “control the evolution of humanity” has been demonstrated to be a myth. Not least of all by the manner in which abortion has become in all too many cases not an option of last resort but, as Tory MP Jill Knight pointed out, something that would lead to a situation in which any woman who “felt that her coming baby would be an inconvenience would be able to get rid of it.”

The failure of the human race to live up to the expectations of the w-uld be moulders of a “person of a new type” is proof of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s dictum that if human nature does change, and there is no evidence from history that it does, it evolves at a geological pace. A comparison of where Britain is now compared to where it was in 1967 offers no solace to those who would claim that abortion leads to a healthier society.

Of course those in Ireland who still believe as their counterparts have done for generations that adopting English “civility” is the way to do probably do not care. At least the proponents of abortion in Westminster made some sort of pitch that it was part of the brave new world that appeared possible back then. Their late imitators make no such claims, nor do they care about much other than ticking another box on their “progressive” bucket list.

Matt Treacy has published a number of books including histories of 
the Republican Movement and of the Communist Party of Ireland. 

Thatcher Supported Legalising Abortion In Britain ✑ While Many On The Left Were Opposed

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