After a period away from regular blogging of the style I don't like putting on Slugger, I'm glad to now be contributing to Everything Ulster. I'm looking forward to getting back into the habit of regular blogging.

When I met up with Beano, we were chatting about a few things, and the conversation came around to the common habit of utterly misrepresented Sir James Craig on one specific matter. I have to say I'm not his biggest fan, indeed I think that he caused a lot of the problems Unionism was subsequently to have, but his decision in 1922 to abolish PR for Stormont Elections from the 1929 election was not one that was intended to screw the nationalists as it is commonly believed, and commonly reported. (Graham Walker's history of the UUP gives a little detail on pages 56, 57 and 71). Indeed this details that the combined Nationalist seat tally dropped by a total of one seat, a situation that largely prevailed in subsequent years. As Nick Whyte details here, the loss of a seat to Nationalism wasn't expected, and was a miscalculation on the part of the draftsmen rather than malicious intent. Local Government is another matter, which I may well return to later in the week, but at Stormont, there was no gerrymandering, and no attempt to reduce the size of the Nationalist caucus.

The simple fact is, the only reason there wasn’t an effective opposition at Stormont, was the Nationalists refused to provide one.

A possibly rather innocuous comment was made a few days ago at Unionist Lite but I've seen this incorrect claim used on Slugger O'Toole to bait unionist commenters on a number of occasions: something along the lines of "Sure you're all subjects up there, I'm much happier being a citizen... blah, blah."

Well, actually, no we're not. There did exist a class of person known as a British Subject and, while technically it still exists, for all intents and purposes it was abolished long ago.

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The media were quick to point out this morning that Gerry Adams has "apologised" to the family of a 12-year old boy his comrades blew to pieces 14 years ago. In reality it was more a series of excuses than an apology and the fact that the media report it in the way that they have is just one example of their will to happily stoop to scary levels to promote the current DUP/IRA administration here.

Anyway, in an attempt to explain away why his buddies saw fit to blow the shit out of people, Gerry came off with a few doozies. I especially liked this MOPE.

"nationalists and republicans ... were denied basic human and civil rights, including the right to vote"
Gerry Adams, Sinn Fein President, Canary Wharf, 2007

We're all used to Sinn Fein playing it a bit fast and loose with the "truth", but this is blatant over-simplification to the point where I'm content it constitutes a lie.

One man one vote operated for all elections in Northern Ireland to Stormont and Westminster. The property franchise (basically one ratepayer one vote) used in local council elections was not a demonic plot hatched by evil unionists to stop nationalists voting. It was a system in use for and inherited from British local elections and was changed to one man one vote in Northern Ireland in the early 1970s - a piffling 23 years before the IRA felt so oppressed they had to go blow some people up at Canary Wharf.

Go on Gerry, pull the other one.

The fact that Adams still, in a time of so-called peace and co-operation, has to perpetuate these myths to demonise unionists and unionism and use lies to retrospectively justify a murder campaign waged against Northern Ireland (and Great Britain) for thirty years belies the fact that there was no justification for the damage Gerry and his friends have done to this country and its people.

I feel compelled to once again direct readers to John Whyte's excellent How much discrimination was there under the unionist regime, 1921-68

Popular romantic depictions of the Easter Rising may owe more to retrospective justification than historical accuracy.

The timing seemed a bit late but last Friday saw an opinion piece by Kevin Myers in the Belfast Telegraph on the topic of Easter Rising celebrations. Criticising the preferred Irish narrative of the Rising and highlighting the double-standards of authors labouring over those Myers asks "What is there to celebrate about the cold-blooded slaughter of innocent people in the streets of Dublin?" What, indeed?

It seems almost inconvenient to the chosen narrative of the Irish national creation myth to ask questions like: "Who gave Volunteer Garry Holohan the right to very deliberately and fatally shoot a teenage boy named Playfair during a raid at the Phoenix Park magazine?" He points out that only one of the 'volunteers' had ever even sought election, and he was "roundly defeated" by the electorate in his quest for a council seat (yes, you heard right, Ireland did indeed have elections before they ceded from the UK).

He's just as critical of the objectives of the leaders of the rebellion as he is of their methods though, blaming them for the decades of economic stagnation that were a feature of the South up to the late 70s.

"It was only when we undid the isolationist consequences of the rising that we began to create a country which could give its children jobs at home rather than one-way tickets on the mailboat to the very land against which the rising had been fought.

The Celtic Tiger - an open economy, with free movement of capital, and with the immigration of hundreds of thousands of foreigners - is the very antithesis of what Pearse and Connolly had wanted. One sought a totalitarian Marxist state, the other a protected Gaelic paradise... ."

Given that there was going to be some kind of home rule most likely within a decade anyway (it eventually came 5 years after the rising), what exactly is there to celebrate?

It was funny to watch republicans reach near orgasm over the withdrawal of the army from Crossmaglen following a job well done. Yesterday the last soldiers left the village Possibly the most amusing thing was the placard carried by some of the terrorist supporting rabble. "Intimidation, torture, murder" in capital letters adorned the middle. Ironically, that's exactly why the army were here for so long - to put an end to the IRA's campaign of, you guessed it, intimidation, torture and murder.

Now seems an appropriate time to thank all the soldiers who served here over the decades of the troubles, doing a difficult and often thankless job in even more difficult circumstances. I'm not sure I can imagine what it must be like leaving your family and friends with only the knowledge that you're doing it to protect innocent life to keep you going so thank you.

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Getting it so unbelievably wrong for decades... and still going strong

According to a report in the Belfast Telegraph the Oirish-Americans of Boston who provided the guns and ammunition used in the slaughter of innocent Ulsterfolk seem to remain an ignorant bigoted old bunch; probably even more so than the people who actually live in Northern Ireland. I don't know if they buy the propaganda through laziness or sheer stupidity, but lets look at a few quotes from people the Tele says "never viewed unionists as the enemy."

Joe Dillon, who promoted "the cause" for decades in the US, seems to hark back through rose-tinted glasses for the days of slaughter and mayhem, of civilians being blown to pieces.

Maybe the relative peace and eventual turning of public opinion against murder leaves a bitter taste in Joe's mouth because deep down he knows he was in the wrong for so many years but doesn't want to face that uncomfortable truth? Much better to bandy about accusations of being sell outs and ramble on about the 'struggle for Irish freedom' (never mind the other uncomfortable fact that people of whatever religious persuasion in Northern Ireland are as free as anywhere else in the western world).

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The equality commission says Omagh District Council has breached its own equality regulations when it erected a monument to the hunger strikers, consisting of a graveyard, a tree for each hunger striker and an Irish tricolour, in the grounds of the Old Dromore Church.

The commission said that by failing to conduct a screening exercise or an equality impact assessment in relation to policies that resulted in the memorial remaining on its property for the last 4 years. To add insult to injury, the memorial was erected on land that used to belong to the Church of Ireland and the council has voted to transfer ownership of the land to the "Dromore Memorial Committee," an organisation dedicated to the glorification of republican terrorists.

The Equality Commission have told them they should now take action to have the memorial removed from council property.

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Ah this ever-so-democratic Labour government, which has gone to war in the interests (in part at least) of "spreading democracy" to the middle-east. While I've never been particularly pro-war or anti-war, I do find the way the government have been acting at home betrays a large dose of hypocrisy.

While they're on this crusade in the name of democracy, let's have a look at what their unelected (should I say unelectable?) Peter Hain has been doing in our own little corner of the United Kingdom.

We have:

• the abolition of our grammar schools and moves to increase the number of private schools, despite a government-sponsored referendum, or household survey (see Appendix 1) to be specific, where two-thirds opposed such a move
• the imposition of water charges to pay, largely, to undo the neglect caused by civil servants over whom we had no control
• and today, confirmation that football will be bullied and blackmailed, by any means necessary, into funding a new stadium in the middle of a field so the government can build a museum to terrorists and yet another bland, soulless retail park

Democracy? What democracy?

An MLA has claimed that "hunger strike commemorations are only being used as another weapon in what republicans would describe as 'the struggle'". Commenting on the use of a parish centre near Dunloy, Co. Antrim, for a hunger strikers commemoration DUP assemblyman Mervyn Storey said he was "extremely disappointed" that the centre was being used to stage what he called "an insult to the victims in north Antrim".

Of course he's right, all the various Sinn Fein's have been trying to use the commemoration of the hunger strikes to bolster their own standing. In Dungiven, Co. Londonderry, there are crudely erected 'memorials' looking like cheap billboards, at least one of which was emblazoned with the faces of the 10 dead criminals and simply the words "Republican Sinn Fein" and another sponsored by the IRSP, showing that it's not just the Provos who are vying to associate themselves with the men who died for their dogma.

Sometimes I wonder how nationalists can so conveniently overlook the fact that these were gunrunners and murderers when they so readily venerate them, praising their "bravery" and how they "stood up for what they believed in". No matter how hard I try, and I sometimes do, I can't see myself ever understanding the mindset that can honour 10 bloodthirsty killers as heroes. Others, I wonder if they really are oblivious to the attempts by Sinn Fein (in all its flavours) to use the hunger strikers for their own political and financial advantage, even more in death than they did when they were alive.

Conviction: Theft and possession of firearms
Sentence: 12 years
Joined Hunger Strike: 22nd June
Suicided: 20th August

Michael (or Micky) Devine was born in Springtown, a former US army camp In Londonderry, in 1954 where the family lived until they moved into a brand new council house in 1960. His father Patrick, a coalman by trade, had served in the British merchant navy during the Second World War. It's reported that Micky had an "unremarkable, but reasonably happy" childhood until the age of 11, when his father died of a serious illness.

After seeing the civil rights marches on TV in 1968, Devine's attitude towards the police changed. As a child he'd been taught not to talk to them and generally to have nothing to do with them, but following riots at the march he developed overnight what he himself described as "an intense hatred" of the police. That night he went out in the city smashing shop windows and stoning the police. In later riots in 1969 Micky would end up in hospital following confrontations with the police.

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