The Smithwick Tribunal has been rumbling along with occasional interest from the media. It will rumble on a while longer.
Interest has been particularly excited when those active in politics, police or security services have made broad statements relating to the context of the period. Unsurprisingly.
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The News Letter is attempting to stimulate debate around what legislation might be usefully presented at Stormont, with a series of articles entitled ‘Laws We Need’.
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The Northern Ireland electorate heads towards the 5 May with little enthusiasm for the choice being presented, little interest in the institutions, and little understanding of what the Assembly has achieved over its past four years.
No doubt there will be general media attention in the run-up to the election on issues around the budget, perhaps, education, almost certainly, and health. Why bother? With all the main Parties at the Executive table, and assured a place if not the same seats following the election, the electorate has little alternative but to vote for the same old same old, or not at all.
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The short video at the bottom of this post is about as neat, succinct and certain in defining classical liberalism as you will find anywhere. It builds on Dr Nigel Ashford’s short book Principles of a Free Society, commissioned by the Jarl Hjalmarson Foundation which identifies the core elements to a Civic Society: Democracy; Equality; Free Enterprise; Freedom; Human Rights; Justice; Peace; Private Property; The Rule of Law; and Spontaneous Order.
In Northern Ireland there are many who loosely use the term ‘liberal’ to flatter themselves. Mostly, they haven’t a Liberal ideal or principle in their head. They use the term ‘liberal’ in the same way as they talk of ‘rights’: a vague sense of moral superiority wrapped in rhetorical cliché.
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There is no doubt that the Parades Commission has become an impediment to dialogue by acting in an arbitrary and inconsistent manner. This may because the Commission is caught between it’s regulatory responsibilities, its inability to understand that it has no ‘public order’ role, and the tendency to accept advice or comment coming directly from politicians (or the NIO) as being of greater importance than the facts before them in a particular and local case.
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Republicans and nationalists seem to have very thin skins. This readiness to take offence is almost impossible to address, least of all politically, in a civil society. In Northern Ireland, Republicans have been adept at turning an emotional response to something misunderstood (deliberately or by default) into a political cause. ‘Resident’ groups have regularly claimed the great offence taken at Loyal Order Parades, without any great examination or challenge as to the nature and cause of that offence. There has followed the “right not to be offended”, again almost taken as read.
The summer interview with Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty by the Economist (below) will not have been welcome in Republican Nationalist circles.
Around 12 minutes in, Ms Chakrabarti says: “I would say to people of faith, and to people who are not of faith, that the one right that none of us should ever have is the right not to be offended”.
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