Brendan O’Neill has been lamenting the postponement of elections in Northern Ireland, pointing out this is profoundly anti-democratic. He is of course entirely correct.
However as long as the state is allowed to have more or less unlimited potential power over civil society, it cannot be unexpected that in a tribal place like Ulster, folks in a given community are going to be terrified of The Others having their hands on the levers of power. I suspect trying to share so much power is at worst a futile hope leading to more violence and at best, a Mexican stand-off.
Surely at least part of the solution is to simply bind ALL political power in Northern Ireland hand and foot with a written constitution that places pretty much every aspect of life that really matters off-limits to the vagaries of democratic politics. Worried about those ‘dirty Fenian Tagues poisoning our schools’? So abolish state educational conscription completely and leave it to churches, community groups, socialist-group-hug-collectives, business guilds, whoever, that way the ‘Tagues’ do not have to worry about the ‘stinking Orangemen’ doing the same to their children. Just apply this to all the centralised power functions (such as planning and land use) for full juicy goodness. Once you have done that, it would seem to me that much of the reason to try and bomb people into/out of power becomes… well… pointless.
Democracy is fine, just as long as the people being voted for cannot actually do anything. Think outside the (ballot) box. Be a radical.
Think twice as outside the ballot box, be twice as much a radical, extrapolate the curve to its origin: if less democratic power is good, none at all is best.
NI is planning to move in exactly the opposite direction, with a human rights bill, the draft version of which covers “democratic rights; rights concerning identity and communities; the right to equality and non-discrimination; the rights of women; rights to life, freedom from torture, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, freedom from slavery and freedom from forced labour; rights in the criminal administrative justice systems; the rights of victims; rights to family life and private life; the rights of children; education rights; rights to freedom of thought, expression, information and association; language rights; and social, economic and environmental rights.”
The draft bill also focuses on equality, with the Human Rights Commission pointing out “‘the absence of a free-standing provision guaranteeing equality or imposing a positive obligation on the state to redress inequality.’ Its bill aims to ‘help foster attitudes and mechanisms by which equality can be a reality for everyone.’ It even raises the possibility that the Bill should mandate positive discrimination. This would involve ‘laws, policies, programmes or activities’ aimed to ensure ‘full and effective inequality’ for an individual or group that is disadvantaged on any ground, such as race or ethnic origin, nationality, colour, gender, marital or family status, residence, language, religion or belief, political or other opinion, possession of a criminal conviction, national or social origin, birth, disability, age, parentage, sexual orientation, status as a victim, socio-economic grounds, or any other status.”
In our pamplet on the future of unionism, copies available from http://www.sluggerotoole.com from Monday, we argue that this is bad news for Protestant and Catholic alike. Rights legislation will create dependency, encourage citizens to graze on the state, and provide unlimited opportunities for intercommunal conflict.
there is a snag in that no two people seem to agree on what ‘equality’ means.