Michael D Higgins insists he is President of Ireland, refuses to commemorate partition

Certainly appears to be one of their number that decided on the wording of the invite.

Funny...nightclub

The difference is in Ireland most people attitude to this "fuss" is meh. He has very little influence.

Indeed I reckon the vast majority of people in the south, are too busy with normal life to be bothered with nationalism. (other than housing) They are more concerned with how Brexit effects their pocket and normal life than any sort of flag waving. Really only becomes an issue when someone makes an issue of it and gets all in their face about it. Then you get push back.

Its very different in the US, UK and NI. Where nationalism and jingoism pervade though everything.

If I was heat of state of the UK and we aspired to absorb you into our territory then I think I would want to attend.

The president of Ireland who has virtually no powers in comparison to a US president and is incredibly limited on what he can and cannot say is according to you as dangerous as trump? Might want to break out of your alt right US news echo chamber and read our constitution before talking so far out of your arse

Personally I think the DUP have tested the water a bit to see what they could get away with. Michael D. has gladly taken the excuse. Now the DUP can turn it into a PR win. As Michael D. could have sought a correction of his title and attended. However, he also said that he did not like the title of the event and he also used that as an excuse for not attendance.

I think Michael D. should have called the DUP's bluff and even asked to speak at he event. Because a man as eloquent and sharp witted as Michael D. would have had much more effect in doing that, instead of just non-attendance. IMO it was an opportunity wasted.

My understanding is the invite got his title wrong.

That's a no-no in officialdom

Probably wasn't done by mistake.

That is not how I see it. Nor will it be how the DUP spin it. You should also be looking at the situation in it's broader sense. In that there is an absurd situation where Michael D. is termed the President of 'Ireland'.

Yet under the GFA the ROI has relinquished claim to NI and got rid of A2 and A3 of the constitution, pushing two decades ago. Looking at it logically it is an anomaly. When added to the latter the states name is 'Ireland' as per BnaE, but it's 'descriptor' is the ROI as per the 1948 ROI act (which severed ties with the English head of state)

This is probably the best article I have read on Northern Ireland in many a long day. The thoughts expressed cover many of the subjects that have been discussed on these boards. These few words sum up clearly where we are now, that Northern Ireland is now a society, distinct from Britain, but also distinct from Ireland. Whereever it finds its place in coming decades and centuries, that will remain true.

"But the emphasis on the soft border glossed over its cultural profundity. Northern nationalists aren’t thin-skinned when they decry partitionist mindsets they encounter in the south, they’re observing the effect of what for most people on the island has been a century of diverging experiences.

Groups, communities, nations that were once artificial may not remain so. As we learnt in Mrs Black’s class, a century ago even the word Pakistan had not yet been coined.

Its critics are free to think of Northern Ireland as an abomination. But a real conversation is impossible until we accept that Northern Ireland was never an aberration."

Other interesting aspects of the article included the reference to assisted migration, which has surfaced on these boards a few times in recent months.

"In 1917, de Valera had said unionists — whom he characterised as “not Irish” — would have to succumb to Dublin rule or “they would have to go under”. De Valera later mooted population transfers. From our vantage point in the 21th century we can see with unsettling clarity where this sort of rhetoric ends."

Seeing this 19th century mentality crystallise again on these pages is a most chilling experience.

100%. People like the DUP and the Loyalist mouths on social media have inserted themselves into this argument for their own purposes and tried to twist the response of the President and tried to paint him in a certain way, to which he has responded admirably. Remember, this isn't a DUP or a NI Assembly or a NIO event, it was none of their friggin business till they waded in to make it their business.

And it would be a mistake too, to characterise Unionism/Loyalism as one homogenous herd. There are at least 3 very distinct social and political groupings of a loosely Unionist persuasion, all of which will be influenced very differently by the evolution of this post Brexit upset in the status quo.

1) old style ultra Protestant Unionists of the DUP and TUV, conservative in every respect. These are dying out.

2) non-religious working class and socially deprived cultural Loyalists, your typical Tiger's Bay type, surrounded by legacy criminality of loyalist paramilitaries, bonfire burners, fleg wavers, Rangers fanatics. These don't know what went on in the past, they just know this is their identity and there is a paranoia.

3) Young, educated, liberal and progressive Unionists, with a small U, from the wealthier farming backgrounds and professional classes of South Belfast and Eglinton and so on, graduates and well travelled. They are the most resistant to Brexit regression and most likely to be influenced positively by the social and economic revolution in the Republic, are being courted by Alliance and the new centrist movement in the UUP

Not sure I agree. NI is a product of a long shared history between Ireland and UK and that is mostly ignored in this article. Its like the NI just sprung into being with partition. There's almost no context. Its a very insular mindset. Of the three countries, I'd would say NI is the one thats changed the least. Its still mostly inward focused.

I think the 100 years thing is mostly about rebranding itself for itself, to move forward. Which seems like a good idea on the face of it. Unless in looking back to move forward, they get bogged down in the past. Which is exactly what has happened to this thread.

Are you now suggesting that Marcus Leroux who wrote the article is a member of the DUP and because of his expressed views in the article, that the President was correct not to accept the invitation?

Amazing the links you draw.

.. the problem with that mentality is that there would have been no Good Friday agreement if politicians in the North had continued to snub each other, and likely as not we would still be shooting and bombing each other today, as a child growing up it was perfectly normal to me for granda to check underneath his car for a bomb everytime we were getting into it, he even had a motorbike wing mirror on a copper pipe to check underneath properly, reflecting on this now I would be utterly horrified if this is something my own children had to endure. Peace and reconciliation is as key now as it was when the GFA was signed, whatever his reasoning this feels like miscalculation by MDH and the timing is poor as no one really wanted to hand the cretins in the DUP a PR win when they have been in decline over the last number of months.