Brexit at a Belfast School Gate

Brexit staggers forward like a whiskey laced fever, and nobody at the school gate says its name.

The mums are stockpiling cans of beans. Not because of apocalypse. But because they expect the price of food to increase. They’re a practical lot.

One friend had no money this week. Off to the food-bank. Straining to make polite conversation while trying, and failing, to hold back tears after pick-up.

Over 30,000 food parcels were given in Northern Ireland last year. Is it a nationalist food bank or a unionist food bank? Asks nobody, ever.

The place where I live, which I love, is angry. I scroll through local Facebook group pages. Videos attacking migrants pop up in my timeline. Thousands of likes. People I don’t expect to, share them. A Muslim friend spends the day weeping.

My youngest’s best friend, who is Polish, is intimidated out of his house. Again. He is five.

We don’t talk about Brexit much at the school gate. But we all exist in its venus flytrap.

***

I know lots of people who voted to Leave. They were fed up with the hamster wheel. Slipping down the ladder instead of climbing up. They are not racist. Although others were. They voted Leave out of despair, but also hope. To save the NHS, to feel some control.

I voted Remain. But inhabited that space in-between. Where the EU is not beloved, but a damn sight better than Britannia alone. Where being from Northern Ireland, and the fragility of our peace, trumped all other concerns. I cringed at the smugness of some Remainers.

But the distance between us all didn’t feel so wide in 2016. I watched my friends disagree well, on the same Facebook pages which now seem so bleak.

We could’ve had a proper debate about Europe, if the Tories hadn’t spaffed their internal feud up against the wall. We could have talked about sovereignty, about jobs, rights and standards, about state-aid and capital, about borders and peace.

But public discourse was threadbare. It was guided by a weird web and dodgy cash. Breath-taking complacency on the the other side. There was never a plan. Only the brief promised pleasure of kicking something over.

***

And in Northern Ireland, we’ll pay the hardest. We already are.

There’s the money of course. The fact that we’re already struggling. But also the politics. Our unresolved conflict. Our borderless border.

We’re using trade as a proxy for emotion. Raging over tariffs to mask our fears of the future. Most of us wondering how we’ll pay the bills.

And in this vacuum, services are receding, politics is circling, bitterness encroaching. 

God knows how, but this chapter of Brexit will of course pass. But its consequences are now embedded in our conflict. It has changed the future of this island.

And at the school gate, we carry on. But we’re not keeping calm. We’re just carrying on. Because there’s never been a time when we’ve had less control.

***

So what do we do?

We zoom out. We expand the frame. We realise, as C. Wright Mills says in The Sociological Imagination, that our private troubles are public issues.

We zoom out and see that we’re are living through seismic historical change. That Brexit is a symptom not a cause.

The tectonic plates of late capitalism are shifting. The climate is breaking down. Income inequality is rising. Information is dematerialising. People are revolting. These are connected.

Northern Ireland is a tiny speck on an endangered planet. Our traditional politics are barely relevant.

The tectonic plates of the Union are shifting. We must recalibrate. Be flexible and practical.

Our neighbours are not the enemy. Not in the houses beside us, nor the borders across.

Migrants are not the enemy. Their taxes pay our pensions.

We realise that our pain, although differently expressed, comes from a common wound.

We focus our ire on unaccountable global capital. Which relentlessly pursues profit over people. We follow the money and ask who stands to gain.

We focus our ire on the British government. Not for their Britishness. But for prioritising party politics over our lives. English nationalism over the regions. For prioritising Ulster nationalism… oh wait, that was last week. For years of brutal economic policies which created the anger that led us to here.

There is an horizon beyond Brexit. But no time for a perfect solution. We must suck up a compromise. Pull off Brexit’s strangling ivy and focus on our people, our climate, our resilience to change.

And – if anyone can bear it – we can do more politics.

We can study up. Engage. We can try eating a flag with a knife and fork, and quickly move on to the other options. We can vote till we boke. Lobby our public representatives, because still, amazingly, this makes a difference. They are not ‘all as bad as each other’. We can act locally, understanding the global. We can look up to those in power to identify the source of our problems, not punch down to those who are struggling. This is where our power as citizens lies. 

We can stand at the school gate and keep being human. Share recipes for canned beans and hope that Deflatine is not rationed. Help each other navigate universal credit, talk to the new people, teach our kids not to hate. On difficult days, we can watch Derry Girls and drink the stockpiled Lidl wine.

We can try to hold this anger lightly – for our mental health. But also deeply – for our political health. And we can channel this anger for all that it’s worth. Not towards each other. But towards the disaster capitalists and the internecine careerists who have walked us merrily up to the brink.

Originally published on Slugger O’Toole on 30th March 2019.

Ards and North Down Declare Climate Emergency

On 27th February 2019, an eerily summery winter evening, Ards and North Down Borough Council passed Northern Ireland’s first Climate Emergency motion. Led by Green Party councillors Rachel Woods and Barry McKee, the motion was agreed without changes in a full meeting of the Council chamber.

This comes not a moment too soon for a region which is set to face major challenges over the next 10-20 years as temperatures, and sea-levels, rise. Parts of the Ards peninsula, along with much of the inner parts of Belfast, are likely to be underwater in our lifetimes. And perhaps a lot sooner than we expect.

A ground-breaking IPCC report in October 2018, amalgamating all the recent scientific research, found that on our current path, global temperatures will rise by 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2040. It gave societies 12 years to take immediate and drastic action to keep temperatures under this level.

But immediate and drastic action is not being taken. Global carbon emissions are rising not falling.

As such, subsequent and cascading climate developments now indicate that the pace of change may be much faster than this, with a rise of 1.5-2 degrees being fairly inevitable – perhaps as soon 2030 – and a rise of up to 4 degrees Celsius more likely by the end of the century.

Even at 2 degrees, life as we know it will be forever changed. These infographics from the New York Times give a flavour of what’s on the way. Or take a whirl around the science at 350.org. If you’re in rude mental health today and would like a more fleshed out version, check out David Wallace Wells‘ work, for example “Time to Panic”. Or Ron Meador on “near-term social collapse due to climate chaos.”

If that seems too abstract, you can enter your postcode in this map to see if you’ll be swimming to work in the near future (the image above is the projection for +2 degrees).

Ards and North Down Borough Council is part of a wave of dozens of councils across the UK, and many more globally, which have recently declared climate emergency.

According to the Climate Emergency Declaration website, as of February 27th, 38 UK councils have made a declaration. Ards and North Down makes 39. The pace of change is fast, with 10 declarations in the past week alone, and more motions on the way.

These declarations are significant because they commit Councils to action. The CACE website points to the nuts and bolts of this. But in short –

“Emergency mode or mobilisation is when councils allocate all discretionary funds available to the council to the task of community education, advocacy for action by higher levels governments, mitigation or resilience building and could include funding or undertaking the planning and research needed to implement full state and national emergency mobilisations.”

This is the Ards and North Down Council motion, which gives a pretty good idea of what concrete steps will follow:

That this Council notes the recent IPCC report on the impacts of climate breakdown; agrees that drastic and far-reaching measures must be taken across society to try and mitigate the risks and declares a ‘Climate Emergency’. It requests an urgent report to assess the impact of the activities of Ards and North Down Borough Council on greenhouse gas emissions, exploring what mitigation measures can be put in place and establishes a working group to bring the issues of climate breakdown to the fore in the council structures and actions, local communities and businesses, as well as formulating a climate adaptation plan.

This could well entail taking practical steps to protect air quality, water purity, to address pollution, protect local habitats, increase biodiversity by re-wilding spaces, streamline borough energy use, maybe even consider local renewable energy co-ops, and to generally make future-focussed planning decisions based on realistic climate projections.

Ards and North Down are not alone. Derry City and Strabane District Council have been leading the way on practical climate action for some time. They will host the first ever Green Infrastructure and Climate Change Conference in Northern Ireland this spring (tickets here). With a focus on developing green infrastructure, increasing green spaces, encouraging resilience to climate breakdown – for the sake of people’s health and the local economy.

In Belfast City Council, the Alliance’s Emmet McDonough-Brown’s successful motion at the Strategic Policy and Resources Committee in February 2019 committed to reducing Belfast’s carbon footprint and making climate a priority. People Before Profit reinforced this with a climate emergency statement, which passed through Belfast City council on 5th March 2019.

This is even more important in the context of Northern Ireland, where, as Friends of the Earth highlight “we have the least protected environment in the UK and Ireland. [We have] no independent Environmental Protection Agency. No National Parks. No law to cut climate-changing emissions.” And where “the planning system leans heavily towards new development.”

Of course, local Councils have limited power to tackle climate breakdown, which is a global problem and demands a national, as well as international, response.

This is exactly the route being taken in the Republic of Ireland. Daithí McKay highlights the most important pieces of Dáil legislation as Bríd Smith’s Climate Emergency Bill, which would commit Ireland to leaving fossil fuels in the ground; Sinn Féin’s Microgeneration Support Scheme Bill, which would enable local communities – households, farmers, co-ops – to produce their own energy and sell it back to the grid; and the Green Party’s Waste Reduction Bill. All are moving slowly and painfully forward with much prevarication from the Irish government. Although upcoming EU fines, for failing to meet climate targets, may force the government into action.

What is also significant, is increasing public understanding and concern about climate breakdown. It’s hard to avoid. There have been winter gorse fires this week in the Dublin mountains. Even Winnie the Pooh’s Hundred Acre Wood in Sussex was ravaged by fires this month. The fact that we’ve wiped out 60% of the world’s animal populations since 1970 and reports about collapsing insect populations, globally and across Ireland, are making their way into public consciousness. Ordinary people are talking about why there are no dead insects splattered on their windscreens anymore.

There’s a gnawing sense that paper straws and keep-cups aren’t going to cut it. That we’re on the cusp of something exponential.

This is reflected on the ground with school kids across Ireland and the UK joining their European counterparts, striking for climate justice, the civil disobedience of Extinction Rebellion, increasing calls for a Green New Deal. 

Even more locally, we see residents of the Sperrins opposing industrial mineral mining; community protests which have stalled a planned industrial pig factory in Ballyclare; Newry, Mourne and Down District Council and others passing a motion opposing the dumping of UK nuclear waste in the Mournes (a similar motion was opposed by the DUP and fell in Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council this week, but that’s another story); Green Party activists in Belfast measuring air pollution as it emerges that our air quality is almost as bad as London.

Across these islands and beyond there is a growing awareness that something has snapped, and that standing still is not an option.

On the same day as the motion was passed, MPs in the House of Commons debated climate breakdown for the first time in 2 years. This is better than nothing. But it was a quick and thinly attended debate, with no accompanying teeth. It is clear that Westminster is in no hurry to recognise the state of Climate Emergency that Caroline Lucas is calling for. Or indeed to do anything about it.

Local Councils are too small to solve global problems. We have top level calls to action from the UN and EU, and ground level calls to action from citizens. But, on these islands, we have a gaping space in between, where national action should be.

Given the heel dragging from both UK and Irish governments, perhaps Councils are one of the most effective political levers we currently have to begin the immediate practical work of climate action and regeneration.

Adapted from an article originally published on Slugger O’Toole on 28th February 2019.

The Dog Show

Everything has felt so heavy recently. Between the UN’s report on accelerated climate breakdown, their report on how the UK is actively choosing poverty, and ongoing Brexit insanity, it’s all quite overwhelming.

So here is something with jokes. It’s a story, told live at Tenx9, about the time I tried to pimp out my dog for money. It involves my partner and I disgracing ourselves at a dog show at the Avoniel Leisure centre…

It contains one of my favourite lines I’ve ever written:

“We had entered the Big Lebowski as a contestant in the Rose of Tralee.”

Which might give you an idea of how things went down.

http://www.tenx9.com/podcast/038-regret/2018/6/8

Future Ireland: Alternative conversations about unity and the union

Over at Slugger, David McCann and I are running a series of articles on the topic ‘Future Ireland: Alternative conversations about unity and the union’. The gist of the project is here.

We’re trying to think about the possible constitutional futures of this place in a more imaginative way. It’s about creative problem solving, honest reflection and data-driven knowledge creation.

Many of us will take positions on unity or the union, but the overall body of work is wide open. We want to know how the future looks and feels as a mother, a farmer, a migrant, a loyalist, an atheist, a small business owner, a Dublin renter, a born-again Christian, an Irish speaker, someone with a disability, a GP, a worker…

The aim is to engage in a different way with a difficult topic. The only criteria is that articles have to look to the future.

If you see this before 15th November 2018, there’s a writing competition.

Ideas and pitches still welcome after this date. Just email me at claire@sluggerotoole.com or David at deputy@sluggerotoole.com.

If you want to follow the conversation on Slugger, go here.

Future Ireland: Where Can The North Thrive?

Originally posted on Slugger O’Toole, 4th September 2018.

……….

Future Ireland: Where Can The North Thrive?

For some masochistic reason, I feel umbilically connected to the soil and the soul of this island.

Especially this messed up northern corner of it.

But there is no point in drawing borders in the soil, and driving flags into it, when it only has 60 more years of harvests left to give.

It occurred to me recently that the best case scenario for Northern Ireland, as things stand, is to have a mediocre Brexit, for Stormont to limp back, for orange and green politics to trundle along – outraged, binary, stuck. To ditch the petition of concern, squeak through equal marriage, and get some kind of limited abortion rights. To keep passing on cuts with a two year delay.

Surely we can do better than this?

My kids will be in their 60s when the soil packs in, unless something changes. They’ll have lived lives very different to mine. Digital, virtual lives. Entwined with artificial intelligence. They may not go to university like I did – who could afford it? Their work may be even more precarious than mine, if there is much work left for humans to do. Many of their friends will be refugees, or refugees will live behind a wall. Because that is what our current geo-politics and climate tipping-point suggest. 

I see my job as training my kids up to navigate this brave new world, to help the heart of it beat, or at least not to be the assholes. 

Literally the only question we should be asking in Northern Ireland right now, is how can we face this uncertain future best? How can future people live well here?

I am taking our overlapping identities and relationships here as given. We, as people, are so much less divided than our politics would have you think. Most of us actually like each other. We want to know each other better, and want pretty similar things for our kids’ futures.

I know it may not always look like this. That it benefits political parties to play identity politics. And that we’re numb to it now. But we actually don’t have time for it.

I’ve always been an armchair Dissenter. A Protestant who feels Irish and who wants Irish unity. But something has shifted. I now feel the need to say it out loud.

It’s not for unity’s sake. Or because I think Irishness is a superior identity. Or Brits out. Because there are many things I like about Britain. And part of me is that Brit.

It’s because this place of Northern Ireland has ceased to make sense to me. We are terminally neglected, happily corrupt and economically sinking. Our divisions have been artificially frozen by our governance. We exile many of our young, our creatives, our queers, our entrepreneurs, our thinkers. And who could blame them for going?

My politics is shaped by a desire for grassroots decision making. And so a lot my hope for Irish unity is about having a smaller unit of democracy. People being bigger fishes in a smaller pond. Inside a state that vaguely gives a damn.

It’s rooted in observing how Ireland has learned to have civic conversations with itself over the last decade. Its openness to changing its mind.

Some of it is environmental – seeing the island of Ireland as an ecological unit in a likely future of food and energy insecurity.

Some of it is Brexity. I want my EHIC card dammit. To be part of something outward looking rather than inward.

There are deep problems and ironies embedded in this kind of argument for unity. The Irish state is as broken as other European states. Like the UK, Ireland is big on corporate tax breaks and riven with deep inequalities. Climate chancers. No-one I know can afford to live in Dublin. Every air punch for an Irish success is followed by a face-palm.

But Ireland is changing. It’s a small open democracy, economically nimble, capable of grown-up civic dialogue and rapid cultural adaptation, as its current disentanglement with Catholicism shows.

There is people power afoot. The Citizens’ Assembly, referendums, the water charges movement, housing activism, divestment from fossil fuels. Successive Irish governments may not like it, but they’re slowly being forced to respond.

There are also positive things happening in the British left, that could change a lot of lives. But if there’s one thing we agree on in Northern Ireland, it’s that we’ll never be a priority for Britain. Brexit – estrangement by a thousand cuts – makes this clearer than ever.

But there is no point in talking about the future of Northern Ireland if we are not having a conversation about why we want unity or the union. If and how things could be better. We need to shape a conversation that places Ireland in the future not just the past. To talk about industrial strategies, ageing populations, renewables, housing co-ops, automation, mental health, food security, privacy and surveillance, universal basic income…

At this crossroads, unity makes sense to me. But ultimately we need to decide what will help future people thrive.

We can talk about who owns the soil all day long, but I’d prefer to know if anything will actually be able to grow in it.