Adam Fusco on Toleration and the flag over Belfast City Hall

On the 3^rd of December 2012 a vote was held by Belfast City Council to remove the union flag from the dome on top of its city hall. An amended vote was passed by a council majority of nationalists with the support of the non-aligned Alliance Party. A compromise was reached in line with the flag-flying policy at parliament buildings at Stormont – the home of the Northern Ireland assembly. The flag will be absent for the majority of the year, except to mark specific occasions such as the Queen’s birthday, as a gesture to unionists. This solution is one that connects to the philosophical ideal of toleration.

The flying of the union flag has been a long-standing controversy in Belfast, as one can imagine, even in the current post-conflict scenario, where religious identity still acts largely as a synonym for one’s political affiliation. The flag has been a permanent fixture on top of City Hall since its opening on its current site in 1906. But with demographic change in the city and a particularly well-fought election campaign on the part of the nationalist Sinn Féin (and a bad one by the Ulster Unionist Party), in 2011, for the first time nationalists outnumbered unionists on the council, with the non-aligned Alliance party holding the balance of power between the two.  This meant that a motion was inevitably going to be brought to council to see the union flag, a symbol that is by most accounts only representative of the half the city, taken down.

This brought vociferous loyalist protest on the evening of the vote (see, for example, the report here). The protest reiterated the long-standing unionist commitment to the flying of the flag over city hall. The argument being that the union flag flies over every city hall in the United Kingdom by convention. So to remove the flag is to undermine the status Belfast that has as a United Kingdom city. 

This of course was countered by nationalist politicians who argued that the flag is by its very nature divisive. Nationalists have long contended that city hall is a public space and has to be, because of this very fact, an inclusive space for all the citizens of Belfast. This means that regardless of the symbol’s positive affirmation of U.K. cityhood for unionists, the flag has to be removed because it alienates and excludes nationalists.

These arguments, however, somewhat cloud the use of symbolism as a demonym for national-political ideology in Irish/Northern Irish politics. Unionists intrinsically value the union flag because they are unionists plain and simple. Many nationalists, particularly those of the Republican stripe, would most likely, when hard-pressed, like to see the Irish tricolour fly over city hall. Real-politick suggests however that no union flag, as a second best, is a better and more achievable option for nationalists than the status-quo. It is more realistic than the preferred option of the tricolour alone, which is an unacceptable position for unionists to ever accept.  

Indeed one of the mooted options during the consultation was to fly both the union flag and the Irish tricolour simultaneously side-by-side (see here). This was appealing to many nationalists, and even some unionists, but ultimately rejected because for many unionists – even though it would give parity to both traditions – it would ultimately symbolically legitimise the political presence of the Irish Republic in Northern Ireland.

Symbolism has a political potency in Northern Ireland politics that some in Britain may find hard to comprehend. What might seem trivial elsewhere has real political value, because symbols of British/Ulster and Irish nationalism have real meaning in the inter-relationship between religious and political identity. The compromise reached involves genuine toleration, like a lot of the political paradigm in Northern Ireland. For the union flag to have remained would have been an unacceptable solution. Unionists could have contended that nationalists should tolerate the flag, but this would have in meant in practice unionists failing to show toleration for nationalists' opposition of the flag. In this sense the flag remaining would have been a plainly intolerant move. This would have again been true if nationalists had pushed for the tricolour to be flown over city hall, a move that would have not found support from the Alliance Party, and quite likely from the moderate nationalist S.D.L.P. (and perhaps even in practice a pragmatic Sinn Féin).

But what of the equal recognition of both traditions, by having two flags? This is a move that does not solve the problem with reference to toleration; it is one that affirms difference. The problem with this solution is that it affirms and essentialises identity. Such a solution solidifies the fact that Protestantism equates with a unionist/British/Ulster identity and Catholicism with a nationalist/republican/Irish identity in Northern Ireland. The tolerant solution provides a political stabiliser that allows these forms of normatively contingent identification to be transcended. Unlike the Alliance Party position, which uncritically makes the assumption that both unionist and nationalist politics are sectarian by their very nature, rather what is sectarian about these forms of identifications is the idea that one is a unionist because they are Protestant and one is a nationalist because they are Catholic. But unionism and nationalism have the capacity however to both be non-sectarian ideals. It is because of this that toleration works as a means, that should be absolutely welcomed in this instance, to move towards a natural accommodation of difference, where politics can be conducted without reference to the constitution and persons can be seen not in terms of their identities, however configured.

Adam Fusco, originally from Belfast, is a PhD student at the University of York, and a graduate of York's MA in Political Philosophy (The Idea of Toleration), for which he was a recipient of a Studentship from the C & JB Morrell Trust.  His research focuses on questions of national identity, their role in contemporary citizenship, and Civic Republican theory.  

Professor Sue Mendus on press regulation, the limits to free speech, and the Leveson Inquiry

You cannot hope to bribe or twist

thank God! The British journalist

But seeing what the man will do

unbribed, there’s no occasion to (Humbert Wolfe)

In July 2011, and in the wake of the News International phone-hacking scandal, David Cameron set up an Inquiry into the ‘Culture, Practice and Ethics’ of the Press. This Inquiry, the Leveson Inquiry, has recently completed its formal hearings and is expected to publish its recommendations in November. What did Lord Justice Leveson hear and what should he now recommend? 

Leveson heard evidence from 474 witnesses of whom over 200 were classed as ‘media’ or ‘PR’. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many of these were extremely wary - even suspicious - of the Inquiry and of the recommendations which might emerge from it. Some referred to it as a ‘show trial’, while others feared that it would (and will) result in recommendations for extensive curbs on press freedom. Mr Michael Gove MP, himself a former journalist, went so far as to claim that the very existence of the Inquiry had a ‘chilling effect’Gove on Leveson's "chilling effect". He advised Leveson to avoid recommending additional legislation, and he told the court that ‘freedom of speech doesn’t mean anything unless some people are going to be offended some of the time’.

Well, we can all agree on the importance of free speech, but before endorsing Mr Gove’s advice to Leveson, let’s pause for a moment and remember how we got here. The Leveson Inquiry was not set up because the press had offended some people (though it had). It was set up because significant sections of the press had used their freedom to: intercept the voicemail of a murdered teenager, make corrupt payments to the police, publish the private diary of a bereaved mother, and disclose the medical records of a Prime Minister’s son. They had also - allegedly - conspired to pervert the course of justice. All this is a very long way indeed from ‘causing offence to some people’, and Mr Gove must surely know that it is.

In particular, he must know that the real danger in Britain today is not that press regulation will undermine the freedom to offend. The real danger lies in the fact that press power is concentrated in the hands of comparatively few people, and those people have persistently used their power to benefit themselves and their political friends, while damaging and discrediting their political enemies. When this happens, a so-called ‘free press’ can quickly become an anti-democratic weapon which the powerful use to foist their own political preferences on an under-informed electorate. That is the real danger and, sadly, there is nothing new about it.

More than half a century ago, giving evidence to the 1947 Royal Commission on the Press, the National Union of Journalists (no less) conceded that only restriction of liberty would remedy the abuses of the press which were prevalent at that time. The same abuses are even more prevalent now, and it falls to Lord Justice Leveson finally to call a halt to them. My own hope is that he will recommend an end to the farce of self-regulation which is the Press Complaints Commission, and a strengthening of the existing anti-monopoly laws which did nothing to contain Rupert Murdoch's ambition and which almost allowed him to gain control of BSkyB. It is here, if anywhere, that hope for freedom lies.

Professor Sue Mendus

Sue Mendus is Morrell Professor Emerita at the University of York. 

Her departmental webpage can be found here. In 2004 she was elected a Fellow of the British Academy, and from 2008 to 2012 she was Vice President (Social Sciences) of the Academy. She is a Founding Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales.

Her written and oral evidence to the Leveson Inquiry can be found here: http://www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/hearing/2012-07-16am/