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Leave
it to the wry editors of The Blanket to contrast,
back-to-back in its 8 August 2002 edition, articles
detailing rather opposite views on public speech:
Anthony McIntyre’s “Frances
McAuley - Resisting The Loyal Sons Of Hate”
- reporting the earnest and determined anti-free speech
efforts of a Northern Nationalist who advocates that
Northern Unionist paraders’ speech is only conditionally
permissible (“they have to enter into dialogue
if they want to march through communities like ours
where clearly they are not wanted”) - and the
intensely pro-free speech article “Intense
Winters” by Miguel Castells Artetxe, apparently
a Basque nationalist (“[F]reedom means being
able to choose among different things. There is no
freedom when one cannot opt for a thought that is
different from the official thought, different from
official doctrine.”).
That contrast brought to mind a letter I wrote two
years ago to one Steven King:
July
13, 2000
BY
AIRMAIL
Mr. Steven King
Belfast Telegraph Newspapers Ltd.
Royal Avenue
Belfast BT1 1EB
NORTHERN IRELAND
Dear
Mr. King:
In light of your piece today, I thought I’d send
along my greetings and a copy of my small work on
Northern Ireland.
While I have read with interest your various Belfast
Telegraph writings, and while your [“When
you're in Ireland do as the Romans do?”] article
today starts out with an interesting comparison[ regarding
parade rights], nonetheless your overall analysis
therein is - with all due respect - grievously flawed;
moreover, it reflects a pervasive confusion in thought
that continues to lead to a great deal of personal
and social conflict in your region.
You write: “[N]ot a single representative of
the Catholic or nationalist tradition, from Bertie
Ahern to John Hume to Archbishop Brady, came out and
conceded that there is such a thing as freedom of
assembly, even for people they don't like very much.”
Your reference to the absence of such a concession
necessarily assumes that a “freedom of assembly”
actually exists, which it does not in the United
Kingdom. While, perhaps, U.K. residents might
try to look to European Union law in support of such
a “freedom,” none exists under British law
per se. This point is clear today as it was
a decade and a half ago when I wrote the enclosed
work (see especially footnotes 25 and 26 on pages
154 and 155, quoting from a British Government Central
Office of Information publication: “[R]ights,
such as the right of personal freedom, the right of
discussion, and the rights of association and public
meeting, which are commonly considered more or less
inviolate, are not protected against change by Act
of Parliament, and the courts could not uphold them
if Parliament decreed otherwise.”). This illaudable
system necessarily results in “the total absence
of civil rights, but instead merely the presence of
‘civil license,’ to be granted or revoked
at the pleasure of Westminster’s reigning majority.”
(Book at 154.)
Your own writing today implicitly concedes this point.
At the end of your article, you assert: “What
Brendan McKenna really wants is a right to apartheid.
There is no such right. The place to prove it is in
the courts, not on the streets, though.”
Under that entirely appropriate standard for determining,
in your society or any other, whether a claimed “right”
actually exists, it is virtually unarguable that the
Orange Order’s asserted “right” to
parade down the Garvaghy Road would but be rejected:
the Parades Commission is duly constituted by Act
of Parliament and it made a legally binding determination
prohibiting that proposed march, and any British court
of law would so hold.
The
basic premise underlying this overall situation concerning
“rights” is a very simple one but nonetheless
one which many in your Isles seem unable to fathom
(or, at very least, seem unable to recognize and admit):
there is no right without a remedy. If one
cannot go to a court to obtain vindication for a supposed
“right,” that “right” does not
in actuality exist and is, in fact, no more than a
hugely inaccurate description of one’s own personal
though legally-unsupported desire. The Orange Order
might, therefore, make the following honest assessment:
We want very much to march down the Garvaghy Road,
but we have no right to do so.
Please make no mistake about my position in this regard:
the very existence of a “Parades Commission,”
in my view, is an abomination. However, I also regard
a system of government - such as established through
the British Constitution - that recognizes no personal
rights in its citizenry as being, at very best,
massively deficient.
(Recently here in the District of Columbia, the Metropolitan
Police Department was giving serious consideration
to suing the organizers of a neo-Nazi march. However,
the suit was not to prevent that group’s planned
march. Instead, the lawsuit under consideration was
to recoup damages because the group belatedly elected
not to march: after the police had gone to a great
deal of trouble to arrange for the march’s security,
the group reacted to near-universal - although entirely
peaceful - public opprobrium by voluntarily canceling
its parade. Perhaps one might say that only in America
would police consider suing neo-Nazis for not
parading, but it is a result in which Americans can
rightfully take a great deal of pride. Notwithstanding
the many failings of our society, we have “down,”
very well and firmly, fundamental aspects of our country’s
governance. Even after many more centuries of history,
the United Kingdom - not least in light of its Province
of Northern Ireland (see, e.g., Drumcree I
through Drumcree VI) - would have great difficulty
honestly arguing a similar claim.)
By
the end of this year, we may know better whether the
Good Friday Agreement will survive; in light of the
persistence of such difficulties as police reform
and “actual” decommissioning, we should
not be entirely surprised if the answer turns out
to be “no.” If the Agreement fails, perhaps
learned people in your region will feel moved to consider
some alternative thereto.
I’d be most happy to receive any comments you’d
care to voice. Thank you for your kind attention.
Sincerely,
Paul A. Fitzsimmons
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