By Robert P. Connolly
Special to the BIR
With spring in the air and the landscape turning green, the mind wanders across the water…
The upcoming British election means that Northern Ireland’s 18 Westminster seats will be up for grabs. The Democratic Unionist Party has a lot on the line because it holds nine of those seats, but it is also important that Sinn Fein, which has five seats, do well and help party leader Gerry Adams bounce back from his annus horribilis of 2009.

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One of the seats the DUP will be looking to defend is the seat that party founder Ian Paisley has held since 1970. Paisley, 83, recently announced that he is retiring from politics and his controversial son, Ian Paisley, Jr., will seek to hold the North Antrim constituency seat.
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The Social Democratic and Labor Party will be looking to improve on its current three-seat status, and South Belfast physician Alasdair McDonnell is working hard to defend the seat he won in 2005, when he stunned the pundits by squeaking past two unionist candidates to take the seat in the affluent, majority-Protestant constituency.
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Adams, by the way, took a bit of stick back home for speaking at Boston’s all-male Clover Club dinner last month, but undoubtedly made friends here for doing so. Several newspapers in Ireland and Britain took Adams to task because of the club’s all-male policy, which dovetails awkwardly with perceptions of Sinn Fein being a male bastion.
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Irish politicians from North and South flocked to Boston, New York, and Washington last month for various St. Patrick’s Day celebrations, and new SDLP leader Margaret Ritchie raised some eyebrows by complaining that she was not invited to President Obama’s White House meeting with Northern Ireland First Minister Peter Robinson and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness. McGuinness probably had it right when he said: “It was not a good idea [for Ritchie] to come to the United States and criticize the president. It was not a good move.”
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Having booked a trip to Ireland, I feel certain that an Aer Lingus strike must be in the offing.
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The Ulster Unionist Party, maybe looking to out-DUP the DUP, was the only Northern Ireland political party to oppose the deal that devolved police and judiciary powers to the Northern Ireland Assembly, preserving the North’s power-sharing government in the process. Lady Sylvia Hermon, the UUP’s only MP in Westminster, broke with the party on the issue, saying that Northern Ireland’s leaders needed to hang together and battle the paramilitary dissidents still trying to cause mayhem in the North. Seems like the UUP may want to listen a little more carefully to its MP. There may be a reason why she’s in parliament and they are not.
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Is it me, or does the news media think St. Patrick’s Day = profligate drinking? My personal favorite was Boston.com thoughtfully offering a compendium of suggested hangover remedies on March 18, under the heading: “St. Patrick’s Day Hangover?” Yes, we’re all a bit under the weather today, aren’t we now?
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On the other hand, there is something heartening about seeing people of all colors and creeds wearing green on March 17, indicating that times are changing in Boston and that everyone now feels like they can come to the party. Drinks optional.
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Colm Toibin’s “Brooklyn” is a good novel, but Colum McCann’s “Let the Great World Spin” is the show-stopper.
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Former Bostonian Frank Costello received a nod in the Guardian newspaper last month for his efforts to bring venture capital money to Northern Ireland, which still needs to develop a more robust home-grown business base. Costello, a former top political aide on this side of the Atlantic, continues to produce Irish histories while he works to seed the fields of economic growth.
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Speaking of the North’s economy, US economic envoy Declan Kelly confirms that a Northern Ireland investment conference will take place this fall in Washington.
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A recent Belfast Telegraph polls shows that 85 percent of Northern Ireland’s Protestants want the North to remain part of the United Kingdom, but that nearly a quarter, 24 percent, don’t expect that that will be the case in 2021, which would be the centenary of the partition of Ireland. While the Catholics of the North favor Irish unification, 26 percent of Catholics say they would vote to keep Northern Ireland in the UK.
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Sinn Fein continues its push to place more of a spotlight on unification, holding town meetings in Britain, Ireland, and the United States. The Republic of Ireland’s economic woes will make a united Ireland an even more difficult sell to the unionists of the North, but the issue will live on as long as the now nearly invisible Border exists.