politicians-from-northern-ireland

"Asgardia, the world's first space nation. It's the world’s first truly functioning digital democracy. Every 15-year-old would love to say that they're chair of parliament for a space nation. By the age of 59, I am. I hope that wherever my grandfather is now, he'll look down and be proud of me trying to create a good politics for outer space."

"I have a big problem with asteroids [...] And so has the rest of the human race. Unless we do something to stop it, sooner or later an impact with an asteroid or a comet will lead to the end of most life on Earth."

"I thought our Shadow Foreign Secretary saying she would be campaigning for Remain is quite shocking and goes 100% against our manifesto. More and more people are feeling more confirmed in their views that politicians say one thing in their manifestos and then change their view."

"[[w:Flag of Ireland|[T]he tricolour]] is not my flag ... I genuinely don't feel Irish. Is there something wrong with that?"

"Then there is the crucial issue of the Irish border. If, in any deal, Northern Ireland is to be treated differently from the rest of the UK then anyone who believes in the Union could not possibly support that deal. No doubt there will be some flowery EU-speak designed to hide the true intention and we will be told that as it is never intended to be needed then we shouldn’t worry."

"While I understand that Ireland was quite shocked at our decision to Leave, so much of the controversy over the border has been manufactured by it to try to keep Northern Ireland bound by EU regulations and different from the rest of the UK."

"I think we all kind of know how we got here, that Northern Ireland was sacrificed because it could have been that we weren’t going to get Brexit at all."

"I'm pro-union. I would not dream of voting for Sinn Fein, I wouldn't dream of voting for the SDLP."

"I don't fit into a mould."

"Kate Hoey is an asset to the Labour Party. She has been a brave and principled fighter for what she believes, and yesterday’s announcement, though understandable, is regrettable. I wish her well."

"[The vote for the Conservative Party in the 2019 general election was] what we needed for stability because now the European Union knows that we're not going to revoke Article 50. We're not going to have a second referendum. We're going to get out, and they will have to change their attitude, too, to the negotiations. And we will get, I hope, within the next year a good free trade deal with the European Union. And of course, then we will be discussing with the United States to get an even closer relationship with you as well."

"I don't have to believe in conspiracy theories to see that the Irish Government and the European Union have been from day one working closely on tactics particularly relating to the border question."

"I personally couldn't vote for the Withdrawal Agreement because of Northern Ireland but I could understand many of my colleagues in the Leave campaign because they have to do it."

"I’m pro-union, I’ll do anything to make sure that the United Kingdom has Northern Ireland as an integral part of it on the same terms as any other part of the United Kingdom when we leave the EU."

"[On Northern Ireland remaining part of the UK] I don't think anyone from a pro-union background should fear Keir Starmer becoming the next prime minister of the United Kingdom."

"There are people in Northern Ireland, leading politicians, who say, and it's true, that Northern Ireland has now become a form of colony. The EU’s first kind of colony."

"I'm actually going to be voting in Northern Ireland and unfortunately the Labour Party is so anti-democratic in Northern Ireland that they allow people to join but they don't put up candidates. [...] So I'll be voting for a pro-union candidate in Northern Ireland."

"We can be a successful independent country like the United States, working, cooperating with the rest of the world."

"Taking foreign laws from a foreign legislature, governing much of our economy in Northern Ireland and keeping us in a foreign customs code whereby GB, Great Britain, our country, where our capital is, becomes a third country, becomes our foreign country – it’s just not acceptable."

"I was always very cynical about the European Union."

"If Stormont goes back with the present Windsor Framework, they in fact would be almost like what happened during the war with the Vichy government, where all those [w:Member of the Legislative Assembly (Northern Ireland)|MLAs]] [Members of the Legislative Assembly] would be collaborators with a kind of colonial government."

"We had suffered enough - 30 years. It was a huge challenge. There was something in it for everyone, but there was pain in it for everyone."

"Leadership needs to have a good value set and it needs to recognize the humanity in the other person; it needs to be pragmatic, but over the years I've discovered chemistry, the personality and if the personalities can work together on opposite sides then you've got the real ingredients of making the proposals work."

"One of the great curses of this world is the human rights industry. They justify terrorist acts and end up being complicit in the murder of innocent victims."

"The dark shadow we seem to see in the distance is not really a mountain ahead, but the shadow of the mountain behind - a shadow from the past thrown forward into our future. It is a dark sludge of historical sectarianism. We can leave it behind us if we wish."

"It is due to the memory of Lord Bryce to recall the fact that the name of the Commonwealth of Australia was suggested by his great work on the American Commonwealth. It lay constantly on the table of successive Federal Conventions, and was of the utmost service to members in framing the new Constitution."

"[P]erhaps may we find the chief contribution of England to political progress, in the doctrine of the supremacy of law over arbitrary power, in the steady assertion of the principle that every exercise of executive authority may be tested in a court of law to ascertain whether or no it infringes the rights of the subject... It was this guarantee of personal civil rights that most excited the admiration of Continental observers in the eighteenth century, and caused the British Constitution to be taken as the pattern which less fortunate countries should try to imitate. If it be said, and truly said, that this fundamental principle could not have been maintained in England without the assertion by the Parliaments of the fifteenth and, again more forcibly and persistently, by those of the seventeenth century, of control over the power of the Crown, it is to be remembered that their efforts might not have succeeded had not the earlier resistance to that power by the men who secured Magna Carta created and fostered in the minds of the upper and middle classes that firm and constant spirit of independence, that vigilant will to withstand the aggressions of the executive, which overthrew Charles the First and expelled James the Second."

"In those days it was thought that only through the principle of nationality could freedom be established, and here, again, the changes which had happened had made this ideal seem less needed than it was. The principle of nationality was held to make for peace and was quite consistent with cosmopolitanism, which played a leading part in conceptions of what was needed for the happiness of the world. There was rather more in the old ideals of the moral element and less of the material element than there was to-day; there was, too, rather more of a sanguine spirit, and the golden age seemed nearer then it seemed now."

"[T]he Charter was demanded by those who complained of the irregular and arbitrary violence of King John, and the restrictions it imposed upon the Crown's action became the corner stone of English freedom. Its provisions, never repealed, though varied and to some extent amplified in subsequent instruments similarly extorted from subsequent monarchs, were solemnly reasserted in the famous declaration by Parliament in 1628 which we call the Petition of Right, and were finally re-enacted in the Bill of Rights of 1689. Thus the Charter of 1215 was the starting-point of the constitutional history of the English race, the first link in a long chain of constitutional instruments which have moulded men's minds and held together free governments not only in England but wherever the English race has gone and the English tongue is spoken."

"As ambassador at Washington, an office which he filled from February 1907 until April 1913, Bryce was particularly successful in gaining the approval of the American people and in becoming an American institution. Whenever he attended the Old Presbyterian church at Washington he was as a matter of course ushered into Abraham Lincoln's pew. ‘Old man Bryce is all right’ was the reputed verdict of a miner in Nevada, and this popular sentiment gave him power in that great democracy which does not allow itself to be governed by the opinions of its politicians."

"Although the work of a visitor, the reputation of The American Commonwealth has stood very high in the United States. It has been continually quoted as a standard authority by contemporary American historians, and was used as a text-book throughout the country for over thirty years. It is much better known there than in England. When Edward Lawrence Godkin of the New York Nation was asked by an English member of parliament whether he had ever heard of a book called The American Commonwealth he answered ‘You bet’."

"The American Commonwealth appeared in 1888. It met with immediate and enthusiastic acclaim in two hemispheres, and during the half-century that followed, remained the classic work in the field... No other foreigner, indeed no American writer on American democracy, enjoyed so great a prestige, or wielded so great an influence in the United States as did Lord Bryce. Our language and history were also his, and he brought to his task a thorough knowledge of the English background in which, despite the "Frontier Theory," so many of the ideals and institutions of America are rooted."

"When repeated experiments have failed, when every policy that has been proposed as a remedy for the ills of Ireland has been tried in succession and found wanting, is it not time to try some other experiment? I think the only experiment that can be tried is to make the Irish people masters of their own fortunes. Throw responsibility upon them, make them feel that it is to their interest to preserve law and order. Make them feel that the laws they are to obey are laws made by themselves, and that if they adopt a policy it will not be reversed by people sitting at Westminster, who have not that intimate knowledge of Irish conditions and wishes which can be possessed only by those who live in the midst of the people."

"Having condemned the policy of severity which had been adopted with the object of bringing the [[Second Boer War|[Boer] war]] to a conclusion, he said that it might be doubted whether anything short of the restoration of the independence of the two Republics—subject of course to a measure of British control—would have the effect of inducing the Boers to lay down their arms. The passion for independence was strong; it had been the cherished ideal of those people ever since they quitted Cape Colony and won the country for themselves. Our demand for unconditional surrender was a fatal blunder."

"No one in our time has contributed more largely to create and foster this temper between the two great kindred peoples than our distinguished Ambassador, now once more at home among us, Mr. Bryce."

"[N]owhere in the world was there a higher idealism than that which possessed the American people... America in this war represented the conscience and judgment of the world."

"One of the most remarkable changes was the extent to which indifference had come to prevail in matters of religious opinion. With regard to freedom of action, there would have been a stronger objection then than there was now in allowing the great majority of persons engaged in any particular trade to coerce the minority into their wishes. On the question of non-interference, he pointed out that the difficulties of laissez faire were now far more generally recognized than they were 40 or 50 years ago. For one reason or another there was now far less disposition to accept the doctrines of laissez faire than there was then, and they played a much smaller part in the ideal we formed of what was good for a nation."

"What do you think of J. M. Keynes's book? ... The condemnation of the work of the Conference as a whole is none too severe. I remember few cases in history where negotiators might have done so much good, and have done so much evil."

"He was told that the day before Lord Bryce's death, the secretary of the academy received from him a type-written copy of a short notice which Lord Bryce had written with regard to the late Lord Reay... The last sentence of that notice...was:—"To his friends who thus saw him (in his later years) he will remain an unforgettable example of dignified strength and nobility of soul." That which was so happily written about Lord Reay was no less applicable to the man who wrote it."

"Bryce's picture of American democracy was much more nearly in accord with America's own ideas about itself. Although "originally written with a view to European rather than American readers," the work was widely read by the general public in the States, and studied by thousands of students in American colleges and universities, where the abridged edition became a standard textbook in classes on civics and comparative government. Hence Bryce interpreted American democracy not only to Europeans but to Americans themselves, contributing much toward shaping and formulating their philosophy and thought about their own government. The American Commonwealth passed through numerous editions, those of 1899 and 1910 representing thorough revisions in the light of new conditions. Altogether more than 166,000 copies of the work were sold in the United States."

"That glorification of national virtues and achievements on which I have been dwelling, might at other times have been a harmless form of pleasure. But it came at a time of keen rivalry, when everything that tended to stimulate racial vanity was caught up and used by those statesmen and other leaders who sought to embark on policies of expansion and aggression even at the cost of rousing national jealousies or embittering national animosities. We all know how vanity may, in individual men, become a powerful spring of action, and intensify energy even while it disturbs the balance of judgment. It is the same with nations. When convinced of their own superiority they may wish to assert it by force, contemning their neighbours, and fancying that they hold a commission from Providence or Fate to improve the rest of the world against its will. As we see to-day that science has made war more hideous and terrible, so we must also confess that learning and literature have done something to prepare nations for war. A sounder learning and a deeper insight might have corrected this danger and taught the peoples that they have at least as much to gain by co-operation as by competition and more to gain from friendship than from hatred. But there is a faculty in man that is sometimes prone to choose the evil and reject the good"

"Liberalism was a plant which did not thrive in stagnant waters, and the waters of London, to their shame be it spoken, were stagnant. Where there was a want of active zeal all the worse and baser instincts which had power in politics told against the Liberal party. The money power was against the Liberal party, and so was the liquor power."

"I believe that Ireland will be better legislated for in a Legislature in Dublin by its own Members, because that Legislature will be in sympathy with the feelings and will understand the needs of its fellow-citizens... It is idle to think of legislating satisfactorily for Ireland in a House in which the Irish Members constitute a small minority out of sympathy with the majority—a House chiefly composed of Members who have never been in Ireland, and have no direct personal knowledge of Irish conditions and Irish sentiment—a House whose acts and votes are checked and nullified by another and an irresponsible House, in which there is not a single Representative of Irish national feeling."

"[T]he learned had been at work in exploring the fields of history and philology. The origins of the several families of mankind were investigated and their affinities set forth. The old annals were edited and republished, the old poems popularised. The ancient exploits of the race were held up to admiration, and each people was supplied by historians and poets with fuel to feed the flame of national pride. It was all natural, and in one sense it was laudable. Men's souls are raised by the recollection of great deeds done by their forefathers. But the study of the past has its dangers when it makes men transfer past claims and past hatreds to the present. A sage friend remarked to me lately while we were discussing the complications of South-eastern Europe: "How much better if we could get rid of history altogether!" The learned men and the literary men, often themselves intoxicated by their own enthusiasms, never put their books to a worse use than when they filled each people with a conceit of its own super-eminent gifts and merits."

"The educated classes were apt to speak in a patronizing tone of the "masses of the people", and to talk of political education as if it were only needed by those masses, but the fact was that the middle classes needed education, especially on this Irish question, quite as much as the masses. The whole trouble and difficulty of our dealings with Ireland had arisen from our ignorance. ... He confidently believed that the country would arrive at but one conclusion, and that that would be in favour of Home Rule. The work would not be a long one, because two or three years would undoubtedly see the solution of this question in the sense which they desired to see it concluded—a consummation which was so much to be desired not only in the interests of Ireland but also of England, Scotland, and Wales."

"In answer to a question, Mr. Bryce said that if Scotch Home Rule meant that Scotland was to have such a complete constitution as Mr. Gladstone's Bill of 1886 proposed to give to Ireland, then he did not think that that was at all desirable and that Scotland wanted it. (Hisses and cheers.) At the same time he was bound to say that if Scotland did want it she was entitled to get it. (Loud cheers.)"

"The best justification for the despotic system described is to be found in the administration of British India. That administration is no doubt in some respects imperfect. ... But it is incomparably better than the administration of any subject territory by an alien and distant race of conquerors than has ever been before. It had in particular attained three great objects. It has established perfect internal peace and security through a vast area, much of which is still inhabited by wild tribes; it has secured a perfectly just administration of the law, civil as well as criminal, between all races and castes; and it has imbued the officials with a feeling that their first duty is to do their best for the welfare of the natives and to defend them against the rapacity of European adventurers. These things have been achieved by an efficiently organized Civil Service inspired by high traditions, kept apart from British party politics, and standing quite outside the prejudices, jealousies, and superstitions which sway the native mind. Only through despotic methods could that have been done for India which the English have done."

"[Bryce] expressed his cordial agreement with what Mr. Washington had said as to the importance of basing the progress of the coloured people of the South upon industrial training. Having made two or three visits to the South he had got an impression of the extreme complexity and difficulty of the problem which Mr. Washington was so nobly striving to solve. It was no wonder that it should be difficult seeing that the whites had such a long start of the coloured people in civilization. He believed that the general sentiment of white people was one of friendliness and a desire to help the negroes. The exercise of political rights and the attainment to equal citizenship must depend upon the quality of the people who exercised those rights, and the best thing the coloured people could do, therefore, was to endeavour to attain material prosperity by making themselves capable of prosecuting these trades and occupations which they began to learn in the days of slavery, and which now, after waiting for 20 years, they had begun to see were necessary to their well-being."

"Whatever be the issue, one can dwell with unmixed satisfaction upon the absence among ourselves of any recrudescence of mediaeval intolerance towards a people whose peculiar defects are fairly chargeable upon what they have been forced in the past to suffer, whose possession of some peculiar merits cannot be denied, and who have made within recent times extraordinary contributions to learning and philosophy, to science and to one, at least, of the arts."

"Let us repress the spirit of hatred. We are justly indignant at the way in which the enemy Powers have waged war. We trust that our victory will warn the world that such methods must never be resorted to again, and that those guilty of them will be punished. But is it wise to talk of banning a whole people for all time to come? The German people are under a harsh and tyrannous rule, which has not only deceived and misled them, but silences any protest—and there are those who wish to protest—against its crimes. Some day, we hope, they will overthrow it, when they have learnt the truth. To indulge revenge will be to sow the seeds of future wars. Nations cannot hate one another for ever, and the sooner they cease to do so the better for all of them. We must of course take all proper steps to defend ourselves in future from any dangers that might arise if after the war the enemy countries were to resume an insidious hostility. That is at present no more than a possibility which may never arise."