The very existence of Northern Ireland has always been a difficult subject for non-Brits to grasp, and in fact for us Brits too if truth be told. When the island of Ireland was divided in two in 1921 , the south became a Self Governing Republic , whilst Northern Ireland remained a territory of the UK.
After decades of a bitter sectarian war led by extremists from both the North and South, there was eventual a peace process in 1998 where the South accepted its claim to reunite with the North could only happen when the majority of people voted for it. Meanwhile the UK agreed to set up a local Assembly that would given the North authority to make their own decisions, a process which would end up creating more confusion than stability.
With such a turbulent history between all the different factions, the Assembly shut down in 2017 leaving Northern Ireland in a power vacuum, and the UK Government had to take over the reigns of power again.
If you are valiantly following tis convoluted history, then the last key to this impossible puzzle, is that Northern Ireland, or Ulster as it prefers to call itself, still has the right to elect their own Members of Parliament to send to London too. Most of which are members of an ultra conservative Party the DUP who were up till now a noisy but irrelevant part of Parliament. That is until the last General Election that Prime Minister Theresa May had called thinking that she could increase her party’s’ majority,
However the exact opposite happened and May’s Conservative Party suffered a humiliating defeat and it became obvious that the only way she could survive in power was to create a coalition party. The only other political party that would even consider this was Ulster’s DUP and thus their 12 members gave Prime Minister May a wafer slim majority,
Their support however came at a heavy price with a long lsit if demands including an insistence that she would not extend same-sex marriage to Northern Ireland even though it’s the only part of the UK where it is not legal.
All however is not lost as in a free vote in Parliament in London last week MPs voted 383 votes in favour to 73 to finally legalise same-sex marriages.Under a new amendment approved by the House of Commons, Northern Ireland Secretary Karen Bradley was forced to make regulations to change the law by October this year
There is a BUT of course because if the politician’s back in Northern Ireland could bury their hatchets to enable the Assembly to re-convene once again with its ultra-right majority,, then the decision about the legalisation would revert to them
Confused? We are too as we carefully try and sort through the muddied water of Northern Ireland’s politics where the rights to stop discrimination against LGBTQ people are denied by a small band of extreme faith-based politicians.
This is the UK in 2019 and it is so wrong and unconscionable
