They haven’t gone away, you know — it’s the same old story up North

THERE can scarcely be a more overworked cliché about the North than Churchill’s words during the House of Commons debate in 1922 on the Irish Free State Bill.

Actually, quoted in full, they have a wonderful poetry about them and seem particularly appropriate at times like this: “Then came the Great War: every institution, almost, in the world was strained. Great Empires have been overturned. The whole map of Europe has been changed. The position of countries has been violently altered. The modes of thought of men, the whole outlook on affairs, the grouping of parties, all have encountered violent and tremendous changes in the deluge of the world. But as the deluge subsides and the waters fall short, we see the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone emerging once again. The integrity of their quarrel is one of the few institutions that has been unaltered in the cataclysm which has swept the world.”

Churchill’s message was the more things change, the more they remain the same.