Irish Examiner view: Business as usual despite aftershocks

Jeffrey Donaldson's political life has ended in failure

Jeffrey Donaldson has been charged with allegations of a historical nature.

It was that problematic character Enoch Powell who once observed that “all political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs.” 

He was writing his line of Joseph Chamberlain, statesman, imperialist, and a man with highly portable principles. 

But that verdict may have impinged this week on one of Powell’s most notable mentees, Jeffrey Donaldson.

Donaldson, 61, was hired as an assistant by Enoch Powell, and served as election agent for the UUP MP for South Down between 1982 and 1984.

He quit as Democratic Unionist Party leader on Friday after his arrest on historic charges of rape, gross indecency, and multiple counts of indecent assault. 

After a weekend of rumour on social media, his wife of 36 years was named as being charged with aiding and abetting additional offences in relation to the same police operation.

Both deny any wrongdoing and are due to appear in Newry Magistrates’ Court on April 24.

The revelations of the charges have reverberated throughout the North, the Republic, and Westminster. 

The PSNI investigation, under the stewardship of the new chief constable Jon Boucher who has been in effective control of the service since October, commenced in January.

Donaldson and his wife were arrested at their home in Dromore, Co Down, just before 7am on Thursday.

His arrest and subsequent resignation threw his party into chaos. 

All references to him were removed from the DUP website and all his social media accounts have been closed. 

Party insiders have acknowledged that they could lose his Lagan Valley seat. 

While Donaldson has indicated that he will not run in the forthcoming Westminster election, anticipated to be in the late autumn, it is not clear whether he will resign his seat which would necessitate a by-election.

But the political obituaries have already been written, irrespective of the outcome of the forthcoming court case. 

Mordant humour circulating on the internet included this line: “It’s official. 2nd worst Good Friday in DUP history.” 

Donaldson, who led his party for three years, was the principal Unionist influence on the deal which reopened power-sharing in Stormont, and now he has gone within eight weeks. 

That, of itself, is unlikely to blow off the doors of devolution but it will place greater scrutiny on the relationship between Northern Ireland deputy first minister, Emma Little-Pengelly, and Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill. 

And on the personality of the “interim” leader, East Belfast MP, Gavin Robinson.

There is a strand of Unionism, as there is within the Conservative party, which is keen to unshackle from EU law and from what it sees as an ipso facto Irish sea border. 

But the prime requirement now, after a prolonged and sterile suspension of power sharing, is for some stability and clear blue water between these events and the verdict of the ballot boxes, whenever that comes.

Judicial process affecting Donaldson and his wife is now under way. 

What the body politic needs is business as usual, albeit that this can be a tenuous definition in the North.

Fighting cancer on new fronts

Ireland can feel proud that, this weekend 20 years ago, it enacted, to the surprise of nearly everyone, the world’s first ban on smoking in bars, restaurants, and workplaces.

The effectiveness of the restriction, and the willingness of the vast majority of the population to observe it, was arguably the greatest public-health achievement in the history of the State. 

Ireland was followed by Norway, Sweden, Britain, New Zealand, France, Italy, India, and 11 German states. 

Now, more than 70 countries ban smoking at work and in public places.

Micheál Martin, then minister for health, made his mark as a future leader by spearheading the campaign. 

Dealing with smoking, and the opposition of Big Tobacco, was, he said, “a no-brainer. You actually have an obligation”.

Health Minister Micheál Martin with the no smoking sign he carries around in the boot of his car. Picture: Gavin Browne

While the war against cancer was aided hugely by the prohibition, challenges arise on other fronts. 

As we reported on Saturday, 50% of the population of Ireland — those without health insurance — are unable to access the cutting-edge cancer treatments that are available to private patients.

All the main insurance companies have committed to making oncology drugs available to patients and hospitals in the private sector as soon as they are approved by the European Medicines Agency, but public-procurement processes are much slower.

This two-tier system allows innate advantage to private health providers and reminds us that the fight against pernicious disease can take many forms.

Louis Gossett Jr

The passing of the veteran actor Louis Gossett Jr, at the age of 87, breaks a final link with a generation of trailblazing African Americans who redefined Hollywood, and created a new sense of what it was to be black and male in the US.

Gossett won the Oscar for best supporting actor in 1982, nearly 20 years after Sidney Poitier won best actor for the now largely overlooked Lilies of the Field, a drama about immigrant nuns escaping the communism of east Berlin.

In An Officer and a Gentleman, Gossett, from Coney Island, played the ramrod-straight martinet Gunnery Sergeant Emil Foley, whose job was to find character flaws in applicants for aviation officer candidate school. 

Louis Gossett Jr's breakout role was as Fiddler in the groundbreaking ABC series Roots.Picture: Amy Sussman/Invision/AP, File

His confrontation with Richard Gere produced one of the great martial arts fights in movie history and — spoiler alert — a happy ending.

Gossett appeared in more than 200 films and, standing dignified and tall at 6ft 4in, always caught the eye. 

His breakout role was as Fiddler in the groundbreaking ABC series Roots, set in the plantations of the Deep South.

He and Poitier opened a door through which went Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman, Laurence Fishburne, Forest Whitaker, Will Smith, Michael K Williams, and a whole galaxy of stars.

To paraphrase the famous song from An Officer and a Gentleman, his most famous movie, Louis Gossett Jr was “up where he belongs” in the estimation of everyone.