O’Conall Street

Eight of the UK and Ireland’s most talented young chefs cooked up a storm this week as the final of the Robbie Millar Scholarship took place at the South West Regional College in Dungannon. 

At an action-packed cook-off, Ben Arnold who studies at Westminster Kingsway College, London impressed an expert judging panel, including Paul Rankin and Noel McMeel, to become part of a very exclusive club ? the Robbie Millar Scholars.

Set up in memory of the late Robbie Millar, the Scholarship called on the best young culinary talent across the UK and Ireland, offering a series of life changing prizes and experiences for the winner. 

In addition to receiving the Scholarship Sculpture crafted by Ross Wilson, Ben Arnold has won stages with the very best in the world of food and wine, including:
• The River Café (one-Michelin Star)
• Valrhona Chocolate in Tain L’Hermitage
• Illy Coffee, Triesle, Italy

Ben Arnold also takes home a magnum of Billecart-Salmon NV from James Nicholson Wine Merchant and a set of Victrinox knives from Henderson Food Service, among other prizes.

Robbie’s wife Shirley presented Ben Arnold with his prize and said she was delighted to see Robbie’s name honoured with such a fine performance from all the finalists, and obviously my congratulations go first and foremost to Ben he has created dishes which Robbie would have been proud of and which illustrate the quality and ambition of this competition.
 
“Robbie was dedicated to seeing young talent develop and felt it was only fair that they should be given the chance to demonstrate their ability and realise their potential. The finalists in this competition are among the very best in the UK and Ireland. I hope they carry the experience and ethos of this scholarship throughout their promising careers.”

On the day the finalists had to think on their feet as they cooked a three course menu from a basket of mystery ingredients. Award-winning wine merchant James Nicholson was one of the judges on the day and identified what the panel were looking for.

“The mystery basket provided a challenge for our finalists, inviting them to think both fast and creatively and to concentrate on the strengths of each ingredient. 
Robbie always had an exceptional eye for detail.  Only the best was good enough for him and this determination for excellence was a quality we were keen to see. ”

The exceptional standard of the contestants ensured that the judges had a very difficult task in choosing a winner. Ben and all the contestants should be tremendously proud of what they have achieved in this competition.  I’m sure we will be seeing a lot more of them as they build their careers in Britain and Ireland’s finest restaurants.”

Now in its second year, the scholarship has become a significant benchmark for young talent working or studying in the catering industry. 

In 2007, Chris McClurg took the honour of becoming the first ever Robbie Millar Scholarship and has since gone on to work with some of Europe’s top chefs and wine experts.  A four part BBC television series documenting Chris’ experiences from winning the competition is due to air in 2008.

I posted last month on my personal reflections of Good Friday 1998 and on some of the key dates which will be be marking here on O’Conall Street over the coming month and a half in the run up to the anniversary of the referendum. Yesterday Mark Durkan reflected on the final days of negotiation and their impact on Ireland. Here is a clip on John Hume on the day which is worth a listen.

Work started early today. We have a major announcement to manage later and the meetings were underway before 8.00am. I did get time to scan the papers before kickoff though and noted some decent journalism across the board marking the day. There is also a conference in Belfast today,  although very few of the actual negotiators except the party leaders will be there. The audience is also somewhat elitist.

The DUP’s Peter Robinson reminded us in the Irish Times this week that he still loathes the Agreement and rejects it entirely. Everyone else disagrees but in what I believe is the enduring testament to its impact on this island, nobody is talking about walking out of the institutions it created or undermining the many changes it brought about.

It’s a shame the day is not properly acknowledged here in Northern Ireland but not a surprise. The DUP although complicit in its working are not going to revise their position and Sinn Fein never liked it much in the first place. Yet all around them is the evidence of its success; a powersharing executive, North - South institutions, a new police force, an equality agenda, a growing economy and peace.

There is still an elephant in the room. A big ugly, scary beast which will take much longer to go away. Our sectarian conflict has bred deep seated sectarian attitudes which are all too alive. This week BBC Spotlight and BBC Panorama both sought to shine a light on the reality of bigotry ten years on. The DUP and Sinn Fein have rejected the one policy mechanism which was in place to tackle this problem - the ‘Shared Future’ document. They say working together is enough to tackle the issue. They could not be more wrong. Sectarianism is not going to just disappear. Like a bad colleague it needs managed out of the system. I hope for all our sakes they recognise this soon and begin in a structured way to tackle the problem.

That would be a real achievement and something to celebrate on every anniversary of the Agreement.  

Mark Durkan has made some interesting comments on the final phase of negotiations which were unfolding this day ten years ago. Readers will note his rebuttal of several points made by Jonathan Powell in his recent book. After three decades of conflict I agree with Mark when he describes the agreements overwhelming endorsement by the people of Ireland as the emancipation of hope. 

• The concept of a joint office of equal First Ministers was inspired by the pictures of Seamus Mallon and David Trimble consoling families in Poyntzpass, Co Armagh after the LVF shot dead two best friends – a Catholic and a Protestant – in Canavan’s bar on 3 March 1998, only weeks before the Agreement.  The moving story of Damian Trainor and Philip Allen’s friendship touched us like a parable for a new society.

• Downing Street faxed a draft Strand One outcome exclusively to David Trimble and John Hume on the evening of 30 March and a revised version on the morning of 31 March.  The SDLP believed the text reflected David Trimble’s conversations with Jonathan Powell.  It was no basis for negotiation never mind agreement.  We established that George Mitchell (the Talks Chair), Mo Mowlam, Paul Murphy (Strand 1 Chair) and the Irish Government knew nothing of this approach.  John Hume flew to London on 31 March.  He told Tony Blair that we would not negotiate with a fax machine, insisted on inclusive negotiations and that the Prime Minister should join the all-party Talks in Belfast if he wanted to contribute anything.  The Downing Street paper was withdrawn. 

• Despite Seamus Mallon’s persistent efforts, other parties, for different reasons, did not want to negotiate the policing issue.  This necessitated the creation of an independent commission as part of the Agreement. The success of the new beginning to policing has vindicated the Patten Commission and reflects well on the leadership of the PSNI, the Policing Board (not least its independent members) and the good work of the police Ombudsman.  The SDLP, especially our Policing Board members, can take credit in driving the implementation of Patten.  We resisted flawed legislation from Peter Mandelson and insisted on the pace and pattern of change set out by Patten.  The SDLP helped to ensure, against the odds, that the new policing arrangements, for some time, were the most successful working feature of the Agreement.

• A formula for “sufficient consensus” was a necessary confidence measure in the agreed rules for the Talks themselves.  Why do some find it exceptional or objectionable that such cross-community decision-making protections were also built into the outcome of those Talks? 

• The SDLP resisted all attempts to make “decommissioning” a condition of ministerial office in Strand One.  We were alarmed when, later, the decommissioning text cross-referred to the exclusion provisions of Strand One.  We immediately highlighted the dangers to both governments only to be told by the Irish Government that it was their wording and all would be ok.

• Parties were told that the language of “using… influence…” on decommissioning was to accommodate Sinn Fein who were saying that clearer mandatory wording would make it harder to them to sell any agreement.  We were also told by both Governments that they had “real commitments” from Sinn Fein.  Government figures also told parties that the end-date for prison releases of the end of June 2000 was deliberately later than the end date for decommissioning of May 2000. 

• Tony Blair inherited a good hand on Northern Ireland when he came to office and deserves huge credit for playing it well in getting the Agreement.  However, his side-letter to David Trimble on Good Friday and his distortive intervention during the referendum started the rot as far as authoritative interpretation and proper implementation was concerned. 

• The Agreement’s overwhelming endorsement – North and South – on 22 May 1998 was the high-water mark for democratic consensus and constitutional legitimacy in Ireland.  From that point “the process” should have been the inclusive institutions and those institutions “the process”.  Instead, the two governments put the premium on an ulterior process outside the institutions starring two parties, rather than the inclusive institutions themselves.  Suspension never occurred as a result of the institutional workings but because of failures in the process as managed by the two Governments.  The McCartney sisters, in early 2005, taught the experts and handlers a lesson in how to make the Provisional movement move. 

• John Hume and Seamus Mallon used to complain to Tony Blair about his dealings and side-dealing – with Sinn Fein and David Trimble only serving to frustrate the Agreement.  He replied “You guys, your problem is you don’t have guns”.  I utterly refute Jonathan Powell’s attempts to rewrite that counsel of cynicism against Seamus Mallon.   

• The SDLP said in 1998 that we designed the Agreement to ensure partnership between those who voted ‘yes’ and those who voted ‘no’ as well as between Unionists and Nationalists, and so it is proving. We now have a settled process as all parties, at last, accept power-sharing, north-south structures and a reformed police service. We must not revert to the stop-go process that hampered the Agreement for too long. Of course, our problems are not all behind us. The Good Friday Agreement endorsed by the people, was the emancipation of hope. Our task is the emancipation of opportunity.”

The final judging for this years CIPR, Press and Broadcast Awards took place in London yesterday. I am not going to spoil the anticipation for the 400 odd journalists and professional communicators who will gather in the Europa on Friday the 18th for the big night, but do want to say that the standard has been exceptional and the competition very stiff from a record number of entries.

 More next week.

I was debating Bertie Ahern’s legacy on the BBC Hearts and Minds programme last Thursday with Stephen Collins and Fionnuala O’Connor when she described Bertie Ahern as the first ‘post nationalist’ Taoiseach. I parked the thought at the time partly to placate my nerves at being on TV with two highly respected journalists, partly because I found the concept genuinely thought provoking. Mick Fealty of Slugger O’Toole dropped by O’Conall Street today for a coffee and a chat (more about that later in the week) and the topic came up again. Then I saw Stephen King, Trimble’s former adviser on a similar line in the Sunday Business Post.

So where did all this ‘post nationalist’ stuff come from? As far as I remember the term first entered the political lexicon during a Hearts and Minds interview John Hume gave as SDLP Leader during the 1999 European election a year after the Good Friday Agreement. It was followed by an article which SDLP MLA John Dallat wrote in the Irish News about the same time.  John Hume used the term to illustrate the need for politics on this island to move beyond the narrow nationalisms which have dominated for too long. At the time Sinn Fein seized on the comment and tried to turn it on the SDLP claiming it meant the SDLP was no longer a ‘nationalist’ party. That their argument held no water was incidental. The North was not ready to move beyond the rhetoric of conflict and they tried to punish the SDLP for seeking to do so. For the record Hume defended his seat comfortably.

Is Bertie a ‘post nationalist’ then? Those who would argue yes say he has moved beyond the rhetoric of nationalism to canvass votes - he lead the dropping of articles two and three. That he is confident enough in his identity not to be a hostage to it. That he proved capable of engaging with other nationalisms, taking the inherent differences as a given and creating space for common ground a mutual respect to emerge. And that he put people first - jobs, education and prosperity, before narrow arguments about identity. On those grounds, they argue, definitely a postnationalist.

Bertie Ahern is a true blue Dubliner. For that matter so am I. He is a working class boy made good. Ditto here too (although he mas made much much better then me!). He is a proud republican and a committed Irish nationalist who believes in the principle of consent. So are the majority of people across this island.  As Taoiseach he claimed to be a social democrat (viva el socialismo) and was undoubtedly an internationalist. He seemed happy to explore his role as the leader of a new Ireland, prosperous, diverse and in an ever deepening dialogue with the very many people on this island who consider themselves British. Ahern, like Hume left his prejudices at the door. He appeared as interested in jobs as in policing. By design or deliberately Fianna Fail today, thanks to him, is more ‘new republican’ then ‘old republican’.

Why is this interesting then? The word on O’Conall Street is that we will not see a referendum on a united Ireland this side of 2020. Just as well, because if it is ever to succeed one thing is certain. Irish nationalists will need to have convinced a significant part of the unionist community that a yes vote is not such a bad thing and that their identity, rights and economic status will not be affected by a unitary state. In other words unity will only be true when it unites people and their representatives have a lot of talking to do before they can claim to be united. The divisions are not just in Northern Ireland. There is a fault line between North and South built on seventy years of jurisdictional disparity. In the South church and state coexist in a way which has worked well for the 26 counties but would be unsustainable in a united Ireland and several generations have ignored the North, wishing it away with the coarse remark that ‘you are all the same up there’. Southerners do not understand northern nationalists and despite a constitutional claim over the territory which lasted until ‘98, bizarrely see unionists as foreigners.

Stephen King tells the story of when Bertie Ahern apologised to the UUP delgation after they were asked to remove their poppies before a meeting with him. That was back in the run up to the agreement. Ahern was right. The poppy is precious to very many people on this island and that is something we simply need to accept. It is also means something to tens of thousends of Irish nationalists who lost their ancestors in the First World War.  To describe it as offensive is to stand there waiting to be offended. There are very many symbols, British and Irish, which will not survive in the new Ireland. I think the poppy will and so it should. But poppies won’t put money in your pocket no more than you can eat a flag.

When communities prosper they have the opportunity move on. When people’s standard of living goes up their insecurities go down. The south maybe be more postnationalist today then twenty years ago and that is partly down to its prosperity. The north can prosper too and with increased wealth, spread across the whole community, attitudes will change and priorities will shift. A stakeholder society will replace and dependency one.  Ahern saw it all happen in the South. I am sure he believes it can happen here too. Maybe that’s what Fionnuala meant when she described him as ‘post nationalist’.

London stood out as a free city this weekend. The Chinese authorities guarded the Olympic torch as if there own but the people of London reminded the world it belongs to no state.

I agree with Steve Redgrave when he says sporting boycotts achieve nothing. I also agree that carrying the torch is in no way an endorsement of China. The fact that the procession was greeted with big protests is China’s problem, not London’s.

 It will be interesting to see what happens today in Paris and in the other countries which are scheduled to receive the Olympic symbol over the next 130 days. My reckoning is that Tibet will make the headlines more often the China and that the world will remind this year’s Olympic hosts that with the honour of the games comes the responsibility to live up to their ideals.

Love this video and the irony of it all. Enjoy......