Will GAA matches involving Tyrone be banned by the British?

The possibility emerged this week in the immediate aftermath of the news from Dublin that this year’s All Ireland final will be played on British soil.

Is nothing, one has to wonder, sacred?

Croke Park bosses of the New GAA faction have been out in force suggesting that no significance should be attached to the import of turf from England to repair the serious damage certain to be inflicted this weekend by stomping fans of the overrated rock band U2.

The implication is that there isn’t a piece of the old sod suitable to play the game of the Gael on. Only English turf will do.

And now the British want to bring in a law to tell the GAA community what activities will be permitted in its own grounds. (The measures will also apply |to football and rugby, but that’s different.)

Criminal Justice Minister Paul Goggins this week announced the extension to the North of British law on “unacceptable behaviour at sports grounds and events”. Powers will be introduced to ban particular individuals from attending matches.

It is this which may impact disproportionately on Tyrone, whose games are regularly enlivened by manly jostling, nasty taunts and rough behaviour up to and including physical assault. Occasionally, even spectators |join in.

The other serious point arising here has to do with the presumption of the NIO in extending British laws rather than waiting until the relevant powers are devolved to the local Assembly. I had thought that all our mainstream parties were opposed to this sort of thing.

But Mr. Goggins was accompanied at the launch of his scheme by Sports Minister Nelson McCausland, smiling in approval throughout. (Nelson won’t have been aware of the Tyrone dimension since, as Sports Minister, he maintains a disciplined ignorance of the most popular sport within his remit.)

But what are we to make of the fact that just last week at a debate in Westminster Hall, Willie McCrea was telling Paul Goggins in no uncertain terms that any attempt to extend the British 1967 Abortion Act to the North would be an intolerable outrage.

Willie was supported by the SDLP’s Mark Durkan and Alasdair McDonnell. Criminal Justice powers will be devolved to Stormont soon, it was pointed out. The locally elected Assembly was the proper body to handle the matter. Westminster had no business butting in.

But rowdy behaviour at sports grounds? A matter of much greater urgency....

One of the reasons for this scale of priorities became apparent during Willie’s contribution to the debate. Three times he was asked whether he was in favour of a woman pregnant as a result of rape having an option of abortion.

“Yes or no?”, pressed Martin Salter of Labour. Came the eventual answer: “The honourable gentlemen cannot expect me, as a parliamentarian, simply to answer the question as he wants it answered. I shall answer it in the way that I was elected to answer, which is what I stand for, and I make no apology for it.”

The reason Mr. McCrea and other Northern MPs and MLAs hide themselves in thickets of prose when the question of rape is raised in the abortion debate is that they know a majority in the North believe that rape victims should have a right to choose — 62% in the last poll.

Notwithstanding their mandate on the issues on which Northern Ireland’s elections are fought, the rape issue explodes their claim to speak on abortion for a majority of the people. Nevertheless, they want the abortion issue remitted to themselves to ensure that, within Northern Ireland, any woman who finds herself pregnant, including a woman made pregnant through rape, will carry the pregnancy to full term, irrespective of her own wishes, interests or feelings or her own conscientious beliefs.

The conscientious beliefs of the big parties will take precedence. Not that any of them appear to have a problem of conscience about exporti ng the issue, and the women, to England, Holland, anywhere they can be shuffled off to.

It also became clear during the debate that, interestingly enough, Alasdair McDonnell doesn’t know the difference between the Family Planning Association and family planning clinics run by the Health Service.

The grubbiest contribution came at the end, from Paul Goggins. Diana Abbot and Emily Thornberry had asked why, if the Act wasn’t to be extended, arrangements couldn’t be made for women from the North to come under the NHS when they arrive in Britain and have NHS abortions, rather than in fee-charging private clinics? Why should they be even further disadvantaged compared to women across the water?

Goggins answered: “Some might argue that women should be able to leave Northern Ireland for assessment as well as treatment here, but I would argue that that would be a serious breach of the relationship between the woman and her GP. Secondly ... we would either have to top-slice the Northern Ireland health budget, which would undermine the devolution settlement, or taxpayers in England, Wales and Scotland would have to pay.”

Now there’s a clear and principled position ...

Clarity and principle have little to do with the debate as constructed by the main parties. The legal position remains a mess, women continue to pay the price, and the people with power to make change have no intention of doing any such thing.