title: Unionism in Ireland

text: To the extent they acknowledge inequities in Unionist rule from Stormont—Paisley was later to allow "it wasn't . . a fair government. It wasn't justice for all"—unionists argue these were a result of insecurity which successive British governments had themselves created by their own divided view on Northern Ireland's place in the United Kingdom.  When the tensions to which it had contributed to in Northern Ireland finally exploded, unionists believe British equivocation proved disastrous. Had they regarded Northern Ireland is an integral part of the United Kingdom, the Government's response in 1969–69 would have been "fundamentally different". If they had thought there were social and political grievances which were remediable by law, it would have been the business of Westminster to legislate. But acts of rebellion would have been suppressed and punished as such with the full authority and force of the state. At no point, according to this unionist analysis, would the policy have been one of containment and negotiation.


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: The example of Free Derry was replicated in other nationalist neighbourhoods both in Derry and in Belfast. Sealed off with barricades, the areas were openly policed by the IRA. In what was reported as the biggest British military operation since the Suez Crisis, Operation Motorman, on 31 July 1972, the British Army did eventually act to re-establish control. But this had been preceded in the weeks before by a ceasefire in the course of which Provisional IRA leaders, including Chief of Staff Seán Mac Stíofáin and his lieutenants Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams, were flown to London for what proved to be unsuccessful negotiations with Northern Ireland Secretary William Whitelaw, acting on behalf of the UK Prime Minister, Edward Heath.


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: The common unionist charge was that Westminster and Whitehall continued to classify Northern Ireland, as it had Ireland before partition, as "something more akin to a colonial than a domestic problem". From the first street deployment of troops in 1969 the impression given was of "a peace-keeping operation in which Her Majesty's Forces are not defending their homeland, but holding at bay two sects and factions as in Imperial India, Mandated Palestine or in Cyprus". This played into the republican narrative that "the insurgence in the housing estates and borderland of Ulster" was something akin to the Third World wars of liberation, and that in Britain's first and last colony "decolonisation will be forced upon her as it was in Aden and elsewhere".


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: With London, Unionist credibility on security did not survive internment, introduced at the insistence of Stormont government under Brian Faulkner. In the early hours of 10 August 1971 342 persons suspected of IRA involvement were arrested without charge or warrant. Many appeared to have no connection with the IRA, and for those that did the link typically was to the left-leaning Officials. Beyond immediate defence of Catholics areas, the Officials had already committed to unarmed political strategy—and on that basis were to declare a ceasefire in May 1972. Leading Provisionals, some of whom were new to the IRA, entirely escaped the net. Unionists blamed the poor intelligence on London's decision to tolerate no-go areas.


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: For the British Government internment proved a public relations disaster, both domestic and international. It was compounded by the interrogation of internees by methods (the so-called the five techniques) that were eventually deemed illegal by the UK Government's own commission of inquiry (and subsequently, in a case brought by the Irish government, ruled "inhuman and degrading" by the European Court of Human Rights). Further national and international outrage followed the Army's lethal use of live fire against unarmed anti-internment protesters, Bloody Sunday in Derry (20 January 1972) being the most notorious incident.


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: In March, Heath demanded that Faulkner surrender control of internal security. When, as might have been anticipated, Faulkner resigned rather than comply, Heath in an instant shattered, for unionists, "the theory that the Army was simply in Northern Ireland for the purpose of offering aid to the civil power, of defending legally established institutions against terrorist attack". In what unionists viewed as a victory for violence, the Conservative government prorogued Stormont and imposed direct rule "not merely to restore order but to reshape the Province's system of government".


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: In October 1972 the British government brought out a Green Paper, "The Future of Northern Ireland". It articulated what were to be the enduring principles of the British approach to a settlement. It is a fact that an element of the minority in Northern Ireland has hitherto seen itself as simply part of the wider Irish community. The problem of accommodating that minority within the political of Northern Ireland has to some extent been an aspect of a wider problem within Ireland as a whole.


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: It is therefore clearly desirable that any new arrangements for Northern Ireland should, whilst meeting the wishes of Northern Ireland and Great Britain, be so far as possible acceptable to accepted by the Republic of Ireland.


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: Northern Ireland must and will remain part of the United Kingdom for as long as that is the wish of a majority of the people, but that status does not preclude the necessary taking into account of what has been described in this paper as the 'Irish Dimension.'


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: A Northern Ireland assembly or authority must be capable of involving all its members constructively in way which satisfy them and those they represent that the whole community has a part to pay in the government of the Province. ... [T]here are strong arguments that the objective of real participation should be achieved by giving minority interests a share in the exercise of executive power .


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: In June 1973 PR elections were held for an Assembly. Following negotiations at Sunningdale in England, attended by the Dublin government, on 1 January 1974 the former Unionist prime minister Brian Faulkner agreed to form an Executive in coalition with Hume's new Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) and the smaller cross-community Alliance Party. Faulkner's later successor as party leader, James Molyneaux, argued that the difficulty for most unionists was not an arrangement in which Protestants and Catholics must consent. It was that, despite a promise not share power with parties whose "primary" aim is a united Ireland, Faulkner had committed them to agreement with "Republican Catholics"


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: Having drawn on both the Republican and Northern Ireland, Labour parties, the SDLP had sought to accommodate "progressive Protestants". But with PIRA continuing to draw on public outrage over internment and Bloody Sunday, the SDLP was under pressure to present Sunningdale as a means to achieving the goal of Irish unity. The new Health and Social Service Minister, Paddy Devlin, conceded that "all other issues were governed" by a drive to "get all-Ireland institutions established" that would "produce the dynamic that would lead ultimately to an agreed united Ireland".


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: The Sunningdale Agreement envisaged a Council of Ireland comprising, with equal delegations from Dublin and Belfast, a Council of Ministers with "executive and harmonising functions" and a Consultative Assembly with advisory and review functions. Unionists feared these created the possibility of their being manoeuvred into a minority position. In retrospect, Devlin regretted the SDLP had not "adopted a two stage approach, by allowing power sharing at Stormont to establish itself", but by the time he and his colleagues recognised the damage they had caused to Faulkner's position by prioritising the Irish Dimension it was too late.


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: Within a week of taking office as First Minister, Faulkner was forced to resign as UUP leader. A surprise Westminster election at the end of February was a triumph for the United Ulster Unionist Coalition, in which the bulk of his old party stood as Official Unionists with William Craig's Ulster Vanguard and Paisley's new Democratic Unionists. Faulkner's pro-Assembly grouping was left with just 13% of the unionist vote. Arguing that they had deprived Faulkner of any semblance of a mandate, the victors called for new Assembly elections.


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: When in May the Assembly affirmed the Sunningdale Agreement, a loyalist coalition, the Ulster Workers' Council (UWC), called a general strike. Within two weeks the UWC, supported by the Ulster Defence Association and UVF paramilitaries, had an effective stranglehold on energy supplies. Concessions sought by Faulkner were blocked by the SDLP. John Hume, then Minister of Commerce, pressed for a British Army enforced fuel-oil plan and for resistance to "a fascist takeover". After Mervyn Rees, the Northern Ireland Secretary refused his final plea for negotiation, Faulkner resigned. Conceding that there was no longer any constitutional basis for the Executive, Rees dissolved the Assembly.


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: In inaugurating a prolonged period of Direct Rule, the UWC strike weakened the representative role of the unionist parties. There were to be a number of consultative assemblies and forums in the years that followed, but the only elective offices with administrative responsibilities were in downsized district councils. At Westminster unionist MPs contended with governments that remained committed to the principles of the 1972 Green Paper. The initiative in protesting what unionists often perceived as inadequate political and security responses to republican violence passed to loyalists.


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: The loyalists principal mode of operation was not to be the work stoppage. With Paisley's blessing, in 1977 the UDA and a number of other loyalists groups sought to replicate the UWC success. Stoppages in support of a "unionist wish-list"—essentially a return to Stormont-era majority rule—failed to secure the support of critical workers and broke up in face UUP condemnation and firm police action. Nor was it to be the ballot, although both the UVF and the UDA did establish party-political wings. It was assassination: in the course of the Troubles loyalists are credited with the murder of 1027 individuals (about half the number attributed to republican paramilitaries and 30% of the total killed).


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: Loyalism, of which the once largely rural Orange Order had been the archetypal expression, is generally understood as a strand of unionism. It has been characterised as partisan but not necessarily party-political, and in outlook as more ethnic than consciously British—the perspective of those who are Ulster Protestants first and British second. Loyalism can embrace evangelicals, but the term is consistently associated with the paramilitaries and, on that basis, frequently used as if were synonymous with working-class unionism. The paramilitaries are "thoroughly working class". Their hold, typically, has been upon working-class Protestant neighbourhoods and housing estates where they have compensated for the loss of the confidence they enjoyed as district defenders in early years of the Troubles with racketeering and intimidation.


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: Paisley combined his radically anti-Catholic evangelism early in his career with a foray into physical force loyalism: his formation in 1956 of Ulster Protestant Action (UPA). Ulster Protestant Volunteers implicated Paisely, albeit via supposed intermediaries, in the bombings intended to "blow O'Neill out of office" early in 1969. Leaders of the UVF, however, are adamant that Paisley had nothing to do with them. His rhetoric may have been inspirational, but theirs was a tightly guarded conspiracy. The motivation to kill came largely from secular forces within the Loyalist community. Through the DUP, Paisley ultimately was to lead the bulk of his following into party politics, emerging in the new century as unionism's undisputed leader.


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: The relationship of other, at the time, more mainstream, unionist political figures to loyalist paramilitaries is also a subject of debate. Paramilitaries deny and resent any implication of political string pulling, They suggest, nonetheless, that they could rely on the politicians to deliver their message. The party leaders might condemn loyalist outrages, but inasmuch as they tried to account for them as reactive, as a response to the injury and frustration of the unionist people, they were effectively employing sectarian, frequently random, killings for a common purpose, to extract concessions from the Government: "You know, 'if you don't talk to us, you will have to talk to these armed men". The relationship of unionists to loyalist violence, in this sense, remained "ambiguous".


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: In 1985 Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher signed an agreement at Hillsborough with the Irish Taoiseach, Garret FitzGerald. For the first time this appeared to give the Republic a direct role in the government of Northern Ireland. An Anglo-Irish Intergovernmental Conference, with a locally based secretariat, would invite the Irish government to "put forward views on proposals" for major legislation concerning Northern Ireland. Proposals, however, would only be on matters that are "not the responsibility of a devolved administration in Northern Ireland". The implication for unionists was that if they wished to limit Dublin's influence, they would have to climb down from insistence on majority rule and think again as to how nationalists might be accommodated at Stormont.


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: The unionist reaction, Thatcher recalled in her memoirs, was "worse than anyone had predicted to me". The Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) and Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) led an "Ulster says No" campaign against the Anglo-Irish or Hillsborough Agreement, that included strikes, civil disobedience and a mass resignation of unionist MPs from Westminster and suspensions of district council meetings. On 23 November 1985 upwards of a hundred thousand rallied outside Belfast City Hall. "Where do the terrorists return to for sanctuary?" Paisley asked the crowd: "To the Irish Republic and yet Mrs. Thatcher tells us the Republic may have some say in our province. We say, Never! Never! Never! Never!" Irish historian Dr Jonathan Bardon remarks that "Nothing like it had been seen since 1912".


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: Unionists, however, found themselves isolated, opposing a Conservative government and with a Westminster Opposition, Labour, that was sympathetic to Irish unity. With no obvious political leverage, and possibly to preempt initiative passing to the loyalist paramilitaries, in November 1986 Paisley announced his own "third force": the Ulster Resistance Movement (URM) would "take direct action as and when required". Recruitment rallies were held in towns across Northern Ireland and thousands were said to have joined. Despite importing arms, some of which were passed on to the UVF and UDA, for the URM the call for action never came. By the fourth anniversary of the accord, unionist protests against the Anglo-Irish Agreement were drawing only token support.


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: In March 1991, the two unionist parties agreed with the SDLP and Alliance arrangements for political talks on the future of Northern Ireland. In their submission to the inter-party talks in 1992, the Ulster Unionists said they could envisage a range of cross-border bodies so long as these were under the control of the Northern Assembly, did not involve an overarching all-Ireland Council, and were not designed to be developed in the direction of joint authority. While prepared to accommodate an Irish Dimension unionists, at a minimum, were looking for a settlement not an "unsettlement".


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: As an alternative to devolution with an Irish Dimension, some unionists proposed that Northern Ireland reject special status within the United Kingdom, and return to what they conceived as the original unionist programme of complete legislative and political union. This had been the position of the British and Irish Communist Organisation (B&ICO), a small contrarian left-wing grouping that had come to the attention of unionists through their Two-nations Theory of partition and their critical support for the UWC Strike.


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: The British Labour Party, they argued, had been persuaded that Irish unity was the only left option in Northern Ireland less on its merits than on the superficial appearance of unionism as the six-county Tory Party. Had Labour tested the coalition that was unionism as it began fracture in the late 1960s by itself canvassing for voters in Northern Ireland, the party might have proved the "bridge between Catholics and the state". Disappointed in Labour's response and contending with a unionist split (Democracy Now) led by the only Northern Irish Labour MP (sitting for a London constituency) Kate Hoey, the B&ICO dissolved its Campaign for Labour Representation in 1993. A broader Campaign for Equal Citizenship, in which for a period the B&ICO also participated, to draw all three Westminster parties to Northern Ireland similarly failed to convince. Its president, Robert McCartney did briefly hold together five anti-devolution UK Unionist Party MLAs in the 1998 Assembly.


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: The 2003 Labour Party Conference accepted legal advice that the party could not continue to exclude Northern Ireland residents from party membership. The National Executive Committee, however, maintains a ban on the Labour Party in Northern Ireland contesting elections. Support for the SDLP continues to be party policy.


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: In July 2008, under Reg Empey Ulster Unionists sought to restore the historic link to the Conservative Party, broken in the wake of Sunningdale. With the new Conservative leader David Cameron declaring that "the semi-detached status of Northern Ireland politics needs to end", Empey announced that his party would be running candidates in upcoming Westminster elections as Ulster Conservatives and Unionists – New Force. The move triggered defections, and in 2010 election the party lost their only remaining MP, Sylvia Hermon who campaigned successfully as an independent. The episode confirmed the UUP's eclipse by the Democratic Unionists, a party that mixed social and economic populism with their uncompromising unionism.


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: Northern Ireland Conservatives have since contested elections on their own. Their 4 candidates in the 2019 Westminster election polled a total 5,433 votes.


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: SDLP leader Seamus Mallon quipped that the 1998 Belfast, or Good Friday, Agreement (GFA) was "Sunningdale for slow learners". This was not the view of David Trimble, with whom Mallon, as joint head of the new power-sharing Executive, shared the Office of First Minister and Deputy First Minister (OFMDFM). Trimble believed that unionism had secured much that had been denied to Faulkner 25 years before.


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: The Council of Ireland, that Mallon's party colleague, Hugh Logue, had referred to as "the vehicle that would trundle Unionists into a united Ireland" was replaced by a North-South Ministerial Council. "Not a supra-national body", and with no "pre-cooked" agenda, the Council was accountable to the Assembly where procedural rules (the Petition of Concern) allowed for cross-community consent, and hence a "unionist veto".


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: For the first time, Dublin formally recognised the border as the limit of its jurisdiction. The Republic amended its Constitution to omit the territorial claim to the whole island of Ireland and to acknowledge that Irish unity could be achieved only by majority consent "democratically expressed, in "both jurisdictions in the island"". The firm nationalist principle that unionists are a minority within the territory of the state was set aside.


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: In return, however, unionists had to accept that within new framework for power-sharing there could be no escaping the need to secure republican consent. The new Executive would be formed not, as in 1974, by voluntary coalition but by the allocation ministerial posts to the Assembly parties on a proportional basis. This d'Hondt method ensured that unionists would find themselves sitting at the Executive table with those they had persistently labelled IRA-Sinn Féin. In 1998 Sinn Féin, who had been gaining on the SDLP since the eighties, had 18 Assembly seats (to 26 for the SDLP) securing them two of the ten Executive departments.


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: Unionists were concerned that this sharing of office was based on a principle that "rendered dangerously incoherent" the UK government's position in relation to the Union. The Agreement insists on a symmetry between unionism and nationalism, the two "designations" it privileges over "others" through the procedural rules of the new Assembly. Either can insist (through a Petition of Concern) on decision by parallel consent, and they nominate the First and Deputy First Ministers which, despite the distinction in title, are a joint office. "Parity of esteem" is accorded to two diametrically opposed aspirations: one to support and uphold the state, the other to renounce and subvert the state in favour of another. The UK government may have deflected the republican demand that it be a persuader for Irish unity, but at the cost, in the unionist view, of maintaining neutrality with regard to future of Northern Ireland.


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: In the UK's acceptance of Irish unity by consent was not new. It had been there in 1973 at Sunningdale, in the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985 and again in the 1993 Downing Street Declaration in which London had disclaimed any "selfish strategic or economic interest" in the matter. Unionists were nonetheless discomforted by the republican claim that the 1998 Agreement had, in the words of Gerry Adams, "dealt the union a severe blow": "there was now no absolute commitment, no raft of parliamentary acts to back up an absolute claim, only an agreement to stay until the majority decided otherwise".


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: In the May 1998 referendum on the Good Friday Agreement, on a turnout of 81%, 71.1% voted in favour. (A simultaneous referendum held in the Republic of Ireland on a 56% turnout produced a majority in favour of 94.4%). The best estimates indicated that all but 3 or 4% of Catholics/Nationalists voted Yes, but that almost half of Protestants/Unionists (between 47 and 49%) stood with the DUP and voted No.


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: Chief among the DUP's objections was neither the North-South Ministerial Council, although that remained under suspicion, nor the principle of power-sharing as such. When the new Executive was formed, the DUP matched Sinn Féin in taking two ministerial seats. The issue was the continuation of the IRA as an armed and active organisation: the republicans were at the table while retaining, at readiness, the capacity for terrorist action further bolstered by the release of republican prisoners. In an agreement that called parties to use their influence with paramilitaries to achieve disarmament, there was no effective sanction. Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams were free to insist that the IRA took their own counsel.


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: In October 2002, at a time the IRA had finally agreed but not yet complied with a process for decommissioning their arms, a police raid on Sinn Féin's offices at Stormont suggested that the organisation was still active and collecting intelligence. Trimble led the UUP out of the Executive and the Assembly was suspended. (No charges were brought as a result of the raid at the centre of which was a Sinn Féin staffer, Denis Donaldson, later exposed as a government informer, and a public inquiry was ruled not in the public interest).


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: In October 2006 the DUP and Sinn Féin found an accommodation in the St Andrews Agreement, paving the way for Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness to be nominated as First, and Deputy First, Ministers by a restored Assembly. For the UUP's new leader Reg Empey the breakthrough was merely the GFA "for slow learners". But while he acknowledged compromises, Paisley argued that Northern Ireland was "turning a corner". The IRA had disarmed, and from Sinn Féin support had been won "for all the institutions of policing". Northern Ireland had "come to a time of peace".


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: After thirteen months in office Paisley was replaced as First Minister of Northern Ireland by his long-time DUP deputy Peter Robinson Robinson, and Arlene Foster who followed him in office from January 2016, had colder relationships than had Paisley with McGuinness and with his party colleagues and these eventually broke down. Citing "DUP's arrogance" in relation to a range of issues, including management of a financial scandal, in January 2017 McGuinness resigned. Sinn Féin refused to nominate a successor, without whom the devolved institutions were unworkable. Assembly elections followed on 2 March 2017. For the first time in the history of Northern Ireland as a political entity, with 45 of 90 seats unionists failed to secure an overall majority in a parliament of the region.


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: It was not until January 2020 that a deal was brokered (New Decade, New Approach) to restore Assembly, and to persuade Sinn Féin to nominate their new leader in the North Michelle O'Neill as McGuinness's successor.


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: The withdrawal of support within the DUP for Paisley's newly conciliatory leadership was not marked by a lasting split over the DUP decision to go into an Executive with Sinn Féin. In the Assembly, Paisley's former lieutenant, Jim Allister has remained a lone Traditional Unionist Voice protesting an "enforced coalition" that "holds at the heart of government" those determined to subvert the state.


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: Four months before the UK's June 2016 referendum on the future of UK membership in the European Union, Arlene Foster announced that her party had decided, on balance, to campaign for Leave. With equal claim to be a pro-business party with a strong farming support base, the UUP decided that "on balance Northern Ireland is better remaining in the European Union". At a time when Sinn Féin was citing the cross-border, all-island, economic activity facilitated and supported by the EU as a further argument for Irish unity, there was a sense that, among other benefits, Brexit would restore a measure of "distance" from Dublin.


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: By a margin of 12% Northern Ireland voted Remain (with Scotland, the only UK region to do so outside London). The DUP position remained that Leave had been a UK-wide decision. Yet as Brexit negotiations with the EU 27 proceeded Foster felt the need to insist that a UK-wide mandate to leave could be honoured only by the UK "leaving the European Union as a whole", its "territorial and economic integrity" intact.


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: The DUP's ten MPs enabled Theresa May's Conservative Government to remain in power; following the hung parliament that resulted from the snap general election in 2017. However, divisions within May's Conservative Party limited DUP influence on Brexit policy. Legislation on withdrawal from EU would require a very much broader cross-party coalition. At the end of the year, May returned from Brussels with a proposal that Northern Ireland, alone, continue with the Republic of Ireland under a common EU's trade regime.


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: Coalescing behind the Dublin government, the EU 27 had ruled that the interests of the Northern Ireland peace process are "paramount". To avoid the "step backwards" that would be represented, "symbolically and psychologically", by a "hardening" of the Irish border, Northern Ireland should remain in regulatory alignment with the European Single Market and behind the Customs Union frontier. That would allow necessary physical checks on goods to be removed to air and sea points of entry.


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: Foster protested that the hazards of a no-deal Brexit would be better than this "annexation of Northern Ireland away from the rest of the United Kingdom". She was supported by prominent Brexiteers. Boris Johnson told the 2018 DUP conference that the EU had made Northern Ireland "their indispensable bargaining chip": "if we wanted to do free trade deals, if we wanted to cut tariffs or vary our regulation the we would have to leave Northern Ireland behind as a semi-colony of the EU . . . damaging the fabric of the Union with regulatory checks . . . down the Irish Sea". It would be an "historic mistake". Privately, Johnson complained that the attention to Northern Ireland sensitivities was a case of "the tail wagging the dog" Within three months of replacing May in July 2019, he had amended her withdrawal agreement, stripping the Irish Backstop not of its essential provisions—Northern Ireland would remain a customs point of entry for the EU—but rather of the suggestion that, to avoid singling Northern Ireland out, the UK as a whole might accept an interim regulatory and customs partnership.


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: The DUP acknowledged the sense of "betrayal". Johnson's Northern Ireland Protocol was "the worst of all worlds". Citing free-trade provisions of the Act of Union, past and present unionist leaders pressed for a judicial review. When eventually rendered in June 2021, the ruling of the Belfast High Court was that while there indeed was a conflict with the Act, in approving the implicitly amending Protocol Parliament was sovereign.


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: With the Prime Minister secure in his "Get-Brexit-Done" mandate from the 2019 UK general election, the DUP's last line of defence was themselves to appeal to the international and constitutional status of the Good Friday Agreement. Johnson had made one apparent concession: every four years the Northern Ireland Assembly would be called upon to renew the region's new double-border trade arrangements. However, this was to be by simple majority vote. The decision could not be subject to a Petition of Concern, and thus to the prospect of a unionist veto. For the DUP this was a violation of the Good Friday Agreement under which any proposal to "diminish the powers of the NI assembly" or to "treat NI differently to the rest of UK" had to be on the basis of parallel unionist-nationalist majorities. Citing " the total disregard of this principle", in February 2022 the new DUP leader, Jeffrey Donaldson, withdrew Paul Givan as First Minister, and precipated a new Assembly election.


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: The appeal to the cross-community consent provisions of the Good Friday Agreement suggested that unionists now saw themselves, not in Ireland alone but in Northern Ireland, as a minority, deserving of minority protection. The novel predicament had been underscored by the 2019 Westminster election. Although the combined nationalist vote actually fell 3%, Northern Ireland for the first time returned more nationalist MPs than unionist.


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: Asked to account for the 2019 loss to Sinn Féin's John Finucane of North Belfast, a seat her deputy Nigel Dodds had held for nineteen years and which never previously returned a nationalist MP, Arlene Foster replied "The demography just wasn't there. We worked very hard to get the vote out... but the demography was against us". A Sinn Féin election flyer used in the previous 2015 run against Dodds advertised the changed ratio of Catholics to Protestants in the constituency (46.94 per cent to 45.67 per cent). It had a simple message for Catholic voters, "Make the change".


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: Demography, in this sense, has been a long term concern for unionists. The proportion of people across Northern Ireland identifying as Protestant, or raised Protestant, has fallen from 60% in the 1960s to 48%, while those raised Catholic has increased from 35 to 45%. Only two of the six counties, Antrim and Down, now have "significant Protestant majorities", and only one – Lisburn – of its five official cities. A majority Protestant Northern Ireland "is now restricted to the suburban area surrounding Belfast". Unionist representation has declined. The combined unionist vote, trailing below 50% in elections since 2014, fell to a new low of just 42.3% in the 2019 Westminster poll.


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: Unionism losing, however, has not necessarily meant nationalism winning: overall there has been "no comparable increase in the nationalist vote mirroring the decline in the unionist bloc". Despite symbolic triumphs over unionism—returning the larger number of Westminster MPs in 2019, and Sinn Féin as the largest party to Stormont in 2022—at 38% the combined nationalist vote remains below the 41.8% secured in 2005.


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: Surveys suggest that more people than ever in Northern Ireland, 50%, say they are neither unionist nor nationalist. The electoral impact of eschewing "tribal labels" (upwards of 17% also refuse a religious designation) is limited since those who do so are younger and less likely to turnout in Northern Ireland's still largely polarised elections. It is still the case that few Protestants vote for nationalists, and few Catholics for unionists. But they will vote for others, for parties that decline to make an issue of Northern Ireland's constitutional status.


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: The principal other party has been the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland. In 2019, Alliance more than doubled its vote from 7.1% to 18.5% in the Northern-Ireland wide May European elections and from 7.9% to 16.8% in the December Westminster election. Competing in the 2022 Assembly election with the full range of local parties, Alliance secured 13.5% of first-preference votes and, with vote transfers, close to a fifth of Assembly seats.


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: According to exit polling in the 2019 Westminster election, the Alliance surge drew both on past unionist and on past nationalist voters. In the Westminster election, 18% of Alliance's new backers said they voted DUP at the previous contest and 3% for the UUP. 12% had voted for Sinn Féin, and 5% for the-SDLP. The party meanwhile gained a quarter of all non-voters from two years earlier. Alliance is neutral on the constitutional issue, but a January 2020 survey indicates that in a border poll, post-Brexit, twice as many of its voters (47%) would opt for Irish unity as for remaining in the United Kingdom (22%).


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: Since O'Neill, who in the last Stormont parliamentary election personally canvassed Catholic households, there have been calls within unionism for it to break out of its Protestant base. When he was DUP leader, Peter Robinson spoke of not being "prepared to write off over 40 per cent of our population as being out of reach". Surveys had been suggesting that in a border poll between a quarter and a third of Catholics might vote for the Northern Ireland to remain in the UK. While anti-partition sentiment has strengthened post-Brexit, there may be a significant number of Catholics who meet the standard of "functional unionists": voters whose "rejection of the unionist label is more to do with the brand image of unionism than with their constitutional preferences". It remains the case that only one half of one percent of DUP and UUP members identify as Catholics: a handful of individuals.


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: In disclaiming any "selfish or strategic" British interest, the 1994 Downing Street Declaration, had effectively ruled that "there could no such thing as disloyalty within Northern Ireland". The conflicting ambitions of nationalism and unionism were of "equal validity".


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: Unionists accused nationalists taking this new "parity of esteem" as a license for a policy of "unrelenting harassment". Trimble spoke of having to reverse an "insidious erosion of the culture and ethnic national identity of the British people of Ulster" systematically pursued by "the Provisional IRA and its fellow travellers"; and Robinson of a "fightback" against the "unrelenting Sinn Féin campaign to promote Irish culture and target British structures and symbols".


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: Unionists alleged a "pan-nationalist [SDLP-Sinn Féin] front" was manipulating public order powers to ban, re-route or otherwise regulate time-hallowed Orange marches. For Trimble the flashpoint was the conflict at Drumcree (1995-2001), for Robinson and Arlene Foster it was the similarly drawn-out Ardoyne shopfronts standoff (2013-2016) in north Belfast. A decision of the once firmly unionist Belfast City Council in 2012 to reduce the number of days the Union Flag was flown from City Hall, was also interpreted as a step in a wider "cultural war" against "Britishness", triggering protest.


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: The greater issue in inter-party talks proved to be language rights. On Good Friday, 10 April 1998, Prime Minister Tony Blair was surprised by a last minute demand for recognition of a "Scottish dialect spoken in some parts of Northern Ireland" that Unionists regarded their "equivalent to the Irish language". In insisting on parity for Ulster Scots or Ullans, Trimble believed he was taking this "cultural war" onto the nationalists' own ground. Unionists argued that nationalists had "weaponised" the Irish language issue as "a tool" with which to "batter the Protestant people".


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: The DUP's first Minister of Culture, Arts and Leisure, Nelson McCausland, argued that privileging Irish through a language act would be an exercise in "ethnic territorial marking". His decision, and that of his party colleagues, to resist Sinn Féin's demand for a stand-alone Irish Language Act, in part by insisting on compensating provisions for Ulster Scots, became one of the principal, publicly acknowledged, sticking points in the three years of on and off again negotiations required to restore the power-sharing executive in 2020. Other unionists object. The "positive ethnic, religious or national special pleading" implicit in the parading, flags and language counteroffensive, they argue, risks defining unionist culture as "subaltern and therefore ripe for absorption into Irish culture as a 'cherished' minor tradition".


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: The 2020 "New Decade New Approach" agreement promises both the Irish language and Ulster-Scots new Commissioners to "support" and "enhance" their development but does not accord them equal legal status. While the UK government recognise Scots and Ulster Scots as a regional or minority language for the "encouragement" and "facilitation" purposes of Part II of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, for Irish it assumes the more stringent Part III obligations in respect of education, media and administration. Yet "New Decade, New Approach" does take a step with Ulster Scots that it does not take with Irish speakers: the UK government pledges to "recognise Ulster Scots as a national minority under the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities". This is a second Council of Europe treaty whose provisions were previously applied in Northern Ireland to non-white groups, to Irish Travellers and to the Roma.


title: Unionism in Ireland

text: Insofar as unionists are persuaded to identity with Ulster Scots and employ it as a marker (as the reference to "the Ulster Scots / Ulster British tradition in Northern Ireland"" in New Decade, New Approach" might imply) they define themselves, "in effect", as a scheduled ethnicity.


title: Taxicab geometry

text: A taxicab geometry or a Manhattan geometry is a geometry whose usual distance function or metric of Euclidean geometry is replaced by a new metric in which the distance between two points is the sum of the absolute differences of their Cartesian coordinates. The taxicab metric is also known as rectilinear distance, "L" distance, "L" distance or formula_1 norm (see "L" space), snake distance, city block distance, Manhattan distance or Manhattan length. The latter names refer to the rectilinear street layout on the island of Manhattan, where the shortest path a taxi travels between two points is the sum of the absolute values of distances that it travels on avenues and on streets.


title: Taxicab geometry

text: The geometry has been used in regression analysis since the 18th century, and is often referred to as LASSO. The geometric interpretation dates to non-Euclidean geometry of the 19th century and is due to Hermann Minkowski.


title: Taxicab geometry

text: In formula_2, the taxicab distance between two points formula_3 and formula_4 is formula_5. That is, it is the sum of the absolute values of the differences in both coordinates.


title: Taxicab geometry

text: The taxicab distance, formula_6, between two vectors formula_7 in an "n"-dimensional real vector space with fixed Cartesian coordinate system, is the sum of the lengths of the projections of the line segment between the points onto the coordinate axes. More formally,formula_8For example, in formula_2, the taxicab distance between formula_10 and formula_11 is formula_12


title: Taxicab geometry

text: The "L" metric was used in regression analysis in 1757 by Roger Joseph Boscovich. The geometric interpretation dates to the late 19th century and the development of non-Euclidean geometries, notably by Hermann Minkowski and his Minkowski inequality, of which this geometry is a special case, particularly used in the geometry of numbers, . The formalization of "L" spaces is credited to .


title: Taxicab geometry

text: Taxicab distance depends on the rotation of the coordinate system, but does not depend on its reflection about a coordinate axis or its translation. Taxicab geometry satisfies all of Hilbert's axioms (a formalization of Euclidean geometry) except for the side-angle-side axiom, as two triangles with equally "long" two sides and an identical angle between them are typically not congruent unless the mentioned sides are parallel.


title: Taxicab geometry

text: A topological ball is a set of points with a fixed distance, called the "radius", from a point called the "center". In "n"-dimensional Euclidean geometry, the balls are spheres. In taxicab geometry, distance is determined by a different metric than in Euclidean geometry, and the shape of the ball changes as well. In "n" dimensions, a taxicab ball is in the shape of an "n"-dimensional orthoplex. In two dimensions, these are squares with sides oriented at a 45° angle to the coordinate axes. The image to the right shows why this is true, by showing in red the set of all points with a fixed distance from a center, shown in blue. As the size of the city blocks diminishes, the points become more numerous and become a rotated square in a continuous taxicab geometry. While each side would have length formula_13 using a Euclidean metric, where "r" is the circle's radius, its length in taxicab geometry is 2"r". Thus, a circle's circumference is 8"r". Thus, the value of a geometric analog to formula_14 is 4 in this geometry. The formula for the unit circle in taxicab geometry is formula_15 in Cartesian coordinates andformula_16in polar coordinates.


title: Taxicab geometry

text: A circle of radius "r" for the Chebyshev distance (L metric) on a plane is also a square with side length 2"r" parallel to the coordinate axes, so planar Chebyshev distance can be viewed as equivalent by rotation and scaling to planar taxicab distance. However, this equivalence between L and L metrics does not generalize to higher dimensions.


title: Taxicab geometry

text: Whenever each pair in a collection of these circles has a nonempty intersection, there exists an intersection point for the whole collection; therefore, the Manhattan distance forms an injective metric space.


title: Taxicab geometry

text: Let formula_17 be a continuously differentiable function in formula_18. Let formula_19 be the taxicab arc length of the planar curve defined by formula_20 on some interval formula_21. Then the taxicab length of the formula_22 infinitesimal regular partition of the arc, formula_23, is given by:


title: Taxicab geometry

text: By the Mean Value Theorem, there exists some point formula_25 between formula_26 and formula_27such that formula_28.


title: Taxicab geometry

text: Then formula_30 is given as the sum of every partition of formula_30 on formula_32 as they get arbitrarily small.formula_33


title: Taxicab geometry

text: To test this, take the taxicab circle of radius formula_34 centered at the origin. Its curve in the first quadrant is given by formula_35 whose length is


title: Taxicab geometry

text: Multiplying this value by formula_37 to account for the remaining quadrants gives formula_38, which agrees with the circumference of a taxicab circle. Now take the Euclidean circle of radius formula_34 centered at the origin, which is given by formula_40. Its arc length in the first quadrant is given by


title: Taxicab geometry

text: Accounting for the remaining quadrants gives formula_42 again. Therefore, the circumference of the taxicab circle and the Euclidean circle in the taxicab metric are equal. In fact, for any function formula_20 that is monotonic and differentiable with a continuous derivative over an interval formula_32, the arc length of formula_20 over formula_46 is formula_47.


title: Taxicab geometry

text: Two triangles are congruent if and only if three corresponding sides are equal in distance and three corresponding angles are equal in measure. There are several theorems that guarantee triangle congruence in Euclidean geometry, namely Angle-Angle-Side (AAS), Angle-Side-Angle (ASA), Side-Angle-Side (SAS), and Side-Side-Side (SSS). In taxicab geometry, however, only SASAS guarantees triangle congruence.


title: Taxicab geometry

text: Take, for example, two right isosceles taxicab triangles whose angles measure 45-90-45. The two legs of both triangles have taxilength 2, but the hypotenuses are not congruent. This counterexample eliminates AAS, ASA, and SAS. It also eliminates AASS, AAAS, and even ASASA. Having three congruent angles and two sides does not guarantee triangle congruence in taxicab geometry. Therefore, the only triangle congruence theorem in taxicab geometry is SASAS, where all three corresponding sides must be congruent and at least two corresponding angles must be congruent. This result is mainly due to the fact that the length of a line segment depends on its orientation in taxicab geometry.


title: Taxicab geometry

text: In solving an underdetermined system of linear equations, the regularization term for the parameter vector is expressed in terms of the formula_1 norm (taxicab geometry) of the vector. This approach appears in the signal recovery framework called compressed sensing.


title: Taxicab geometry

text: Taxicab geometry can be used to assess the differences in discrete frequency distributions. For example, in RNA splicing positional distributions of hexamers, which plot the probability of each hexamer appearing at each given nucleotide near a splice site, can be compared with L1-distance. Each position distribution can be represented as a vector where each entry represents the likelihood of the hexamer starting at a certain nucleotide. A large L1-distance between the two vectors indicates a significant difference in the nature of the distributions while a small distance denotes similarly shaped distributions. This is equivalent to measuring the area between the two distribution curves because the area of each segment is the absolute difference between the two curves' likelihoods at that point. When summed together for all segments, it provides the same measure as L1-distance.


title: Sexagenary cycle

text: The sexagenary cycle, also known as the Stems-and-Branches or ganzhi (), is a cycle of sixty terms, each corresponding to one year, thus a total of sixty years for one cycle, historically used for recording time in China and the rest of the East Asian cultural sphere. It appears as a means of recording days in the first Chinese written texts, the Shang oracle bones of the late second millennium BC. Its use to record years began around the middle of the 3rd century BC. The cycle and its variations have been an important part of the traditional calendrical systems in Chinese-influenced Asian states and territories, particularly those of Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, with the old Chinese system still in use in Taiwan, and to a lesser extent, in Mainland China.


title: Sexagenary cycle

text: This traditional method of numbering days and years no longer has any significant role in modern Chinese time-keeping or the official calendar. However, the sexagenary cycle is used in the names of many historical events, such as the Chinese Xinhai Revolution, the Japanese Boshin War, the Korean Imjin War and the Vietnamese Tet Mau Than. It also continues to have a role in contemporary Chinese astrology and fortune telling. There are some parallels in this with the current 60-year cycle of the Hindu calendar.


title: Sexagenary cycle

text: Each term in the sexagenary cycle consists of two Chinese characters, the first being one of the ten Heavenly Stems of the Shang-era week and the second being one of the twelve Earthly Branches representing the years of Jupiter's duodecennial orbital cycle. The first term "jiǎzǐ" () combines the first heavenly stem with the first earthly branch. The second term "yǐchǒu" () combines the second stem with the second branch. This pattern continues until both cycles conclude simultaneously with "guǐhài" (), after which it begins again at "jiǎzǐ". This termination at ten and twelve's least common multiple leaves half of the combinations—such as "jiǎchǒu" ()—unused; this is traditionally explained by reference to pairing the stems and branches according to their yin and yang properties.


title: Sexagenary cycle

text: This combination of two sub-cycles to generate a larger cycle and its use to record time have parallels in other calendrical systems, notably the Akan calendar.


title: Sexagenary cycle

text: The sexagenary cycle is attested as a method of recording days from the earliest written records in China, records of divination on oracle bones, beginning ca. 1100 BC. Almost every oracle bone inscription includes a date in this format. This use of the cycle for days is attested throughout the Zhou dynasty and remained common into the Han period for all documentary purposes that required dates specified to the day.


title: Sexagenary cycle

text: Almost all the dates in the "Spring and Autumn Annals", a chronological list of events from 722 to 481 BC, use this system in combination with regnal years and months (lunations) to record dates. Eclipses recorded in the Annals demonstrate that continuity in the sexagenary day-count was unbroken from that period onwards. It is likely that this unbroken continuity went back still further to the first appearance of the sexagenary cycle during the Shang period.


title: Sexagenary cycle

text: The use of the sexagenary cycle for recording years is much more recent. The earliest discovered documents showing this usage are among the silk manuscripts recovered from Mawangdui tomb 3, sealed in 168 BC. In one of these documents, a sexagenary grid diagram is annotated in three places to mark notable events. For example, the first year of the reign of Qin Shi Huang (), 246 BC, is noted on the diagram next to the position of the 60-cycle term "yǐ-mǎo" (, 52 of 60), corresponding to that year. Use of the cycle to record years became widespread for administrative time-keeping during the Western Han dynasty (202 BC – 8 AD). The count of years has continued uninterrupted ever since: the year 1984 began the present cycle (a —"jiǎ-zǐ" year), and 2044 will begin another. Note that in China the new year, when the sexagenary count increments, is not January 1, but rather the lunar new year of the traditional Chinese calendar. For example, the ji-chou year (coinciding roughly with 2009) began on January 26, 2009. (However, for astrology, the year begins with the first solar term "Lìchūn" (), which occurs near February 4.)


title: Sexagenary cycle

text: In Japan, according to "Nihon shoki", the calendar was transmitted to Japan in 553. But it was not until the Suiko era that the calendar was used for politics. The year 604, when the Japanese officially adopted the Chinese calendar, was the first year of the cycle.


title: Sexagenary cycle

text: The Korean ( hwangap) and Japanese tradition ( "kanreki") of celebrating the 60th birthday (literally 'return of calendar') reflects the influence of the sexagenary cycle as a count of years.


title: Sexagenary cycle

text: The Tibetan calendar also counts years using a 60-year cycle based on 12 animals and 5 elements, but while the first year of the Chinese cycle is always the year of the Wood Rat, the first year of the Tibetan cycle is the year of the Fire Rabbit (—"dīng-mǎo", year 4 on the Chinese cycle).


title: Sexagenary cycle

text: <nowiki>*</nowiki>The names of several animals can be translated into English in several different ways. The Vietnamese Earthly Branches use cat instead of Rabbit.


title: Sexagenary cycle

text: As mentioned above, the cycle first started to be used for indicating years during the Han dynasty, but it also can be used to indicate earlier years retroactively. Since it repeats, by itself it cannot specify a year without some other information, but it is frequently used with the Chinese era name (年号; "niánhào") to specify a year. The year starts with the new year of whoever is using the calendar. In China, the cyclic year normally changes on the Chinese Lunar New Year. In Japan until recently it was the Japanese lunar new year, which was sometimes different from the Chinese; now it is January 1. So when calculating the cyclic year of a date in the Gregorian year, one has to consider what their "new year" is. Hence, the following calculation deals with the Chinese dates "after" the Lunar New Year in that Gregorian year; to find the corresponding sexagenary year in the dates before the Lunar New Year would require the Gregorian year to be decreased by 1.


title: Sexagenary cycle

text: As for example, the year 2697 BC (or −2696, using the astronomical year count), traditionally the first year of the reign of the legendary Yellow Emperor, was the first year (甲子; "jiǎ-zǐ") of a cycle. 2700 years later in 4 AD, the duration equivalent to 45 60-year cycles, was also the starting year of a 60-year cycle. Similarly 1980 years later, 1984 was the start of a new cycle.


title: Sexagenary cycle

text: Thus, to find out the Gregorian year's equivalent in the sexagenary cycle use the appropriate method below.


title: Sexagenary cycle

text: The result will produce a number between 0 and 59, corresponding to the year order in the cycle; if the remainder is 0, it corresponds to the 60th year of a cycle. Thus, using the first method, the equivalent sexagenary year for 2012 AD is the 29th year (壬辰; "rén-chén"), as "(2012–3) mod 60 = 29" (i.e., the remainder of (2012–3) divided by 60 is 29). Using the second, the equivalent sexagenary year for 221 BC is the 17th year (庚辰; "gēng-chén"), as "60- [(221+2) mod 60] = 17" (i.e., 60 minus the remainder of (221+2) divided by 60 is 17).


title: Sexagenary cycle

text: Step-by-step example to determine the cyclic year of first year of the reign of Qin Shi Huang (246 BC):


title: Sexagenary cycle

text: Start from the AD year (1967), take directly the remainder mod 60, and look into column AD of the table "Sexagenary years" (just above).


title: Sexagenary cycle

text: For a BC year: discard the minus sign, take the remainder of the year mod 60 and look into column BC. Applied to year -246, this gives:


title: Sexagenary cycle

text: When doing these conversions, year 246 BC cannot be treated as −246 AD due to the lack of a year 0 in the Gregorian AD/BC system.


title: Sexagenary cycle

text: The following tables show recent years (in the Gregorian calendar) and their corresponding years in the cycles:


title: Sexagenary cycle

text: The branches are used marginally to indicate months. Despite there being twelve branches and twelve months in a year, the earliest use of branches to indicate a twelve-fold division of a year was in the 2nd century BC. They were coordinated with the orientations of the Great Dipper, (: "jiànzǐyuè", : "jiànchǒuyuè", etc.). There are two systems of placing these months, the lunar one and the solar one.


title: Sexagenary cycle

text: One system follows the ordinary Chinese lunar calendar and connects the names of the months directly to the central solar term (; "zhōngqì"). The "jiànzǐyuè" (()) is the month containing the winter solstice (i.e. the Dōngzhì) "zhōngqì". The "jiànchǒuyuè" (()) is the month of the following "zhōngqì", which is Dàhán (), while the "jiànyínyuè" (()) is that of the Yǔshuǐ () "zhōngqì", etc. Intercalary months have the same branch as the preceding month.


title: Sexagenary cycle

text: In the other system (; "jiéyuè") the "month" lasts for the period of two solar terms (two "qìcì"). The "zǐyuè" () is the period starting with Dàxuě (), i.e. the solar term "before" the winter solstice. The "chǒuyuè" () starts with Xiǎohán (), the term before Dàhán (), while the "yínyuè" () starts with Lìchūn (), the term before Yǔshuǐ (), etc. Thus in the solar system a month starts anywhere from about 15 days before to 15 days after its lunar counterpart.


title: Sexagenary cycle

text: The branch names are not usual month names; the main use of the branches for months is astrological. However, the names are sometimes used to indicate historically which (lunar) month was the first month of the year in ancient times. For example, since the Han dynasty, the first month has been "jiànyínyuè", but earlier the first month was "jiànzǐyuè" (during the Zhou dynasty) or "jiànchǒuyuè" (traditionally during the Shang dynasty) as well.


title: Sexagenary cycle

text: For astrological purposes stems are also necessary, and the months are named using the sexagenary cycle following a five-year cycle starting in a "jiǎ" (; 1st) or "jǐ" (; 6th) year. The first month of the "jiǎ" or "jǐ" year is a "bǐng-yín" (; 3rd) month, the next one is a "dīng-mǎo" (; 4th) month, etc., and the last month of the year is a "dīng-chǒu" (, 14th) month. The next year will start with a "wù-yín" (; 15th) month, etc. following the cycle. The 5th year will end with a "yǐ-chǒu" (; 2nd) month. The following month, the start of a "jǐ" or "jiǎ" year, will hence again be a "bǐng-yín" (3rd) month again. The beginning and end of the (solar) months in the table below are the approximate dates of current solar terms; they vary slightly from year to year depending on the leap days of the Gregorian calendar.


title: Sexagenary cycle

text: The table above allows one to find the stem & branch for any given date. For both the stem and the branch, find the N for the row for the century, year, month, and day, then add them together. If the sum for the stems' N is above 10, subtract 10 until the result is between 1 and 10. If the sum for the branches' N is above 12, subtract 12 until the result is between 1 and 12.


title: Demarai Gray

text: Demarai Remelle Gray (born 28 June 1996) is an English professional footballer who plays as a winger for club Everton.


title: Demarai Gray

text: Gray came through the youth system of Birmingham City, for whom he made his Football League debut as a 17-year-old in October 2013. In two-and-a-half seasons, he made 78 appearances across all competitions, including 51 starts in the Championship, and scored 8 goals. Gray signed for Leicester City in January 2016, and was a member of their 2015–16 Premier League-winning squad. In January 2021, he joined Bundesliga club Bayer Leverkusen, but returned to English football with Everton in July.


title: Demarai Gray

text: He has represented England from under-18 to under-21 level. Born in England, Gray is eligible to play for Jamaica through family heritage.


title: Demarai Gray

text: Gray was born in Birmingham, where he attended Frankley High School and played for Cadbury Athletic's junior teams. He joined Birmingham City's Academy as an under-11, and took up a two-year scholarship in July 2012. In a 2013 interview, Gray assessed his strengths as "pace, dribbling and technique", felt he needed to "score more goals", described himself in three words as "bubbly, calm and happy", and named Nathan Redmond as the biggest influence on him since joining the club.


title: Demarai Gray

text: After impressing Birmingham manager Lee Clark in training, he was named in the squad for the Championship match against Millwall on 1 October 2013, and made his senior debut as a 91st-minute substitute for Jesse Lingard in a 4–0 win. He made his first start on 2 November, in a 1–0 league defeat at home to Charlton Athletic. Gray signed his first professional contract, of two-and-a-half years, on 9 December. Days after his inclusion together with academy teammate Reece Brown in a "Top 10 Football League stars of tomorrow" feature on the "FourFourTwo" website, Gray scored his first senior goal. Entering the League match at home to Blackburn Rovers on 21 April 2014 as a second-half substitute with Birmingham 4–1 down, he received a pass from Federico Macheda and shot low into the corner to score the final goal of the match. His performance over the season earned him the Academy Player of the Season award for 2013–14.


title: Demarai Gray

text: Gray performed well in 2014–15 pre-season, and the management suggested he was showing increased maturity. He started the first two matches of the season, but for the remainder of Clark's tenure as manager, Gray was used more as substitute than starter. Against Leeds United in September, he was denied a penalty and booked for diving when apparently fouled by Giuseppe Bellusci; both managers thought it the wrong decision. The following week, his first goal of the season gave Birmingham a 2–0 lead at top-of-the-table Norwich City, but he became unwell in the second half. Norwich scored while Birmingham were attempting to substitute him, and the match ended 2–2.


title: Demarai Gray

text: He made his first start under new manager Gary Rowett in the 1–0 win away to Rotherham United on 22 November, and soon established himself as the left midfielder in a 4–2–3–1 formation as Rowett regularly named an unchanged starting eleven. On his tenth league start, Gray scored three times in the first half of the match at home to Reading on 14 December, which ended 6–1. It was his first hat-trick since his under-14 days, and Rowett praised not only his clinical finishing but also his work off the ball and tracking back to cover in defence. His performances during December earned him the Football League Young Player of the Month award.


title: Demarai Gray

text: Clark had expressed concern that the club's financial difficulties would force the sale of players such as Gray, and the player was offered a two-year contract extension. A £500,000 bid from Premier League club Crystal Palace was rejected in September, scouts regularly watched the player, and media reports linked him with clubs including Liverpool, Newcastle United and Tottenham Hotspur. The club turned down a series of offers, the highest reported as £5 million, from Championship club AFC Bournemouth in the January 2015 transfer window. In a statement issued when the window closed, they said that "none of [those offers] reflected the ability and potential of the player", and expressed their pleasure at having retained his services.


title: Demarai Gray

text: With loanee Lloyd Dyer available as an alternative, Rowett used Gray more sparingly, suggesting that his reduced effectiveness was a normal part of a young player's learning curve: the player needed to learn how to impose himself on a match despite increased attention from the opposition. The "Birmingham Mail" suggested that Gray's potential as a matchwinner should not be ignored. His solo goal on 11 April, in which he ran the length of the pitch to score the winner against Wolverhampton Wanderers, was his first since the Reading match and earned him the club's Goal of the Season award. According to "The Guardian", "It was not so much the 18-year-old's pace that impressed as his persistence in running at and then pressurising Wolves full-back Scott Golbourne into error, and the certainty with which he then slid the ball past the Wolves goalkeeper". He finished the season with 43 appearances in all competitions, of which two-thirds were as a starter, and won the club's Young Player of the Season award.


title: Demarai Gray

text: After many months of negotiation, Gray signed a new three-year contract with the club in July 2015. At the player's insistence, a release clause was included in the terms. He went into the new season feeling "stronger as a player, physically and mentally", and produced some fine performances, as in a 2–0 win at Leeds in October, when he took advantage of confusion in the defence to score what proved to be the only goal of his Birmingham season, and in a goalless draw at Preston North End in December. He nearly marked his last appearance for the club, as a substitute in a 2–0 win at home to Milton Keynes Dons on 29 December, with a farewell goal. When the ball broke to him, "with a single silky touch and devastating burst he was in on goal, ready to put the icing on an outstanding team performance. He gave the goalkeeper the eyes, created the gap at the near postand proceeded to hit the upright."


title: Demarai Gray

text: In the early part of the season, Gray had asserted that "right now what's key for my development is playing games here", but that "I will know when it's my time". When Rowett selected Viv Solomon-Otabor to start ahead of Gray against MK Dons "with January coming up", it was clear that his time had arrived.


title: Demarai Gray

text: Premier League club Leicester City activated the release clause in Gray's Birmingham City contract, reported as £3.7 million, and he signed a four-and-a-half-year contract on 4 January 2016. He made his debut on 10 January, away to Tottenham Hotspur in the third round of the FA Cup. He started the match, assisted a goal by Marcin Wasilewski, and "showed glimpses of the pace that will cause Premier League defences problems" in the 2–2 draw at White Hart Lane. Six days later he made his first appearance in England's top flight, as an 85th-minute substitute for Marc Albrighton in a 1–1 draw at Aston Villa.


title: Demarai Gray

text: Consistency of team selection as Leicester maintained their position at the top of the league meant Gray's chances of first-team football were limited, but teammate Danny Simpson highlighted the contribution of the squad players. Former "Sky Sports" journalist Alex Dunn wrote that Gray "proved to be incredibly adept at killing time when coming on for Leicester as a late substitute". He made the assist for Jamie Vardy's stoppage-time goal that secured a 2–0 win at Sunderland, and against Swansea City, his run from deep, cross and parried shot set up a goal for Albrighton. He had made ten appearances, all as a substitute, by 2 May when Leicester were confirmed as champions.


title: Demarai Gray

text: On 3 November 2018, a week after the death of Leicester City's owner and chairman Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha in a helicopter crash, Gray scored the winning goal against Cardiff City. He celebrated by removing his shirt to show an undershirt bearing the words "For Khun Vichai" written on it and then running to the away end of the ground.


title: Demarai Gray

text: On 31 January 2021, Gray joined Bundesliga club Bayer Leverkusen on an 18-month contract. He made his debut on 6 February as a 74th-minute substitute, with Leverkusen leading VfB Stuttgart 4–1, and ten minutes later scored his first and only Bundesliga goal to make the final score 5–2. Shortly after Gray's transfer to Bayer Leverkusen, the player stated "there was no contract offer [from Leicester City]", remarking upon his exit not "ending in the best way", while still feeling appreciation for the "moments I will cherish forever".


title: Demarai Gray

text: Gray joined Premier League club Everton on 22 July 2021 for an undisclosed fee, understood by BBC Sport to be £1.7 million. He signed a three-year contract with an option for a fourth year. Gray scored his first competitive goal for Everton "with a clinical low effort into the far corner" in his second league match, a 2–2 draw with Leeds United on 21 August.


title: Demarai Gray

text: Gray was called up for an England under-18s training camp in November 2013. He made his debut at that level on 18 February 2014, playing the whole of a 4–0 win against their Belgian counterparts in a friendly match at St George's Park. Two weeks later, he was involved in England's goal as they lost 2–1 to Croatia in the first match of a double-header. He received his first call-up to the under-19s for a friendly against Germany in September 2014, and made his debut as a second-half substitute. An ankle injury forced Gray's withdrawal from the squad for the 2015 European Under-19 Championship first qualifying round, but he was able to play his part in the elite round. He started the first match, against Denmark, and was involved in England's second goal in a 3–2 win, when his near-post flick was deflected over the line by a Danish player. The Football Association (the FA) credit Gray with the goal, although UEFA record it as an own goal. A substitute in the second group match, a win against Azerbaijan, he returned to the starting eleven for the final group match against France, but a 2–1 defeat meant England failed to qualify for the finals.


title: Demarai Gray

text: After taking part in a joint training camp for the under-20 and under-21 teams, Gray was included in Aidy Boothroyd's under-20 squad for the 2015 Toulon Tournament. Starting the opening match on the left of a three-man attack, Gray gave England an 8th-minute lead with a shot from , but Morocco twice took the lead before Chuba Akpom secured a 3–3 draw for England. Gray was a second-half substitute in the next match, a win against Ivory Coast. He made his third appearance as England lost to Mexico, but took no part in the last group game or the third-place play-off, and later admitted he had felt tired after a full season of league football and had not been at his best. He and Birmingham teammate Reece Brown were called up for the under-20s' first matches of the 2015–16 season, a double-header against the Czech Republic. In the first match, both Brown and half-time substitute Gray scored as England won 5–0; in the second, despite what the FA's website called a "hugely influential" attacking performance by Gray, they lost 1–0.


title: Demarai Gray

text: After Nathan Redmond withdrew through injury, Gray was called into the under-21 squad for European Championship qualifiers in November 2015. An unused substitute for the first match, a goalless draw away to Bosnia and Herzegovina, he was not included in the matchday squad for the second, a 3–1 win at home to Switzerland. Gray made his under-21 debut on 26 March 2016, in the reverse fixture against Switzerland, a 1–1 draw. His run led to England's goal, scored by Akpom, and according to head coach Gareth Southgate, "it was a super debut. He was a threat all night and I think the work he did at the goal was exceptional but he also put a real shift in for the team and did his work off the ball."


title: Demarai Gray

text: On 9 September 2018, Gray was called up for the full England squad for a friendly match against Switzerland.


title: Demarai Gray

text: On 27 May 2019, Gray was included in England's 23-man squad for the 2019 UEFA European Under-21 Championship.


title: Demarai Gray

text: Gray is eligible to play for Jamaica as well as his native England. In a televised interview in March 2021, Jamaican Football Federation president Michael Ricketts included Gray in a list of English players with Jamaican heritage he suggested were "in the process of acquiring their Jamaican passport" as part of the nation's plan to improve their chances of qualifying for the 2022 World Cup.


title: What a Fool Believes

text: "What a Fool Believes" is a song written by Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins. The best-known version was recorded by the Doobie Brothers (with McDonald singing lead vocals) for their 1978 album "Minute by Minute". Debuting at number 73 on January 20, 1979, the single reached number one on the "Billboard" Hot 100 on April 14, 1979, for one week. The song received Grammy Awards in 1980 for both Song of the Year and Record of the Year.


title: What a Fool Believes

text: The song was one of the few non-disco No. 1 hits on the "Billboard" Hot 100 during the first eight months of 1979. The lyrics tell a story of a man who is reunited with an old love interest and attempts to rekindle a romantic relationship with her before discovering that one never really existed.


title: What a Fool Believes

text: Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins who had wanted to collaborate for some time wrote the song together in Los Angeles. Loggins went to McDonald's house and heard him playing a tune on piano, and suggested they work on that as he already had a hook line, "She had a place in his life" in mind. The song they wrote was influenced by songs they grew up listening to such as the Four Seasons' "Sherry" and "Walk Like a Man". They finished the song by the following day.


title: What a Fool Believes

text: Both Kenny Loggins and Michael McDonald recorded the song around the same time. Loggins' version was a creative arrangement with producer Bob James. Loggins released his version of "What a Fool Believes" five months prior to the Doobie Brothers version on his second album "Nightwatch", released on July 12, 1978.


title: What a Fool Believes

text: The Doobie Brothers with McDonald on vocals recorded a version with producer Ted Templeman. They recorded numerous takes of its rhythm track over five or six days, but had problem finding a version that they liked, and Templeman ended up playing drums with Keith Knudsen to try to achieve a "floppy feel" with the song. Templeman eventually decided, to the band's horror, to cut up the master tape of a recording into sections, and put together a usable version. McDonald came up with the rest of the arrangement, adding the keyboard, vocals and strings to the song. The resulting song was stylistically unlike any song the Doobie Brothers had done before. Templeman was still not satisfied with the result; when he played the song to the executives of Warner Bros., he suggested discarding the song, but they said: "Are you crazy? That's great!"


title: What a Fool Believes

text: In December 1978, five months after Loggins' original recording was released, the Doobie Brothers included their version on their album "Minute by Minute", with their version being released as a single the following month. This is the best-known version of the song, debuting at number 73 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 on January 20, 1979, and then reaching number one on April 14, 1979, for one week.


title: What a Fool Believes

text: Apparently as a joke, Michael Jackson claimed in a videotaped phone conversation with Elizabeth Taylor in 2003 that he contributed at least one backing track to the original Doobie Brothers recording, but was not credited for having done so. "Entertainment Tonight" broadcast this claim with viewers being unaware that Jackson was joking. The band later denied his participation.


title: What a Fool Believes

text: "Billboard" magazine praised the vocal performance, synthesizers and production. The reviewer described the song as building from a melodic first verse "to a heart warming hook chorus". "Cash Box" said it has an "easy funk backing, strings overhead and characteristically unique vocals which soar upwards."


title: What a Fool Believes

text: "Ultimate Classic Rock" critic Michael Gallucci rated "What a Fool Believes" as the Doobie Brothers all-time greatest song, particularly praising "McDonald's soulful vocals and soft and warm keyboard riffs." In 2021, it was listed at No. 343 on Rolling Stone's "Top 500 Greatest Songs of All Time".


title: What a Fool Believes

text: A live version appears on Loggins' 1980 album "Kenny Loggins Alive". Loggins' original version switches several of the gender pronouns, so that it is sung largely from the perspective of the woman in the encounter.


title: What a Fool Believes

text: A reissue of the single was released in 1987 credited to the Doobie Brothers featuring Michael McDonald. It was included on McDonald's 1986 compilation album "Sweet Freedom" and was credited here as Michael McDonald with the Doobie Brothers. It reached No. 57 on the UK Singles Chart in January 1987.


title: What a Fool Believes

text: Warner Brothers also released a 12-inch single disco version by the Doobie Brothers in 1978 (backed with "Don't Stop to Watch the Wheels"), which peaked at number 40 on "Billboard"s Disco Action Chart in April 1979. Mixed by disco producer Jim Burgess, at 5:31 the song is considerably longer than the 3:41 versions on the 7-inch single and the "Minute by Minute" LP. The 12-inch version also has a more pronounced bass-driven drumbeat.


title: What a Fool Believes

text: British band Matt Bianco released their version of "What a Fool Believes" as a single in 1991. It is from their fourth album "Samba in Your Casa". The single reached No. 23 on the Irish Singles Chart in early 1992.


title: Eardrum

text: In the anatomy of humans and various other tetrapods, the eardrum, also called the tympanic membrane or myringa, is a thin, cone-shaped membrane that separates the external ear from the middle ear. Its function is to transmit sound from the air to the ossicles inside the middle ear, and then to the oval window in the fluid-filled cochlea. Hence, it ultimately converts and amplifies vibration in the air to vibration in cochlear fluid. The malleus bone bridges the gap between the eardrum and the other ossicles.


title: Eardrum

text: Rupture or perforation of the eardrum can lead to conductive hearing loss. Collapse or retraction of the eardrum can cause conductive hearing loss or cholesteatoma.


title: Eardrum

text: The tympanic membrane is oriented obliquely in the anteroposterior, mediolateral, and superoinferior planes. Consequently, its superoposterior end lies lateral to its anteroinferior end.


title: Eardrum

text: Anatomically, it relates superiorly to the middle cranial fossa, posteriorly to the ossicles and facial nerve, inferiorly to the parotid gland, and anteriorly to the temporomandibular joint.


title: Eardrum

text: The relatively fragile pars flaccida lies above the lateral process of the malleus between the notch of Rivinus and the anterior and posterior malleal folds. Consisting of two layers and appearing slightly pinkish in hue, it is associated with Eustachian tube dysfunction and cholesteatomas.


title: Eardrum

text: The larger pars tensa consists of three layers: skin, fibrous tissue, and mucosa. Its thick periphery forms a fibrocartilaginous ring called the annulus tympanicus or Gerlach's ligament. while the central umbo tents inward at the level of the tip of malleus. The middle fibrous layer, containing radial, circular, and parabolic fibers, encloses the handle of malleus. Though comparatively robust, the pars tensa is the region more commonly associated with perforations.


title: Eardrum

text: The manubrium () of the malleus is firmly attached to the medial surface of the membrane as far as its center, drawing it toward the tympanic cavity. The lateral surface of the membrane is thus concave. The most depressed aspect of this concavity is termed the umbo ().


title: Eardrum

text: Sensation of the outer surface of the tympanic membrane is supplied mainly by the auriculotemporal nerve, a branch of the mandibular nerve (cranial nerve V), with contributions from the auricular branch of the vagus nerve (cranial nerve X), the facial nerve (cranial nerve VII), and possibly the glossopharyngeal nerve (cranial nerve IX). The inner surface of the tympanic membrane is innervated by the glossopharyngeal nerve.


title: Eardrum

text: When the eardrum is illuminated during a medical examination, a cone of light radiates from the tip of the malleus to the periphery in the anteroinferior quadrant, this is what is known clinically as 5 o'clock.


title: Eardrum

text: Unintentional perforation (rupture) has been described in blast injuries and air travel, typically in patients experiencing upper respiratory congestion that prevents equalization of pressure in the middle ear. It is also known to occur in swimming, diving (including scuba diving), and martial arts.


title: Eardrum

text: Patients with tympanic membrane rupture may experience bleeding, tinnitus, hearing loss, or disequilibrium (vertigo). However, they rarely require medical intervention, as between 80 and 95 percent of ruptures recover completely within two to four weeks. The prognosis becomes more guarded as the force of injury increases.


title: Eardrum

text: The pressure of fluid in an infected middle ear onto the eardrum may cause it to rupture. Usually, this consists of a small hole (perforation), which allows fluid to drain out. If this does not occur naturally, a myringotomy (tympanotomy, tympanostomy) can be performed. A myringotomy is a surgical procedure in which a tiny incision is created in the eardrum to relieve pressure caused by excessive buildup of fluid, or to drain pus from the middle ear. The fluid or pus comes from a middle ear infection (otitis media), which is a common problem in children. A tympanostomy tube is inserted into the eardrum to keep the middle ear aerated for a prolonged time and to prevent reaccumulation of fluid. Without the insertion of a tube, the incision usually heals spontaneously in two to three weeks. Depending on the type, the tube is either naturally extruded in 6 to 12 months or removed during a minor procedure.


title: Eardrum

text: Those requiring myringotomy usually have an obstructed or dysfunctional eustachian tube that is unable to perform drainage or ventilation in its usual fashion. Before the invention of antibiotics, myringotomy without tube placement was also used as a major treatment of severe acute otitis media.


title: Eardrum

text: In some cases, the pressure of fluid in an infected middle ear is great enough to cause the eardrum to rupture naturally. Usually, this consists of a small hole (perforation), from which fluid can drain.


title: Eardrum

text: The Bajau people of the Pacific intentionally rupture their eardrums at an early age to facilitate diving and hunting at sea. Many older Bajau therefore have difficulties hearing.


title: Star Chamber

text: The Star Chamber (Latin: "Camera stellata") was an English court that sat at the royal Palace of Westminster, from the late to the mid-17th century (c. 1641), and was composed of Privy Counsellors and common-law judges, to supplement the judicial activities of the common-law and equity courts in civil and criminal matters. It was originally established to ensure the fair enforcement of laws against socially and politically prominent people sufficiently powerful that ordinary courts might hesitate to convict them of their crimes. However, it became synonymous with social and political oppression through the arbitrary use and abuse of the power it wielded.


title: Star Chamber

text: In modern times, legal or administrative bodies with strict, arbitrary rulings, no "due process" rights to those accused, and secretive proceedings are sometimes metaphorically called "star chambers".


title: Star Chamber

text: The first reference to the "star chamber" is in 1398, as the "Sterred chambre"; the more common form of the name appears in 1422 as "le Sterne-chamere". Both forms recur throughout the fifteenth century, with "Sterred Chambre" last attested as appearing in the Supremacy of the Crown Act 1534 (establishing the English monarch as head of the Church in England). The origin of the name has usually been explained as first recorded by John Stow, writing in his "Survey of London" (1598), who noted "this place is called the Star Chamber, at the first all the roofe thereof was decked with images of starres gilted". Gold stars on a blue background were a common medieval decoration for ceilings in richly decorated rooms: the Star Chamber ceiling itself is still to be seen at Leasowe Castle, Wirral, and similar examples are in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua and elsewhere.


title: Star Chamber

text: Alternatively, William Blackstone, a notable English jurist writing in 1769, speculated that the name had been derived from the legal word "starr" meaning the contract or obligation to a Jew (from the Hebrew שטר ("shtar") meaning 'document'). This term was in use until 1290, when Edward I had all Jews expelled from England. Blackstone thought the "Starr Chamber" might originally have been used for the deposition and storage of such contracts. However, the "Oxford English Dictionary" gives this etymology "no claim to consideration."


title: Star Chamber

text: Other etymological speculations mentioned by Blackstone include the derivation from Old English "steoran" (steer) meaning "to govern"; as a court used to punish (in Latin: "crimen stellionatus"); or that the chamber was full of windows.


title: Star Chamber

text: The Court evolved from meetings of the King's Council, with its roots going back to the medieval period. The so-called "Star Chamber Act" of King Henry VII's second Parliament (1487) did not actually empower the Star Chamber, but rather created a separate tribunal distinct from the King's general Council.


title: Star Chamber

text: Initially well-regarded because of its speed and flexibility, the Star Chamber was regarded as one of the most just and efficient courts of the Tudor era. Sir Edward Coke described the Star Chamber as "The most honourable court (Our Parliament excepted) that is in the Christian world. Both in respect of the judges in the court and its honourable proceeding."


title: Star Chamber

text: The Star Chamber was made up of Privy Counsellors, as well as common-law judges, and it supplemented the activities of the common-law and equity courts in both civil and criminal matters. In a sense, the court was a court of appeal, a supervisory body, overseeing the operation of the lower courts, although it could hear cases by direct appeal as well. The court was set up to ensure the fair enforcement of laws against the English upper class, those so powerful that ordinary courts could never convict them of their crimes.


title: Star Chamber

text: Another function of the Court of Star Chamber was to act like a court of equity, which could impose punishment for actions which were deemed to be morally reprehensible but were not in violation of the letter of the law. This gave the Star Chamber great flexibility, as it could punish defendants for any action which the court felt should be unlawful, even when in fact it was technically lawful.


title: Star Chamber

text: However, this meant that the justice meted out by the Star Chamber could be very arbitrary and subjective, and it enabled the court to be used later on in its history as an instrument of oppression rather than for the purpose of justice for which it was intended. Many crimes which are now commonly prosecuted, such as attempt, conspiracy, criminal libel, and perjury, were originally developed by the Court of Star Chamber, along with its more common role of dealing with riots and sedition.


title: Star Chamber

text: The cases decided in those sessions enabled both the very powerful and those without power to seek redress. Thus King Henry VII used the power of the Star Chamber to break the power of the landed gentry which had been such a cause of problems in the Wars of the Roses. Yet, when local courts were often clogged or mismanaged, the Court of Star Chamber also became a means of appeal for the common people against the excesses of the nobility.


title: Star Chamber

text: In the reign of King Henry VIII, the court was under the leadership of Cardinal Wolsey (the Archbishop of York and Lord Chancellor) and Thomas Cranmer (the Archbishop of Canterbury) (1515–1529). From this time forward, the Court of Star Chamber became a political weapon for bringing actions against those who opposed the policies of King Henry VIII, his ministers and his parliament.


title: Star Chamber

text: Although it was initially a court of appeal, King Henry, Wolsey and Cranmer encouraged plaintiffs to bring their cases directly to the Star Chamber, bypassing the lower courts entirely.


title: Star Chamber

text: The Court was used extensively to control Wales, after the Laws in Wales Acts (sometimes referred to as the "Acts of Union"). The Tudor-era gentry in Wales turned to the Chamber to evict Welsh landowners and protect themselves, and in general, protect the advantages given to them by the Laws in Wales Acts.


title: Star Chamber

text: One of the weapons of the Star Chamber was the "ex officio" oath where, because of their positions, individuals were forced to swear to answer truthfully all questions that might be asked. Faced with hostile questioning, this then gave them the "cruel trilemma" of having to incriminate themselves, face charges of perjury if they gave unsatisfactory answers to their accusers, or be held in contempt of court if they gave no answer.


title: Star Chamber

text: The power of the Court of Star Chamber grew considerably under the House of Stuart, and by the time of King Charles I, it had become synonymous with misuse and abuse of power by the King and his circle. King James I and his son Charles used the court to examine cases of sedition, which meant that the court could be used to suppress opposition to royal policies. It came to be used to try nobles too powerful to be brought to trial in the lower courts.


title: Star Chamber

text: King Charles I used the Court of Star Chamber as a Parliamentary substitute during the eleven years of Personal Rule, when he ruled without a Parliament. King Charles made extensive use of the Court of Star Chamber to prosecute dissenters, including the Puritans who fled to New England. This was one of the causes of the English Civil War.


title: Star Chamber

text: On 17 October 1632, the Court of Star Chamber banned all "news books" because of complaints from Spanish and Austrian diplomats that coverage of the Thirty Years' War in England was unfair. As a result, newsbooks pertaining to this matter were often printed in Amsterdam and then smuggled into the country, until control of the press collapsed with the developing ideological conflict of 1640–41.


title: Star Chamber

text: The Star Chamber became notorious for judgments favourable to the king, for example when Archbishop Laud had William Prynne branded on both cheeks through its agency in 1637 for seditious libel.


title: Star Chamber

text: In 1571 Elizabeth I set up an equivalent Court in Ireland, the Court of Castle Chamber, to deal with cases of riot and offences against public order. Although it was initially popular with private litigants, under the Stuarts it developed the same reputation for harsh and arbitrary proceedings as its parent court, and during the political confusion of the 1640s, it disappeared.


title: Star Chamber

text: In 1641, the Long Parliament, led by John Pym and inflamed by the severe treatment of John Lilburne, as well as that of other religious dissenters such as William Prynne, Alexander Leighton, John Bastwick and Henry Burton, abolished the Star Chamber with the Habeas Corpus Act 1640.


title: Star Chamber

text: The gruesome punishments which the Star Chamber imposed were not forgotten, and were revived by King James II, prompting an article in the Bill of Rights of 1688 "That excessive Baile ought not to be required nor excessive Fines imposed nor cruell and unusuall Punishments inflicted".


title: Star Chamber

text: The Chamber itself stood until its demolition in 1806 (or 1834 or early in 1836), when its materials were salvaged. The door was reused in the nearby Westminster School until it was destroyed in the Blitz, and the historic Star Chamber ceiling, with its bright gold stars, was brought to Leasowe Castle on the Wirral Peninsula in Cheshire from the Court of Westminster, along with four tapestries depicting the four seasons.


title: Star Chamber

text: In the late 20th century, the expression was revived in reference to ways of resolving internal high-level questions within the government, usually relating to budget appropriations. The press and some civil servants under the premiership of Margaret Thatcher (1979–1990) revived the term for private ministerial meetings at which disputes between the Treasury and high-spending departments were resolved.


title: Star Chamber

text: In 2010, the press employed the term for a committee established by the Cameron ministry to plan spending cuts to reduce public debt.


title: Star Chamber

text: In March 2019, the European Research Group formed its own 'Star Chamber' to pass judgement on Theresa May's then proposed Brexit deal, and which recommended that MPs should "not" back it. On 29 December 2020, the ERG's Star Chamber gave a similar verdict on Boris Johnson's recently agreed EU–UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement, but on this occasion recommending that their members vote for it because the deal is "consistent with the restoration of UK sovereignty".


title: Star Chamber

text: The historical abuses of the Star Chamber are considered some of the reasons, along with English common law precedent, behind the protections against compelled self-incrimination embodied in the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The meaning of "compelled testimony" under the Fifth Amendment – i.e., the conditions under which a defendant is allowed to "plead the Fifth" to avoid self-incrimination – is thus often interpreted via reference to the inquisitorial methods of the Star Chamber.


title: Star Chamber

text: As the U.S. Supreme Court described it, "the Star Chamber has, for centuries, symbolized disregard of basic individual rights. The Star Chamber not merely allowed, but required, defendants to have counsel. The defendant's answer to an indictment was not accepted unless it was signed by counsel. When counsel refused to sign the answer, for whatever reason, the defendant was considered to have confessed."


title: Norwalk, Connecticut

text: Norwalk is a city located in southwestern Connecticut, United States, in southern Fairfield County, on the northern shore of Long Island Sound. Norwalk lies within both the New York metropolitan area and the Bridgeport metropolitan area.


title: Norwalk, Connecticut

text: Norwalk was originally settled in 1649, and is the sixth most populous city in Connecticut. According to the 2020 United States Census, it has a population of 91,184.


title: Norwalk, Connecticut

text: Roger Ludlow purchased the areas east of the Norwalk river from Chief Mahackemo of the Norwaake (or Naramauke) Indians in 1640. Norwalk was settled in 1649, incorporated September 1651, and named after the Algonquin word , meaning "point of land", or more probably from the native American name "Naramauke".


title: Norwalk, Connecticut

text: The Battle of Norwalk took place during the Revolutionary War, and led to the burning of most of the town. In 1836, the borough of Norwalk was created, covering the central area of the town. In 1853, the first ever train disaster in the United States happened over the Norwalk River. During the 19th and early 20th century, Norwalk was a major railroad stop for the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad. The city of South Norwalk and the remaining parts of the town of Norwalk were both combined in 1910 to form the current city.


title: Norwalk, Connecticut

text: The Ku Klux Klan had a brief presence in Norwalk during the 1920s, but quickly fell apart due to internal issues. In 1955, multiple hurricanes hit the city, causing flooding in Norwalk Harbor. During the 1970s, efforts were taken to historically preserve South Norwalk, resulting in the creation of the Washington Street Historic District.


title: Norwalk, Connecticut

text: According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which, is land and (37.24%) is water.


title: Norwalk, Connecticut

text: Norwalk's topography is dominated by its coastline along Long Island Sound, the Norwalk River and its eastern and western banks, and the Norwalk Islands. The highest elevation is above sea level on the fairway of the 16th hole of the Silvermine Golf Course, and the low elevation is sea level on Long Island Sound.


title: Norwalk, Connecticut

text: As of the census of 2010, there were 85,603 people, 35,415 households, and 21,630 families residing in the city. The population density was . There were 35,415 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 68.7% White, 14.2% African American, 0.4% Native American, 4.8% Asian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 9.0% from other races, and 2.8% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino people of any race were 24.3% of the population.


title: Norwalk, Connecticut

text: There were 35,415 households, out of which 27.9% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 47.1% were married couples living together, 11.0% had a female householder with no husband present, and 38.4% were non-families. 33.0% of all households were made up of individuals, and 8.5% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size in the city was 2.55 and the average family size was 3.16.


title: Norwalk, Connecticut

text: The population's spread gave 22% under the age of 18, with 7.3% from 18 to 24, 31.7% from 25 to 44, 31.2% from 45 to 64, and 12.8% aged 65 years or older. The median age was 40 years. For every 100 females, there were 96.2 males.