It’s all the fault of the Brits?
Gerry Adams has blamed the Secretary of State and Ministry of Defence for the issues around the Belfast homecoming parade. In supposed generosity he argues a reception and religious service should have been good enough for families and supporters of the returning servicemen and women (i.e. behind closed doors and ignores the impracticality of how thousands could attend such events).
“A civic reception and a religious service would have provided families and supporters of the British army with the opportunity to welcome back their loved ones.”
Meanwhile the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church has sent Gerry Adams a letter criticising calling for the Sinn Fein protest to be cancelled:
“It is not in a spirit of triumphalism that we welcome these soldiers home but in a spirit of thanksgiving, sharing in the relief of their families that their loved ones are safe.”
The DUP has called for the BBC and UTV to televise the event:
“I know that many people have taken a close interest in this event and will be attending the parade in Belfast on Sunday: however I believe there is sufficient support throughout the community for this event to be broadcast live as it happens. People from all around Northern Ireland will want to watch as we pay tribute to our soldiers returning home from such difficult and hazardous missions.”
“Adams is still an MLA”
Yes but so are so many others. In NI politics now he doesnt have a clear platform. He’s Party President but what’s his role other than as some sort of political Banquo’s Ghost?
Clearly the plan was to try to leverage him into a national figure on the Irish Stage but that fell flat on its nose at the TV audition in the run up to the election. So where now?
Also, I repeat. What’s the strategy on this march? Why the protest? Why didnt they think this and so may other things through?
It’s all the fault of the Brits?
That’s what I’ll be thinking on Monday morning if anyone gets seriously hurt.
I never agreed with the Plantation when I diligently studied it’s cause & effect for Leaving Cert History; but it’s consequences are most definitely “here-to-stay”
(until a GT 51% mandate for a UI is democratically achieved in a border poll); maybe you would be best served remembering that (and a part of your history & upbringing) rather than trying to involve yerself in a historical, tribally-based sectarian scabble that was a different world away from both of our own upbringings.
That’s rubbish you’re talking, ANO. What happened in Belfast and across the north is 10 worlds away from the lives of people in Great Britain more than it is to Southern Irish people. We’re brought up on Irish history because it’s OUR history. People in Britain know scratch about the history of the people on this island, Nationalist or Unionist, and they care even less.
UTV and BBC NI are “British” not “Irish” stations yet both are available and very popular across Ireland. Are they watched in Britain?? I can’t imagine the old Gerry Kelly show being too appealing to people in Newcastle or Dundee or Cardiff yet he was very popular across his own island. Why? Because it was a Belfast chat show made for an IRISH audience and that’s where it was popular – in Ireland.
So to tell a lad from Waterford or anywhere in the 26 he doesn’t understand the North because of where he was brought up in Ireland and should walk down the Shankill road to see Belfast isn’t Irish is nonsense. If Belfast is so “British” would an East End cockney walk down the Falls road with a Union Jack singing about the Queen and come out alive?
At present Belfast is an Irish city under British jurisdiction. Or was Dublin not an Irish city either when it was in the UK?
“So to tell a lad from Waterford or anywhere in the 26 he doesn’t understand the North because of where he was brought up in Ireland and should walk down the Shankill road to see Belfast isn’t Irish is nonsense.”
Does anyone really understand NI? I doubt it. It’s way too complex, and too much is hidden. If the folks with a posteriori expereince of its dynamics have trouble understanding it, you’re at a considerable disadvantage a priori.
I think sites like this one give southerners a better understanding of it, but only if they are prepared to accept that they are approaching the subject from a position of considerable ignorance which they have confused with with valid knowledge.