“No act of violence will advance the cause of reunification by one millimetre”
In a reported speech on Sunday Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness ducked the opportunity to tell his former comrades-in-arms that he was in the wrong too, preferring instead to stick to his new party approved script.
“But we believe that we are in the countdown to a united Ireland.” [Added quote from a Mid Ulster Observer report]
It’s an improvement on his stated view at the time…
During Martin McGuinness’s early days as head of the IRA’s Derry Brigade in the early 1970s, he is said to have made the city’s center “look as if it had been bombed from the sky without causing the death of a single civilian”; while a decade later he sat on the IRA’s army council while it approved the bombing of the hotel used by the British Cabinet for 1984 Tory Conference and, two years later, he told delegates at a Sinn Fein conference that the party’s “unapologetic support for the right of Irish people to oppose …in arms the British forces of occupation… is a principle… it will never, never, never change, because the war against British rule must continue until freedom is achieved.” [added emphasis]
But as I said in that post
In the interview Danny Morrison also suggests, when asked about the difference between the stated “chief goal” of the Provisional IRA – a united Ireland - and the current situation, that now people “feel that they’re able to look forward to a united Ireland at some stage in the future” and that “in a sense, the guerillas fought and the guerillas are in government”.
Neither of which points addressed the question.
And leaves another hanging in the air – what happens when that feeling goes away?
Now that “the guerillas” are “the people in power”…
As I’ve mentioned previously, if “No one in this small, enclosed biosphere ever told them this project was never going to work in the first place…”
It looks like we’re beginning to find out the answer to that question.
And is that “good republican” now also a “dissident republican suspect”?
Both forces have increased surveillance on known dissident republican suspects north and south, including the former Provisional IRA chief of staff Thomas “Slab” Murphy. A Dublin-based newspaper reported that Murphy had been spotted in Trinity College Dublin last week with another man who was taking video images around the campus. Trinity, which is in the heart of central Dublin, is close to where the Queen will pass by during her three-day visit to the Republic next month.
Topic: Government, Politics, Society and Culture
Region: Ireland, Northern Ireland, UK
Ah, the abnormal statelet of mind makes an appearance. LOL.
Mick
Enjoy the wedding tomorrow. In 30 years time they will be your king and queen, God Bless them
Mickhall
Why do you believe that the British (and their ‘Irish allies’), other than those already living in Northern Ireland, would want to hang on to NI today?
(Cue Alias mithering on about sovereignty again)
That’s like asking why he believes that an old married couple, having recently renewed their vows on their golden wedding anniversay, would still want to ‘hang on to each other.’ He’d believe because that conclusion is supported by the evidence.
The UK has never wavered in its absolute committment its ownership of NI as stated to the Goervernment of Ireland Act, and that absolute committment is again restated in the Northern Ireland Act 1998. Since the UK parliament is sovereign, it can ask for a divorce any time it likes. The fact that is has never asked for one, and has just renewed its vows, indicates that is has exercised its right to self-determination to stay lovingly within the longlasting union.
Of course, lunatics would believe otherwise….
“Nevin used the old cold war terminology about commies etc.”
MH, I did indeed use the word but I put it in quotation marks. A whole range of such epithets were used to describe the then IRA socialist leadership at the time it was involved in the initiation of NICRA. The two words I used give an indication of that range.
Hehe – right on cue Alias,
That’s why I asked Mickhall what he believes, because I’m quite clear what your viewpoint is, thanks.
You’ll also notice I haven’t made any comments about what I think or believe, but please feel free to restrict yourself to making assumptions or speculating wildly if it makes you happy.
Cynic2
Ah the ole royal wedding, where foolish people wave flags and remember their places as commoners, even if they have more money than the royals themselves.
As far as I’m concerned they’re nothing more than tourist attractions that move about. I was in London a few years back and preferred Madam Tussauds myself.
“That’s why I asked Mickhall what he believes, because I’m quite clear what your viewpoint is, thanks.”
Well, clarity is usually good in a debate.
That’s probably why certain folks try to obscure reality by superimposing a bogus impression over it. For example, by creating the impression that the UK has no selfish or strategic interest in NI when the reality is that it does. It is British sovereign territory, and the UK has expended great resources in maintaining its selfish and strategic interest in its sovereign territory. Indeed, it even cited a headquarters for its national security agency in NI so that that agency may better protect the UK’s selfish and strategic interest national interests, as is its primary function.
The propose of the bogus impression is to undermine support for those who seek to undermine the UK’s selfish and strategic interest national interest in NI, by making them think that all they have to do to acheive their aim is sit on the sidelines and wait for the ‘inevitable’ British withdrawal. Why bother working towards something that you are told will happen anyway?
Another deliberate bogus impression is that NI has a right to self-determination. In reality, it has no such thing. It is not sovereign, and therefore cannot by definition have such a right. That right in fact remains with the UK parliament, which reserves the right to repeal all Acts of Parliament (such as the Northern Ireland Act 1998). The ‘self’ in self-determination does not therefore refer to the people of NI.
And how could the people of NI have a right to self-determination? What, for example, if they voted to remain in the UK but the rest of the UK voted to expel them? Who would argue that the minority could veto the majority and that the people of NI could then stay in the UK against the will of the majority? If you did have a right to self-determination, which you cannot, your right would cancel out the right to self-determination of the rest of the UK. So you would think you alone have this right? Nope, there is only ever one right to self-determination per sovereign state. As as you’re not sovereign, you have no such right.
How about that for clarity?
“like the white elites and their patsies in SA .. the old cold war terminology about commies etc.”
MH, do you include John Hume in this list of luminaries? I think you’ll find that latching onto a word to make a point may shed little light.
Liam O Comain – “John Hume and the Republican Objective”: “In response to a question that I put to John Hume in later years as to why the DCAC never affiliated to NICRA, he replied that he knew that the republicans controlled the latter with the help of the Communists and some independents, and for the DCAC to affiliate it would find itself under the control of the republicans, which he strongly opposed.”
“if the wish expressed by a majority in such a poll is that Northern Ireland should cease to be part of the United Kingdom and form part of a united Ireland, the Secretary of State shall lay before Parliament such proposals to give effect to that wish as may be agreed between Her Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom and the Government of Ireland”
Are you saying that such a poll will not take place. Or, alternatively, that if such a poll were held and a majority returned in favour of a UI, that subsequently the UK would renege on the agreement?
… or do you just not answer questions that undermine your agenda?
[...] ministers in a puppet government”, Robin Wilson makes an important point. Now that “the guerillas” are the people in power… From the Guardian report “In theory, the ‘peace process’ culminating in [...]
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