A short footnote on the underlying politics of the SpAd Law by Newton Emerson from yesterday’s Irish News…
During the Troubles the vast majority of the nationalist electorate pointedly rejected IRA violence but since the ceasefires a reassessment of that violence was necessary and warranted by ‘unionist misrule’ has crept into the nationalist mainstream.
By extension, as Mr Kavanagh seemed to imply, a ‘discriminatory’ special advisers bill threatens to take us back to where we started. In fact, there is no risk to peace from this minor inconvenience to Sinn Fein’s party machine.
A far greater threat is pretending the entire 30-year span of the IRA campaign was justified, its violence was successful and victims like Mary Travers were an accidental aberration. A clumsy law may be a small price to pay to remind ourselves that this was not the case.
The real scandal is the degree of scandal and hystrionics outrage raised around doing such a modestly decent thing for victims…. its a measure of the hit taken to the re-education reconciliation programme intended to make the rest of us forget just how costly the IRA’s for a latter day Catholic Emancipation….
Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty