Conflict
“Republicans should remember that the third colour in the Irish flag is Orange…”
Tweet Last Thursday’s The View gave most of the programme over to the vexed issue of parading. It includes a number of noteworthy points. Neil Jarmin points out that the Parades Commission has missed an opportunity offered it by Paddy Ashdown’s Strategic Review of Parading to give it a more robust set of processes (that [...] more »
After the political victory of the GFA is Northern Ireland slipping back into another ‘big sleep’?
Tweet Men it has been well said, think in herds. It will be seen that they go mad in herds while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one. Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841) Speaking of Fionola, her essay in an excellent collection from the British Council, gets a mention [...] more »
UTV Insight: Collusion and some of its innocent victims…
Tweet Last night’s piece is well worth watching through to the end… Here’s the money quote from Barney Rowan in the third section… “You put Special Branch in the dock, and they will put the State in the dock…” …and possibly more than the state. more »
Celebrated in London, Sam Thompson’s “Over the Bridge” is as powerful today as ever
Tweet Last Sunday the great James Ellis, still rockin’ at 82, poet, translator and household name in the 1960s and 70s as Bert Lynch in the gritty TV cops series Z Cars, saluted the cast of the London revival of the late Sam Thompson’s prophetic shipyard play Over the Bridge, just after the performance . Jimmy had special [...] more »
“A lot of Northern Irish funding rewards bad behaviour” (with few positive outcomes)
Tweet Pete Shirlow was in Washington last night, briefing staffers on Capitol Hill about the current situation in Northern Ireland. The US – Ireland Alliance site has his report, which in turn draws on insight and data from two different surveys. Here’s how he opens: the peace process appears to be moving at two speeds [...] more »
“They’ve had the time, they’ve had the money, they’ve had the opportunity…”
Tweet Refreshing to hear someone call it as it is.. and John Cunningham of the Camlin Group certainly laid it on the line last night on The View... “It’s like watching children argue, arguing at school. What relevance does it have? Why don’t they put it all behind and really look and address the problems [...] more »
The political vacuum is compromising the standing of the PSNI
Tweet When criticism is made from both directions it’s often said that the subject of the criticism must be doing something right. I suspect that’s what Matt Baggott is thinking now over the rows about recent arrests on both sides of the divide. There is an alternative view of course; he may be getting it [...] more »
Collusion: Whitey Bulger and the FBI’s international trade off for domestic information
Tweet Fascinating piece by Ed Moloney on Whitey Bulger, an Irish Boston gangster who was ‘turned’ by the FBI relatively early in his long career of domestic crime, was later allowed a little international sideline: In 1975, Bulger agreed to become an FBI informer and was largely left alone by the authorities, who were mostly [...] more »
“Simply because if you fill in a form you could get charged with an offence”
Tweet So, Mervyn Gibson rocked the boat on The View last night, when he noted the Orange may, after taking legal advice, choose not to notify the Parades Commission… Why? because one of the outcomes of the recent flag protest is a new ‘understanding’ that if you don’t notify the Parades Commission, there is nothing [...] more »
Aftermath of a riot as it used to be done in Belfast…
Tweet The footage here is, I think, shot in the Beechmount area of west Belfast (I take correction on that) in 1988. No commentary, just raw footage. The presence of masked paramilitaries underlining the absence of security forces. more »
#Flegs: They haven’t gone away you know…
Tweet There was a lot of upset Crusaders and Cliftonville supporters on Twitter at the weekend. Apparently flag protesters from other parts of Belfast (let’s call them predominantly Blues and Glens supporters) turned up at the away turnstiles to prevent Cliftonville’s majority Catholic support ingress to the ground. Result: the season’s big game between the [...] more »
The bombing of McGurk’s Bar and the loss of innocence…
Tweet I meant to get this up on Slugger last week, but since I was out on the hoof from Tuesday to Thursday I never quite found the time to get to it. It’s a video pulled together from interviews conducted by Northern Visions of family members of the victims of the bomb at McGurk’s [...] more »
First Minister issues warning over alleged political connection to punishment shooting…
Tweet There’s little to say about this just yet other than to note that the return of punishment shootings in Belfast is hardly a sign of health in the so called peace process. A returning to old ways? The fact that the PSNI are questioning Sean Kelly, the man convicted of the Shankill bomb (and [...] more »
Dolours Price and the human cost of armed revolution…
Tweet Very good piece from Kevin Myers in the Indo yesterday: Like many of their generation, they [the Price sisters] were hellbent on achieving the utterly unattainable: a united Ireland by force of arms. I knew a couple of their IRA Andersonstown colleagues, Mairead Farrell and Sean McDermott: intelligent and likeable, yet driven by a [...] more »
Micheál Martin – opportunism and cynicism of the very worst kind
Tweet The award for opportunist of the week must surely go to Micheál Martin. His hastily written opinion piece in Wednesdays Irish News was a timely reminder of Fianna Fáil’s cynical approach to both the peace process and to politics. For weeks Belfast city centre has been brought to a standstill by illegal loyalist blockades. [...] more »
Ongoing #Flegs disturbances point to a chronic rather than acute failure in NI Politics…
Tweet Richard Irvine writing in the Irish Times today makes a point worth considering… In fact the magnitude of the unionist victory is not only unchallenged by these Sinn Féin tactics, rather it is underscored. Unionists should be delighted that republicans have so little ambition that they can achieve only small and compromised symbolic victories [...] more »
“In her hands golf balls which she said were thrown by her nationalist neighbours…”
Tweet Worth watching this piece from Gerry Adams at a Presser at the weekend. “It is not spontaneous, it is not organic, it is orchestrated it is planned. This was a deliberate policy of coming to these so-called interface areas and attacking people only on the basis that they are Catholic.” Except here’s the UTV [...] more »
“…a disruptive loyalist protest outside an empty Leinster House on a busy retail day”
Tweet So, now it is the SDLP who are getting it in the neck from the flag protesters. Patsy McGlone (who has said nothing on the matter, so far as Slugger is aware, but who is unfortunate enough to live in a UVF dominant part of the world) has had a bullet in the post. [...] more »
We need fresher thinking than this
Tweet Two New Year articles worth noting which struggle with the abiding theme. Given prime billing in the Irish Times, Robin Wilson laments the anti-democratic and physical force elements in both of our traditions as we move further into the decade of commemoration. His historical sweep of a century reinforces his determinist case against the [...] more »
Stormont’s inaction driving the handcart back towards the brink of the past?
Tweet Or predictions thread for the year to come is still a work in progress, but you don’t need a crystal ball to tell you the shenanigans at the year end suggest that already Stormont’s institutions are having some difficulty staying in touch with where the politics of the street is moving. Alan Murray notes in [...] more »
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Books
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Sunday Supplement
Tweet It being Sunday, we’ve all got time to consider and ponder things at greater length than during the working week, yes? If it’s good enough for the Sunday papers, it’s good enough for this guest blogger. So here’s the review section… Actually, it’s my introduction to a book published last year, Goin’ Down Slow: [...] read our review » -
Legion of the Rearguard – Dissident Irish Republicanism by Martyn Frampton, Book Review
Tweet Are you confused about ‘dissident’ Irish Republicanism? Anxious about its existence and its seemingly increasingly deadly capabilities? Martyn Frampton’s new book, Legion of the Rearguard: Dissident Irish Republicanism (Irish Academic Press, 2011) serves both as a primer on active dissident groups and a timely analysis of their historic significance and contemporary capabilities. This book [...] read our review »
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Round up of Tuesday’s Political Studies Association conference
Tweet If you want to get a flavour of the proceedings at the Political Studies Association conference on its opening day, then the Storify collation below will bring you some of the images, tweets and sounds of the day. Particular highlights included: the Opening Plenary with David Blunkett, Peter Riddell and Matthew Flinders; and the [...] read our review »
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