The long and winding road to dealing with the past stretches ahead at Westminster. Will it turn out to be a dead end?

All Northern Ireland parties and groups including victims are united on one thing. They are opposed to the UK government’s NI Troubles, (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill. Nevertheless the Bill began its long passage to become law – or not –in the House of Lords last Wednesday. The Lords debate presents a good opportunity to air the issues in one place in this lengthy post. A vote will eventually be held on whether to recommend scrapping the Bill entirely or heavily …

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Leave futile arguments about equivalence aside. We all need to come clean about why the Troubles lasted so unforgivably long.

clock, alarm clock, watch

Belatedly I want to pick up from Mick’s treatment of Fionnuala O’ Connor’s   interesting question about origins, prompted by the inevitable controversy surrounding Michelle O’Neill. At the outset, I’m reconciled to the fact that my brief analysis, partly based like Fionnuala’s on contemporary observation, will be disputed. I want to be as fair as I can. There’s nothing more pointless than one sided polemic.   Her question relates to the present and future. To make ‘reconciliation’ possible do republicans have to …

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By public demand, a new Belfast Agreement is needed to transform our deadlocked politics

As sure as night followed day, the sonorous tributes to David Trimble flowed from those who in their day had stabbed him  front and  back.  Some were no doubt observing the Irish habit of never speaking ill of the recently dead.  Perhaps some rose above hypocrisy.   For behind the traditional political rhetoric lies latent acceptance that they are all inheritors of his legacy. As Trimble himself put it: In 2005 I came a cropper but, in the seven years between …

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Update: Tory civil war breaks out over the Protocol as reports say Johnson is backing an even harder line defying the EU

Larne Harbour 

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The UK government must do better than this wretched legacy bill. But an amnesty is still inevitable

Last week the Bishop of Derry dedicated a garden to the memory of a 15 year old Derry boy Manus Deery, shot dead by the British Army in the Bogside on the 50th anniversary of his death. As the Derry Now website reported: Manus had just started working after leaving St Joseph’s Secondary School and was eating a bag of chips and carrying a comic in his back pocket which he had bought with his first wage packet… At the …

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Give Boris Johnson a fresh chance to prove his sincerity and commitment. We have nothing to lose and much to gain

Ahead of his day in Northern Ireland, much media comment is focusing on Boris Johnson’s announcement of draft legislation later this week to unilaterally amend parts of the Protocol. This is both inevitable and regrettable.  Northern Ireland’s welfare is far more important than the abstruse game of higher politics. Boris Johnson’s article in the Belfast Telegraph deserves to be cautiously welcomed. It suggests a new level of engagement in all level of NI affairs even encroaching on  Stormont’s competences. Much …

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A Window of Opportunity?

It’s important to head this up by stating clearly that I’m completely indifferent to which of our First Ministers gets to speak first at press conferences. It’s meaningless. Certainly, I would rather we didn’t have the optics of a Sinn Fein First Minister who spends selected weekends attending commemorations of Provo killers, but equally I think it’s a fitting punishment for the DUP’s party before country chicanery in the St Andrews carve up. Michelle O’Neill does not represent my outlook …

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Incoherence in Westminster is just as great as chaos in Stormont

To use a well known term from political science, we seem to be in a right bugger’s muddle. Brinkmanship is the order of the day. Wobbling on the cliff edge is Liz Truss the foreign secretary, threatening to bring in legislation to allow business to disregard EU rules on GB-NI trade as early as next week. She argues  that existing  EU concessions would “ make things worse.” It focuses on the fact that grace periods mean the protocol is not …

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The public will not put up with more months of private stalemate. Sinn Fein and Alliance must open up the Assembly to full debate

  The glasses of full and half full Assembly results have been poured and are  being eagerly being digested according to whether consumers are convinced they amount to a breakthrough for the nationalist cause or leave things much the same in a slightly different shape. Each according to taste. What matters more immediately now are the bums on seats in Stormont. To allow Executive ministers of the old mandate to continue, MLAs will have to manage to elect a Speaker. …

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The time is long overdue for taking to heart the lessons of the fall of the old Stormont

We thought we had learned them in 1998 but we hadn’t really, or not enough.  To find out why, we have to go back in time.  Just over 50 years ago, Brian Faulkner the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland rang WD Flackes BBC NI’s political correspondent from an outer office in 10 Downing Street to inform him that the game was up for the Stormont Parliament.  Billy’s scoop led the national 9 O’clock News.  Ted Heath had made Faulkner an …

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Secular control of Northern Ireland’s schools means more than a modest expansion of integrated education. Is that what a majority wants?

Abortion, the legacy, the Irish language and now integrated education; why is secretary of state Brandon Lewis tossing out controversial policy ideas which are largely the prerogative of Stormont?  Real action on any of these hot topics will be held in abeyance until the after the Assembly elections. Then we’ll see won’t we?   Although his ideas lack shall we say, a certain sophistication, they are certainly provocative and seem intended to stimulate a more diverse debate than the same old. …

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What sort of Assembly do we want?

What sort of people keep holding elections to a body they aren’t sure they even want to survive?  We’ve been doing it for ever. Since 1973 at least, as long in politics as Joe Biden.  That’s without taking account of old time Sinn Fein’s northern abstention.  As they contemplate the embarrassing cycle of abandoned fresh starts since 1998, who could blame the voters of Northern Ireland if they finally lost confidence in the very idea of the Assembly?  However the …

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The neglect of deep misogyny is exposed in Northern Ireland, not only by the Tweed case

The state of profound misogyny gripping Northern Ireland which survives the  “armed patriarchy”  of the Troubles is well summed up by Susan McKay  in the Guardian. While concentrating on the unionist side and the state,, no comfort is available for nationalists and republicans from the Maria Cahill rape saga, a notably egregious example but hardly an outlier. Susan’s piece begins with the lamentable story  of the monster David (“larger than life “) Tweed a former Irish rugby international,  whose reputation …

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The genie of amnesty is out of the bottle. Not the last word, but the beginning of the end.

The British government’s announcement of a statute of limitations has not only united all parties against them.  It has also exposed the weaknesses of everybody’s positions including their own. All  other parties are insisting on a role for justice while admitting there’s very little hope left of achieving it. As justice for victims and relatives is unobtainable in most cases, what is the point of holding out for years for the remote chance of a trial?  After decades of deadlock …

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Legacy: Who are we moving on for?

Northern Ireland, it seems, has a problem with moving on. Decades (centuries) of strife and conflict. The pain, the trauma, all of it passed down from generation to generation. In the year of our lord 2021, we’re still angry about it all. Still hurt, still frustrated and in pain. Step forward the Prime Minister and his Secretary of State, Brandon Lewis.  They have seen the light and taken a bold, brave step to help us move forward. The government has …

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This time, it’s the Troubles legacy. Northern Ireland opinion on a key issue, even when substantially in agreement, is being overruled by Johnson’s Conservatives

The devil will be in the detail but as a example of news management in advance, the UK Government’s plans for a Troubles amnesty could hardly be worse for opinion in  Northern Ireland Veterans who served in Northern Ireland are finally set to be freed from the threat of prosecution. In a victory for the Daily Mail, a planned statute of limitations will today be announced covering all incidents during the Troubles. The move by Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis is …

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An open letter to Jeffrey and Doug

Now the dust has settled on the turmoil at the top of the two main unionist parties for the foreseeable future, we’ve had a wide range of commentators telling us what challenges they face and what is likely to define their tenure of office.  Many of them were from various hues of non or anti-unionist opinion advising unionists on the way forward. But the two leaders (initially at least) would do better to focus on the thoughts and feelings of …

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How the NI Protocol protects the Agreement

To the chagrin of Unionist politicians, it’s often emphasised by the four governments (UK, Ireland, EU, and US) that the Northern Ireland Protocol exists to protect the peace process and the Good Friday Agreement. For reasons which are understandable when examined in isolation, Unionism feels let down by the promise of the Agreement. I can see where they are coming from. The Agreement is based on cross community consent; the Protocol does not recognise this. British citizens are asked to …

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Arlene Foster, yes but spare us the revisionism.

Although by now it seems that the four days since Arlene Foster resignation as First Minister seems like ancient history, given all that’s subsequently occurred, it remains important that the appalling revisionism over her tenure is addressed – from a unionist perspective. In common with most ousted unionist leaders since O’Neill, Arlene is already being presented as a progressive moderniser undermined by the hardcore.  Her own allies are peddling this notion, as are nationalist commentators, both for their own ends. …

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Well, well, well-#AE2022 and that Lucid Talk poll

It’s early days, minds could change later, but the Belfast Telegraph’s latest poll will send shivers down the DUP’s spine. According to Lucid Talk, support for the DUP has dropped to 16%, the same as Alliance. Sinn Fein sits at 25%. Doug Beattie will take comfort from the figure for the UUP, up two points to 14%. A Sinn Fein First Minister has been a possibility since the 2017 Assembly election. Based on these figures,  Sinn Fein will clinch the …

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