Peace Process
UK’s strongest constitutional card may be the very mildness of the loyalty it invokes…
Tweet John Lloyd argues that the moment for unity is over. I’m not sure I agree with him in that regard, in the sense that the moment has never yet appeared. Thus far, Sinn Fein’s call for a border poll has only served to emphasise a growing political distance between Northern Ireland and the south. [...] more »
Northern Ireland’s modest and timid ambitions for peace
Tweet Malachi O’Doherty points of a long term pessimism that often seems to want to long tail conflict rather than tackle the heart of it. He points to the problem of Belfast’s walled interfaces, in the context of past fatalism: What was routine back then was the conviction that Northern Ireland’s problems could not be [...] 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 »
Peace Process Parallels: Northern Ireland and the Middle-East
Tweet In the wake of the UN decision to recognise the state of Palestine (albeit not as a full member of the UN) it seems timely to return to the question of parallels between the peace process here and in the Middle East, most recently highlighted on Slugger in relation to remarks by former US [...] more »
The NI peace process has lessons for Israel and Hamas
Tweet Richard Haass President Bush’s envoy to Northern Ireland and now head of a leading foreign affairs advisory board, has a piece in the Financial Times (£) headlined “Israel should learn from Northern Ireland.” The first lessons are not those touted by the former paramilitaries but those learned by the governments. As he has said before, [...] more »
Bored with the blather…
Tweet IF you’ve ever sighed with exasperation or clenched your teeth with frustration every time you heard someone say “we are all to blame” for the Troubles, you may find Malachi O’Doherty’s latest column somewhat cathartic. The peace process patter that has evolved in our political discourse may be natural and second nature to those [...] more »
Shotgungate: a visual comment
Tweet With the news that DUP Health Minister Edwin Poots sent a few shotgun rounds across the bow in order to warn off a few no good intruders doing the round I had to put this riveting imagery to cartoon. I further felt the shotgun imagery was readily applicable to the Poots blood donor controversy [...] more »
The Rising of the Undead
Tweet Disparate republican militant groups have announced a coming together under a single leadership that has breathed new life into the IRA, promising to bring murder, anarchy and terrorism back to Northern Ireland. Here’s my illustration. more »
“What we have learned is that hearts and minds are fluid. And they do change”
Tweet No better man than Malachi O’Doherty for a sweet and powerful valedictory for a very long and sometimes politically tough Peace Process™ era, and the programme that brought us some of the most memorable commentary of that era… And in the process he also praises the decency, for the most part, of politicians who [...] more »
India and Pakistani Peace Process: “Stuff like this doesn’t happen overnight…”
Tweet One of the thing about our (and other) Peace Process is that it is hard afterwards to distil what made things work. Here for instance, the Belfast or Good Friday Agreement was apparently borne of the work of a lot of people who previously could not agreement amongst themselves on anything much. Ahsan Butt [...] more »
#BostonCollege and the clash of law with the covert politics of peace…
Tweet The Boston College tape court case is reaching an interesting pass, though it’s unlikely to be the final decisive stage. The circuit court hearing is worth listening to (takes about 45 seconds before anything happens) for a number of reasons. One, it’s an, albeit brief court room drama featuring what must be the most [...] more »
Hearts and Minds: Paramilitaries and ‘the table of accountability’
Tweet John Howcroft talking to Noel Thompson argues that the UDA in north Belfast is now accountable for its actions, tough it is not clear from the interview as to how and to whom… A genuine step forward, or just another quid pro quo… more »
Lessons from Northern Ireland: Rise above the fatalism generated by your own “sui generis” conflict…
Tweet H/T Mary FitzGerald on Twitter… This is a fairly impressive array of academic, political and government voices which looks at what lessons might be drawn from our much feted Peace Process, recorded in May last year… Most worthy of note are Jonathan Powell (keep hard power on so the insurgents cannot get comfortable, but [...] more »
Terrorists: the good, the bad and the ignored
Tweet I blogged my views about Gusty Spence previously. However, Mr. Spence’s death also raises the issue of how ex-terrorists (or ex-combatants for those who prefer the term: exactly how the actions committed terrorists could be called combat is bizarre, but I digress) are viewed especially by the media. The way in which the media [...] more »
Thoughts on the Liberal Dissidents
Tweet The Liberal Dissidents is a sluggerism coined months ago by Fitzjameshorse but one which makes sense in Northern Ireland. There is a heterogeneous group of people who are interested in politics and the nature of Northern Ireland’s society who are in the middle in orange / green terms yet seem highly disenchanted with the [...] more »
The ANC, the IRA and the rise of influence of the left within Sinn Fein…
Tweet World by Storm has a nice piece up on the IRA’s role in helping MK, the armed wing of the ANC, in the 1980s. In particular he sees a strange alchemy at work there: …if one can think of a clearly legitimate contemporary struggle it was that against apartheid and it is to the [...] more »
“We lived in peace for a few years, and then all this is coming back”
Tweet A view from the Protestant side of the peace walls… The mystery of exactly what kicked all this off, continues… more »
Victims and Guilt: a Kafkaesque proposition
Tweet In Northern Ireland we are all victims. Unfortunately many people do not feel that they are victims not having suffered during the Troubles. As such it is necessary for peace processors to help us all understand our victimhood. This can be difficult because there are many stubborn cases of people who feel they are [...] more »
Protestant Alienation 2011
Tweet Almost 20 years ago now the academic community in Northern Ireland first began looking at the concept of Protestant Alienation. Amongst the factors they identified were the feeling that the Hume Adams talks were creating a blueprint for the defeat of unionism which the British government might acquiesce to. That feeling of alienation increased [...] more »
Loyalist paramilitaries and “civilianisation”
Tweet Last month UTV covered the issue of ex-prisoners having difficulties obtaining secure employment. A number of months ago, shortly before Christmas, a conference was held on the issue of “civilianising” the UVF. If this sounds familiar it is because every few months there is another announcement of the “civilianisation” of the UVF. This process [...] more »
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Books
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Do Words Matter?: Book Review of Political Discourse and Conflict Resolution – Debating Peace in Northern Ireland
Tweet I share many of the concerns of Andy Pollak, whose recent post ‘My Response to the Slugger Begrudgers’ zeroed in on the ‘relentless flow of negativity’ of some Slugger commentators. Pollak’s post was largely concerned with the medium of the blog. Indeed, I think the anonymity of the online world encourages extreme discourse and [...] read our review »
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Christopher Hitchens, 1949 – 2011
Tweet Writer Christopher Hitchens has died aged 62. He was as contrary as he was brilliant. Here is a brief In Memoriam from Vanity Fair (his outlet of choice since 1992) and, here, a longer tribute from his friend Christopher Buckley Stanley in The New Yorker. Better, perhaps, though to post one of Hitchens’ own writings [...] read our review »
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A Political History of the Two Irelands competition…
Tweet It’s not often we get free things to give away to our readers, but courtesy of Palgrave Macmillan we have a nice paperback copy of Brian M Walker’s excellent history of partition of the island and how identities shifted in both the north east and the south and west: as most of the territory [...] read our review »
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