Slugger O'Toole The SDLP’s Alisdair McDonnell speaking at the weekend. “The loyalist violence is nasty. The unionist prevarication is difficult and trying. But the real crunch here is that Sinn Féin let us down and they have lied their way around every corner since October 4 trying to pretend they are not.” Slugger O'TooleA general account used for the daily threads and other things.
Kelly talks to Rev John Dunlop, minister of Rosemary Presbyterian Church in north Belfast: “‘There is a community worker I know well,’ he says, ‘who says that cross-community work for her is to get young people from the two loyalist paramilitary factions together in the same room. It’s a big move from that to then engage with the republican community further up the street, who tend to be a lot more articulate and ideologically aware.’” He describes how he sees …
Roy Garland attacks the ethnic assumptions made by some when justifying the promotion of the Irish language. Slugger O'TooleA general account used for the daily threads and other things.
Malachi O’Doherty with a caustic but probably accurate analysis of why Belfast wasn’t selected for the UK shortlist for European City of Culture in 2008. Slugger O'TooleA general account used for the daily threads and other things.
Trimble and Adams have their first bilateral meeting since the week of the Stormont collapse. Slugger O'TooleA general account used for the daily threads and other things.
Pictures from Daniel O’Donnell’s wedding in Kincasslagh, Co Donegal today (via the newsfeed at Irish in Britain). Slugger O'TooleA general account used for the daily threads and other things.
McCann identifies the difference in the IRA’s premise and those of similar movements. He begins with an echo of Michael Collins: “The agreement doesn’t represent freedom, then, but freedom to achieve freedom. Not the promised land, but a stepping stone toward it. The problem is that the IRA has differed from movements that republicans have sometimes, depending on who’s within earshot, been content to compare themselves with–the Basque ETA, the African National Congress, the Palestine Liberation Organization–in that it has …
The School of Journalism’s weblog at Cardiff University has given a mention of Letter to Slugger O’Toole to their MA students. They have a lot of interesting links and materials on the weblog phenomenon. If you fancy setting up your own blog, Blogger is the place to get started. Slugger O'TooleA general account used for the daily threads and other things.
Kelly turns to education. He suggests: “Working-class Protestants have never had much esteem for educational qualifications, nor for much of the last century did they require them: a trade was thought best, and-given the unabashed sectarianism within the north’s major industries-it came easy. This economic prop has since been kicked away by the decline of traditional employers such as Short’s aircraft factory and the shipbuilder Harland & Woolf.” Billy Hutchinson on the effects of a shrinking heavy industry: “‘Long gone …
This has to be most intelligent and reflective review of Ed Moloney’s A Secret History of the IRA. In fact, it is more of a critical essay on the Northern Command and its natural antithesis to classic Republicanism. He starts on Adams, who has taken star billing in previous reviews (also here and here): “The shadow of Gerry Adams falls across almost every page. Moloney recounts his IRA career: joined as an 18-year-old volunteer in D Company on the Falls …
Kelly talks to Chris McGimpsey, who he describes as a Liberal Unionist, who voices the suspicion amongst Loyalists in North Belfast that “…that there is a Sinn Fein/IRA strategy to expel Protestants from their traditional neighbourhoods and capture Belfast by stealth.” McGimpsey cites: “…a succession of bomb scares at the Everton Day Centre on the Crumlin Road that separates Ardoyne from Glencairn and Shankill. He believes that militant republicans are responsible: ‘I think they want to get that school closed …
Robert Ford, Commander of Land Forces in Northern Ireland at the time, is to appear in the Saville inquiry today. Slugger O'TooleA general account used for the daily threads and other things.
The BBC are looking for people to provide memories of the Harland and Wolff, once the largest employer in Belfast. Slugger O'TooleA general account used for the daily threads and other things.
An update on one of the more brutal and bizarre beatings of recent months. Slugger O'TooleA general account used for the daily threads and other things.
Richard Kelly visited the PUP office in Stormont. “‘All Prods are clairvoyant, you know,’ Ervine said. ‘And it’s never good news.’ If David Ervine was now playing Cassandra, then the peace process was sickly indeed. After all, the PUP were the sole unionist grouping which wholeheartedly championed the Agreement-indeed, the first unionists in living memory to come up with a new idea, namely that working-class Protestants and Catholics should make common cause to challenge the long misgovernment of middle-class, ‘big …
Mark Durkan in interview with Seán MacCárthaigh, refutes the old insult that it is simply offering weak compromise to the Nationalist constituency. Towards the end he speculates intriguingly about the future pattern of party politics in Ireland: “I’m open to wider realignment. But people are talking about a merger between the SDLP and an existing southern party; I see things in a more fluid context. People think the parties in the south exist as they are, in perpetuity, and I …
Mark Durkan has called for all paramilitaries to disband. He clearly has the support of others in his party. Billy Mitchell in The Blanket provides a more detailed view of a problem inherited from 30 years of apparently endless conflict within the state. And even Sinn Fein seem to be sending strong messages to fringe groups. Slugger O'TooleA general account used for the daily threads and other things.
Love him or loathe him, the former politician and one time editor of The Observer Conor Cruise O’Brien was 85 yesterday. He took a break from writing to let an interesting range of folk pay him tribute. Slugger O'TooleA general account used for the daily threads and other things.
In his recent essay for Prospect magazine, Richard Kelly asks why Unionism has failed to talk up what it gained from the Belfast Agreement: “…not since Trimble emerged from Castle Buildings on 10th April 1998, declaring the union safer than when he had first sat down, has unionism said much in public that savoured of victory. The talk was only of incessant affronts to their tradition, and of a one-way track bearing intolerable concessions. Why couldn’t unionism engage? Two years …
Though this is strictly outside the Letter’s remit on NI, James Crabtree provides an excellent take on the problem of quality within the weblogging phenomenon. Slugger O'TooleA general account used for the daily threads and other things.