Brian Walker

  Cecil Taylor in the tiny BBC NI Newsroom, 1960s  My first boss in the BBC Cecil Taylor, BBCNI News Editor  at the beginning of the Troubles and an influential editorial figure in the Corporation for many years thereafter, died this week aged 96. His career  ranged from another world in the 1950s through the 1970s and 80s when all had changed utterly.   The pre-Troubles BBC reflected  the dominant forces of  the establishment  which were unionist with a liberal veneer …

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Chief Legacy Commissioner Sir Declan Morgan Dublin’s challenge before the European Human Rights Court at Strasbourg  to the UK  Government’s Legacy Act replacing legal process with  the mainly administrative and arguably closed process of a legacy commission has an air of  political inevitability about it. Whatever their belief in the strength of their case, they could hardly expose such an open flank to a militantly self righteous Sinn Fein.  Not only  Irish nationalism north and south but the UK Labour …

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For several months now, I’ve been lost in admiration for how political journalists and commentators in Slugger and elsewhere have been making bricks without straw  in trying to report the state of politics. But now it seems, if  the panels in late night’s The View are to be believed, a mad rush is on  to complete a deal to restore Stormont –   perhaps as early as next Tuesday when Parliament rises for Christmas.  This may be a tad optimistic but …

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To add a note to my post about the Legacy Act and its Commission. To avoid arid whataboutery, we’ll need to go highfalutin. A crucial aim is  to create an agreed ethical environment emerging out of history. Without it victims are unlikely to obtain  much case by case satisfaction when physical  evidence is so lacking. People – and the official record and records of all kinds  –  will need to start talking. The two governments and all parties  are in …

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The wholesale opposition to the UK government’s  new minted  Legacy Act was predictable and expected. At the same time the good faith of the all the politicians involved  is suspect, as Newton Emerson pitilessly described over a year ago. At every level, rejections shamelessly cancel out. All Stormont’s political parties oppose the legislation, currently being rushed through Westminster. But unionists object only to an amnesty for terrorists; Sinn Féin to an amnesty for former security force personnel. Protecting soldiers is …

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The independent minded nationalist Jarlath Kearney has been doing some interesting break-out thinking. Couched in strategic language to distance his message from the old zero sum debate, he laments the cooling of the British -Irish relationship  whose revival he sees as the only way to advance politics in the North.  For Kearney, that  relationship has to mean much more than closer diplomatic relations. The primordial Ireland-UK challenge is straightforward: there is an absolute, overriding requirement to rediscover and replenish a …

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In a 130 page  report, the Constitution Unit of University College London has reviewed how the GFA has worked out over the past quarter century. It used party manifestoes and focus group and elite group interviews to deliver a sober account which is necessarily an outsider’s product. No bad thing if it succeeds in creating greater attention in London in particular. We are acutely aware that few politicians in Great Britain today have invested much time in understanding Northern Ireland’s …

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Photo: spoof  customs on the border The latest verdict  on the Windsor Framework   will be seized on by some  to justify  the DUP’s reluctance to re-enter the Assembly  for a long time. By how many remains to be seen,   It doesn’t help that the sharpest criticisms which are shared by NI local  business have been aired not by them but by unionists who are acute Framework sceptics.  The verdict  comes in a report by  the House of Lords sub-committee on …

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This is a UK  government in decline. Its authority is diminishing among its  own back benchers. This week it’s rushing through measures before the summer break. The Illegal Migrations Bill will become law but can’t be implemented while transfer to Rwanda remains illegal. Today the NI Legacy Bill will begin its final Commons stages in the teeth of opposition from most stake holders including the DUP, although with one bright spot for unionists, an amendment carried in the Lords to …

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Chris Heaton-Harris MP, NI Secretary While so much energy is being expended over identity issues in the Assembly’s absence (e.g.  “The Brits don’t love us anymore.” Please!)   remarkably little attention seems to be paid to actual politics which is proceeding largely without regard to the local politicians. The UK government in the person of Chris Heaton-Harris is free the play games or play for real, whichever he chooses. The UU leaning Malone House Group has just pointed out that the …

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photo: Royal Victoria Hospital Belfast When so much comment has been preoccupied with squeezing out yet another fine point about the council election results, rumbling on in the background has been another squeeze, the Barnett squeeze which has the effect of reducing the funding for Northern Ireland at the worst possible time.  (explanation later). Breaths are being held for a Westminster bailout of up to a £1billion more or less, to fill a budgetary black hole, on condition that the …

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I need hardly dwell on the beating unionists have taken at the polls. In comment, the most severe on the DUP came from a critical friend  well  into his own voyage of discovery, Sam McBride of the Bel Tel. The message is Sinn Fein are always on a roll while the DUP are still circling the wagons against the inexorable pressure of demography, but able to survive if  they adopt a survival strategy.  (Come to think of it the native American …

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Chris Heaton -Harris NI Secretary   The Northern Ireland parties are fighting on a phantom agenda for Thursday’s  council elections. Few seem to have noticed and nobody seems to mind, preoccupied as they are by the electoral struggle, the local media mostly included. This at any rate is the verdict of  our most provocative and analytically searching professional  commentator Newton Emerson who is convinced a bailout is coming. The other big change pending is  the prospect of a transformation of the …

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The Secretary of State’s grim budget statement may not be the last word after all.  From a Dublin dateline, the Poltico website casts a more favourable light on it, predicting another £1 billion “bung” – but with conditions A half-dozen senior insiders in the British government and Northern Ireland civil service have told POLITICO that Westminster is mulling a £1 billion offer to boost the region’s public services if its main political parties restore a power-sharing government before the end …

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Once again the old game of slipping deadlines is being played. An NI budget was due – today? Soon?  Unprecedented pressure mounts but Chris Heaton Harris shows no sign of bending. Public servants rarely speak out publicly about their responsibilities but when they do it’s usually buried in Yes Ministerspeak. Not any more.   The tactic seems to have been to have a retired mandarin speak about the unique strain the absence of an Executive has imposed on them.  The former …

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There was a glut of greatness at Queen’s and Hillsborough yesterday, so much so that even the local media could manage only a few snapshots, the BBC excepted . Nearly every big figure who brushed against Northern Ireland in decades spoke and dined.  A very heavy  UK presence of seven former prime ministers and the current  incumbent, plus the leader of the opposition, along with  the EU in force reminding us their controversially  active role  in our affairs, Ursula van …

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By its very nature with its illustrious cast , it would have been  too much to expect the great conference at Queen’s “Agreement 25”  to have conducted  a searching inquest into the strength and weaknesses of the Good Friday Agreement, or an inquiry into  the Windsor Framework as the device for returning the DUP to the Assembly. It became quickly clear that the dynamics were wrong.  Anyway it would have been one thing to talk about balancing arms decommissioning against …

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What do we expect to get out of this week’s conference at Queen’s to commemorate the GFA? More lofty exhortation certainly. Bill and Hillary Clinton have already begun. More sour sniping from some unionists?  Ditto.  But most of the political world will at least pass themselves, moved to courtesy and respect at the appearance of the seriously ailing 89 year old George Mitchell. Blair, Ahern  and striking a  contemporary  note, Sefcovic of the EU ( representing the  new third force …

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