Brian Walker – Page 6 – Slugger O'Toole

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

Brian Walker on March 31, 2022, 6:35 am

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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 …

The Russian military was so very different during World War Two

Brian Walker on March 27, 2022, 8:02 pm

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Photo, Moscow Military Museum A long time ago in 1985, in the dying days of the last Soviet gerontocrat Chernenko, just before Gorbachev came to power, I went to Moscow with a small BBC team to make radio programmes marking the 40th Anniversary of victory in what is to us the Second World War, but is still to Russians today the Great Patriotic War, a war of survival in which 20 to 25 million died. Events like the Battle of …

Bring back Londonderry Feis!

Brian Walker on March 6, 2022, 3:36 pm

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Good on the Derry Now website for going to town to commemorate the centenary of Fheis Dhoire Cholmcille Derry Feis is celebrating its 100th birthday this Easter. To mark the special occasion, we are publishing a series of articles titled: Mo thuras go Fheis Dhoire Cholmcille 2022. Today, Fearghal Mag Uiginn, head of the Irish at Thornhill College and presenter of BBC Radio Ulster’s Blas Ceoil, describes his personal journey to Derry Feis 2022. Describing Feis Dhoire Cholmcille as the …

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

Brian Walker on March 1, 2022, 11:51 am

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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. …

Thoughts on a personal visit to the Russian border

Brian Walker on February 24, 2022, 10:02 am

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Last night I drafted a piece musing about the comparisons and contrasts between the imperial mindsets of Russia and Britain in history. This morning I threw it away. Instead my mind went back to a visit a decade ago to the border between Estonia and Russia In what seemed like entirely tranquil circumstances. We had taken a train from Talliin the capital of the tiny Baltic state of Estonia a couple of hundred miles to the old Russian imperial capital …

What sort of Assembly do we want?

Brian Walker on February 18, 2022, 9:20 am

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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 …

What is the point of Brandon Lewis?

Brian Walker on February 13, 2022, 3:31 pm

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On the Sunday Morning show on BBC 1, NI Secretary Brandon Lewis let slip that he’d “spent the week in the US”. He also enlightened us that he visited Northern Ireland “most weeks” but didn’t say for how long. His most recent contributions are in written statements urging the DUP to return to the First Minister post immediately and saying that No, he will not call an Assembly election early. These read as if they’re for the record rather to …

Personal reflections on Kenneth Branagh’s ” Belfast”

Brian Walker on February 4, 2022, 8:33 pm

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As the First Minster was announcing his resignation, I was being transported to the same world fifty three years ago, by Kenneth Branagh’s film Belfast in the company of my grown up daughter, her English husband and my young granddaughter, sitting all together in an almost empty London multiplex. Branagh dedicates the film to “those who stayed, those who left and those who were “lost.” We are among the second. For the past 50 years, I’ve led a two centred …

On the fringes of Bloody Sunday

Brian Walker on January 30, 2022, 6:12 pm

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Preamble Today in the light of so much glaring hindsight, it’s very hard to recapture the general experience of the time. It was the job of us local reporters to chronicle a least half a dozen incidents a day. Although of course there were exceptions, we had settled down to a new normal that was far from normal. I wouldn’t say I was case hardened. But the regular rhythm of events had run the gamut from exciting through appalling and …

The fantasies of the fundamentalist Christian Right in America are stoking fears of civil war. They must not be imitated in Northern Ireland

Brian Walker on January 9, 2022, 1:07 pm

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If you think Northern Ireland is in a pretty chaotic state, just compare it with the scale of turbulence in America. President Biden at last accepted the challenge of the lies of Trump on the anniversary of the Capitol riot. He said he was “crystal clear” about the dangers facing the nation, and accused Donald Trump and his political allies of holding a “dagger at the throat of America, at American democracy”. In the course of the 21-minute speech, delivered from the …

Can Liz Truss be trusted to deliver a Protocol solution?

Brian Walker on January 9, 2022, 11:04 am

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Since the disasters of the UWC strike and the collapse of the first power sharing structures in 1974, I’ve never found it more difficult to discover the route to stable politics in Northern Ireland. To be sure, the overall situation is nowhere near as fraught. A war on two fronts is not being waged. Masked paramilitaries are not barricading the streets and the power supply is not in the brink of being cut off entirely. On the contrary, despite Covid …

Frost’s resignation dissolves fudging over the Protocol and faces Johnson with the stark choice. And Liz Truss the party favourite will make it.

Brian Walker on December 19, 2021, 12:53 pm

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The social libertarian reasons David Frost has given for quitting the government such as the “direction of travel” on Covid restrictions and increased taxes are hardly the whole story. For if he thought he looked like winning in the Protocol negotiations he would surely not have quit. His letter to Johnson smacks of the same disingenuousness as his Protocol reports – a hard line written in the language of sweet reasonableness. Frost knows very well he has set Johnson a …

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

Brian Walker on December 2, 2021, 12:49 pm

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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 …

A southern truth and reconciliation process meets with inevitable northern scepticism

Brian Walker on November 30, 2021, 2:02 pm

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A brave attempt to break the deadlock between the British government’s proposal for a Troubles amnesty and the refusal of all other parties and groups to contemplate it received an airing in a webinar last Friday hosted by UCD academics. (TRP) is a group of southern independent great and good.. Their webinar was chaired by an Irish High Court Judge Mr Justice Richard Humphries, so presumably they have influence . They support the implementation of a ‘Truth Recovery and Reconciliation …

A Troubles history based on British records will not be the whole story but it’s still worth it

Brian Walker on November 26, 2021, 8:24 pm

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Irish Times columnist and distinguished historian Diarmaid Ferriter dismisses the British government proposal for an “official” British history of the Troubles. Although it could hardly be the last word, this is a project I believe is well worth exploring if it means opening state archives to independent historians. If an amnesty of some sort is passed, greater access to state records would be part of the deal, to accompany the end of prosecutions. While such a deal would produce furious …

Stiff medicine needed to get the Protocol over the line before Christmas

Brian Walker on November 19, 2021, 5:28 pm

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The pace of Protocol negotiations is quickening. Yesterday and earlier today The BBC nationally was giving rare prominence to this incomprehensible topic (if you’re not NI/Irish). After today’s meeting the straws in the wind were a bit more favourable but without Lord Frost clearly shifting position. Technical talks ahead of Friday’s meeting had focused on guaranteeing the supply of medicines from Great Britain to Northern Ireland. Mr Šefčovič said there had been progress in this area, adding: “We now need …

Straws in the Protocol wind

Brian Walker on November 18, 2021, 2:08 pm

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From the FT Rishi Sunak, chancellor of the exchequer, warned that provoking the EU into a trade dispute in the row over the so-called Northern Ireland protocol would hardly help. “Empty shelves this Christmas would be a disaster,” says one senior British official. “Nobody wants to be the person who screws up Christmas.” Rather than force a confrontation with Brussels, Johnson ordered his chief negotiator, Lord David Frost, to return to the table with renewed vigour to try to resolve …

Professional historians will be wary of terms like these for writing an official History of the Troubles

Brian Walker on November 15, 2021, 5:43 pm

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The Daily Telegraph reports… An official history of The Troubles will be commissioned under government plans, amid fears the narrative of the conflict is being distorted by republicans. It would also focus on the role of the British Government and Armed Forces in the 30-year sectarian conflict, including the Bloody Sunday massacre of 1972, when 13 civilians were shot dead by troops. If signed off, the official history project would sit alongside a package of measures announced earlier this year to …

Johnson and Frost can afford another turn of the screw before retreat. The rachet is in their hands

Brian Walker on November 10, 2021, 8:40 pm

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Using the old mantra of Michel Barnier, the clock is ticking on the Protocol negotiations. Even so, picking up from Mick’s references to Irish Times commentator Ronan McCrea, it isn’t obvious to me why at this point the EU should “play hardball.” Granted that he fears the damage done in a lengthy arbitration period under the terms of the withdrawal agreement. ..during the lengthy period during which all of these procedures were being worked through, the EU would be faced …

Austin Currie suffered politically and personally for his unrelenting opposition to violence

Brian Walker on November 10, 2021, 12:33 pm

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Not the most successful – the palm goes to John Hume – but in some ways Austin Currie was the best of them all. He was certainly the last of them, the six elected under different banners in the last election to the old Stormont in February 1969 to form the SDLP within a year. They formed the generally progressive, moderately nationalist and unambiguously democratic potential partner with which the bulk of unionism refused to deal before the relentless rise …