Paving the Path to Peace: Civil Society and the Northern Ireland Peace Process #GFA25
Watch back last week’s conference that shone a light on work by trade unions, community groups, artists and faith-based organisations in the road towards peace.
Government
Anger in the voluntary sector
There was anger across Northern Ireland when the government’s funding allocations from the replacement for the European Social Fund were announced. Firstly, the announcement was made late morning on the very last day possible. And secondly, the level of funding from the replacement programme, the Shared Prosperity Fund, was much less than that lost from ESF. Many people felt this was not the promise the UK government made after Brexit. For people in Derry, this was regarded by some as …
Heaton Harris’s threat may end an Extended School policy that none of the local parties ever seriously owned..
I was asked to come on Nolan this morning to comment on a story I might otherwise have missed. It’s part of a bigger play the NIO seems to be using to put added pressure on the DUP to suspend its boycott of the Stormont institutions. In the detail it’s rather telling about just what a free ride our political class has been taking since the re-start of the institutions back in 2007, which sadly, in reality never really survived …
If it does take another 25 years to blow away the stench of 1969 and after, it’ll be worth the wait…
Sorry I wasn’t able to get to Tuesday’s discussion of the media’s role at the time of the Belfast Agreement, it would have been a pleasure to be back in the company of many audience members with whom I had shared some great moments since that time. Hearing them speak you realise how long and isolating the process of waiting for some or any product was back then. And also how well resourced the media was. Would the modern day …
Mitchell: “Don’t be too hard on yourselves, but don’t give up on the belief you can do better and better…”
At ninety George Mitchell rocked the house yesterday treating his audience to the wisdom, humour and realism no doubt honed over many years in American public life. For today, I’ll stick to his opening remarks (and a recurring theme here of renewal)… On the evening the Agreement was reached I commended the men and women who wrote and signed it. But I also said that it would take other leaders in the future to safeguard and extend their work. And so it has. …
Casement to be rebuilt as part of the joint Irish British bid to host the Euros…
‘There’s no money for it’ says a series of callers to Stephen Nolan’s radio programme, when informed by Stephen that the IFA are confident that the long awaited development at what was for generations the home GAA in Belfast. Before going any further we should pause at this point and let this state of affairs sink in. I don’t mean the absence of Stormont, I mean the IFA, the original representative soccer body on the island until the FAI broke …
Good Friday Agreement’s heavy-lifters still wait for Easter Sunday
In Northern Ireland’s most challenged neighbourhoods and communities, where advocating for the Agreement carried the greatest risk, the 25 years since its signing have been a long harrowing of broken promises, stalled initiatives, and predatory practices. From the mid-nineties onwards, buoyed by the prospect of local power-sharing, a raft of social policies emerged with the potential of consolidating the decades of grassroots activism that maintained local communities (urban and rural) in the face of violence. Under New Labour, the first …
For political Unionism surely the time for pragmatism is now?
When I submitted this article we were four or five days from the announcement of what became known as the Windsor Framework. The article laid out – from an unapologetically pro-union perspective – how I thought Jeffrey Donaldson should respond to the forthcoming announcement to secure the strongest possible outcome for Unionism and for Northern Ireland. I voted Remain in 2016 because after years living in the post-industrial heartlands of the West Midlands, the North East and the West of Scotland …
Book review: On the flawed genius of Charles J Haughey…
David Moane is a Dublin-based retiree with an interest in politics and current affairs. Here he re-assesses the career of Charlie Haughey in the light of Gary Murphy’s recently well received biography. I have mixed views on Haughey. I am in my early sixties now and am old enough to remember the great sparring matches between him and Conor Cruise O’Brien. When Haughey was appointed Taoiseach in December 1979, O’Brien was editor-in-chief of the Observer newspaper. He wrote a column …
GFA stood on the shoulders of those giants who defied terror and who ultimately were vindicated in pursuing peace
The following is an abridged version of a speech I made in Belfast last night to the Peace Train Organisation… If you’d told the teenage leftist, entirely English too, that I would spend years working against terror with bedfellows in many parties on both sides of the Irish Sea, I’d have been surprised. When I joined Labour in 1976, I initially swallowed the position that the root cause of the Troubles was partition, and that Irish unification was the solution. I overcame …
Eastwoods tells delegates SDLP is here to stay
200 delegates gathered in St Columb’s Hall for the SDLP conference. Gathering in the party heartland of Derry after a terrible year the SDLP is doing some soul-searching about its future. Recent polls have shown the party is still struggling to gain traction with the electorate. This conference is aimed at beginning the fightback for the party and what they are betting the house on is a New Movement for a New Ireland. This idea is not an original one. …
As the Westminster door closes, perhaps the DUP’s opportunity has just opened?
But, as LBJ once famously pointed out, politics is about numbers. Right now not only does Sunak have almost all of his party, he also has the full throated backing Labour, Lib Dems and the SNP meaning the House divided: Ayes 515 to Noes 29.
WATCH: book launch of Padraig O’Malley’s Perils and Prospects of a United Ireland #ImagineBelfast
Slugger live-streamed the book launch of Professor Padraig O’Malley latest work – Perils and Prospects of a United Ireland – part of the Imagine! Festival of Ideas and Politics. As part of the event, Belfast Telegraph journalist Sam McBride talked to O’Malley about his fourth book on the politics of Northern Ireland, with nearly 100 interviews with leaders and commentators reflecting on the social, economic, and political changes afoot in both parts of the island. You can stuill watch it …
DUP won’t endorse the Windsor Protocol without “clarification, change and re-working…”
Latest is that DUP MPs are not going to vote for the Windsor Framework in Westminster. It’s tempting to jump to the conclusion that this is where they’re going to land at the end of the month, but (a little) premature. They’ve chosen an awkward (Peter Robinson like) device that doesn’t make the party leader’s position particularly easy whilst the panel deliberate in the background. My own suspicion is that they’re probably busy taking soundings from they voter base. LucidTalk …
“Twitter’s gamification bears some resemblance with echo chambers and moral outrage porn…”
“A medium is not something neutral—it does something to people.” -Marshall McLuhan I was on Nolan this morning to discuss an Irish News story about a 29 year old candidate standing for the DUP called Tyler Hoey. It featured some awful FB quotes (which I won’t repeat here) from just three years ago favourably mentioning the UDA. The paper notes that Ian Paisley “previously said” he took action to make sure the posts were removed, an apology made and “a real …
On Lineker, the only reasonable expectation you should have of a service is its professionalism, not avoidance of offence…
Gary Lineker, eh? I’m not so much of a soccer head that I missed either edition of Match of the Day this weekend. It’s more a nostalgia act for me from the days when it was the closest thing we could get to watching live soccer on television. As for the larger question of whether we should be listening to football commentators for our political analyses, I’m kinda with Julie Birchill writing in The Spectator: When I was a girl, …
WATCH: Can Ireland Be One? Malachi O’Doherty in conversation with Duncan Morrow #looknorth23
For Malachi O’Doherty, the question of Irish unity is less about when there might be a border poll or what the result of a plebiscite would be, but whether this deeply divided island can actually ever be truly united. It’s the topic he has examined in a recently published book: Can Ireland Be One? As part of Look North! The North Belfast Festival, Malachi chatted to UU’s Prof Duncan Morrow. Filmed by Alan Meban @alaninbelfast in Ulster University on …
Previewing the ninth annual Imagine! Belfast Festival of Ideas and Politics #imaginebelfast
The Imagine! Belfast Festival of Ideas and Politics is seeking to provide ‘brain food’ to all and sundry over seven days in March. The packed programme is a veritable feast of ‘ideas for a better world’. Now in its ninth year, the festival has over 130 in-person and online events, and the majority are free. While politics is often to the fore, politicians themselves aren’t usually platformed at the non-partisan festival’s events. But this year, one event will be exploring …
Brexit deal designed to ‘unf*ck’ the UK’s economy not to just serve the vital needs of unionism…
Brian has a point when he argues that the DUP may struggle to oversell the complications of this Brexit deal. Of course they should be given time to look over the car and kick the tyres. Sammy Wilson and others are entitled to point out the shortfalls. But this deal changes the overall degree to which any UK government is willing and prepared to go out on a limb to salvage things for the DUP in particular and unionism in …
As the gate closes on roughneck Brexonomics, this is roughly the space in which any NI deal can be done.
There are a number of important signals from yesterday’s publication of the Windsor Framework document that have little enough to do with Northern Ireland per se but rather mark the beginning of the end of a Brexiteer fantasy Brexit. There will be many concerns arising and not all of them are being expressed by unionists. Using a mechanism like the petition of concern, which has been subject of a lot of controversial issues for a close to final arbiter has raised …