1998 Agreement

Sinn Féin’s partitionist approach to united Ireland referendum(s)…

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… or an attempt to avoid ‘stupid’ questions about the party’s stated commitment to campaign against the fundamental principle of consent – that it is for the people of Northern Ireland to exercise their right of self-determination.  Those are the options from a comparison between the commitments on Irish unity Sinn Féin presented to the people of Ireland in their manifesto for February’s General Election, and the ones presented in the slim-lined version to the people of Northern Ireland ahead of …

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White vans of Sri Lanka, and the lessons of failing to make political agreements stick…

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Leena Manimekalai, director of White Van Stories talked the Jon Snow last night about the full scale abductions currently ongoing in Sri Lanka, despite a much lauded ‘peace process’… Of the film she notes, the social instability it gives rise to “there is so much of hope, [in spite] of despair, there’s waiting, and there is apathy, there’s everything, you know.” Unlike our own cases of The Disappeared this is both the norm (rather than a cover for access or …

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Sinn Féin: “An all-island referendum would have precedence.”

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Like BBC NI political editor Mark Devenport I was somewhat puzzled by the Sinn Féin’s Northern Ireland Assembly election manifesto call for a ‘referendum on Irish unity‘.  As Mark Devenport points out The Sinn Fein manifesto’s mention of a referendum on Irish unity encouraged me to revisit the Good Friday Agreement to check what it said on the matter. The Agreement says the Secretary of State can call a border poll “if at any time it appears likely to him that a majority …

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