Army Council

The question being asked, he said, is: “Why are you up there [in Stormont]?”

Mick Fealty on January 25, 2017, 2:59 pm

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Highly insightful reporting and analysis from Brian Rowan in the Irish Times on Monday re the current rumblings inside Sinn Fein and its leadership class of old IRA men, which (if we’re lucky) will raise serious internal questions about direction of the project: Republicans are now questioning the worth of the Stormont institutions and a decade-long relationship with the DUP at the head of the Northern Ireland Executive. This was the mood inside the Felons Club that Saturday in January. Within hours, …

Something quite profound has shifted here, and more so within unionism than nationalism…

Mick Fealty on October 22, 2015, 5:50 pm

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So where does this all leave Unionism? Well, plainly not everyone is in the same place Gregory Campbell was last night. The brutal truth of all of this is that the DUP did not want to leave office over this, or almost anything else. In the blame game it is always unionism’s fault, so staying in situ was always Peter Robinson’s plan of action. Then along came Mike Nesbitt, who, no doubt having seen the term “Head of IRA Intelligence” …

“a considerable proportion of their members are still bound by the secrecy oath they swore when they joined the IRA”

Mick Fealty on October 22, 2015, 12:35 pm

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Sinn Fein pulled an initial blinder last night: one, by not turning up for the Nolan Show and letting Gregory Campbell explain the nuances of the Panel Report all on his own; and two getting the host Stephen Nolan read out their key messages on their behalf. However, in the longer run not speaking about it, leave the field open to your opponents to define the ground on which this issue gets unpacked. The problematic linking of ongoing IRA criminality …