BIPA at 21: Has its day come?
At the end of its recent plenary in Brighton Irish Co-Chair Joe McHugh quipped that that the low profile of the Assembly had been changed by press coverage of its decision to hold the plenary in the Grand Hotel 27 years after the Provo bomb that nearly killed Mrs Thatcher. Some Conservative MPs were angered by the decision which was taken for practical rather than political reasons. Northern Ireland ministers unusually stayed away pleading a conflicting diary engagement. Reservations about …