Conflict – Page 17 – Slugger O'Toole

Did Craigavon have legal grounds to cancel Duffy booking?

Mick Fealty on May 8, 2009, 6:41 pm

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Regarding the cancelled meeting the other the night, Craigavon Borough Council stated, “Following legal advice, a further discussion with council officers and a representative of the family took place earlier today. As a consequence of that discussion the offer of accommodation was withdrawn. The meeting will no longer take place at North Lurgan Community Centre.” Slugger has obtained a copy of the form that was used to book the community hall in Kilwilkie the other night… You can view a …

“or would it be acceptable to just keep it in a box on the mantelpiece?”

Pete Baker on May 4, 2009, 3:05 am

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In Thursday’s Irish Times Fionnuala O’Connor made an interesting observation. Martin McGuinness called the dissidents “traitors”, won applause in the wider world, and has been careful not to use the word again. Is that because too many of his own colleagues are sensitive to the charge that participation in a Stormont gridlocked by the DUP is a betrayal of the republican dead? Last weekend McGuinness traded down to “impostors” who are “impersonating” the IRA, and inserted a deft reminder that …

Two Unionist parties, two different futures?

Mick Fealty on April 21, 2009, 1:18 pm

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In today’s Irish News ‘returned native’ Fionnuala O’Connor raises an important point about the various responses from the local parties to the attack on a house in the Village where four Hungarian women lived: The two main parties took very different positions. A DUP councillor and an MLA were clear in their criticism and admiring of the work immigrants do. Christopher Stalford and Jimmy Spratt were forthright by contrast with Ulster Unionists. Bob Stoker was reported as “wholehearted” agreeing with …

On five minutes of heaven (2)

Mick Fealty on April 6, 2009, 12:25 pm

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Erm, I have to admit to getting a little jaded with Northern Irish political dramas. The growing distance between the way today’s population live their lives out and what passed for normal life twenty or thirty years ago makes the past an even stranger place than it was at the time. Competing claims over the defining narrative for that past also make things more complicated. But Five Minutes of Heaven is based on a real life experience of two men… …

Five Minutes of Heaven

Pete Baker on April 6, 2009, 3:37 am

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Five Minutes of Heaven has just been aired on BBC 2 and, after all the pre-broadcast hype, and Sundance Festival accolades, I was expecting something a lot more substantial. The acting, in general, was fine – James Nesbitt’s collection of psychological tics and side-effects aside – but the entire piece felt underwritten. It started reasonably, even if the portrayal of the loyalist killer as a now feted global concilliator seemed, well, odd. Although that did allow Neeson to initially give …

Pipe bombs in Limerick…

Mick Fealty on April 3, 2009, 9:01 pm

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Not sure what this means, but the Limerick blogger is on to this pretty quick… I might be wrong, but I don’t associate pipe bombs with the south west… Worth keeping half an eye on… Update: from Republican Sinn Fein: Joe Lynch from Beechgrove Avenue in Ballinacurra Weston who is the director of local elections in the area for RSF said the raid on his home was designed simply to intimidate election workers in the run up to the contest …

“There’s positive thinking…”

Pete Baker on April 2, 2009, 1:48 am

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According to an iol report the Northern Ireland Secretary of State, Shaun Woodward, MP, fresh from his appearance in front of the NI Assembly and Executive Review Committee yesterday, has told the NI Affairs Select Committee that, ‘Loyalist paramilitaries could be moving towards decommissioning their weapons’. Anonymous sources have also been encouraging the belief that “the de Chastelain report will be a favourable report.” Of course, equally, they [it] might not be.. What’s the trade-off, again? And are we pursuing …

Gardai arrest three in Dublin raid

Pete Baker on March 30, 2009, 1:26 am

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Not much detail on this yet but two men and a woman, all described as being in their 30s, have been arrested in Dublin by police investigating republican paramilitary activity and are being held under Section 30 of the Republic of Ireland’s Offences Against the State Act. The BBC report notes that, “Police said that suspect devices have been found and have asked for support from an Irish army bomb disposal team. But the more up to date RTÉ report …

Trouble before the Northern Ireland Poland match…

Mick Fealty on March 28, 2009, 8:14 pm

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Gettinging early reports of trouble at the Village end of Tates Avenue, and one unconfirmed reports of trouble at Sandy Row. We understand it kicked off about an hour ago, nearly two hours before the official kick off… Update: It’s understood that the trouble may have followed a fracas in Weatherspoons in Bradbury Place. We have another unconfirmed report of a stabbing… Update 2 No confirmation on the stab story. Seems low key. Windsor Park opened early to let Polish …

“there is a political logic at work here..”

Pete Baker on March 18, 2009, 6:55 pm

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US Presidential praise for the response to the recent republican paramilitary murders carries echoes of Jonathan Powell’s “more like politicians now, than capos” line [the video’s gone but the quotes remain]. The “people”, after all, have been there before [Most of them – Ed]. Indeed. And what other viable political option did those politicians directly connected to the Northern Ireland Executive actually have? Other than to embrace the hypocrisy Mick has identified elsewhere. At openDemocracy Robin Wilson is, despite serious …

“This is the weakness in the Sinn Fein position..”

Pete Baker on March 15, 2009, 2:51 am

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As well as the suggested similarities to elsewhere, Malachi O’Doherty has some interesting thoughts about this “odd week”. The argument against a new campaign is, roughly, this. The dissident republicans have no hope of achieving what the Provisional IRA failed to achieve in thirty years. We will understand what viable objectives the dissidents might have if we understand what is wrong with that argument. The Provisional IRA failed to achieve a united Ireland but succeeded greatly in the secondary objective …

Three arrested over Antrim murders

Turgon on March 14, 2009, 3:26 pm

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The BBC are reporting that three men aged 41, 32 and 21, have been arrested in the Lurgan and Bellaghy areas over the RIRA murders of Mark Quinsey and Patrick Azimkar in Antrim. They are being questioned in Antrim police station. TurgonThis author has not written a biography and will not be writing one.

Dissident’s political wing issues statement

Turgon on March 13, 2009, 11:12 pm

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The BBC are reporting that the 32 County Sovereignty Movement has warned that the conflict will not end unless Britain renounces its claim to sovereignty over Northern Ireland. The full text of the statement is here. Meanwhile Fr. Aidan Troy has suggested dialogue with dissidents should be considered. TurgonThis author has not written a biography and will not be writing one.

“We may in fact have to accept that..”

Pete Baker on March 13, 2009, 6:27 pm

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Whilst I’ve noted that some have already suggested we might be looking at something similar to the IRA campaign in the 1950s, at the Guardian’s Politics Blog Henry McDonald has another suggested comparison. Eta’s current nihilistic campaign probably provides an even better comparison. We may in fact have to accept that – just as Spain and the Basque country will be shaken occasionally by the odd Eta outrage – the same goes for Northern Ireland and extremist republican groups. Basque …

Time for Sinn Fein to spend its own capital (rather than everyone else’s) on winning the peace…

Mick Fealty on March 12, 2009, 2:51 pm

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Over at Brassneck, I’ve compiled a round up of the blog comment on recent events and the issue arising. I’ve ended with Conor Ryan, who, it seems to me covers the political (as opposed to the moral or legal) angle better than most “yesterday was the day when the process – and Sinn Fein – finally showed its maturity”. Now it can be said that this was a reluctant conversion. The sheer awkwardness of McGuinness’s body language not to mention …

Sinn Fein and the Rubicon

Turgon on March 12, 2009, 2:54 am

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The reaction to the terrible murders of the last few days has been interesting. Some have seen it as a great coming together of our society and in that coming together have seen considerable cause for hope. Much as I welcome the clear fact that the majority of our citizens utterly reject this violence I am reminded that it takes very few people to sustain a campaign of murder. I am also reminded that as a small child I stood …

Silent Protest live blog…

Mick Fealty on March 11, 2009, 12:05 pm

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Silent protest It seems an absolute contradiction in terms, but I’ve set up a live blog for the Silent Protest at 1pm today. In fact, I don’t expect to be ‘blogging’ anything at all myself. But I have set it up to draw in Twitter entries marked with the hastags: #silentprotest, #Belfast, #Newry, #Derry, or #Londonderry . If you want your thoughts – before and after the protest – to appear here, then just add one of these to your …

Is the process just a dark hole in which old monsters squirm and grow?

Mick Fealty on March 11, 2009, 1:16 am

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In some ways the implicit meaning of this crisis are too awkward for some of our politicians to face. One that hadn’t immediately occurred to me was Peter Preston’s observation (following consistently on from poisonous foundations) that by locking the incumbent political opinion into Stormont, you automatically alienate any outside political opposition and leave them to their own devices. Voters in a democracy will always want to know what comes next, to see what’s the alternative. And, intellectually, Northern Ireland …

Woodward playing a dangerous game with words…

Mick Fealty on March 10, 2009, 9:13 pm

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One of the most interesting aspects of the shifting patterns of the game, has been the transference of terms like ‘criminal’ as the prime discriptor for the dissident Republican paramilitaries from Sinn Fein to the Secretary of State Shawn Woodward. It may have been co-opted in order to provide some cover/support for the Deputy First Minister and his party, but Malachi O’Doherty reckons it could end up making things a hell of a lot worse: Those of us who remember …

The Republican movement faces its own harsh reality…

Mick Fealty on March 10, 2009, 8:47 pm

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Contract the experience of northern Nationalism over the last forty years to a single word, and it would be ‘separation’. By and large they have lived separate lives. Separate from our neighbours, by school, sport, preferred language and by large scale segregated living. And, often most painfully of all, separate from an independent state to which most would much prefer to belong. In debates on Slugger some nationalists give the impression of living in an idealised parallel universe where political …