Right, I’m on the move for most of the rest of the afternoon, so here’s a heads up on tonight’s Hearts and Minds. As grammar schools throw down the gauntlet on selection, the Education Minister answers claims that she’s responsible for privatising the 11 plus. And Sinn Fein is at odds with the other parties over a chair for the victims commission. But is the delay in putting the commission on a legal footing more about changing the definition of …
I had previously asked, given that Gerry Adams is a fan of the middle-class would-be permanent revolutionary, whether it was still chic to worship ‘Che’ in Sinn Féin in this new ‘indigenous’ deal. The Belfast Telegraph reports that we may, or may not, find out. A spokesman for the west Belfast MP said: “Gerry was one of a range of people interviewed for this documentary. The interview took place in London and he was asked when he first saw the …
That could be up to another two weeks. Apparently Sinn Fein are unhappy at how their Executive deal with the DUP was undermined by a vote in the Assembly which found the DUP backing an Alliance party amendment that one of the Commissioners adopt the role of ‘primus inter pares’. It’s one of the rare cases of the Assembly beating back an (albeit) weak agreement within the Executive. A successful outcome of the talks between Sinn Fein and the DUP …
Peter Taylor has a piece up on the BBC news website advertising tomorrow night’s Northern Irish segment in his new four part series The Age of Terrorism. He picks out the Enniskillen bomb, and the IRA’s deal with Colonel Gaddafi as the key moments in the IRA’s decision to eventually eschew violence. He notes that: Many have long thought the bombing must have been an unauthorised, one-off operation by a local unit, believing it to be inconceivable that the IRA …
This is the only snippet I could find of Monday night’s programme on UTV. It contains some points worth repeating. Note especially Glenn Patterson’s piece on the contradiction he contends is at the heart of the new dispensation: This is a place where there was brutal violence used regularly and celebrated: quite a lot of it used against very, very young people right across Belfast and Northern Ireland. I think we do have to look at the problems of policing, …
Notwithstanding the extraordinary apology in the Andersonstown News, David Adams picks up where Squinter laid off.. Only, unusually perhaps for a unionist commentator, (David) Adams believes that the blame for anti social behaviours in West Belfast does not lie with his namesake, the Sinn Fein MP, but with poor parenting. Squinter’s anger is understandable, but it is hard to know what precisely he thinks Gerry Adams and his party should be doing. By the same token, it is somewhat disingenuous …
Mick Hall has an interesting quote from a Northern Irish member of éirígí, a relatively recent phenomenon in Republican politics, which seems to have surfaced in Dublin much before organising in Belfast: “The party defends the right of any people who are subjected to imperialist occupation to use whatever means they deem necessary to remove that occupation. However, we do believe that the elevation of military struggle to a principle as opposed to a revolutionary tactic has retarded the development …
The Irish Times is still rummaging in areas of Jonathan Powell’s book that the Guardian forgot. It has some interesting detail, not least the suggestion by Robinson that the DUP had virtually thrown Paisley out as leader due to the increase in internal pressures in advance of the deal. But there’s more. For instance, Powell suggests that after McGuinness asks Powell to ‘stand down’ during the 2004 negotiations that failed over photographing of IRA decommissioning, he goes on to tell …
Phillip Johnston raises an interesting question upon reading, in Jonathan Powell’s book on the Peace Process™, that Martin McGuinness never understood why the British ever initiated the Saville Inquiry into Bloody Sunday: ie, what on earth was it for if the current Deputy First Minister believes an apology would have sufficed. So who’s big (£181.2m) idea was it? Answer: the Irish Government. Powell: “The inquiry … has failed to give satisfaction to either side. The nadir for me was when …
Just to prove Pete isn’t the only blogger with a half decent ear for a line of poetry, here’s a piece by Fred Johnston, that I first read in South Magazine in April 2006, and which I finally got permission from the author to ‘reprint’ on Slugger, just when my copy of the magazine disappeared in the morass of bookshelves here at Slugger Central. It has finally re-emerged. And I am very grateful for the author’s permission! MAO-ING At Carnsore …
That’s Tony Blair’s former chief of staff – the recently married Jonathan Powell – on Tony Blair. Powell’s account of The Process™ will be published soon, and is to be serialised in the Guardian from Monday. Today’s paper has a taster, and a longer interview, pointing to the importance of the “secret back channel between the British government and the IRA”. One part of that back channel, Brendan Duddy – formerly a member of the Policing Board – has been …
A UUP sponsored motion in the Assembly today on the Eames/Bradley co-chaired Consultative Group on the Past seems to have provided an opportunity for the DUP and Sinn Féin to unite in criticism of the group. DUP MLA David Simpson is reported to have commented during the debate that “One part of the group was briefing against another part of the group. In effect one part of the Eames/Bradley group sought to use the press to get its view of …
As noted yesterday, Gerry Adams benevolent reading of Ian Paisley’s career on Comment is Free was remarkable in its civility. Simon Jenkins is unimpressed. He recalls his early days as a reporter encountering a younger Paisley in Northern Ireland: The man was a monster, a fanatic, a hangover from the middle ages. I remember wondering how on earth Britain had allowed Ulster’s constitution so to fester as to have this man roaming the woods and hills of Ulster. One thing …
Not all the weapons in the possession of the IRA (or as pointed out below, other extant Republican paramilitaries) were, it seems, decommissioned. The Sunday Tribune reports: A volley of shots was fired by several gunmen at a ceremony in west Belfast yesterday attended by a 200-strong crowd which included prominent Sinn Féin members. The shots were fired beside the IRA garden of remembrance on the Falls Road where the ashes of former Belfast Brigade OC (officer commanding), Brendan Hughes, …
Interesting snippet from an web site called World Net Daily. It alleges that McShane sensed he was being moved in on, and called his handlers and asked to be taken out before the IRA acted against him. It alleges also that he was the conduit through which the British discovered critical intelligence on events as far back the killing of British soldiers at Warrenpoint, to the activities of the Columbia Three: The car he drove, bought for Adams by Sinn …
Newshound had spotted the report in the South Texas Monitor and the BBC have followed up. If the details in both reports are true it would appear that the Maze escaper caught with out-of-date immigration documents at a US border checkpoint in Texas could only be one of a handful of people from the list of those still on-the-run. From the Monitor report The man, whose name Border Patrol refused to release late Wednesday night, is expected to soon be …
If you missed the first part of the Friday Play on BBC Radio 4, Bloody Sunday: Scenes from the Saville Inquiry you can catch it here. Definitely worth a listen. What it lacks in literary qualities (the script is composed of edited ranscripts from the Inquiry itself) it makes up for in its documentation, first and foremost, of the trauma of the events even some thirty years later. But it also points up the unwillingness of key participants to be …
Earlier Turgon posted some thoughts and questions about the Eames/Bradley chaired Consultative Group on the Past. And, interestingly, David Adams covered similar concerns in the Irish Times today. He begins by picking up on those “anonymous sources close to that group”. From the Irish Times [subs req] Non-attributable kite-flying and plausibly deniable leaking as a means of swaying or inuring public opinion is usually the grubby preserve of governments and political parties; it is certainly not what you expect from …
Interesting thoughts from Dean Godson on the Consultative Group on the Past, who argues that the seeming emphasis on Government crime during the Troubles is hardly appropriate when the bulk of the killings where committed by anti state actors: The modus operandi of the consultative group is strange indeed. Oddly, for a body meant to deal with the past, no professional historians sit on it. Instead, its approach seems heavily conditioned by academic experts in “transitional justice” and “conflict resolution” …
Long awaited (on Slugger at least) last night’s programme on the mass migration of Protestant population from the west bank of Derry City is worth watching in full. The whole issue remains a matter of some controversy but, as the narrator says towards the end, the truth is probably nowhere near as cut and dried as either side quite believes. It’s true, as some commenters have mentioned on previous threads on this subject, that population movements were common throughout the …
