Conflict – Page 37 – Slugger O'Toole

DUP awaits outcome of ‘criminality test’

Mick Fealty on April 18, 2006, 11:30 am

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One of the instructive aspects of the recent documentary on David Trimble was the position of his former colleague Jeffrey Donaldson. In effect he said that the Belfast Agreement was a basically sound document so far as Unionists were concerned, except for three associated issues: the re-naming of the RUC; the release of paramilitary prisoners; and the issue of decommissioning. All of these are now (more or less) complete, Donaldson argues that his party simply needs time to ensure the …

Decommissioning done, only criminality to go…

Mick Fealty on April 18, 2006, 11:25 am

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Noel MacAdam reads into the IRA’s Easter statement that the organisation may have determined to put its own house in order viz a viz criminal activities. Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty

In denial of a bloody and Catholic past…

Mick Fealty on April 18, 2006, 10:50 am

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Eammon McCann hits a rare dissonant note when he argues that the only real inheritors of the rebels of 1916 are those who continue to be unadulterated rebels – Republican Sinn Fein. He notes a particular reluctance to acknowledge the determination of many of the participants to build “a Catholic country for a Catholic people”: Nobody knew in 1916 what the world would look like 90 years later or how Ireland might fit within it. People say of 1916 what …

Scottish sectarianism a thing of the past

Mick Fealty on April 18, 2006, 10:38 am

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Dani Garavelli argues that Scotland’s insistence that sectarianism is it’s own dirty shame turns out to be a chimera when it comes to finding any signs of the kind of discrimination attendent with sectarianism elsewhere. The fact that Rangers and Celtic fans still sing gory songs on and off the terraces may be a sign that hard core bigotry persists but, she argues, this is more grist for the satirist’s mill than indications of serious social problems. Over in the …

IRA disown criminals…

Mick Fealty on April 13, 2006, 9:33 pm

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As part of its Easter message, the IRA seems to be putting some distance between itself and former members now looking to take up a full time career in crime. According to El Blogador, it is also now owning up to the killing of Eugene McQuaid back in 1974. McQuaid was previously listed as a casulty of the British Army, according to the Sutton Index: “killed by booby trap rockets which exploded while he was transporting them on his motor …

High growth in the Catholic middle classes

Mick Fealty on April 13, 2006, 4:35 pm

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Fascinating piece in the Economist (via the invaluable Newshound). Much of the early stuff is general, but it slices down into some interesting longer term metrics for the substantial social change that has taken place underneath the stuff and nonsense of headline politics. It has some interesting things to say about a burgeoning Catholic middle class. More later! For members of the rapidly-growing Catholic middle class, in particular, life has never been better. Their success is evident in the universities, …

Blast incendiary device in hijacked van

Pete Baker on April 13, 2006, 3:46 pm

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The bomb alert on the Ryanair plane was a hoax. The incendiary bomb placed in the van, hijacked last night by three armed and masked men, and whose driver was then ordered to take it to the Strand Road police station in Derry, was not. As a recent New York Times article pointed out, reprinted here, the army bomb disposal teams, EODR, were called out 495 times last year, and dealt with 51 viable devices. Pete Baker

Donaldson and his two masters

Mick Fealty on April 13, 2006, 1:39 pm

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Anthony McIntyre looks back on his memory of Denis Donaldson, and wonders to what degree Donaldson actually compromised himself, since for the period of the Peace Process Sinn Fein and the British shared one major agenda – the quashing of dissent from the Agreement. Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and …

Free State left UK at just the right moment

Mick Fealty on April 12, 2006, 6:37 pm

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Garrett FitzGerald argues that some revisionists have taken the re-drafting of history too far. In particular, he argues that the southern state got out of the UK before it was economically too late (subs needed) to kick out for economic independence, “at a moment when the cost of the break was still bearable, involving as it did only a small reduction in public service salaries and in the very limited social welfare provisions of that period”. It is true that …

Kipling, the Irish Guards and the First World War

Mick Fealty on April 11, 2006, 11:59 pm

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Wesley Boyd with a fascinating Irishman’s Diary in today’s Irish Times (subs needed)on Kipling and his personal connection to the Irish Guards: “…a fervent unionist, Kipling was incensed by the insurgency in Ireland but he developed a great admiration for the gallantry of the men of the Irish Guards, most of whom were Catholic and from the southern provinces”.He continues: When the war started in 1914 Kipling’s only son, John, still at school and not yet 17, applied for a …

DI, FF, SDLP, and ‘that’ MSN message…

Mick Fealty on April 11, 2006, 6:20 pm

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Our blogging companion from Letterkenny Damien Blake has a front page slot on Daily Ireland calling for Fianna Fail to organise in Northern Ireland. It’s sits alongside the paper’s extraordinary W**nker headline on Espie’s ruck with former colleagues in the SDLP. It still looks like storm in a… ‘milkbottle’? Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events …

Reconciliation the undone business of 1916

Mick Fealty on April 11, 2006, 1:24 pm

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Michael McDowell argues that the conflation of history and politics especially at a ninety year remove is futile. He goes on to argue that Republicanism’s greatest challenge is to address its own failure to provide the means for reconciliation of the two main traditions on the island. At this remove, railing against the respective positions in 1916 of Redmond, or of Pearse and Connolly, or of MacNeill is futile and, I think, faintly ridiculous. Each had his courage, his beliefs …

Hardtalk: Kevin Fulton

Mick Fealty on April 11, 2006, 12:19 am

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Stephen Sackur talks to Kevin Fulton about his time as a British spy within the IRA. Hard passage over a bomb technology he brought back from the US for the IRA, but also believes that the British had enough information to prevent the Omagh bomb, but they allowed it to go ahead. Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest …

On the necessary moral force of the state

Mick Fealty on April 10, 2006, 9:27 pm

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Interesting to see that the great journalistic splash around the Donaldson case has brought Oliver Kamm into the Northern Ireland space, if only to illustrate an argument on morality of state force. He begins by noting Dean Godson’s remarks in the Daily Telegraph that “Mr Blair has become the prisoner of the peace process. Like a gambler who has invested so much, he has to keep heaping on the chips to obtain a return”.Kamm sets of with key statement 1: …

Adams: DUP accept priniciple of power sharing

Mick Fealty on April 10, 2006, 12:31 pm

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David McKittrick’s interview with Gerry Adams is interesting for two things. He mentions, almost casually, that Donaldson told Sinn Fein nothing of his work for the British (which may raise interesting questions about Stormontgate). And, on the subject of the DUP, he says “there’s no doubt they have conceded the principle of power-sharing, but beyond that you just get involved in endless speculation with no real foundation to it”. Combined with a call to Republicans to “work hard to try …

Conflicted over the memory of 1916?

Mick Fealty on April 10, 2006, 10:26 am

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This week sees the nintieth anniversary of the Easter Rising in 1916. It is a subject not to be trifled with. Inthe online edition of the Observer Geoffrey Wheatcroft was avalanched with strident criticism for his characterisation of the Rising as a betrayal of democracy. He mentions “Pearse’s exalted (or insane) words about the tired old earth that needed to be enriched by the spilling of much blood”. Though as Dan O’Brien has argued this same theme was echoed in …

Will Sinn Fein ever directly accept policing?

Mick Fealty on April 10, 2006, 1:54 am

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On Friday, Fionnuala O’Connor noted that “through the trauma of The Troubles and the prolonged, anti-climactic dickering that for the most part has replaced violence, conspiracy theories have been almost as sustaining as religion”. Eammon McCann highlights the problem of even making an educated guess as to who exactly who killed Donaldson: Donegal Catch is Ireland’s leading frozen fish brand. Hence the joke that has been whizzing in text messages around Northern republican circles: ‘‘Donegal Catch dish of the day …

“the likeliest culprits”

Pete Baker on April 8, 2006, 5:55 pm

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An interesting, and to a large extent persuasive, line of argument from Ed Moloney in the Irish Times. Asking – “So, who killed Denis Donaldson and why?”[subs req]. He, perhaps surprisingly to his critics, believes that “The IRA leadership is probably telling the truth when through its nom de guerre, P O’Neill, it denies involvement, at least any ‘authorised’ involvement.”He begins by pointing out that the narrative being promoted initially by some, that of an attempt to undermine the Blair-Ahern …

Shootings and the freedom of expression

Mick Fealty on April 7, 2006, 7:21 pm

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Is there a connection? My latest blog piece at The Guardian hooks into Glenn Patterson’s thoughtful response to the shooting of Denis Donaldson and a wider debate on the freedom of expression. Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty

A stark choice: together or forever separate?

Mick Fealty on April 7, 2006, 3:59 pm

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At the beginning of the week, Roy Garland took up the DUP’s MEP Jim Allister on a press release that only briefly appeared on their website last week and then mysteriously disappeared. It was an all out attack on the Unionist Group’s Drawing a line under the past document. In summation he argues: Either we begin to live together, share our fears and tears and bind up each other’s wounds or we remain entrapped forever by the sectarian stumbling blocks …