I noted the Irish Examiner article on the ammunition find in Kerry on Tuesday.. and the generally low-key reaction. Today’s Irish Independent has a report that would explain why – One senior garda said the ammunition had been there “for several years” and was “buried into the bank of the river”. “It was hidden, not dumped.”From the Irish Independent – However, they said they do not believe it had any links to the recent IRA statement ordering its members to …
RTE appear to carry confirmation, from Gardaí, of this morning’s Irish Examiner report that thousands of rounds of ammunition – speculated to be for assault weapons – were dumped in North Kerry on Monday night. According to the IE’s John Breslin [sound file], which seemed to be the only paper to cover the story, despite the find being made on Tuesday the Garda Press Office “said it had no information about the discovery of the ammunition.”The Irish Examiner report also …
Loyalist Paramilitaries are being blamed for the serious rioting last night in the Crumlin Road area. Reports tell of 10 cars and a bus being hijacked and set alight, petrol bombs being thrown and 40 police officers being hurt. The trouble followed the arrest of 6 men in connection with the ongoing loyalist feud, in which three men have already been murdered.Police in riot gear went to the scene, and 11 baton rounds were fired. Northern Ireland’s criminal justice minister …
John O’Farrell in the New Statesman believes that Tony Blair was singularly equiped to understand the journey that the IRA could make from violence to peaceful democratic engagement with state, as much from his mother’s Donegal background as anything else. 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
Danny Morrison looks at what he believes is the end of a very long era in Irish Republican history. He begins by noting the raggedy start to the IRA’s campaing: “Support for the IRA in its defensive role after the pogroms of August 1969 was overwhelming in Belfast. However, support for armed struggle came testily in dribs and drabs”. Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the …
It seems that the DUP is planning to take on the case of Sean Kelly to judicial review, after Peter Hain decided to keep the evidence on which he had ordered Kelly’s re-arrest secret. 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
Quentin Peel, writing in today’s FT, argues that despite ‘a good result’, Sinn Fein should not be allowed to forget (subs needed) the parallels between their own campaign of violence and that being waged in Baghdad, London and other places against innocent people. The IRA move is not just because al-Qaeda has given terrorism a bad name, to put it crudely. That is true, of course. The attacks of September 11 2001 suddenly brought home to ordinary Americans, in particular, …
Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley meet Tony Blair separately today to tell him why the other is being unreasonable. Adams on the BBC Today programme refered to having “the usual re-cyclable interview” (sound file) with John Humphries. Perhaps most interesting, was Adams’ statement that he now had to “accept the authority of the police”. 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 …
In Tuesday’s Guardian, Lionel Shriver claims that “throughout the whole melee, whether Ireland was united never mattered very much, and really doesn’t matter now”. Not for the first time, she’s trying to prick our “collective vanity”. By regularly writing about us in international newspapers. Aaron Scullion
Peter Robinson looks back over the IRA’s record and finds a plausibility gap between that organisation’s words and actions. He also argues that there has been an unseemingly airbrushing of last week’s statement’s ambiguity in an attempt to fast track political progress in NI. Almost a decade ago the IRA announced it was all over but within a few months the murders and criminality were back on its agenda. Yet again they declared a ceasefire but they failed to cease. …
From yesterday’s Irish Times, Fintan O’Toole gives his reaction to the IRA statement – “The most extraordinary thing about the IRA’s statement last week is that it shows how much joy has been drained out of the peace process”He argues that the general feeling “of boredom, scepticism and apathy” that met the statement was in part a result of the overtly choreographed presentation – So why was the moment, when it came, so anti-climactic? Why, beyond the realms of a …
Just before it gets archived into the Belfast Telegraph site, have a look at this piece from Eric Waugh. He poses some interesting questions about how the IRA might transform into an acceptable, law abiding (if not entirely lawful) peace time organisation.He argues: There must be a law-abiding state provided for a fledgling administration to govern. If the state is lawless, that administration will not survive. But a law-abiding State has as its sine qua non that all its citizens …
Operation Banner comes to an end thirty five years after the British government first ordered the Army into Northern Ireland to provide backup for the then RUC. They were first sent onto the streets in August 1969, although the numbers in barracks had been building up from at least the previous month. 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 …
Geoffrey Wheatcroft with a fierce critique of Tony Blair’s apparently contradictory stance on the Northern Irish peace process, and his more combative and aggressive approach to terrorism in Britain. He concludes: If there is no moral distinction between Adams and al-Zarqawi, and Adams’s objectives are certainly no more honourable or rational than al-Zarqawi’s, there is one objective difference: Adams is white. No doubt Tony Blair doesn’t consciously think in terms of ‘darkies’ or Mahometan savages, but the grim and very …
With another death attributed to Loyalist paramilitaries over the weekend, the end of the IRA campaign is throwing light on that (lesser known) side of the paramilitary equation. Henry McDonald’s excellent piece in the Observer magazine yesterday, details exactly how the shady world of Loyalist paramilitarism has moved from its heartland and into North Down’s ‘Gold Coast’ – with tragic results for at least one family. The Dorrians are Catholics living in a village that is largely Protestant, on the …
THE man you love to hate, Kevin Myers, gives us either a cynical or uncharitable view (depending on your own political outlook) of the IRA statement. Meanwhile, Tommy McKearney believes the IRA statement throws down many challenges to republicanism. Republican critic Anthony McIntyre believes little has actually changed, except that the IRA may now be used to quell republican dissent. On the other side of the fence, Eric Waugh believes there are many implications for republicanism if it is to …
IN Ballymena a group of young Presbyterians has carried out a “random act of kindness” and scrubbed unionist graffiti from two Catholic churches in the demographically-shifting town. The spate of recent unionist attacks on Catholic churches and property – and the threat of a resumed Harryville picket of the Church of Our Lady – was ostensibly in response to a proposal for the first ever republican parade in Ballymena – which the Parades Commission placed severe restrictions on yesterday. Belfast …
Nigel Morris in the English version of the Independent has a potted history of the times since the ceasefire, and some of the most significant announcements by Sinn Fein and the IRA in that time. It contains the apology to the victims of IRA violence on the 16 JULY 2002 (30th anniversary of the Bloody Friday bombings). We offer our sincere apologies and condolences to their families. There have been fatalities among combatants on all sides. We also acknowledge the …
Beth McGrath, daughter and sister to two victims of the Shankill Road bombing talks about how their loss has affected her and gives her views vis a vis the IRA statement. Although pragmatic and measured, her belief is that bitterness is not the answer and will not help move the peace process on nor ease her own personal grief. FRom someone who has experienced violence and loss so directlt these words are rather inspiring and brave.By Noreen Erskine BBC News …
Kevin Toolis’s piece in January arguably kicked off an avalanche of criticism that set Sinn Fein on course to a nightmare PR period in the immediate aftermath of the Northern Bank robbery. Today he remembers the murder of Judge William Doyle after Mass at St. Brigid’s in Derryvolgie Avenue: ironically, the chosen time and place for several murders by both the IRA and Loyalist paramilitaries down through the years. Toolis notes a lack of remorse in the IRA closing of …
