Future of Republicanism

“No one party or leader will unite this country…”

Mick Fealty on July 9, 2013, 11:54 am

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David McCann with a republican view on why Sinn Fein’s calls for a border poll in the near future are undermining any long game chances of achieving a unified island: The old republican strategy of ‘It doesn’t matter whether you win or lose but how you’ve played the game’ is precisely why we have achieved next to no success in ending partition. Instead of coming up with common sense proposals and some new thinking on what a united Ireland would …

Basil McCrea tells SF Summer School they are putting party before country…

Mick Fealty on July 3, 2013, 8:20 am

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Basil McCrea’s speech to Sinn Fein’s 4th (I think) summer school was jovial (you’d expect that), civil and delivered in a friendly tone. He had his republican audience laughing more than once. But his payload was well constructed and thought out. Although I am not sure he’s right about one border poll automatically triggering another every seven years after, he’s almost certainly spot on about the narrative Sinn Fein would use to leverage to leverage the advantages that would subsequently …

Micheal Martin: NI’s ‘establishment parties’ are failing the Belfast Agreement

Mick Fealty on February 28, 2013, 12:16 pm

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So Micheal Martin’s speech last night, revisited with my own analysis appended. First the word cloud (kindly generated by John) of Micheal Martin’s speech has one word which stands far out above any other. And it’s Agreement. Not surprising perhaps since the speech was themed around the coming 15th anniversary of the Belfast Agreement. And, it seems, he came to Belfast not to bury, or even just to praise it, but remind his audience of young students at Queens last …

Sinn Fein’s ‘creative accountancy’ over funding the gap for a United Ireland

Mick Fealty on January 25, 2013, 11:30 am

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So, briefly, Newton Emerson gives us confirmation of what you probably already knew from listening to Gerry Adams talking to Tara Mills in last week’s big interview on Sinn Fein’s #BorderPoll. That is that the party’s figures simply do not add up. In yesterday’s Irish News he noted: It is true that DFP’s last report showed revenue rising to 12.7bn but the same report showed public spending rising to £23.2bn, so the £10bn gap remains. Mr Adams tried to muddy …

Why a #BorderPoll ill-serves the cause of a united island

Mick Fealty on January 24, 2013, 11:50 am

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“I live in terror of not being misunderstood.” From The Critic as Artist, by Oscar Wilde So, what is a reasonable, even a Nationalist, objection to the calling of a Border Poll in the next parliamentary term north and south? The most obvious is that from what we know of the current public will in Northern Ireland, it will be lost. And why? Because what we know of the polling in this area already tells us that there is not …

Border Poll: On the one road, maybe the wrong road, on the road to god knows where?

Mick Fealty on January 18, 2013, 1:02 pm

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The best bit from last night’s The View was undoubtedly Stephen Walker’s report on a future border poll. He usefully revisits the last one in 1973, which was about as bogus as they come. Just over 6000 people voted for taking Northern Ireland of the UK back then, because most nationalists boycotted it. The tenor of the criticism from both unionists and Fianna Fail on the matter is that this call is similarly bogus, in the sense it is after …

A new IRA emerges lashed together from the wreckage of the old…

Mick Fealty on July 30, 2012, 11:31 am

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The big news of the weekend? The convergence of a wide range of republican paramilitary groups into a new one called, erm, the IRA… So it hasn’t gone away you know… That’s the PR of it anyway. I suppose one might be tempted to say that it took them long enough to decide that the current spilts were killing any ‘credibility’ they might have had at representing a coherent idea never mind anything else. What it proves is that you …

The IRA’s criminal investment programme

Mick Fealty on July 26, 2006, 1:52 pm

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At the time of the Northern Bank robbery, we re-iterated over and over that this story will continue to muddy the political waters for years to come. Although the IRA has denied being involved the tide of evidence appears to moving in the opposite direction. As Pete noted yesterday, the two governments yesterday (including Justice Minister McDowell) were at pains to stress that no criminal activities were now being organised centrally by the IRA. But Conor Lally reports this morning …