Republic – Page 19 – Slugger O'Toole

O’Leary’s Dalriada proposal keeps Northern Ireland and Scotland in the UK and the EU

Brian Walker on July 26, 2016, 9:05 am

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The political scientist Professor Brendan O’Leary is one of the strongest supporters of power sharing in Northern Ireland and an deviser of political solutions to ethnic conflict throughout the world. On leave from Pennsylvania University and an old boy of St Macnissi’s Garron Tower, he has produced the Dalriada Document – inspired by the ancient North Antrim- west of Scotland kingdom. The Dalriada document is an ingenious attempt to square the circle of keeping Scotland and Northern Ireland in both …

An immigration breakthrough on Brexit points to a solution to the hard border problem

Brian Walker on July 24, 2016, 10:24 am

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If it transpires, the Observer’s story on the EU granting the UK an exemption on free movement for EU citizens could be a breakthrough. How could an immigration cap solve the problem of a hard border? On the face of it, it would make it worse. But if Ireland would join the exemption and agree an immigration cap with the UK based on estimates of the need for EU and non- EU workers, the issue of a hard border disappears. …

Are the Dublin party leaders serious about raising Unity in the Brexit negotiations or are they playing Dail politics?

Brian Walker on July 19, 2016, 11:00 am

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So Enda has taken the lead from Micheal who took his cue from Martin and inserted musing about a future border poll into his speech at Glenties. For such a fateful topic the whole sequence has been deplorably improvised. The qualifications about lack of present evidence won’t stop the hare running now. A border poll can only be damaging in any volatile situation and a monstrous irrelevance connected with Brexit, apart from the unpredictable fallout if Scotland votes for independence. …

In the welter of crises at home and abroad, ” calm down dear” is not a bad maxim for comment

Brian Walker on July 17, 2016, 3:49 pm

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Commentators have a natural tendency to over-interpret the world on the basis of the latest developments. I say “natural” because they are bound to feel compelled to rise up to the level of traumatic events like Nice or the Turkish coup attempt. Over Turkey comment has been useful as there’s a lot to explain about the origins of the coup and the political upheaval going on in response. Over Nice, it’s much more difficult. Standby for the political crucifixion of …

Time for the Irish government to lay out their ideas on a “special status” for Northern Ireland

Brian Walker on July 9, 2016, 10:45 am

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The chronic weaknesses of both governments hardly assists clear thinking over Brexit. On the other hand there seems to be a general willingness to minimise the damage e.g. over a hard border and trade. Whoever is the new British PM we cannot expect much departure from Theresa Villiers’s minimalist approach to coordination with the Republic. On the other hand the British-Irish relationship and the North-South bodies are adequate in themselves without the minor splash of an all-Ireland forum at this …

Northern’s Ireland best chance of leverage rests inevitably at Westminster

Brian Walker on July 8, 2016, 2:18 pm

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Look guys, you’re knocking at an open door. Yes it’s not yet resolved as we haven’t got a new UK government. That will take on the outside 74 days. But the Republic had to wait 69 days for their new government so they know how to wait. What’s the alternative? It isn’t good politics to keep demonising the Tory government before they’ve devised a Brexit strategy and when there plainly isn’t any alternative. One Nation Tories will want to to …

Ireland is not abandoned. Britain does give a damn but in its own way

Brian Walker on July 7, 2016, 11:23 am

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“The Brexiteers – (meaning the ascendant strain in the Conservative party -) don’t give a damn about Ireland” is a common reaction from Martin McGuinness to Fintan O’Toole. It’s quite an irony to hear Irish nationalists complain about nationalists of the English persuasion. But the cry is as much plaintive as enraged. After all that reconciliation stuff Why Have You Done This To Us? But it wasn’t that, friends. it’s just that England (sic) takes priority in a zero sum …

The wee nations of these islands show the way in Europe

Brian Walker on July 2, 2016, 1:30 pm

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It was a big week in Europe in more ways than one. Wales is left as the standard bearer of the home nations in the Euros. Northern Ireland and the Republic get honourable mentions in the reputation stakes not only on the field but on the terraces and the pubs. The Somme commemorations recall Britain’s very literal continuing place in Europe (There is a corner of a foreign field etc.”) Modern Ireland is recovering its own memory. In the horrible …

Brexit panic takes hold in Ireland

Brian Walker on June 16, 2016, 8:42 am

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In just 250 words the Irish Times reports the scale of Brexit panic in Ireland, north and south. Promising “a huge campaign all over the world”, an informed source said a strong campaign is needed in the US, China and India and elsewhere to drive home the message that Ireland is separate from the UK and that it intends to stay in the EU. … Mr Cameron infuriated unionists yesterday when he warned travel restrictions may be needed between Northern …

Jonathan Powell blasts Brexit

Brian Walker on June 13, 2016, 5:22 pm

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On The View on the day the former PMs Major and Blair warned of the threat of Brexit to the Union and stability, Eamonn McCann erupted. It wasn’t “Blair, that man steeped in the blood of Iraq that brought peace”, he thundered (I quote him freely) “but the people of Northern Ireland who don’t want to fight each other. They are the peace process.” As a champion of the people en masse and in the abstract, Eamonn is surely right …

The time is overdue for the two governments to tell what they know about the Dublin-Monaghan and the Birmingham bombings

Brian Walker on June 1, 2016, 10:40 am

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Consider the latest developments about two atrocities, the Dublin and Monaghan UVF bombs in May 1974 and the Birmingham IRA pub bombs of November the same year. What they have in common is knowledge of the identities of what we must call the alleged perpetrators. The deep frustration caused to individuals and states has not gone away. Kieran Conway now a Dublin solicitor, then the IRA’s “director of intelligence.” has again confirmed what is so well known, that the identities …

If Brexit happens, Ireland may be united for the purpose of entering Great Britain

Brian Walker on May 30, 2016, 10:53 am

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In the Brexit propaganda battle the hare is now being raised not of imposing controls on the Irish border but of geographically more convenient checks between the island or Ireland and the island of Great Britain. While the Irish Times quotes “official sources” in Dublin bringing up the issue again, the piece invokes a report by the House of Commons’ Northern Ireland Committee that discusses it. The Commons committee warned in a report entitled Northern Ireland and the EU Referendum …

Gerry Adams at Easter. In full

Brian Walker on April 3, 2016, 10:42 am

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I though it worthwhile to put on the record Gerry Adams’ Easter Centenary address, part unreconstructed old republicanism, part election address, a classic of its kind in style and content, without further comment. On Sunday 27th March, Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams TD addressed the Easter Rising commemoration in Belfast’s Milltown Cemetery. Mr Adams stated that hurts and divisions must be healed if we are to realise the vision of the 1916 Proclamation. HIs speech in full: Address by …

Easter & Innocence

Paul Hagan on March 26, 2016, 11:02 am

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Still trying to read all the books I got for Christmas I’ve been dipping-into a recently-published collection of poetry by a local priest. His works of short and accessible verse are mostly on matters that might feature in a country curate’s sermons, except for one, which retells a story from his childhood, his trip to Dublin at Easter 1966. He recalls how he “Felt at home beneath the colours of the GPO” Recalling a time when the display of the …

1916 is still worth a fret or two

Brian Walker on March 21, 2016, 3:28 pm

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I’ve just finished reading my latest foray into an absorbing subject, Ruth Dudley Edwards’s magnificent The Seven, her biographical account of the main leaders of the Easter Rising, guardedly but critically reviewed by the historian and Irish Times columnist Diarmaid Ferriter here. While Ruth may be dismissed by some as the arch revisionist, no reader can deny her command of biographical detail ( much of it her own research, some of it owing to many others who have written about …

What will be the followup to new police move on the Birmingham bombings?

Brian Walker on January 30, 2016, 1:22 pm

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(Kieran) Conway, who is a now a solicitor in Dublin specialising in criminal defence,, voluntarily spoke to detectives in connection with his memoir of life inside the IRA “South Side Provisional”. In the book, Conway revealed certain details about the Birmingham pub bombings to which the IRA has never officially admitted. No one has ever been convicted in relation to the atrocity in England’s second city… For decades the IRA never publicly admitted they carried out the atrocity but Conway …

The scheme for gathering information on the Troubles ignores the public interest

Brian Walker on January 26, 2016, 12:42 pm

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News is dribbling out about the proposed cumbersomely- named Independent Commission on Information Retrieval on the Past – despite the fact that the proposals for dealing with the Past have not yet been agreed. Even without a flood of confessions from paramilitaries, this body may yet prove to be the most important in a complicated set -up which includes an Oral history archive. In the Newsletter Sam McBride and his headline writer splutter unnecessarily about Martin McGuinness’s role in making …

Gerry Adams on Thomas ‘Slab’ Murphy’s tax evasion: Yeah but, no but, yeah but, no but…

Pete Baker on December 20, 2015, 5:23 pm

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After the guilty verdict in the trial of, “key supporter of the Sinn Féin peace strategy”, Thomas ‘Slab’ Murphy on 9 charges of tax evasion, Gerry Adams, TD, declared that he had “no comment to make until the legal process has been concluded”. Following criticism of that position the Sinn Féin president has, apparently, decided that some comment would be appropriate after all. The journal.ie has his initial further comment, and the Sinn Féin website has a further, further version. From the …

For the AssembIy solution, it’s the Stormont House agenda, stupid!

Brian Walker on September 27, 2015, 2:30 pm

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Amid all the sterile political sparring, the most significant development in the Assembly stand- off has been the one that has been almost totally ignored – the UK governments’ publication of a summary of measures which would form the basis of a Northern Ireland (Stormont House Agreement ) Bill to be included in the Queens Speech at the beginning of the Westminster session. With the addition of the paramilitary monitoring review , the summary confirms the obvious fact that the …

Will Sinn Fein emerge as winners once again?

Brian Walker on September 10, 2015, 1:28 pm

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For general stimulation, Kevin Toolis, a noted historian of the IRA, presents the millennarian version of Sinn Fein’s outlook in the Times(£) For the IRA and Sinn Fein, the collapse of Ulster’s power-sharing executive shortly before Irish voters go to the polls is a perfect political storm that could sweep Gerry Adams to power in Dublin.. And of course, untainted by ever having held national office, Sinn Fein, Ireland’s only cross-border party, presents itself as the leftish unblemished defenders of …