Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters are often accused of only ever talking to people they agree with. It is fair to say that nothing gets accomplished by disengaging from disagreement. Parties need to negotiate, and when at negotiating tables parties need to behave as equals. That’s why Corbyn the peace-lover’s willingness to stretch a hand out to some of Northern Ireland’s warmakers shows his commitment to meaningful peace. That’s why it’s right to say, as John McDonnell did, that one will often need to treat an adversary, no matter how unpalatable, with a level of dignity and respect. That’s why McDonnell’s argument that resisting loyalist terror helped effect a conclusion to the Troubles is not condoning horrific bombings, it is acknowledging facts of history in a way phrased to offer dignity to an organisation that had then renounced violence. It’s not ‘Britain-hating and terrorist-sympathising’, it’s pragmatic peacemaking. Continue reading
Tagged with Northern Ireland
Perfidious Albion
The decision by Drew Harris, the Assistant Chief Constable of the PSNI, not to investigate killings carried out by the secret British Army Military Reaction Force (MRF) of the early 1970s will surprise few within the nationalist community.
The MRF was the subject of a BBC programme last year. In it members of that clandestine force boasted of their activities. The MRF was particularly noted for carrying out drive-by shootings in which civilians were targeted. Pat McVeigh and Daniel Rooney were two of its victims. There were others.
At that time it was widely believed that these attacks were the work of unionist death squads but now we know that British soldiers, working to a strategy to heighten sectarian fears, were responsible. Continue reading
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On The Run letters – A sham crisis
The grandstanding by the DUP and other unionist politicians over On The Run letters (OTRs) is a sham crisis which has more to do with upcoming elections than with dealing with and resolving legacy issues.
In recent days there has been deliberate misrepresentation about the OTR issue and the provision of letters by the British government.
Unionist leaders have intentionally engaged in hyperbole and feigned anger over an issue that has been on the political and public agenda since the Good Friday Agreement negotiations.
The fact is that there was no agreement between Sinn Féin and the British government on how to resolve the issue of OTRs. Those who received the letters, as they are entitled to, were citizens who were not wanted by the British forces and they received their letters because this was the case. Continue reading
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Sinn Féin opposed to austerity, North and South
Mike Penning, former Tory Northern Ireland Office minister, and now Work and Pensions Minister flew briefly into Belfast last week on a mission. He threatened that unless his government’s cuts agenda is implemented here, penalties will be imposed on the Executive.
Incredibly he said welfare cuts was a matter of fairness. He arrogantly accused those of us who oppose welfare cuts of ‘burying our heads in sand’. He trumpeted his working class background; as if that made more acceptable the Conservatives’ strategy to undermine the welfare rights of the most vulnerable. Continue reading
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No Going Back
Belfast 2013 is not the City I grew up in. In my youth and for much of my adult life Belfast was a place in which nationalists had no rights; a place where sectarianism and discrimination, injustice and inequality were commonplace and exercised as a matter of institutional and political practice. Continue reading