Bypassing the centre and trying to broker a peace of the extremes in Northern Ireland was always going to come back to haunt the government

stephen

This is what happens when you go around invading other countries. Who on the mainland actually wants a connection with Robinson and his ilk? How does the rest of the world view it?
It's easy to differentiate between the US and UK embassies around the world and those of the rest - we are the ones with all the primed guns and alerted soldiers standing outside.
Who will have the gumption and courage to cut this problem loose? What could these fine children of the province do if the mother country gently eases them out of the nest?
It's very simple: eventually, all occupations must come to an end.

Leo McKinstry

I strongly disagree with the argument that the Government was "foolish" to deal with Sinn Fein and the DUP, by-passing the more moderate unionists and nationalists. The entire experience of the lengthy peace process since the early nineties demonstrated that any agreement which did not have the support of SF and the DUP was unworkable. Moreover, it is too simplistic just to brand the DUP and SF as the "extremes", implying that they should be ignored. We should acknowledge the remarkable journey that both sides have made over the last decade. It would have been utterly unthinkable, only a decade ago, for hardline unionists to consider sharing power with their sworm enemy Sinn Fein. Similarly, the Republican movement has accepted the existence of British sovereignty over the six counties, something that they spent decades fighting. Even if there is no deal this week, we still should be optimistic about Northern Ireland's future. After all, political arguments about devolved powers are infinitely preferable to extensive paramilitary violence and the mass slaughter of civilians. I should know, having spent most of my early life in Belfast at the height of the Troubles.

Bruce, UK

As I have commented before, a political stitch-up of the people of Northern Ireland by the liar Blair and his cronies. Gangsterism as politics. Blair's "hand of history" turned out to be fist raised against the people.

The Oncoming Storm

So many chickens have come home to roost! The DUP wouldn't have had to deal with SF if Paisley's rabble rousing in the 60's and 70's hadn't underminded Terance ONeill's government and given impetus to the formation of PIRA, SF wouldn't have had to deal with the DUP if they had given Trimble what he needed on decommissioning 10 years ago and the governments wouldn't have had to deal with this shambles if they hadn't spent the last 10 years simply fudging the contentious issues meaning that they just came back to haunt them!

Wilhelm

Gerry Adams looks like film director John Landis, google it.

James

James - I actually think you are being harsh with your assessment. This is a peace process - and as such there will high-points and low-points.

By dealing with extremists we have tied the hands of a larger proportion of people to the Good Friday Agreement. If these groups splinter then we need to ensure that this does not jeopardise the hard-won peace. If the moderates can improve their electoral showing and representation then they will naturally become players again.

Both the issues you mention need to be addressed at somepoint. The make-up of the assembly reflects the electorate's votes and therefore wouldn't necessarily be easier to resolve if the moderate parties had a bigger role.

Huge gains have been made - no reason to lose faith just yet.

John Richardson

Leo McKinstry.

At last you have written something that I can totally disagree with.
Pheewh.
I was beginning to think you were near perfect.
That's unhealthy.

Chingford Man

stephen,

You want rid of Northern Ireland, so I suppose you also want the Royal Irish Regiment out of Afghanistan? Maybe ignorantly "courageous" people like you could take their place. You also don't have much experience of US embassies worldwide.

If people are ready to fight and die under a flag then their interests under that flag should be protected.

Hope you start GCSE History soon.

Dave B

@Stephen
We did not 'invade' Ireland. British presence in Ireland is not an 'occupation'.

strapworld

Well written Mr. Forsyth!

I do so agree with stephen. Robinson is a loathsome character as are adams and mcguinness.

Give this province to Ireland, Sever all links with it. We have done enough. We have lost far too many good men and women for this lost cause. We should not entertain the thought of more of our men and women having to die for these people.

Goodbye and, as they say in these northern parts, good riddance!

AndyinBrum

Dave B our presence is due to an English invasion albeit 400 years ago. However, we're currently there because the majority of Northern Irelands population wanted to stay within the union post 1922.

Stephen, you're still talking arse

The Oncoming Storm

Strapworld, if Brown told the Irish tomorrow that Britain was handing over NI they would scream! There's no way that the Republic could afford to take on NI unless people in NI were prepared to take a significant drop in living standards and give up the local NHS. If there was a border poll tomorrow a sizeable section of Northern Nationalists would certainly vote to retain partition out of pure naked self interest!

Tiberius

While I fear to tread in the area of Ulster politics, I have to ask what leads Leo McKinstry to think that Sinn Fein has accepted British sovereignty over the Province.

Battle 2807

Jonah McDoom strikes again!
The peace process was curtains as soon as he decided to scuttle over there.

Chingford Man

"We should not entertain the thought of more of our men and women having to die for these people."

For the benefit of strapworld, most soldiers and nearly all policemen murdered and maimed by the IRA came from Northern Ireland. It was overwhelmingly (though not exclusively) Ulster people who suffered at the hands of the IRA when Westminster didn't want to know. Don't pretend it wasn't so.

Leo McKinstry

John Richardson
I'm relieved to hear that I've collapsed from your pedestal of perfection. Tiberius, by definition Sinn Fein accepted British sovereignty when the party entered the power-sharing executive. Since 1919, the Republican movement had been fighting against British rule and partition. Indeed, its very existence was predicated on resistance to the idea of a unionist-run state in Northern Irelad under the Crown. The change in its position has been astonishing, though personally I feel the British army had never been given credit for its defeat of violent Republicanism. The reason the IRA gave up the armed struggle in the early nineties was largely because its morale and numbers had been so shattered by the security forces, particularly through their network of informers.

David Lindsay

They know their own.

Northern Ireland was carved up between members of a bizarre fundamentalist sect (unconnected to mainstream Ulster Protestantism, very Protestant though that undoubtedly is) and a Marxist guerrilla organisation. Such was the cutting edge of “centrist” politics. And we all approve of that. Don’t we?

Calling something “the centre ground”, so that anything else isn’t, is really a way of calling it “the only acceptable opinion”.

The “moderate”, “mainstream”, “Centre Left” New Labour was and is riddled with unrepentant old Communists, fellow-travellers and Trotskyists. New Labourites sang, not The Red Flag, but The Internationale, at the funerals of Donald Dewar and Robin Cook. And, despite also being openly funded by the CIA through NORAID, the Soviet-funded IRA was an integral part of this little world. It still is.

Likewise, the “moderate”, “mainstream”, “Centre Right” Cameroons include unrepentant old paid cheerleaders for the Boer Republic set up as an explicit act of anti-British revenge in a former Dominion of the Crown, as well as unrepentant former paid defenders of Pinochet’s Chile. Some of them once moved in circles in which it was also de rigueur to demand the dismantlement of the public services, the legalisation of all drugs, the abolition of any minimum age of consent, and much else besides. Once again, these views have never been recanted; indeed, they have largely come to pass. And once again, Northern Ireland, in this case the DUP and those sections of the UUP which have since left it (and largely taken over the DUP), was and remains integral.

Look at the things that “centre ground” politicians all support, so that any deviation is “extremism”. From the Iraq War, to the funny-money flogging off of the schools and the hospitals, to practically uncontrolled immigration, are these policies with which most people would at least broadly agree?

“The centre ground” also includes support for the European Union, which subjects us, both in the European Parliament and in the coalitions filling the Council of Ministers, to the legislative will of assorted Stalinists, Trotskyists, neo-Fascists, neo-Nazis, East European kleptomaniacs and other neocon crazies, and people who regard the Provisional Army Council as the sovereign body throughout Ireland. If “the centre ground” has its way, then those ranks will soon to be swelled by Turkish Islamists, Turkish ultra-nationalists, and Marxist Kurdish separatists.

New Labour has duly installed in the Speaker’s Chair the erstwhile Secretary of the Race and Repatriation Committee of the Monday Club. And the New Tories are heavily dependent on Demos, one of several continuity organisations created out of the ruins of the Communist Party of Great Britain, though whose founding director, Geoff Mulgan, is ecumenically a veteran Trotskyist. Mulgan is on course for a peerage and Ministerial office under Cameron.

And so on, and on, and on, and on, and on.

Don’t vote for any of them. Make alternative arrangements. Or end up like Northern Ireland.

John Richardson

David Lindsay.

Well said...er..typed.

You omitted 'pc' only as it is so obviously another lethal middle-way spawn I presume ?

The politically aware are conscious of this poisonous 'middle ground'.
They know it is code for submission and slavery. Only some have the moral self-confidence to say 'No!' and some do not.
Some know they are prepared to be slaves. They know they will not fight back. So they pretend to approve of 'the consensus'.
We should not let them get away with cowardice.
I recently read (in 'The Salisbury Review') of a lady complaining she felt a stranger in this,her own land. She was finding it hard to get a job in London being, it was implied, white.
Nothing new.
She then explained that an application for employment at The British Museum included a question about her sexuality.
It seems she answered this question as she reached the interview stage !
Obviously she was then insulted and rejected.
It is hard to be sympathetic with this submission and complicity in The Regime.
No-one can enslave us unless we let them.
As you suggest we must make other arrangements.
This must include less indulgence of those who pretend they do not know what is happening.
Less 'Wake Up!'
and more
'Stop pretending to be asleep!'

-----------------------------------------

Leo Mckinstry

Re-your 4:43pm post.

No.
That's more like it.
Ya still godit !

TrevorsDen

" our presence is due to an English invasion albeit 400 years ago" --- huh?

it was a scottish settlement wasn't it?

Anyway ....

Ireland has never been united except under the Briitish Crown.
The Normans barons invaded Ireland - in fact it was with the instigation of one of the several Irish kings. Henry II then brought them to heel - seemingly with the support of the Pope.

Go figure .

Major Plonquer

The Irish have a perfect word to describe what's happening in Ulster - 'blarney'. However, thanks to the tireless efforts of Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson we now have New Blarney.

Michael

With the greatest respect to the blogger, this post is nonsense betraying a total lack of knowledge about Northern Ireland politics.

The government DID NOT "DECIDE" to bring in the extremes, there was no option but to negotiate with them since collectively they represent the vast majority of people in Northern Ireland.

A deal which only a minority of people in both communities supported would have no chance of ever working.

You don't get to pick your negotiating partners and to suggest otherwise is totally ill informed.