UNIONISTS MUST STOP THEIR CRISIS CREATION
Unionists must stop their crisis creation
JAMES KELLY
MONTHS of loyalist mayhem, murders, riots at Ardoyne, blast bombs, intimidation, burning of churches and Drumcree... and Tony Blair has finally got round to issuing a yellow card!
To who... the UDA?
Oh no, the IRA!
Suddenly the Labour Prime Minister and Secretary of State Dr Reid present the image of a stupid referee and his cross-eyed linesman receiving the time-honoured football greeting as they trot into the pavilion: "Hey you two, when are you getting new specs?"
Many people must be wondering what has come over Tony Blair since the earlier signs that at last a new personality had turned up at 10 Downing Street who understood what was going on in that God-awful coconut colony across the Irish Sea. Before that Tory and Labour politicians -MacDonald, Baldwin, Attlee, Morrison and Churchill - had all assumed the mantle of tin-pot imperialists.
The end result was that the local Ulster gunrunners, who hijacked power in the six counties in 1920, were allowed literally to get away with murder for 50 years.
The nabors in Whitehall didn't want to know what was going on there and it finally blew up into a 30-year bloody tragedy which should never have happened.
But it did happen... through crass stupidity on all sides.
Without the intervention of America the Good Friday Agreement would never have brought that woeful chapter to an end.
Since then the many-headed monster of loyalism, Paisleyism, Orangeism and yes... 'no unionism'... has conducted a ceaseless campaign to unravel that agreement - aided by the numbskull republican diehards prolonging the misery with their insane bombing operations in places like
Omagh.
Blair's performance since he sacked Mo Mowlam seems to have stemmed from Downing Street's anxiety to save Trimble's skin as the rather
indifferent leader of the pro-agreement Unionists - staggering from one internal party crisis to another.
The brutality of the UDA murder this week of young Gerald Lawlor, another totally innocent Catholic victim, brought thousands of people out in sympathy with his parents.
The redoubtable Father Dan Whyte, the parish priest who administered the Last Rites to the young victim, put that inglorious debate at Westminster in its proper context when he lashed unionist politicians who have been manipulating the current climate in which loyalists around killing Catholics.
Fr Whyte said that, while the north Belfast parishioners he served did not support the IRA, they took issue with unionist politicians' analysis
of the situation over the past few months.
People felt that crises were being manufactured and then manipulated for the unionist side.
Anyway the phoney crisis had proved a flop.
Now, they're all off on holiday.
Where to?
How about Gibraltar?
Reid has drawn a line in the sand on instructions from Tony.
The Colombian Farc and the funny peculiar inside job at Castlereagh, blamed on the IRA, are all old hat not to be taken into account as
breaches of the GFA.
Any further alleged breaches are to be handed over by Dr Reid to the Stormont assembly to deal with by a motion.
An invitation to the combined unionists to commit parliamentary suicide?
So it's all off until September in the rain.
Meantime the Republic has published its latest census showing a huge rise in population, nearing the four million mark.
Whatever happened to the Northern Ireland census?
Why the delay in publishing the results of this crucial headcount?
Are they keeping something from us?
JAMES KELLY
MONTHS of loyalist mayhem, murders, riots at Ardoyne, blast bombs, intimidation, burning of churches and Drumcree... and Tony Blair has finally got round to issuing a yellow card!
To who... the UDA?
Oh no, the IRA!
Suddenly the Labour Prime Minister and Secretary of State Dr Reid present the image of a stupid referee and his cross-eyed linesman receiving the time-honoured football greeting as they trot into the pavilion: "Hey you two, when are you getting new specs?"
Many people must be wondering what has come over Tony Blair since the earlier signs that at last a new personality had turned up at 10 Downing Street who understood what was going on in that God-awful coconut colony across the Irish Sea. Before that Tory and Labour politicians -MacDonald, Baldwin, Attlee, Morrison and Churchill - had all assumed the mantle of tin-pot imperialists.
The end result was that the local Ulster gunrunners, who hijacked power in the six counties in 1920, were allowed literally to get away with murder for 50 years.
The nabors in Whitehall didn't want to know what was going on there and it finally blew up into a 30-year bloody tragedy which should never have happened.
But it did happen... through crass stupidity on all sides.
Without the intervention of America the Good Friday Agreement would never have brought that woeful chapter to an end.
Since then the many-headed monster of loyalism, Paisleyism, Orangeism and yes... 'no unionism'... has conducted a ceaseless campaign to unravel that agreement - aided by the numbskull republican diehards prolonging the misery with their insane bombing operations in places like
Omagh.
Blair's performance since he sacked Mo Mowlam seems to have stemmed from Downing Street's anxiety to save Trimble's skin as the rather
indifferent leader of the pro-agreement Unionists - staggering from one internal party crisis to another.
The brutality of the UDA murder this week of young Gerald Lawlor, another totally innocent Catholic victim, brought thousands of people out in sympathy with his parents.
The redoubtable Father Dan Whyte, the parish priest who administered the Last Rites to the young victim, put that inglorious debate at Westminster in its proper context when he lashed unionist politicians who have been manipulating the current climate in which loyalists around killing Catholics.
Fr Whyte said that, while the north Belfast parishioners he served did not support the IRA, they took issue with unionist politicians' analysis
of the situation over the past few months.
People felt that crises were being manufactured and then manipulated for the unionist side.
Anyway the phoney crisis had proved a flop.
Now, they're all off on holiday.
Where to?
How about Gibraltar?
Reid has drawn a line in the sand on instructions from Tony.
The Colombian Farc and the funny peculiar inside job at Castlereagh, blamed on the IRA, are all old hat not to be taken into account as
breaches of the GFA.
Any further alleged breaches are to be handed over by Dr Reid to the Stormont assembly to deal with by a motion.
An invitation to the combined unionists to commit parliamentary suicide?
So it's all off until September in the rain.
Meantime the Republic has published its latest census showing a huge rise in population, nearing the four million mark.
Whatever happened to the Northern Ireland census?
Why the delay in publishing the results of this crucial headcount?
Are they keeping something from us?
Further Information
Publisher: THE IRISH NEWS
Ref: IN/0562
Published Date: 27-Jul-02
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