In an email from my dearest confidant, Nancy Gail, I found the following…
This should not go unnoticed and unremarked upon. This is also the first time that I have seen an AP wire article that makes clear the fact that the problems in the past were entirely due the the Protestant Unionists. —Nancy Gail
Northern Ireland parties announce deal – Yahoo! News
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070326/ap_on_re_eu/northern_ireland
M’kay. Color me there…. Arriving at the link I read this:
N. Ireland reaches power-sharing deal
By Shawn Pogatchnik, Associated Press Writer Mon Mar 26, 6:27 PM ETBELFAST, Northern Ireland – The leaders of Northern Ireland’s major Protestant and Catholic parties, sitting side by side for the first time in history, announced a stunning deal Monday to forge a coalition of archenemies within six weeks.
“We all saw something today that people never, ever thought would happen,” said British Secretary of State Peter Hain, who expects to hand power May 8 to a coalition led by the polar opposites of provincial politics: Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionists and Gerry Adams’ Sinn Fein.
Paisley, a Protestant evangelist who for decades sought to thwart compromise with Roman Catholics, sat at a table beside Adams, a reputed
Irish Republican Army veteran whom Paisley long denounced as a “man of blood.” Throughout the tortuous 14-year course of Northern Ireland’s peace process, Paisley had never before agreed to negotiate directly with Adams.(Go to the link above for the entire story…)
OH! MY! GODS!
Peace at last in Northern Ireland? That has always seemed as much a pipe-dream as peace in the Middle East!
What’s more, Nancy Gail was right. The AP did, finally, label Paisley and his Protestant Unionist pretty much as the English-backed thugs they have been for these many decades. It was less than a month ago that Paisley said he’d not cooperate with Sinn Fein. To be fair, he actually said “Not the Sinn Fein as we know it today.” The Bull has not noticed much change in Sinn Fein in the past month. Have you? 
Perhaps now that the old hate monger has hit his 80th year on this side of The Veil he has finally recognized his own mortality and has come to question his legacy.
What of the Democratic Unionist, you say? Well,Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern laid down the law by telling them that either the Democratic Unionists would agree to cooperate or Britain would abolish the assembly.
Nice one, Tony! Now, see to it that there is ‘nary a Redcoat – nor a Highlander – on Ériu! Then, at long last, the World just might get to see a free and united Ireland once more. Who knows? Perhaps then a free Scotland? A free Wales? Let us all pray!
On the subject of this posting, Bill ‘Slick Willie’ Clinton said “I am elated that this day has finally come”. And as much as The Bull despises both of the Clintons, (especially Hillary), I am forced to agree on this point. I grew up hearing of and reading about “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland. I can still recall how mad my dear ol’ Dad would get when I would rattle off about the Brits getting th heck out of Ireland altogether and letting Northern Ireland go on its own way and perhaps rejoin the Republic of Ireland. Wow! Dad exploded! I was, he said, taking the side of Sinn Fein. No, I replied, I was taking the side of a people wanting to be free. The only time I remember him getting more pissed was when I voted for Uncle Ronnie in the 1980 Presidential Election. He didn’t speak to me for a month!
Uh oh… I feel one of The Bull’s famous History Lessons coming on! (If my bloody Manx cat will get off me mouse!) Before I do that – and lose two thirds of those reading this post – I need to thank Nancy Gail for prodding me to write this so it would not be totally forgotten in media frenzy these days.
A History of Ireland as we know it today.*
In 1800 the British and subsequently the Irish Parliament passed the Act of Union which, in 1801, merged the Kingdom of Ireland and the Kingdom of Great Britain to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. According to contemporary documents the necessary majority in the unrepresentative Irish Parliament was achieved by means of bribery. Thus Ireland became part of an extended United Kingdom, ruled directly by the UK Parliament in London.
The 19th and early 20th century saw the rise of Irish Nationalism especially among the poorer Catholic population. Daniel O’Connell led a successful non-violent campaign for Catholic Emancipation. A subsequent campaign for Repeal of the Act of Union failed. Later in the century Charles Stewart Parnell and others campaigned for self government within the Union or “Home Rule”. This was also unsuccessful. These failures resulted in the eclipse of moderate nationalism by militant separatism.
In 1921, following the Easter Rising of 1916, and the subsequent Irish War of Independence, a treaty was concluded between the British Government and the leaders of the Irish Republic. The Treaty recognized the two-state solution created in the Government of Ireland Act 1920. Northern Ireland was presumed to form a home rule state within the new Irish Free State unless it opted out. Northern Ireland had a majority Protestant population which feared becoming a minority in a majority Catholic state. Not unexpectedly it opted out of the new state and chose instead to remain part of the United Kingdom. A Boundary Commission was set up to decide on the boundaries between the two Irish states, though it was subsequently abandoned after it recommended only minor adjustments to the border. Disagreements over some provisions of the treaty led to a split in the Nationalist movement and subsequently to the Civil War. The civil war ended in 1923 with the defeat of the Anti-treaty forces.
The Anglo-Irish Treaty was narrowly ratified by the Dáil in December 1921 but was rejected by a large minority, resulting in the Irish Civil War which lasted until 1923. In 1922, in the middle of this civil war, the Irish Free State came into being. For its first years the new state was governed by the victors of the Civil War. However, in the 1930s Fianna Fáil, the party of the opponents of the treaty, were elected into government. The party introduced a new constitution in 1937 which renamed the state “Éire or in the English language, Ireland” (article 4 of the Constitution).
In 1949, the Irish state declared itself to be a republic and that henceforth it should be described as the Republic of Ireland. The Republic was plagued by poverty and emigration until the mid-1970s. The 1990s saw the beginning of unprecedented economic success, in a phenomenon known as the “Celtic Tiger”. By the early 2000s it had become one of the richest countries (in terms of GDP per capita) in the European Union, moving from being a net recipient of the budget to becoming a net contributor during the next Budget round (2007-13), and from a country of net emigration to one of net immigration. In October 2006, there were talks between Ireland and the U.S. to negotiate a new immigration policy between the two countries, in response to the growth of the Irish economy and desire of many U.S. citizens who sought to move to Ireland for work.
In the first half of the 20th Century, Northern Ireland was largely spared the strife of the Civil War in the south, but there were sporadic episodes of inter-communal violence between Catholics and Protestants during the decades that followed partition. In elections to the 1921-1972 regional government, the Protestant and Catholic communities in Northern Ireland each voted almost entirely along sectarian lines, meaning that the government of Northern Ireland (elected by “first past the post” from 1929) was always controlled by the Ulster Unionist Party. Over time, the minority Catholic community felt increasingly alienated by the regional government in Northern Ireland, with further disaffection fueled by incidents such as gerrymandering of the local council in Londonderry in 1967, and the discrimination of Catholics in housing and employment.
In the 1960s Nationalist grievances at unionist discrimination within the state eventually led to large civil rights protests, which the government suppressed heavy-handedly, most notably on “Bloody Sunday”. It was during this period of civil unrest that the paramilitary Provisional IRA, who favoured the creation of a united Ireland, began its campaign against what it called the “British occupation of the six counties”. Other groups, legal and illegal on the unionist side, and illegal on the nationalist side, began to participate in the violence and the period known as the “Troubles” began, resulting in approximately 3000 deaths over the subsequent three decades. Owing to the civil unrest as “The Troubles” erupted, the British government suspended home rule in 1972 and imposed direct rule from Westminster.
Attempts were made to end “The Troubles”, such as the Sunningdale Agreement of 1974 and Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, but ultimately were failures mainly due to the continuing level of violence. More recently in 1998, following a Provisional IRA cease fire and multi-party talks, the Good Friday Agreement was concluded and ratified by referendum in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. This agreement attempts to restore self-government to Northern Ireland on the basis of power sharing between the two communities. Violence has greatly decreased since the signing of the accord. The power-sharing assembly has only operated for brief periods and is currently suspended.
In 2001 the police force in Northern Ireland, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, was replaced by the Police Service of Northern Ireland.
On 28 July 2005, the Provisional IRA announced the end of its armed campaign and on 25 September 2005 international weapons inspectors supervised what they currently regard as the full decommissioning of the Provisional IRA’s weapons.
And now in 2007, perhaps, “The Troubles” are over.
Here Ends the Lesson.
(* Snipped and pieced together from the Wikipedia article on Ireland.)
Until later,
Bull, out!
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