The cold political reality is that, like all of its predecessors, the New IRA will be left to its own devices while it confines them to Northern Ireland.
It is only the bombing of London that gets attention, and those predecessors have used that means to wear things down to the point that the only thing left for the British State to do in response to it would be to withdraw from Ireland once and for all.
Everything short of that happened decades ago now.
Everything short of that happened decades ago now.
You can go back almost as far again to when Londoners first started to elect Ken Livingstone, John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn to things.
As they never missed any opportunity to do until the last two London Mayoral Elections, which were long after the end of the Troubles.
Inner London was made to pay the price of the principles of the right wing of Fleet Street, which took the train home to leafy suburbia and the Home Counties every evening.
Over long, long years, Inner London always expressed its unwillingness to pay that price. But no one was listening.
That wing finally went too far when it tried to force the Unionists of Northern Ireland to bear that vicarious burden, and it was treated to a gigantic and long-overdue chorus of, "What have you ever done for us?"
Toryland knows as little of terrorism as it does of poverty, and the real victims of both are perfectly well aware of that fact.
The heart of Toryland is of course the City of London. Both the United Kingdom and the British Empire were created for it.
If and when either of them ever quite died, and neither of them has yet, then it would die in that same interest. But not otherwise.
If and when either of them ever quite died, and neither of them has yet, then it would die in that same interest. But not otherwise.
""Inner London was made to pay the price of the principles of the right wing of Fleet Street, which took the train home to leafy suburbia and the Home Counties every evening.""
ReplyDeleteWhat utter tripe. You evidently weren't read anything during the Troubles.
Northern Irish Catholics were accorded full civil rights since the 1980's.
There was no remaining excuse for terrororism-in London or anywhere else-after that.
The inner city of London paid the price for a terrorist gang who sought to achieve by violence what they could never achieve through democratic means.
The Good Friday Agreement didnt bring peace because surrender never does; it brought Omagh, and the bank robbery and the 60 odd murders carried out since 1998 by the IRA (or Real IRA or whatever they now call themselves).
Call that peace?
Candidates taking your line do put up in Northern Ireland, as rejectionist Republicans also do. No one much votes for either of them.
DeleteStop trying to make other people pay the price of something that you once read in a Home Counties-based Englishman's London newspaper column.
You (or, at any rate, he) imposed that on London for long enough. In spite of how the people living there voted throughout the period in question, when they never missed an opportunity to elect Ken Livingstone, John McDonnell or Jeremy Corbyn to any office that he sought.
You're talking trash. As I said, since the civil rights legislation of the 1980's ended discrimination against Catholics-and rightly so-there was no remaining excuse for either side to resort to violence.
ReplyDeleteThe IRA mudder victims paid the price of evil thugs who used terrorist violence against innocent civilians to extort concessions fhey could never get through democratic means.
Those who surrendered to that violence are as bad as they are.
You do realise what surrendering to terrorism does in the end don't you?
It inspires more terrorism by legitimating it as a political tactic.
Sinn Fein/IRA won't rest until they lead a United Ireland and then the terrorists will be the government as they always wanted.
They have been in government for about as long as I expect that you can remember anything at all about politics. People opposed to that state of affairs do contest elections in Northern Ireland. But they get absolutely nowhere.
DeleteThat is the verdict of the people who have to live there, just as the repeated election of Ken Livingstone, John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn was the verdict of the people who had to live the places that the IRA bombed on the Mainland, rather than being able to take the train back out to Epsom or Surbiton every evening, Monday to Friday.
If they really wanted a United Ireland, then they'd bomb the City again after all these years. Then they'd get it within however many weeks it would take to process the paperwork.
They would never have "got" what they already have, were it not for the election of a cowardly craven Labour Government in 1997.
ReplyDeleteThey weren't elected for that reason (rather because of the sleaze and incompetence of the incumbents) but they carried out the most disgraceful surrender to terrorism in our history.
Those Labour politicians who say we are in a 'war on terror' against ISIS or Al Qaeda seem to forget their party surrendered to terror last time it was in power.
Sinn Fein/IRA are not presently the Government. They share power in Stormont and refuse to take seats in Westminster. But they want to be.
The various terrorist acts since 1998 are reminders to get a move on.
When the terrorists and civilian-killers become the Government of a united Ireland, McDonnell and co will be happy.
Nobody who believes in the rule of law will be anything but ashamed.
I laughed out loud at that screed. If Sinn Fein is not in government in Northern Ireland, then what are you complaining about? You can't remember a time when it wasn't.
DeleteSeats at Westminster? Several of the Unionist occupants of those barely turn up. They have somewhere else to be.
The Good Friday Agreement was the point at which Nationalists in Northern Ireland realised that no one in the Republic really wanted them; even Sinn Fein's more recent electoral gains there have not been about that issue.
But Unionists in Northern Ireland don't seem to have cottoned on that almost no one in Britain would have them by choice, either.
They must have been reading the ostensibly Thatcherite London press, with its endless capacity to gloss over its heroine's record in office. For she was no friend of theirs. Nor they of hers.
One bomb in the City, and they'd be on their own. Whether or not the Republic took Northern Ireland, and it probably wouldn't, Britain would wash its hands of the place. That is just cold, hard reality. No one does it colder or harder than we do.