Political prisoner, activist, journalist, hymn-writer, emerging thinktanker, aspiring novelist, "tribal elder", 2019 parliamentary candidate for North West Durham, Shadow Leader of the Opposition, "Speedboat", "The Cockroach", eagerly awaiting the second (or possibly third) attempt to murder me.
Tuesday, 22 March 2011
What This War Is Not About
Yvonne Fletcher.
Lockerbie.
The IRA, to which we have since surrendered anyway, a win both for Gaddafi and for the United States, both its backers at the same time.
There has been no surrender. Intelligent loyalists accepted that they couldn't drive out the Catholics. Intelligent republicans accepted that they couldn't get the Protestants onside. Everyone intelligent accepted that you can't govern a place with two nationalities in it as if it had only one. The self-conciously intelligent moderates of both middle classes saw the opportunity to get paid to administer a huge (relatively speaking) state paid for by someone else. It was called Sunningdale. It just took them a long time to convince the less intelligent. Actaully, as the main parts of Good Friday was negotiated without any real reference to Northern Ireland's politicians, one could say that we just stopped asking the less intelligent.
There has been no surrender. Intelligent loyalists accepted that they couldn't drive out the Catholics. Intelligent republicans accepted that they couldn't get the Protestants onside. Everyone intelligent accepted that you can't govern a place with two nationalities in it as if it had only one. The self-conciously intelligent moderates of both middle classes saw the opportunity to get paid to administer a huge (relatively speaking) state paid for by someone else. It was called Sunningdale. It just took them a long time to convince the less intelligent. Actaully, as the main parts of Good Friday was negotiated without any real reference to Northern Ireland's politicians, one could say that we just stopped asking the less intelligent.
ReplyDelete