Just Like Old Times
Commenter Suzie Flood has beaten me to it. There was plenty to blog about in yesterday's Republican Sinn Fein conference, including the Che Guevara like appearance of Richard Walsh, but I had to head off from the office soon after broadcasting the story so didn't get the chance to gather my thoughts here.
With the Belfast press pack crammed into the tiny back office at RSF's Falls Road office, it felt a bit like a scene from Citizen Smith or the Judean People's Front. However we were all well aware that, given this month's murders, this was no laughing matter.
Mr Walsh's script justifying the latest violence could have been taken word for word from something Gerry Adams or Martin McGuinness might have said 20, 30 or nearly 40 years ago. He was cross questioned about how he could presume to know the minds of the people of Ireland better than did the voters north and south who supported the Good Friday Agreement. He answered to the effect that the voters had been given a choice between peace and terrible war (it sounded like a reference back to Michael Collins and the Treaty) but had, in effect, been sold a pup.
In contrast to previous RSF conferences which have featured ageing southern figures like Ruairi O'Bradaigh, this one included young men wearing baseball hats and "Megadeath" woolie caps. They complained about police raids on their homes in Craigavon - one said the police had taken all his clothes leaving him with nothing to wear. Elsewhere in the building, but declining to be interviewed, was a young woman who had spent 11 days in Antrim Holding Centre being held by police investigating the recent murders.
At 27, Richard Walsh looked not much older than the youths sitting beside him, a point not lost on us rather more venerable hacks. But then Gerry Adams was only 23 when he was released from jail to talk to Willie Whitelaw. A sobering thought.
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RECALLING THE PAST...37 YEARS AGO!
As you have raised it Mark, I wonder what words were indeed said in 1972 in negotiatons with Willie Whitelaw?
I quote from J Bower Bell ("The IRA")...
"On Friday July 7, the Provo delegation, Mac Stiofain, O'Connell, Twomey, Martin McGuinness, C/O of Derry, Gerry Adams, Ivor Bell from Belfast, and Myles Shevlin from Sinn Fein (Kevin Street), arrived by courtesy of the RAF at a house in Chelsea to meet Whitelaw and three members of his ministerial team. The Provos had at last arrived at the bargaining table, Mac Stiofain made the Provos' point, stressing the key demand for an all-Ireland decision. Whitelaw's insistence on the validity of the Government of Ireland Act was brushed aside and his concern about the Protestant reaction was not considered a serious matter..."
July 9 the negotiations broke down.
July 21, the IRA exploded 26 bombs across Belfast (which I can recall - first hand) and as is said, the rest is written in bloody history.
Pandora
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