Presidents UK state visit

C

cremeegg

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While I am not entirely comfortable with this state visit. Too many feathers for my taste!

I do think that we could not have a better representative than Michael D.

Not just from the candidates at the last election, but out the entire population of Irish public life, I do not think there is anyone better to represent Ireland
 
Michael D is a good president, but the breathy, hagiographic coverage by RTE has been more than a little over the top. I switched off when they tried to detail the intense importance of the President's 5 second pause at the monument to Mountbatten.
 
That picture of the Q smiling up at and shaking warmly the hands of the man who would have acclaimed the murder of her uncle was to me the most sickening sight of this whole peace process.:mad:
 
Duke of Marmalade said:
That picture of the Q smiling up at and shaking warmly the hands of the man who would have acclaimed the murder of her uncle was to me the most sickening sight of this whole peace process.:mad:
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well in fairness he had to smile and warmly shake her hand too, cant have been easy for either of them but that's what has to be done in a peace process, enemies shake hands and try to put the past behind them.
 
The murder of an old man (Mountbatten) was no-way political buta cowardly act terrorism that also killed the young lad on the boat.
 
Cork.

I agree with you that the Killings at Mullaghmore were nothing but murder.
Duke.
May be sickening , but Mr Mc Guinness actuallly believes that the 2000+ deaths were a sad but acceptable outcome to get us to this day? Go figure?
I find it strange that it took 30 years and 2000+ deaths to get Sinn Fein to sign up in the Agreement to accept Partition? Go figure?
Rainy Day.
I suppose it was a wee bit over the top, but had you lived in N Ire in 70,s 80,s 90,s To now see this visit , is monumental.
It is easy now to wonder what all the fuss is about , but God we do not want to revisit a return to the murder/mayhem/mutilations of that era.
I see the visit as the natural acknowledgment of the friendship of 2 familys that were torn by infighting, fuelled by a cancerous hatred, engendered by dogmatic positions .
 
GC

It is interesting to speculate that if RTE/Pat Kenny/Miriam had chosen McGuinness as our president instead of Michael D would this visit have happened?

I don't think so and not because McG would veto it but surely it would be too much to ask that the Q should actually fete someone so stained in the murder of her own uncle.
 
Dear Duke ,

She probably would have ,
Remember she is the mouthpiece of a Government that eventually accepted that Bloody Sunday in Derry was plain murder,and by inference Bloody Sunday was a huge catylst and a justification
for the ongoing sadness of the {troubles}
That same UK government let Queen acknowledge in her visit the Easter Rising.
The Plain People of Ireland clearly decided that {the war} is long over.
The citizens of UK knew the Irish to be their friends.

After so so many years we have come to a happy cknowledgment of our positions.

We still have a few backwoodsmen in Real IRA etc that are still poisioned but hopefully they will stop.
 
My dearest GC,

Your take that what happened that Sunday in Londonderry was a "catalyst" for the next 25 years of IRA terror is an interesting one.

But let gets the facts clear. BS was a defining moment for sure. It led the British Government to realise that the old Stormont set up was beyond redemption. Within about a year they imposed the fair solution we now know, power sharing executive, Council of Ireland etc. But there was a problem, the Catholics of NI rejected Grisly, Martie and their mates at the ballot box. The solution was a real threat to their continued relevance and so they accelerated the campaign forcing the collapse of the power sharing government and sustained the campaign for another 2,000 deaths until one day they noticed that they were doing rather well at the polls and they said to themselves "we'll have that Sunningdale deal after all".

I am sure glad that RTE chose our presie for left to the people we may just indeed have the appalling scenario of a terrorist representing us on the world stage.
 
It is unfair, it say the least, to ignore the Unionist opposition to Sunningdale.
The day after the agreement was announced the UDA and UVF formed the Ulster Army Council. Faulkner resigned as leader in early 1974, to be replaced by an anti-agreement Unionist (whose name escapes me) and a general strike was called by the Unionists in May. The United Ulster Unionist Council (the umbrella group for anti-agreement Unionists) said that the result of the 1974 general election (in which only one pro-agreement MP was elected) was a democratic rejection of the agreement, which it was. They then stated that they would bring down the Sunningdale Executive and Assembly by any means necessary.
It is fair to say that Unionist opposition to the agreement was much stronger and more widespread than Nationalist opposition and was the major factor in the collapse of the agreement.
 
It's also worth noting that the Executive powers of the Council of Ireland under Sunningdale were limited to Tourism and little else.
 
Purple, that is the conventional narrative I agree. I see it differently. As a Catholic living in West Belfast I couldn't believe we were getting equal citizenship in my lifetime. But this was not what the IRA were fighting for, they wanted the total destruction of the northern state. This was an absolutely intolerable situation for the majority population. If the IRA had declared a ceasefire having far surpassed the aims of the civil rights movement we would have saved 2000 lives and we would have a NI today much more at ease with itself.
 
There's a scene in Futurama where Cubert Farnsworth has the epitheny that the Pizza Express space ship doesn't travel through space, it stays stationary and moves space around it.

It struck me as an odd concept being stuck stationary as the entire Universe shifts around you. Then you see opinions on politics and especially the North and it all makes sense.
 

Sunningdale was gone by May 1974. Who knows what the IRA would have done, or what their political and popular support would have been, if the Unionists had engaged positively with Sunningdale (as the SDPL did). The "conflict" could, and most probably would, have been over far sooner.

The IRA gained support from the perception, based mainly on reality, that Northern Ireland was run for the benefit of the Protestant majority.
When that reality changed between the mid 80's and early 90's the possibility of peace increased dramatically.
Injustice and inequality in Northern Ireland now is due to a legacy of that tribalism, not the current laws or governance.
 
Sorry guys but tragic as the history of Northern Ireland is, it is not the only issue in the relationship between England and Ireland.

The predominant theme has been England's use of its greater resources to control and exploit Ireland.

Michael D was the prefect person to put this in its proper perspective. His reference to his father's role in the war of independence seemed note perfect to me.

It would have been much more difficult for Martin McGuinness to address the issue successfully although I think he would have tried to do so.

As for David Norris well I simply cannot imagine how he would have dealt with the history of Irish English relations. Thanked them for bringing us cucumber sandwiches perhaps.

Sean Gallagher ? Dana?

I think we are lucky to have had Michael D.
 
cremeegg said:
Dana?
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Dana would have thanked them for all kinds of everything

Purple, War and Peace in NI has for the last 50 years at least been at the behest of extreme republicans. Loyalist violence was a reaction. British security policy was a reaction. The hunger strikes propelled the IRA onto the electoral radar. It was not improving conditions for Catholics in the 80s and 90s that coaxed them to end the war it was that the ballot box started to look more attractive to them personally than the bullet.
 
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