Irish Politics. One Day. Two Links.
In 1985 not a day in the whole year went by without me thinking of what was happening in South Africa. That was probably due to my schooling, for which I’m always grateful, and to a general interest in Ireland in unjust situations around the world.
Apartheid is now long gone, and living in the US I don’t think of South Africa much any more. But never does a day go by, that no holiday, no sickness, or no drunken haze has stopped, where I don’t think of the euphemistic Irish question.
Like most people’s memory of what has constituted the recent Irish conflict, mine is a catalogue of horrors. From Bloody Sunday and Bloody Friday through every obscenity we visited on each other up to and beyond what we call a Peace Process.
The dates are all bad news, except for the very few that were very brief and sickening moments of hope. Even from a hundred miles away, sometimes much nearer.
I remember feeling so happy when the 1994 cessation was called, even though I believed there would be more bombings and shootings before the overall end would ever be reached. And there was. But I always believed it would be reached, usually alone in arguments where others advanced the impossiblility of the square peg in the round hole.
Because as a species I think we have the imagination necessary to square such circles.
There’s a lot that can go wrong in the next six weeks, especially when it only takes something small to go wrong - not to mention there still being people who want it to go wrong - but even if we go no further than where we are now, what has happened today is truly one of the greatest days this conflict has ever seen, probably its most momentous.
So I can’t let this day go by and not mark it. Here then are two links, both slight and all the more important for it because they convey a fatigue and incredulous appetite for the news of what took place today.
1. Fair play to Mick Fealty of Slugger O’Toole for finding this and sitting on it until the hour arrived. What their stars said: Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams
2. An extraordinary opinion piece in Britain’s Guardian from Gerry Adams himself, presumably written not knowing what would happen come today. A humorous piece, by the man they call dour. On a politicans’ condition he calls candidatitis, as he pleads for understanding of Paisley and himself, little boys aiming to please. You get the little boys you voted for.
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