Reluctant Irish Optimism: An Agreement Coming?
Growing up in Ireland with the politics of the National Question, we grew up with phrases that defined how a nation and its neighbour dealt with violence and nationalism. Many of them became catchphrases repeated so much it ultimately rendered them with no meaning or use - except maybe for satire - and we waited until somebody coined the next phrase.
The politics of the last atrocity • Parity of esteem • Shoot-to-kill • Talks about talks • No return to Stormont • Constitutional Nationalism • No Surrender • Rejectionist Unionist • The Armalite and the Ballot Box • Dissident Republican • Guns before Government • Representatives of terrorism • Megaphone diplomacy • Verifyably beyond use • Totality of relations • Reinterpretation of memories • Tiocfaidh ár Lá • Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed • Seven years; don’t make it eight
For so many years a phrase about us facing an abyss was how we were told matters lay if we didn’t talk to/agree with/stop killing each other. I love how now when we finally seem to have an agreement more significant even than the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement, we seem not to believe it. Now we appear to be facing into an agreement. That’s Irish progress.
For now it is called the St Andrew’s Agreement because it is the British and Irish governments, not the Northern Irish parties, who have agreed. If the agreement holds it renders my recent poke at Unionism inaccurate, but we have four weeks yet for the DUP to find something to disagree with, most likely the fact that Sinn Féin are agreeing. And even then, the long road to March.
See Also:
• Michael Flatley’s Unionist Troubles
• Irish Press Banned as Irish Independence Revoked
• Ireland and/or Eire
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