IRELAND DOUBLE FEATURE
No change yet for the Birmingham Six - or for many Irish political prisoners in British jalls
Ireland: are the times
GEOFF BELL takes a look at the most recent government pronouncements on developments in Ireland, and asks readers some searching questions. "Great empires have been overturned. The whole map of Europe has been changed... The modes of thought of men, the whole outlook of affairs, the grouping of partics, all have encountered violent tremendous change... But as the deluge subsides and the waters fail short we see the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone emerging once again. The integrity of their quarrel is one of the few institutions that has been unaltered in the cataclysm which has swept the world"
The words came from Winston Churchill, speaking in the House of Commons in 1922, büt could seem as fitting today. The world changes, Germany marches towards unity, the SovieL Union dissolves, African armed smigglers come in
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THE BIRMINGHAM SIX
a-changing?
from the cold, Soviet armies withdraw from Eastern Europe, hut in Treland.. in Ireland, the British government minister responsible for the north caster hit says that some day, if many things change, he just might talk to elected representatives of Sinn Fein... and all hell breaks Joose.
Well, at least all hell breaks loose in Ireland, and for those British with a brief for it the minister responsible is denounced by such stalwarts of red, white and blueism as Mr K. McNamara Labour (ves Lahour 1) spokesperson on Ireland and Dr Paisley of the Democratic Unionists. Everyone else says he's talking sense. Then the storm passes and the British polity gets down to bracing itself against poll tax protesis, the disintegration of the NHS, huge mortgage rates and the fall and fall of Margaret Thatcher. And forgets about Ireland,
For instance, who is the govern ment minister responsible for the North of Ireland7 How many, even of an informed, educated and politically aware readership of a magazine such as this, could answer that question without thinking? Or answer it at all?
And how many of the British populace could answer that question? Al a rough guess less than 10 per сель That is very relevant, and will be retumed to.
Anyway; his name Brooke, and he made his controversial remarks last Novemher, series of interviews marking his first hundred days In office. Brooke had been exiled to the North of Ireland after being chairman (sic) of the Tory Party and failing to win over the masses to Thatcherism.
Until these interviews he thought of as a political lightweight und so it came as a surprise when he said the things he did: first that it was unlikely that the IRA could heaten, second that he would not use the word "Never" in reference to talks with the IRA, and he recalled that the same word was used by a British minister about negotiations EOKA in Cyprus and was later forgotten; third, that it was likely he would talk with Sinn Fein in the event of an IRA ceasefire.
On behalf of Sinn Fein, Martin McGuiness later described Peter Brooke as the first such British government minister "with some real
In the following two articles on developments in
Irish polltics,
GEOFF BELL looks at recent shifts In Tory government policy, and
LIAM MAC UAID examines the
Peter changes in the
Republican in a movement was with