Category Archives: Northern Ireland

Obama in Northern Ireland for G8, addresses peace process

A lot of media coverage came rolling out of Northern Ireland as U.S. President Barack Obama and other leaders gathered for the G8 summit June 17-18. First Lady Michelle Obama and her two daughters also visited the Republic of Ireland.

Barack Obama

There were plenty of security concerns before the summit. Who could imagine such an international gathering in Northern Ireland in past decades? While the two-day event was a costly inconvenience to residents of nearby Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, there was no violence.

A bomb was found near the Lough Erne resort hosting the summit, but it turned out to be a remnant from a World War II mortar range.

Links to some of the best Ireland- and Northern Ireland-related stories follow below:

  • “Northern Ireland has languished out of the headlines and a gradual erosion of the peace process has taken place,” writes Irish Central founder Niall O’Dowd. “That is why the visit of President Obama is so vital.”
  • Michelle Obama, Bono and families lunch at Dalkey pub.
  • Significant progress has been made in the 15 years since the U.S.-brokered Good Friday Accords, including a Catholic-Protestant government and the disarmament of the IRA and outlawed Protestant groups responsible for most of the 3,700 death toll. But tearing down Belfast’s nearly 100 “peace lines” — barricades of brick, steel and barbed wire that divide neighborhoods, roads and even one Belfast playground — is still seen by many as too dangerous. Obama cited that playground in his speech, lauding an activist whose work led to the opening of a pedestrian gate in the fence.
  • Obama: “If there’s one thing on which Democrats and Republicans in America wholeheartedly agree, it’s that we strongly support a peaceful and prosperous Northern Ireland. … We will keep working closely with leaders in Stormont, and Dublin, and Westminster to support your political progress.”
  • The Irish Times reports U.S. President Barack Obama to press for renewed efforts to end community division in the north.
  • Great headline on security-related story from the BBC: Lock down on Lough Erne.

‘Shadow Dancer’ joins roster of films about The Troubles

The New York Times and other media outlets are out with reviews of “Shadow Dancer,” a new film set in The Troubles of 1970s Northern Ireland. Here’s a link to the trailer. The Times writes:

The last 30 years has seen the rise of ambitious stories made before and after the historic Good Friday peace accords of 1998. Many share an urgent desire to set the historical record straight and even undertake a kind of cathartic re-creation.

The piece does a good job of listing other movies in the genre, including “Patriot Games,” “Blown Away,” “Elephant,” “Hunger” and “In the Name of the Father.” My brother Matt correctly points out the Times review neglects to mention “The Devil’s Own,” staring Brad Pitt and Harrison Ford.

Let’s us know of any other films to add to the list.

Shadow-Dancer-DVD

“People’s Referendum” shows support for united Ireland

An unofficial poll in two Ireland/Northern Ireland border communities shows strong support for re-uniting the island, The Irish Times reports.

Not surprisingly, Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams welcomed the result, saying “a debate on Irish unity and the type of agreed Ireland people wish to create for the future has now begun.”

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Other media outlets such as the Irish Examiner, Irish Independent and BBC ignored the vote organized by the pro-republican United Ireland – You Decide campaign. The 92 percent “Yes” tally among 1,000 or so ballots appears at odds with historical polling on the issue.

That said, it’s interesting to read the post-vote comments on the Facebook page of Protestants for a United Ireland.

The Good Friday Agreement of 1998 provides a mechanism for such a border poll. Some unionists have suggested holding a referendum as a way of calling the bluff of republicans, since another provision requires waiting seven years before allowing a second poll.

Six northeast counties were partitioned as Northern Ireland in 1922 as 26 southern counties achieved partial independence as the Irish Free State. Ireland is now at the beginning of a 10-year stretch of centennial anniversaries that are rekindling that history and debate.

George Mitchell on Good Friday’s 15th anniversary

Numerous political figures played critical roles in securing the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland. I’ve always most appreciated the work of former U.S. Senator George Mitchell, who chaired the negotiations.

Here’s his 15th anniversary reflection, from the Belfast Telegraph:

It was a difficult experience but one that ultimately produced what I think is a good result.

When the agreement was reached I said publicly on that day and in the days that followed that in itself it did not guarantee peace or political stability or reconciliation but rather it made them possible.

Whether they would occur would depend upon the courage and commitment of the political leaders and people of Northern Ireland.

As we all know of course there were many problems, setbacks, issues over the past 15 years but they have worked hard to resolve them and I certainly believe, and I hope most people do, that Northern Ireland is a better place as a result of the agreement.

It’s undeniable not every issue has been resolved or problem solved. I also think it’s important not to hold Northern Ireland to an unrealistic standard that no other society meets. Every society has its problems.

We’ve got plenty of problems here in the United States, there are problems in other parts of the United Kingdom, there are plenty of problems in Ireland and the European Union and you could go all around the world and say the same thing.

On balance, I think Northern Ireland has made progress and I feel very honoured to have been part of it. I still come back to Northern Ireland often. I’m an American and proud of it but a large part of my heart and my emotions will always be in Northern Ireland and with the people there.

Readers interested in learning more about Mitchell’s role in Northern Ireland should pick up a copy of his 1999 book, Making Peace.

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 George Mitchell

Flag protests continue in Belfast, threaten Dublin

Loyalists demonstrators continue to protest restrictions on flying the British Union Jack flag over Belfast City Hall. Police claimed Saturday they were fired upon by someone in an unruly mob of about 1,000 people.

The protests have reached the one-month mark. Here’s a BBC Q & A explaining the issue, which so far is drawing only lite media attention in the U.S.

But the story could heat up more in the coming week if bus loads of protesters make good on their vow to bring the demonstrations across the boarder to the Republic of Ireland. The Irish Examiner reports the demonstrators want to demand removal of the Irish Tricolour from Leinster House, the seat of government. Said one protest leader:

“Under the Good Friday Agreement we were promised that this would remain part of the United Kingdom. Now we are continually told to move on, and that this is an island of equals. If that’s the case, how do the people in Dublin feel when we come down and ask them to take the flag off the capital in their country? Very annoyed, I would say.”

For me, the issue resonates from my newspaper coverage more than a decade ago about changing representations of the Confederate period in the City of Mobile, Ala., city seal. Confederate partisans wanted to keep the controversial Battle flag image in place, while many African-Americans and tourism/economic development-focused whites wanted it replaced by a less offensive (and less familiar) flag of the Confederate government. Similar controversies have flared across the American South for years.

In Mobile, protests and debate lasted for 18 months before the city government and “Southern Heritage” supporters finally reached a “Dixie détente.” Here’s hoping the flag issue on the island of Ireland doesn’t take as long to resolve, or get any nastier than it’s already been.

Another first in cross-border relations

It was not the same attention-grabber as the July handshake between Martin McGuinness and the Queen, or Herself visiting the Republic in May 2011 and laying a wreath at Dublin’s Garden of Remembrance.

But Enda Kenny has become the Republic’s first taoiseach to attend Remembrance Sunday commemorations in Northern Ireland. As the Guardian reported, he did so at an event in Enniskillen, where 25 years ago 11 Protestant civilians where killed in an IRA bomb. Eamon Gilmore, Kenny’s deputy, attended an event in Belfast.

Gilmore said people of all traditions on the island of Ireland would be “remembering together” in a “decade of commemorations” that include the 100th anniversary of the 1916 Rising, the end of the first world war in 1918 and the foundation of the two states in Ireland in 1921.

Their presence is seen as another gesture of reconciliation between the two political traditions on the island, as well as official recognition in Dublin of the thousands of Irish men who served in the British armed forces, particularly during the two world wars.

Ulster Covenant centenary

I am a few days late with this post, but still wanted to note the 100th anniversary of the Ulster Covenant.

On September 28, 1912, nearly 500,000 men and women signed separate documents to protest legislative attempts, called “Home Rule,” to secure more domestic autonomy in Ireland. The pledge to “use all means which may be found necessary to defeat the present” conspiracy was soon backed by the creation of a loyalist militia called the Ulster Volunteer Force.

Here’s news coverage of the anniversary in the Belfast Telegraph.

The Ulster Covenant was one one of the first steps toward politically cleaving the northwest corner of Ireland from the rest of the island. Nine years later six counties were partitioned as “Northern Ireland.”

The Ulster Covenant centenary is the first of many important centennials that will be marked over the next decade. Other upcoming anniversaries include the August 1913 Dublin labor lockout; April 1916 Easter Rising, January 1919 start of the War of Independence; December 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty; and the 1922-23 Civil War.

Here’s a link to the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland with more information about the Ulster Covenant, including a search feature to check for ancestors who may have signed the document.

Here’s a Wikisource link to Rudyard Kipling’s poem, “Ulster, 1912.”

Finally, here’s an interesting take on the anniversary by Irish Times columnist Fintan O’Toole.

Court battle over Troubles stories

The U.S. Supreme Court is being asked to settle a legal dispute over the release of the tape recorded interviews of people involved in violence during The Troubles in Northern Ireland.

The case involves the governments of the United States and United Kingdom, as well as Boston University, and the perpetrators and surviving family of a 1972 IRA killing.

Here’s a quick summary of the details from the Boston Globe. Here’s a video report from the PBS NewsHour.

There is some irony here. The case has been working its way through the courts at the same time Ireland’s Bureau of Military History has made available online more than 1,700 witness statements from the revolutionary period 1913-1921, as we detailed two posts below.

Were there any legal attempts to have those statements released to prosecute events that had happened decades earlier? Is there a secondary issue of considering these matters as crimes or as war-related?

I certainly understand the surviving family members desire for justice. And as a journalist I have frequently argued for the release of any material that sheds light on public events. But I also understand the BU researchers’ desire to keep their word to the people who came forward to give statements, just as I would want to protect a source. I also have some sympathy for the witnesses who shared their stories in the belief their remarks were being kept secret until after their deaths.

It’s an interesting and thorny case.

Omagh remembered

The Omagh Community Youth Choir was playing a series of concerts in New Orleans this weekend.

The group includes Catholic and Protestant teens from the town rocked in 1998 by the deadliest day of violence during “The Troubles.” It was formed in “a defiant act of peacemaking,” NOLA.com reports here. “Glee” with a mission.

I visited Omagh and other parts of Northern Ireland in 2001, three years after the blast and just weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in America. I was traveling on a journalism fellowship from the German Marshall Fund of the United States, which promotes better relations between Europe and America. Here’s the story I published in the Mobile Register, where I was working at the time.

It was heartening then to see how much progress had been made to reduce violence in the north of Ireland. Re-reading the piece today is a reminder of how much more progress has been made over the past 11 years.

I’m still shaking my head about Martin McGuinness and the Queen shaking hands. Count me among those who are glad they were able to do so.