Léargas

The battle of ideas Thirty years ago last Saturday in an interview in Woman's Own, the late British Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher spelt out her own narrow view of society and the role of government. Thatcher said:  “I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand “I have a problem, it is the Government's job to cope with it!” or “I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!” “I am homeless, the Government must house me!” and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing!” The policies of Thatcher fractured British society. Her right wing model of government increased poverty and stripped families of the means of a decent quality of life. Thatcherism promoted the individual and minimised society's support for those less able to defend themselves. It was about less state involvement, so-called smaller government, less taxation on business and t

24 years ago this month, on September 13 th  1993, the Oslo Accord was signed on the lawn of the White House in the presence of Yasser Arafat for the PLO, Yitzhak Rabin for Israel and US President Bill Clinton. It was another stage in a process of secret and public negotiations that had begun under the aegis of the Norwegians. The accord provided for the creation of a limited form of self-government for the Palestinian people and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank by April 1994 and a final agreement by February 1999. President Clinton proclaimed:  "The peace of the brave is within our reach. Throughout the Middle East there is a great yearning for the quiet miracle of a normal life.” Almost a quarter of a century later and the hoped for miracle of a normal life seems as far away as ever, certainly for the Palestinian people. Thousands have died in the low intensity violence that has marked much of the intervening years, occasionally broken

Last Friday I arrived in New York for an overnight visit. I was there to speak at the Irish Echo’s Labor (it’s the US spelling) Awards. On Saturday I met up with my good friend Bill Flynn for lunch. Bill celebrated his 91 st  birthday on Labor Day last week. He was as sharp as ever in his observations about the political situation in the USA and in Ireland. The Irish Echo Labor Awards event was a huge success. So too was our brief visit to the Labor March to meet old friends and to make new ones. My congratulations to all involved especially the honourees and their families.  It was as a result of the hard work of Bill, Niall O’Dowd, Bruce Morrison, Chuck Feeney and others in Irish America that I first received a visa to allow me entry into the USA in January 1994. Since then I have regularly travelled to the USA – at least four times a year. I go there in response to invitations and am very grateful for the opportunity to present Sinn Féin’s analysis of developments in Ireland

In the cut and thrust of negotiations there is always the risk that someone will say something that makes the process of achieving agreement more difficult. Sometimes they do that deliberately. Sometimes they are just stupid. Or tongue in cheek. During the negotiations leading to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 the Ulster Unionist politician John Taylor famously dismissed proposals from Senator George Mitchel saying he wouldn’t touch them with a  ’40 foot barge pole’ . Taylor was renowned for such hyperbole. Last week he was at it again claiming that nationalists in the North  ‘are not equal’  to unionists. He wasn’t alone in making outrageous and stupid comments. The morning after the DUP leader Arlene Foster made, what some in the media described as a ‘new offer’ and a ‘compromise proposal’ to Sinn Féin, her Westminster colleague Sammy Wilson was in fine ‘Taylor mode’. He said:  “They (Sinn Féin) are not a serious party… we now have the spectacle of a party with seven MPs who