Legacy – Slugger O'Toole

The legacy of the past can still be felt in today’s political relationships, warns O’Neill

Paul Gosling on July 30, 2021, 9:05 am | Readers 1724

Legacy is being discussed at length at present, following the British government’s proposals to abandon prosecutions and investigations related to Troubles’ events. But there is another toxic legacy – the impact of past events on current political relationships. That aspect of legacy is discussed with Sinn Féin Vice President and Deputy First Minister Michelle O’Neill in the latest Holywell Trust Forward Together podcast. Michelle argues that political leaders must work hard to build trust, to enable the political system here to …

More truth and honesty needed in government, and in dealing with legacy, says Colum Eastwood

Paul Gosling on July 23, 2021, 9:05 am | Readers 984

Truth and honesty must be at the heart of how we deal with the legacy of the past and in how politicians in Northern Ireland govern today, says Colum Eastwood, leader of the SDLP and MP for the Foyle constituency. He was speaking in the latest Holywell Trust Forward Together podcast and is the third political leader to be interviewed in the series, discussing how to make progress in Northern Ireland. Victims have been badly treated, stresses Colum, and they …

Learning to live in harmony with the legacies of Empire. Different experiences in Great Britain and Ireland

Brian Walker on February 15, 2021, 8:55 pm | Readers 3762

In the culture wars over shifting national identities it’s striking how nationalist Ireland is further along the road to reconciliation with its troubled past than a UK has reached in its troubled present. That is a journey that feels as if it has barely begun. Perhaps all that righteous victimhood has become easier to cope than all that tortured guilt. BLM – Gladstone and Churchill off their pedestals The focus is turned on the role of Empire and in …

‘Politicians will argue, they will fight over it and they will come up with reasons for not dealing with the past’

Paul Gosling on June 22, 2020, 9:02 am | Readers 3424

It was hoped that the Patten reforms would herald a new start for policing in Northern Ireland, but, argues Denis Bradley, the PSNI remains burdened with its legacy from the old RUC. Denis is a former vice-chair of the Northern Ireland Policing Board and co-chair of the Consultative Group on the Past. He was talking in the latest Forward Together podcast from the Holywell Trust. “In the setting-up of the PSNI, the new service inherited, carried with it, the deeds …

What is justice anyway?

Paul Gosling on June 1, 2020, 9:02 am | Readers 447

What is justice? The answer might be obvious, but in past Forward Together podcast interviews it has been noticeable that the responses to that question have been inconsistent. While parts of political unionism seem focused on the judicial process for acts going back to the Troubles, the response by some in republicanism has been that the core of justice is about creating a fair society today. Daniel Holder, deputy director of the Committee on the Administration of Justice, tells the …

‘Unless we start listening, we’re not going to move forward’

Paul Gosling on September 2, 2019, 7:04 am | Readers 949

“Unless we start listening, we’re not really going to move forward,” says Julieann Campbell, editor of the Unheard Voices collection of women’s stories from the Troubles. She was interviewed in the latest Forward Together podcast. Julieann reflects in the podcast on the impact on her of the interviews with women about their experiences in the Troubles. “I think it has affected me on several levels, emotionally and in my work,” she says. “It is a fact that it has made …

New way of consulting with civic society is part of the talks negotiations, discloses Naomi Long

Paul Gosling on July 1, 2019, 8:00 am | Readers 939

Creating a new mechanism for consulting with civic society is part of the talks negotiations aimed at getting Stormont back, Alliance Party leader Naomi Long has disclosed. Naomi is a newly elected MEP, former MP and has just resigned her role as an MLA. She was interviewed in the latest Forward Together podcast. “We need to find a role for engaging with civil society,” suggests Naomi. “I think there is a lot of good work that goes on in our …

‘Stephen Nolan needs to find the right balance – and not make angry people angrier’

Paul Gosling on June 17, 2019, 7:00 am | Readers 6945

Stephen Nolan needs to find the right balance between allowing people to express their emotions, without making angry people even angrier. The plea was made in the latest Forward Together podcast by Sinn Fein MLA and former finance minister Máirtín Ó Muilleoir. “In this often divided society, I think the tone and timbre of the debate has to be respectful,” says Máirtín. “We have to find ways of not feeding the ratings monster, not sectarianising a discussion, which has huge sectarian …

A legacy process should be about why the Troubles should never happen again

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on April 20, 2019, 12:27 pm | Readers 1171

Brian Rowan and Deric Henderson speaking about Reporting the Troubles at a Creative Holywood conversation.

On Thursday evening, hours before Lyra McKee was fatally shot in Creggan, Brian Rowan was speaking about Reporting the Troubles in Holywood. Throughout the event, he often pivoted away from pure reminiscence and returned to the subject of legacy, arguing for an inclusive and society-wide process that asked less about what had happened but instead focussed on why it happened and crucially why it should never happen again.

Bradley’s words deserve more than weak statements

Sarah Creighton on March 8, 2019, 8:44 am | Readers 2126

Theresa May likes to talk about ‘our precious union.’ It’s clearly a buzzword somebody at Tory HQ dreamed up at meeting and wrote on a whiteboard. The Prime Minister repeats the phrase like a bot, often to reiterate the fact that Northern Ireland is part of the UK. Over the past few days, you could be forgiven for thinking that we’re living in a different world. On the 5th March sixty two year old Tommy Morgan gave evidence at the …

“…the policy he was so central to for so long was toxic to public morality.”

Mick Fealty on November 29, 2017, 5:01 pm | Readers 3285

Just putting this here because I think it tails nicely with Diarmuid Ferriter from Saturday and Newton Emerson last Thursday. It’s Colm Keena on Gerry Adams… The career of the politician and republican activist Gerry Adams has shown an almost unerring capacity over the decades to get the important things wrong. This marked capacity is as true of his time as a leader of a movement committed to the use of killing and destruction in pursuit of its aims, as …

Diarmaid Ferriter on Gerry Adams: “Many political careers end in failure; some just end in irony.”

Pete Baker on November 28, 2017, 4:16 pm | Readers 3346

It’s worth quoting at length from historian Diarmaid Ferriter in Saturday’s Irish Times on the ironic legacy Gerry Adams leaves for Sinn Féin. Fianna Fáil continued to invoke its republican “heritage” while determinedly staying the revisionist course; the same conclusions are likely to be reached about Sinn Féin under Adams. One of the reasons for the self-righteous defensiveness beloved of Adams was precisely to mask the revisionism, or what has been referred to as the “creative ambiguity” of peace process …

Continuity between Adams’ failed war and failing peace is to ‘establish the conflict as eternal and perpetual’

Mick Fealty on November 24, 2017, 10:45 am | Readers 4997

A powerful piece from Newton Emerson, in yesterday’s Irish Times… The first person the IRA murdered after Gerry Adams was elected Sinn Féin president was Charles Armstrong, the Ulster Unionist chair of Armagh City and District Council. Adams became president on Sunday, November 13th, 1983. The following evening, a bomb exploded under Armstrong’s car as he left a council meeting. An SDLP colleague, Pat Brannigan, risked his life by pulling Armstrong from the burning wreckage. Armstrong left a wife and eight children, who heard the explosion from …

On legacy, Mrs May seems determined to play a cute political game of her own

Mick Fealty on April 28, 2017, 11:31 am | Readers 1572

This is interesting… Soldiers and police officers who served during the Troubles in Northern Irelandshould not be prosecuted in relation to historical killings and torture, a Westminster committee has said. The House of Commons defence select committee said a de facto amnesty granted to republican and loyalist paramilitaries under the 1998 Good Friday agreement should be extended to army and police veterans involved in killings and other incidents in the Troubles. It wants the next British government to introduce an …

Troubles Legacy: What happens when narrative fiction meets narrative fact?

Mick Fealty on April 11, 2017, 10:50 am | Readers 2662

Ben Lowry says some have high hopes of the HIU (which has all the tools to do proper historical inquiry that HET didn’t, but was on a political choke chain), which may be disappointed. But he has a point when he notes: If the state had been even remotely as ruthless as republicans imply, Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams and other leading republicans would have been dead before the end of 1972, let alone alive and active in the republican …

Building trust and policing for the present – Martin McGuinness and George Hamilton at #feile15

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on August 6, 2015, 11:58 pm | Readers 2029

Around 400 people filled the assembly hall of St Mary’s University College to hear deputy First Minster Martin McGuinness and PSNI Chief Constable George Hamilton discuss the challenges of dealing with the past under the eye of chair Brian Rowan. Another 100 or more stood along the pavement outside St Mary’s protesting at the presence of the Chief Constable in West Belfast and calling for an end to “British internment in Ireland”. A tannoy blasted music over the railing towards …

I Just Don’t Get The Troubles

Kris Nixon (Belfast Barman) on May 29, 2015, 6:55 pm | Readers 5528

I watched BBC’s Panorama on state collusion in criminality during the troubles in a state of shock. I knew this kind of thing happened, we all did… people killed, people were killed, people enabled killings and people seemed to acknowledge that killing just sort of…happened. I’m 28, I was born in May 1987 four days before the Loughgall Ambush, I was eight months old when the Milltown Cemetary attack took place, I wasn’t yet two years old when Pat Finucane was murdered, a month …

Margaret Thatcher is like Alex Ferguson…

Pete Baker on April 9, 2013, 5:20 pm | Readers 102

I don’t intend to comment on the putative legacy of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher [Too early to say? – Ed] Perhaps. And Mick has it covered… But I will point to Tom Chivers’ observations on some of the more, erm, extreme reactions. My own hypothesis, and it’s only a hypothesis, is that she’s hated by some of the less thoughtful elements of the Left in the same way that Sir Alex Ferguson is hated by less thoughtful Liverpool fans: because she …

Robinson setting out the parameters for his ‘pluralist’ legacy in 2021?

Mick Fealty on November 26, 2012, 9:44 am | Readers 81

So one of the big set pieces of the weekend was Peter Robinson’s claim was that a majority of Catholics now (ie, right now) would prefer to stay with Britain than take their chances in what (as Ruarai points out in the comments zone) remains a hugely undefined united Ireland. On the face of it he’s pushing further than Trimble’s famously self defeating claim that 35% of NI Catholics where unionists. Self defeating because such weak attachment did not and …

Derry City Council finally pay their [ground rent] debt

Pete Baker on February 15, 2012, 7:44 pm | Readers 76

As they promised at the time, the BBC report an update on Derry City Council’s attempt to frustrate the legacy of Raymond Saville Conolly de Montmorency Lecky-Browne-Lecky. After his death in 1961 the amateur actor’s dying wish was that two charities, the Actors’ Charitable Trust and the Musicians’ Benevolent Fund, would benefit from revenues from his estate – including the ground rents from properties he owned in Londonderry. One of the ground rents involved was for the City Swimming Baths on William Street, run …