In all of the other news items and retrospectives I completely missed the fact that last Wednesday was the 15th Anniversary of the Good Friday agreement. "A transformative agreement"!
Knowing that the fanbase (and this forum) have been following CAFC for so many years I just thought it appropriate to mention. Remember the thousands killed over twenty years and the tens of thousands injured in a conflict which used to appear on the 9 o'clock news EVERY night as a kid. Remember the pub blown to bits just a mile or so from the ground.
These days we have Libya and Syria but back then I remember every kid at school who came in from Woolwich having to phone home one morning as there had been a bomb at / near the barracks possibly causing damage to a bus which kids may have been on?
No intention of starting a Rangers/Celtic type debate - just thought that it appropriate to stop for a minute and mention the anniversary of a lasting settlement to a conflict which many thought might never end.
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I give this thread until lunch time! ;-)
;o)
It took a change of PM and John Major was able to take a more realistic line, he and several others (David Trimble for example) deserve a lot of credit for realising that those in charge and who therefore had the most to lose had to take the first steps.
In South Africa they too came around to this way of thinking and at about the same time.
Think I mentioned before: when it came on the news one night as a young child I asked my parents if that was about the trouble between the Catholics and the prostitutes. I didn't understand why my mum left the room at the time.
It has been acknowledged this week that there were "back channels" in the 80s despite the rhetoric. But it was Blair and Aherne who were able to put the ball in the back of the net - I can't remember why the ceasefire fell over in Major's time but I'm sure it lasted about a year before going off the rails... could look it up on the web but not the point!
Politics basically - by then the slim majority that Major had in the Commons was being steadily eroded as a few elderly Tory MPs died in office and were replaced in by-elections by Labour or Lib-Dem MPs. This meant that he was increasingly reliant on Unionist MPs to stay in office and their continued support came at a price - the rejection of the Mitchell Report which suggested some power sharing. The thorny issue of decommissioning of weapons was a sticking point for the IRA who understandly failed to see why they should surrender their weapons as a condition to further talks. So everything basically stalled...and the IRA blew up a building in Canary Wharf to demonstrate that they were still prepared to use violence if doing things peacefully wasn't getting them anywhere.
You seem to be clued up on the subject BFR - do you know of anything that supports the view I heard that Adams/McGuiness made overtures to the British authorities to find a way to end the conflict without them losing face?
That we'll never know for sure and I doubt even if it were true that Adams/McGuinness would ever publically admit to it. Bear in mind that a couple of generations earlier Michael Collins wound up getting killed in suspicious circumstances after signing a treaty with the British government. However in support of that line of argument there was the suspicion was that they weren't really getting anywhere by using terrorism and gradually the number of active IRA cells were being infiltrated and compromised or through attrition were no longer active. But there had been very unofficial discussions going back to the time of Ted Heath and it really took a bit of give and take. I can recall John Major saying something to the effect that he would never negotiate with the IRA but that was clearly untrue. Hence they bussed in George Mitchell (an American Senator) to mediate.
I always love spending holidays there and saw it as a huge adventure as a kid, but it wasn't me that had to live there 365 days a year, with no respite. The change that has taken place in the years since has been remarkable and, whilst people still take care about where they go & how they behave, it's a great city to live in...for everyone.
I was in Belfast in the early 90s once or twice for work - very tense one time as a soldier had been shot dead in broad daylight the day before and the brother of one of our hosts had committed suicide through stress.
I expect that many interesting papers will come out under the 30 years rule but that would be in another 15 years time - in the meantime if anyone has any interesting links to stories or sites on the web (that aren't too sectarian!) then that would be much appreciated - in a sense a way to help those interested to inform themselves as a mark of respect to all those who died during "the troubles"