NO BLUFF: David Trimble was indeed fatally weakened by Sinn Fein's tactics
Posted on 11/04/2001 3:04:18 AM PST by Norn Iron
North in the hands of the cast of a comic operetta
NO BLUFF: David Trimble was indeed fatally weakened by Sinn Fein's tactics |
Trimble deserves the misplaced sympathy given to Sinn Féin, writes Eilis O'Hanlon
DANNY Morrison's infamous call to republicans to "take power in Ireland" with "an Armalite in one hand and a ballot box in the other" was misunderstood, explained Emily O'Reilly in last week's Sunday Business Post. He was simply guiding republicans gently towards accepting the primacy of politics.
Oh well, that's all right then. No need to mention the 69 murders and 461 attempted murders carried out by republicans and their Armalites in the year Danny Morrison made his speech. No need to mention the woman killed by an IRA nail bomb at Chelsea Barracks only weeks before his address.
No need either to bring up that dull old controversy about Adams shouldering the coffin of the Shankill bomber. As O'Reilly again spells out helpfully, the peace process could not have survived otherwise and who would want the blame for that?
Emily O'Reilly's article last week was typical of the indulgence which Sinn Féin gets in the Irish media, the inexhaustible willingness to subject every event primarily to the test of how it will play in the republican heartland, and to make endless allowances for their stage-managed evasiveness, malingering and belligerence.
That reached a nadir when the IRA started putting arms beyond use and politicians rushed to concede what a hard decision it must have been for them; and Adams was clearly after more of the same sympathy last week as he told all who would listen that republicans, bless their little balaclavas, were "hurting" inside at the start of decommissioning.
Their hearts were low, their hearts were so low, as only a Provo's heart can be.
There wasn't much equivalent sympathy for the "hurting" of unionists, of course, though David Trimble's difficulties in persuading his own side's hardliners should have appeared to any disinterested observer as considerably more intense.
Adams heads a united republican movement and faces only a fragmented, marginalised, dissident opposition. Trimble heads a fragmented and disunited Ulster Unionist party, and faces a united and resurgent opposition in the No camp.
The worst incident that Gerry Adams can actually relate is someone shouting "traitor" at him from a car. David Trimble was physically assaulted at the last election count by DUP thugs.
Yet when Trimble did what he needed to do to bolster support among his own ranks withdrawing from the Assembly; resigning as First Minister he was denigrated by the very same commentators who make elaborate excuses for Sinn Féin.
Trimble was bluffing, they said; his brinksmanship was designed to get the IRA to surrender, and if his bluff was called, the Ulster Unionists would meekly fall into line behind him. Friday's vote in the Assembly showed where such stunning analysis has led. So Trimble was bluffing when he said he was being fatally weakened by Sinn Féin's tactics, eh? Some bluff.
IRA/Sinn Féin dragged the process out so long that the ground simply crumbled away beneath David Trimble's feet, and that it should have been minnows like Peter Weir and Pauline Armitage who nibbled away the last clumps rather than, say, Jeffrey Donaldson is simply one of history's little ironies.
Trimble fell victim to a system of devolved government so fiendishly labyrinthine that it ended up giving power not to the people so much as to life's eternal Peters and Paulines, out of all proportion to their true importance.
It's easy to concentrate on Weir and Armitage because they come from within Trimble's own party, but it's worth looking at the 28 others who scuppered his chances, a crucial section of whom came from members of the United Unionist Assembly Party (UUAP) and the Northern Ireland Unionist Party (NIUP). The NIUP got 0.2 per cent support in this year's local and general elections. The UUAP got 0.3 per cent.
Recipients of such ringing endorsements from the electorate include Norman Boyd MLA, who got only 29 more votes at this year's council elections than something called the Newtonabbey Ratepayers' Association; and Denis Watson MLA who, as the UUP's Steven King pointed out last week, couldn't even get elected to the local council "in the Orange heartland of Craigavon". And let's not forget Cedric Wilson, clown prince of the No camp, who only got elected to the Assembly on the 18th count. It's like the North has woken up to find its future is in the hands of the cast of a Gilbert & Sullivan comic operetta.
And what these political collosi are now about to gift us, most likely, is an election which may well see Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams returned as First and Deputy First Ministers. A real recipe for peace, justice and the Northern Irish way there.
Aer Lingus should start a one-way service from Belfast to Anywhereville. Demand for tickets will be so high that it should solve their financial difficulties at a stroke.
"O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous," Voltaire prayed. Last week, the Lord answered the IRA's same prayer.
Irish terrorists bowed to pressure when Haass kicked ass. According to O'Leary the terrorists volunteered to be good boys!!
In days of old
When knights were bold
And toilets weren't invented,
They did a load
In the middle of the road
And went away contented
His trousers were down around his ankles. He was cleaning his backside with a handful of grass and bracken.
"G'wan, yi dirty baste!" we screamed in unison. "You're stinking."
Many felt it got a great boost when President Clinton was recently seen with it under his arm as he got off Air Force One.
Don't they have a washroom on Air Force One? Clinton was last seen heading for the outdoor privy!!
the book has received very favorable reviews
Ah, but from who? They don't mention that, do they! If the best you can do is cite Bubba carting your book around as a recommendation, that's pretty pathetic!
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