It’s hard to know where to put Chris Heaton Harris – with the fools or the knaves. He has recently stated that a border poll would require the consent of both the nationalist and unionist communities in NEI. No it wouldn’t.
The Good Friday Agreement makes it clear that when it appears to the British Secretary of State that a majority of people in NEI would favour a border poll and that the border poll would advocate Irish unity. There is no question of proportions from the unionist side, as Heaton-Harris claims.
I think it’s important to have this nailed and hammered home. We’ve heard politicians claim that the unionist community would have to give its assent to the holding of a border poll. Total twaddle. A simple majority – the famous 50+1 – is all that is needed to call a border poll. It would be preferable that it was 50 + 100,000, but +1 will simply be faithful to the GFA text.
Because the DUP would claim that they are democracy incarnate, given that they’ve finally gone back into Stormont which was what they were paid to do, it’s important that we don’t let their halo dazzle us. As for Chris Heaton Harris – I can think of no better reason for wishing that Labour become the British government after the next general election, than that the dolt Heaton Harris would then be replaced by the more thoughtful and energetic Hilary Benn, son of the principled Tony Benn.
Footnote: I see the British government is at some pains to reassure unionists that ‘joint sovereignty’ over NEI is not in the GFA. Quite right. But the elasticity of the ‘consultative role’ given to the Dublin government would certainly have been tested if the DUP had not noticed that staying out in the Stormont cold risked political pneumonia. Welcome back, guys. And can you now stop that grinning ninny Paul Givan from visiting Catholic schools and trying to do a latter-day version of Terence O’Neill’s photo-shoot opportunities with nuns.
It would appear that Irish unity now depends on either one’s remaining life span, the length of one’s arms or in Keir Starmer”s case, the ability to see the horizon.
I was watching an interesting program on American art last night from the first British settlers who were welcomed and then this degenerated to open hostility. At some treaty/meeting/conference a settlement was agreed and to cement the peace, a consignment of blankets were bestowed by the land thieves as a gesture. It was revealed that the blankets came from the cholera hospital and the disease laced items almost wiped the troublesome locals out. Anybody notice a 21st century parallel here?
“For Strategic reasons, some part of Ireland should remain within His Majesty’s Dominions”
1949 Memo by Cabinet Secretary Sir Norman Brooke, marked “noted” by Clem Attlee.
Attlee was every bit as Imperialist as Winston Churchill. The Welfare State was largely built
on the robbery of the vast Rubber resources of Malaya during the near Genocidal “Emergency”
unleashed there by Attlee. It was where the late, unlamented General Frank Kitson earned his spurs
and was a template for the American War on Vietnam.
During WWII the Britain’s RAF had a squadron in Suffolk equipped to drop Anthrax on
Ireland if the Germans made a landing there – a weapon they never dropped on the Continent.
The Irish were expendable, – Even “Paddy Finucane’s” family!
Starmer seems happy with current Genocide in Gaza.
The idea that Ireland is”free-loading” under a British or NATO umbreella is hogwash.
Ireland has one consistent enemy – British Government and its agents – including its Irish agents.
Hilary Benn may, or may not be as honourable as his father Tony, or Tony’s father.
The decision to leave the referendum at the whims of any British minister was just bad negotiating, pure and simple. Nothing we can do about that now of course, but the lie that unionists have to consent to Irish unity(?) has to be nailed. I see where you are coming from as far as the Tories are concerned and any Labour government would be preferable to that shower, but Starmer is an English politician and they never have Ireland’s interests are heart. On another note, if Jim Allister had been born fifty years earlier he would probably have been a minister in the unionist junta at Stormont. Shudder.
Lets just hope S.F support down south doesn’t slip any further, because nothing short of a republican led administration in Dublin is going to bring about a citizens assembly any time soon. Its only then that the illiterate Tories and Imperialist Labour administrations at Westminster can be guided back to school to be giving extra tuition about how to READ the Good Friday Agreement properly.
Very good jude free Palestine