Wee bits of colour instead of cause and effect

What is it about mainstream media that they get so upset at the very thought of the words ‘reunited Ireland’? I watched Prime Time’s special programmes on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, and a more hopelessly apolitical programme you’d be hard-pressed to find. The ‘men of violence’ = IRA = Sinn Fein.  No attempt to explain why there should be such an eruption of violence among so many working-class Catholics. No attempt to explain the goals of the IRA other than the spilling of as much blood as possible. No attempt to measure British and unionist contributions to the conflict.

Likewise in an article by Fr Seamus Murphy of Loyola on 1916 and after, and 1969 and after, in today’s Irish Times.. “The real issue since 1912, which had never gone away, was to find a way for nationalists and unionists to live together”. Is Fr Murphy a card-carrying member of the Alliance Party? The real issue is why a north-eastern group of unionists should continue to block Irish unification and independence. Yes of course it’s a good thing for ‘nationalists and unionists to live together’ – in a democratic, equality-based state called Ireland.

Enough with the grief of Bertie Ahern on the death of his mother. Enough with the massive patience of Senator Mitchell with the representatives at the lead-up to the GFA. Please oh please, and on my knees, I beg you: stop treating the Troubles as a mass psychosis that gripped northern Catholics for thirty years and then vanished. And stop giving us little gobbets of personality traits from the GFA talks instead of the causes of the conflict and sensible steps towards its resolution, and what made them sensible.