Comments on The Pensive Quill: The Laughter of Our Children

The most successful IRA campaign ever? I suppose t...

2011-03-08T14:03:18.085Z

The most successful IRA campaign ever? I suppose that would depend on how success is measured.
If it was to be measured against the intitial aims and objectives of the IRA campaign, well then it was an object failure.
However, if it is measured against the back drop of an ethno-conflict/equality issue, well then of course it was successful.
I always find the off their knees statements insulting, as for no longer being a second class citizen.
I could never get a job for years unless I was prepared to tell an interview panel, that I had been in prison because I was young and foolish.
Still pay over the odds for house insurance and life insurance .Suppose I should be grateful considering I have already had two policies terminated and this company only took us after they did a long and extensive check through our credit and insurance history.
Second class citizen, I was made to feel like something they scraped off their shoes.
We do have a thriving tour industry in our area. People pay money all day everyday to hear how us interface people live and how are martyrs in the memorial garden died.
Maybe, someday we will actually have a serious and comprehensive research study dedicated to finding out why an entire struggle could be re-packaged and sold.
Maybe, people like the narcissistic Brian Feeney will find out that often it is the jingle of money not apathy and than drowns out the truth.
Maybe, Adams and all those who bargained and sold will be exposed.
Doubt it though!

Thanks for an other excellent article Liam. I'...

2011-03-08T01:42:33.225Z

Thanks for an other excellent article Liam. I've passed on your last pieces on the GFA to a few different people and they've found them very interesting.
So essentially what's happened with SF (in the 6 counties anyway, they'd be anything to anyone down south) is they've come to the belief that the SDLP were right so they've stole their votes by moving towards the nationalist middle class, who previously wouldn't have touched them with a barge pole.

Great article for purposes of clarity but its asha...

2011-03-07T00:51:24.586Z

Great article for purposes of clarity but its ashame the writer feels obliged to have such along referenced list to comply with capitalist nit pickers who would claim ownership of the people's language.Nothing is original in our political and sociological discourse it is all borrowed on the basis of evolution. I'd like to thank Liam for his excellent work and article.!

If I may myself reference Wikipedia on Wolfe Tone, generally accepted as the father of Irish republicanism and to which the provisionals still claim allegiance; "The principles of the French Revolution were now being eagerly embraced in Ireland, especially among the Presbyterians of Ulster. Two months before Tone's essay, a meeting had been held in Belfast, where republican toasts had been drunk and a resolution in favour of the abolition of religious disqualifications gave the first sign of political sympathy between the Roman Catholics and the Protestant dissenters ("Whigs") of the north. "A Northern Whig" emphasized the growing breach between Whig patriots like Henry Flood and Henry Grattan, who aimed at Catholic emancipation and parliamentary reform without severing the tie to England, and those who desired a separate Irish republic. Tone expressed contempt for the constitution Grattan so triumphantly extorted from the British government in 1782; himself an Anglican, Tone urged co-operation between the different religions in Ireland as the only means of obtaining redress of Irish grievances.

One of the inscribed flagstones on the steps leading to the grave of Theobald Wolfe Tone
In October 1791 Tone converted these ideas into practical policy by founding, in conjunction with Thomas Russell (1767–1803), Napper Tandy and others, the Society of the United Irishmen. The original purpose of this society was no more than the formation of a political union between Roman Catholics and Protestants, with a view to obtaining a liberal measure of parliamentary reform. It was only when it was obvious that this was unattainable by constitutional methods that the majority of the members adopted the more uncompromising opinions which Wolfe Tone held from the first, and conspired to establish an Irish republic by armed rebellion.

Tone himself admitted that with him hatred of England had always been "rather an instinct than a principle", though until his views should become more generally accepted in Ireland he was prepared to work for reform as opposed to revolution. But he wanted to root out the popular respect for the names of Charlemont and Henry Grattan, transferring the leadership to more militant campaigners. Grattan was a reformer and a patriot without democratic ideas; Wolfe Tone was a revolutionary whose principles were drawn from the French Convention. Grattan's political philosophy was allied to that of Edmund Burke; Tone was a disciple of Georges Danton and Thomas Paine. Paine was a roommate of Tone's compatriot, "Citizen Lord" Edward FitzGerald, in Paris; and Paine's famous themes of the "rights of man" and "common sense" can be seen in the opening paragraph of the Declaration of the United Irishmen."

The provisionals could be respected I suppose, if they dropped the republican and Sinn Fein tag and called themselves, The Catholic Party or the Two State Party or the Peace people's Party or something like that !

The victory for the PRM lies not in the advancemen...

2011-03-06T22:52:13.293Z

The victory for the PRM lies not in the advancement of traditional republican objectives but rather in the reformation of the statlet to include catholic/nationalist interests within the British consitutional framework.

The Irish Question as defined by Desmond Greaves remains as a fundamental issue of conflict for future generations.

Well-documented and sensibly argued, Liam. Thanks ...

2011-03-06T20:45:28.056Z

Well-documented and sensibly argued, Liam. Thanks for a solid set of reflections from a wide variety of sources. It sums up a lot neatly.

The laughter at our writer's Is there anyone ...

2011-03-06T20:28:18.319Z

The laughter at our writer's

Is there anyone who liam does not
Quote- what about his own opinion's
whats the big secret

Does liam know that the p.s.n.i
does not have a G.A.A team- they have still not joined-

they kick a few o'neills balls about in front of picked reporters
who are to dumb to ask the p.s.n.i
the truth.