Bumped off by Paisley-Learning about media operations

Really funny day last Tuesday. I turned up to Lyrath Hotel at lunchtime with Caoilfhionn and her friend Alan, because the Irish Hotels Federation wanted two kids to promote their great new initiative to provide decent healthy food for kids, as an alternative to the chips and sausages, chips and fish fingers etc. diet which has been the bain of all us parents' lives.

Dressed as I was for a gardening session at school, I was fairly shocked to deiscover that RTÉ wanted to talk to me as a parent. Anyway, we ploughed on, and all were happy with the short interview with the two kids and myself. Unfortunately, the start of the 6 o' clock news on Tuesday evening featured the breaking news that the 'Big Man' Ian Paisley had announced he was standing down as leader of the DUP. The end result of course was that he occupied half the Six One news and the 9 o' clock news and we got 'bumped off' as the journo's would say.

Try explaining that to an eleven year old. Her reply was 'That bloody Paisley!' Her late great-grandfather would be proud of her! Just for the record, here's the piece which made RTE's great News2Day, the kids news programme on The Den.

Breakthrough at last-Policing for Slow Learners

So on Sunday, Sinn Féin finally joined the rest of Northern Ireland community and acceted the legitimacy of the newly created Police Service of Northern Ireland (I couldn't resist this funny photoshop Adams family pic which came from a friend by the way!!)


Now hopefully the process of moving on with real life in Northern Ireland can come closer. It seems astonishing that it is almost ten years since we voted so overwhelmingly for the Good Friday Agreement. The party I support in Northern Ireland, the SDLP,got it right, as usual, on policing from the start, signing up to the local police authorities across the North, and encouraging nationalists and republicans to join the force.






Now the so-called Republican leadership have at last followed suit. It's now up to the DUP to deliver. There is little doubt that the words of Gerry Adams yesterday in unequivocally advising communities to go to the police in the event of horrific crimes being carried out in their communities are historic. They didn't include a call to ship the killers of Robert McCartney, whose proud and battling sisters are pictured here with Labour Party Deputy Leader, Liz MacManus, however. It's time Adams and co. got off the pot in this regard, and that the Short Strand community did the right thing and deliver justice to the McCartney family.


Having met many members of the DUP in the last year and a half, while I represented the Labour Party in peace talks with the party through the Glencree Centre for Reconciliation, I get the strong feeling that the DUP know the end-game has arrived. I hope that Ian Paisley will seize the chance to prove so many people wrong, and to join in leading Northern Ireland forward in democracy.


For my part, as a Connolly Republican Socialist, I will continue to strive for a United Ireland, based on tolerance, diversity, and equality, as will my party and our sister party the SDLP. That is a legitimate political ambition for all Republicans on this island, and we must reclaim that title from the 'Shinners'. For now however, I hope to see Ian Paisley as first Minister, and Martin McGuinness as Deputy First Minister, although even typing these words seems strange. Of couse I hope to see my former student leader colleague. Mark Durkan, replace McGuinness, and the SDLP rewarded by the electorate of the North for their unstinting support of peace and democracy (oh and happy 70th. birthday John Hume). Ansin beidh ár lá tioctha faoi dheireadh.