Not quiet on the Northern front

We've been finding ourselves stuck for blog-worthy material the last few days, notwithstanding the odd story here and there such as whether or not an elected head of state was spirited off to another continent and removed from his position in the process. To fill the Irish interest, we refer you to a couple of recent New York Times stories. Yesterday's NYT reported on the only really new twist in the seemingly perpetual impasse in Northern Ireland's peace process, namely the increased exasperation shown by the government in the Republic towards Sinn Fein and the IRA. In what Gerry Adams is trying to pass off as a par for the course event in say, the Temple Bar, four individuals removed an IRA dissident from a Belfast pub and were rudely interrupted by the police in the course of beating the dissident.

By the IRA's usual standards of deniability, their handiwork seemed somewhat visible in this case and the already creative interpretation of their ceasefire was stretched further. Hence the torrent of criticism in the Republic. But there's also an opportunistic element to the criticism, with the government belatedly realising that Sinn Fein stands to do quite well in elections in June. Incidentally the NYT describes these as municipal elections but also up for grabs are seats to the European Parliament, a mostly powerless but high-profile gravy train. Another sign that the peace process is going out of fashion was provided in the NYT's Sunday Book review, which contains this aside by reviewer Geoffrey Wheatcroft on Philip Stephens' book about Tony Blair:

In one chapter alone does Stephens himself lapse into something like uncritical approbation. He describes the 1998 agreement in Northern Ireland as a ''historic achievement,'' and implies that it was wholly admirable. To be sure, that is the conventional wisdom, but there is another view. When John Banville was asked about the ''peace process,'' the most distinguished Irish novelist and critic of his generation replied that ''those of us who have always thought of the I.R.A., and indeed Sinn Fein, as neofascist, are deeply worried by the kind of respectability they have won now in Dublin, London and Washington.''...

Stephens cites the complacent phrase British officials used about the ''constructive ambiguity'' behind the agreement, but what that really meant was that the position was misrepresented to both sides -- all too characteristically on Blair's part, his critics would say.

While this "constructive ambiguity" refers to things like the timeline for disarmament and the exact linkages between political parties and armed groups, it could also apply to the ever-present geographical ambiguity about Northern Ireland. Such as this line from yesterday's NYT article:

The cease-fires in Northern Ireland, whether of the republican paramilitaries who want Ulster to join the Irish Republic or their loyalist rivals who want to stay part of Britain, are notoriously flexible.

Get out your atlases and see whether you can make much sense of that sentence.