My Articles to the Newspapers

Dynamic duo’ are now finally together

How things have changed!

The two men who former chair of the peace talks, US Senator George Mitchell, described exactly a decade ago as representing “the twin demons of Northern Ireland – violence and intransigence – which feed off each other in a deadly ritual in which most of the victims are innocent,” have now decided to sit down in government together.

There was, of course, an extremely serious point to George Mitchell’s description of the political extremes. He was suggesting very strongly that Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley together represented the combined causes of the North’s problems. In other words they were a dynamic duo responsible for the worst excesses of the Troubles.

George Mitchell was right, of course. Any reasonably man will believe that Adams’ violence and Paisley’s intransigence at the very least extended the Troubles by as much as twenty years.

So it is fitting and appropriate that we have them getting together now. I note that they didn’t use their first press gathering to admit the damage that they caused together. Perhaps if they now spent a moment forgetting the list of grievances they have about each other and see that together they subjected the people of the North to pain and suffering on an outrageous scale.

If just for one moment they acted like adults and realized that without them and the endless list of hurts they carry without admitting any blame the North’s problems might have resolved themselves in, say, 1974 at Sunningdale. Personally, I would go further and suggest that the Troubles were not inevitable at all.

But I believe that it is now for Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams to stand up and together admit that the combined effect of their actions led directly to thousands of deaths and injuries. Will they in a spirit of humility now repent of their pasts and put their agreement on a truly Christian footing. Or has anything really changed?

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*John O’Connell is Derry-based author.

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