The Red Hand

I toyed with calling this No Surrender, but that might have been provocative; not that the Red Hand is immune from criticism, but its origins are older.


I've held back from saying much on Northern Ireland, not least because I'm not entirely temperate when I think about it - I broke lent within seconds of the second murder this week - and in reality I don't actually have much to say: I still can't stand Adams, never have; never will, who has not come out of this well, but I was surprised at McGuinness' use of traitor to describe the murderers.


What is more interesting - to me at least - is how atavistic the whole thing remains for those of us who aren't actually involved. Instinctively, and before reflection, I come out as a massive Tory (etymological note: not in the sense of the Irish, catholic origins of the word), Protestant leaning, Unionist (that's 1800, not 1707). In reality of course, I probably am protestant, just, but episcopal; I'm so disassociated with the Union, that I want to give Yorkshire independence, let alone Ulster. And, while I believe that the IRA are and always have been, in all and any of their incarnations, murderers, rebels and criminals, so are lots of groups, I get much less agitated about them.



I think it's to do with the party: the republicans hate Tories, and instinctively that means we hate them. There aren't actually that many good reasons for them to hate Conservatives (as opposed to the English more generally) on this issue: the partition of Ireland was a Lloyd George policy, Labour sent the army in in 1969, the criminalisation of the IRA prisoners a Labour decision in 1976 (even SF admit that), Tebbit gets some flak, but quite frankly, if any organisation paralysed my wife I would take their province apart and shoot anyone who harboured or supported the men who did it (note: this is not what we did). In reality, we - as a party - have a good record on the peace: Thatcher involved the Republic in 1985, and Major did the hard groundwork on the ceasefire. There are decisions where we look less good, but this is far from a disastrous story - it really means, Tories were in power for a long time.


Our position is more tricky, but then we've never liked rebels or the Irish more generally, and they did let down the loyalists down at the Boyne.