The speed with which the government propitiated republican opinion since last week’s so-called declaration of peace by the IRA suggests a prepared strategy. Within days of this palpably insincere protestation of peace and goodwill the watchtowers were razed in areas effectively owned by the IRA. Three thousand home service troops of the Royal Irish Regiment were told they would be disbanded. Firm promises were given to Sinn Fein that, once devolved government is restored, they could have carte blanche to destroy Northern Ireland’s superlative secondary education system — and no doubt poison the minds of the next generation of Ulster men and women against any idea of Britishness. When republicans and their accomplices in the British government tell Unionists that this beneficent act by the IRA will benefit all of them, it is hard to know whether to laugh or cry. The programme set in train by the Prime Minister — who would like us to think he has cracked the centuries-old problem of Ulster — is one destined to eradicate British influence in the province, against the democratic wishes of the majority of the people there — and without much support, indeed, from the Republic itself, where disgust at the IRA is more pronounced these days than in Britain.
The only pleasure one can take from all this is the prospect of the confrontations that must now follow between the putative First Minister in any devolved assembly, the Reverend Dr Ian Paisley, and the part-time Northern Ireland Secretary, Mr Peter Hain — who is also Secretary of State for Wales.
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