ballyshannon, donegal, irish newspapers online, ireland, irish history, irish literature, irish famine
 
vindicator.ca - Linking Canada and Ireland vindicator.ca - Linking Canada and Ireland
  
 

Prophetic Words

"This house [Stormont] is not going to determine when partition will end. The Irish people and Westminster will determine that question and when the hour comes they will not give a tinker's curse what you [the Unionist Government] think about it."

This prophetic statement was made by Cahir Healy, M.P., Secretary to the Anti-Partition League, speaking in debate in Stormont in 1949. (see Northern Ireland Parliamentary Debates (Hansard) House of Commons vol.33, col. 1379.)

What brings this statement to public attention in 2003 are the latest developments surrounding the six county statelet of Northern Ireland. Much has happened there since the days of the Anti-Partition League.

Its parliament was abolished in 1972. Contingents of the British Armed Forces patrolled the streets of Belfast. Army observation towers were erected throughout the countryside. Helicopters were in daily use for reconnaissance and aerial surveillance. In the ensuing years more than 3,000 people were killed, thousands injured, and hundreds of thousands suffered mental and physical hardships frequently associated with totalitarian regimes of dictators and ruthless ideologues.

Good Friday, 1998, saw the re-establishment of a parliamentary institution at Stormont. Successive walk-outs by Unionists, frustrated at the growth of democracy which curbed what they took to be their inherited right to rule, led to the re-institution of direct rule by Westminster, not once but twice, in a period of five years.

In March, 2003, a communiqué was issued following another of the long series of meetings involving consultations with all relevant political parties, chaired by British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, setting a date for new elections to the Stormont Parliament.

David Trimble, the main Unionist leader, walked out in the middle of the two-day meeting, whereupon Blair and Ahern drew up a timetable for the resolution of many of the issues confronting not only the political parties but the English and Irish peoples.

Whether that timetable will be met, only time will tell. But time is running out for what was once hailed as "a Protestant parliament for a Protestant people".

"This house [Stormont] is not going to determine when partition will end. The Irish people and Westminster will determine that question and when the hour comes they will not give a tinker's curse what you [the Unionist Government] think about it."

Walking out is not a policy. It is blind folly leaving the field, in Cahir Healy's prophetic words, to "the Irish people and Westminster."

--30--


Home | About | Canadian Vindicator | Literature | Gallery | History