A Tangled Web

The Millar's Tale



Frank Millar, in the Irish Times, has provided a useful analysis on the predicted course of events expected to revive the odious Belfast Agreement. It is especially useful coming, as it does, from a Southern perspective. Ulster's pro-Union majority, and those of us on the British mainland who are fully committed to the Union and its fundamental principles, will doubtless be witness to an over-egged media spectacle come the autumn, as democratic parties and governments alike further debase their integrity by treating with unrepentant IRA terror.



Millar's piece is very revealing, but misses the centripetal raison d'etre of the entire 'peace process' project. Thus, when he says: 'the real danger for the DUP is that it might not yet sufficiently grasp the nature of this "process" or Sinn Fein's mastery of it...' he ignores, deliberately or otherwise, the inescapable conclusion that the whole process is specifically designed to act as an incremental appeasement process to ultimately deliver Irish republican objectives. It is like presenting Carol Vorderman with a paper on algebraic fractions, and then marvelling at her ability to decipher them: the paper is tailored to suit her virtuosity at mathematics.



Simultaneously, Millar also lists polling evidence indicative of widespread contentment with Direct Rule. Therefore, if the 'peace process' is simply a political burlesque show designed not only to appease the constitutional aims of violent Irish separatists, but to amplify their chimeric 'democratic' credentials, why is the DUP even considering entering any process this side of total IRA decommissioning, disbandment, punishment, atonement and defeat? There would be no political downside to maintaining firm principles, and there is no discernible appetite for a return to devolution from the broad Ulster populace. I do not believe this DUP rush has anything to do with a fear of an imposed solution. Had the sovereign UK government of the day wished to impose any dilution of Northern Ireland's constitutional position - risking the real possibility of massive social instability - it would have done so already. No, I suspect the reason for honeyed intimation from the DUP has far more to do with crowing the career aspirations of its MLA's, than it has in constitutional sustainability.