Just Like Old Times
Commenter Suzie Flood has beaten me to it. There was plenty to blog about in yesterday's Republican Sinn Fein conference, including the Che Guevara like appearance of Richard Walsh, but I had to head off from the office soon after broadcasting the story so didn't get the chance to gather my thoughts here.
With the Belfast press pack crammed into the tiny back office at RSF's Falls Road office, it felt a bit like a scene from Citizen Smith or the Judean People's Front. However we were all well aware that, given this month's murders, this was no laughing matter.
Mr Walsh's script justifying the latest violence could have been taken word for word from something Gerry Adams or Martin McGuinness might have said 20, 30 or nearly 40 years ago. He was cross questioned about how he could presume to know the minds of the people of Ireland better than did the voters north and south who supported the Good Friday Agreement. He answered to the effect that the voters had been given a choice between peace and terrible war (it sounded like a reference back to Michael Collins and the Treaty) but had, in effect, been sold a pup.
In contrast to previous RSF conferences which have featured ageing southern figures like Ruairi O'Bradaigh, this one included young men wearing baseball hats and "Megadeath" woolie caps. They complained about police raids on their homes in Craigavon - one said the police had taken all his clothes leaving him with nothing to wear. Elsewhere in the building, but declining to be interviewed, was a young woman who had spent 11 days in Antrim Holding Centre being held by police investigating the recent murders.
At 27, Richard Walsh looked not much older than the youths sitting beside him, a point not lost on us rather more venerable hacks. But then Gerry Adams was only 23 when he was released from jail to talk to Willie Whitelaw. A sobering thought.
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