Three Thousand Versts of Loneliness

This column appeared first in the News Letter, Friday 21st July 2017. It’s a pungent irony that, in Northern Ireland, the political movement that tried to murder its way out of the UK uses words like ‘equality’, ‘rights’ and ‘respect’ incessantly. It’s even more ironic that Sinn Fein has been allowed to subvert these terms relatively unchallenged, while so many people, particularly the young and naive, have been taken in by its trickery. When republicans talk about ‘equality’, they’re not demanding equal treatment under the law, or an equal opportunity to work, or equal access to benefits and a home, or even freedom from discrimination, because all those things are guaranteed already by some of the most stringent legislation in the western world. Instead, Sinn Fein’s idea of equality is a pretext to attack Northern Ireland’s place in the UK. In Shinner-speak, any outward symbol of the province’s Britishness becomes a sign of inequality and the institutions and emblems ...