Three Thousand Versts of Loneliness

Sinn Fein held their annual conference in Dublin last weekend. The venue reflects the party’s nominal all-Ireland status, although Fergus Finlay in the Irish Examiner argues that Sinn Fein are becoming increasingly redundant in the Republic of Ireland, whilst Alex Kane points out that the party's strategic failures have ensured that they are operating institutionally within the context of a stronger Union and a more robust Northern Ireland . These analyses have merit. Fianna Fail is often cited as the precedent for violent republicanism developing to become a dominant political force, with the assumption being made that SF’s rise will continue along a similar path. However Ireland is a considerably different place, both north and south, from the island in which Fianna Fail affected that rise. It is possible that in the absence of the carrot of credible practical policies, rather than Sinn Fein’s violent past becoming less of a disincentive for voters, as the party’s previous ...

Dmitry Medvedev was 25 when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. He was only 19 when Mikhail Gorbachev came to power and introduced Glasnost and Perestroika (openness and restructuring), the twin pillars of reform which were to transform Russia. The 42 year old, who will become the President of the Russian Federation in May, will be in many respects the first genuinely post-Soviet leader that Russia has experienced. In the wake of Medvedev’s election victory yesterday, in which he appears to have claimed in the region of two thirds of the vote, speculation has re-emerged as to whether the outgoing President, Vladimir Putin, who will become Medvedev’s Prime Minister, will retain the bulk of political influence in Russia. Although the incoming President has indicated that he will work closely with Putin and continue to follow a similar policy course, at yesterday’s rally in Red Square he reiterated that he would exercise his constitutional right to formulate foreign policy. Gordon Bro...

I was watching the local news earlier in the week and it covered a story about an aggrieved woman who was being evicted from her house to enable an extension to the runway at Derry City Airport. She tearfully explained the extent of the injustice which had been dealt her; casting around for a comparison for her predicament, she cited one of a series of religious wars fought throughout Europe in the mid seventeenth century. “It’s just like Cromwell” she proclaimed. This woman is not atypical and nor did it seem likely that she was a scholar of that period of history. In Northern Ireland it seems fairly unexceptional for someone to invoke a perceived hurt from 350 years previous to exemplify the unfairness of a local spat over compulsory purchase. Bearing this in mind, it is questionable whether we really need a museum to pour over the details and complexities of our recent Troubles. That said, not all the ideas being floated by the Healing Through Remembering group actually in...

In countering the more hysterical commentary about perceived Russian tyranny, I am sometimes aware that it might appear that I do not want the country to be more free or democratic. That is assuredly not the case. I simply think that the best way in which to achieve such an outcome is not to brow-beat and demonise Russia, nor is it the display of flagrant hypocrisy and double-think in dealings with the Kremlin. I do not, for example, think it is helpful to lecture Russia about intervention in their neighbours’ affairs, whilst simultaneously intervening most blatantly and directly in the affairs of a great many countries around the world. I do not believe it is reasonable to invoke international law to denounce separatist conflicts in Georgia (for example) whilst concurrently condemning Russia for invoking international law to denounce Kosovo’s declaration of independence. I do not consider reasonable demonising Russia for a failure to extradite Andrei Lugovoi, whilst reserving the ...

As Russia goes to the polls on Sunday, conflicting messages are issuing from pro western opposition within the country. On one hand we are told that the elections are a charade and that the new president will not be receiving a legitimate mandate and on the other we are told that Russians should not put store in Medvedev’s liberal credentials. He is trying to trick those who favour liberal democracy into backing him. There is a fundamental inconsistency between these lines of argument. If Medvedev needs to win the backing of the Russian electorate, by persuading them that his policies are one thing or the other, if he feels a compulsion to present his beliefs in the language of democracy and rationalise them by reference to concepts such as freedom and the rule of law, then Russia is not in the clutches of autocracy or dictatorship. Whilst elections may not be free and fair and whilst pluralism may be more an illusion than a reality, the elections do have an importance in Russia a...

The argument against the Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland on this blog has thus far been based on the stark fact that we do not need such a bill. Human rights in Northern Ireland are already protected under UK law by the Human Rights Act and the European Convention of Human Rights. No advocate of a bill has yet been able to advance any concrete suggestions as to what it might contain and which additional rights Northern Ireland actually needs. If the first detail to emerge from the BoR Forum is anything to go by, what we need is to lift the age of criminal responsibility to 16 and then to 18 . Think about this for a moment. The implication is that a 17 year old should not be held criminally responsible for theft, rape or even murder. There may be an argument that the current age of criminal responsibility is set too low, at 10 years old, but to suggest that a 15 year old, or indeed even a 16 year old, is not capable of understanding the seriousness of their actions is not jus...

“Radical unionist” Dr John Coulter is certainly an unusual creature. Indeed to ascribe to him his own label, his “revolutionary unionism” consists mainly of advocating a united Ireland. As you can imagine his take on unionism tends to go down best with nationalists, if they are prepared to overlook the rather unpleasant supremacist stuff which provides the seasoning for Coulter’s singular dish of commentary. Thus Coulter is a regular in the Blanket and his latest musings take as a jumping off point, the death of IRA hunger striker Brendan Hughes. One of the aspects of Coulter’s take on unionism, with which nationalists will find themselves most comfortable, is the manner in which he uses this term, not primarily as a label of political belief, but rather as ethnic or communal shorthand. And it is through this prism of ethnic or communal group interests that Coulter’s arguments are filtered. The reason he advocates a united Ireland is because that polity might “permanently unite U...