Govt. “Lost Control”
The Tory spokesman for Northern Ireland, Lord Glentoran, told the British House of Lords on July 23 that the British government had “lost control” of the political situation in Northern Ireland.
Of particular concern to observers of the volatile Northern Ireland political scene is the startlingly accelerated draw-down of troop levels and the closure of British military bases in the country since the Good Friday “peace” agreement was concluded in April 1998. Troop levels are at their lowest for 30 years, with 25 army bases closed or demolished since the agreement was signed.
The reduction of security in Northern Ireland is also being aggravated by the unseemly loss of nearly 1000 police officers over the first half of this year due to so-called police reforms. These reductions are just playing into the hands of the antagonists on both sides of the Irish dispute. As a weak, inept government in London sticks its head in the sand, the gun-runners and drug peddlers run rampant, and the Irish Republican Army (ira) regroups and deploys its murderous personnel in key locations, ready to mount their historic carnage at the first indication that England’s leadership will not bow to their will.
No guns have been handed over in Northern Ireland. There is simply no basis for enduring peace between the Catholics and Protestants in this country. The caving-in by socialist do-gooder “leaders” to the whims of Sinn Fein-ira leaders Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, neither of them having ever renounced their terrorist leanings, has now produced an untenable situation in this strife-torn patch of the emerald isle.
Conservative Upper House member Lord Tebbit was scathing in his condemnation of the Blair government’s collusion with Sinn Fein-ira to oust Britain from Northern Ireland. In a government debate on the Northern Ireland situation, he declared of Blair’s government, “Their objective is precisely the same as that of Sinn Fein-ira, it is a united Ireland under the rule of Dublin by what is grandly called consent. Consent of a people left without an adequate police force at the mercy of a terrorist army which has not been required to give up a single one of its weapons” (Press Association, July 24).
