Dev's party returning North?
Via Slugger comes word that the perennial rumbling within Fianna Fáil about organising in Northern Ireland is coming to the fore again, this time with rumour that FF will try to start a society at Queen's. One wonders how such news will go down in the parts of the press that fawned over Trinity's Young Unionist Society a few years ago (a project brought to us by the same coterie of crypto-Unionists that run the ridiculous Reform Movement, whose publicly-admitted patrons we seem to recall number Ruth Dudley Edwards, Bruce Arnold and John Bruton amongst them).
FF organising again up North is a subject that arouses controversy similar to that with the UK Tories and Labour Party doing same - namely stepping on the toes of (and dividing the vote for) the respective local political allies such as the SDLP or UUP. While enrolling as an individual member of the Soldiers of Destiny in the North is now permitted, establishing cumainn and running candidates is still a long way off - presuming that the SDLP can meantime manage to survive the Provo electoral challenge, that is. But the establishment of a Fianna Fáil cumann within QUB is the first real step along such a path.
(As an aside, we recall Wexford Fianna Fáiler Malcolm Byrne - the subject of some attention recently - as being one of the loudest voices within the party to organise immediately in the six counties.)
p.s. Explaining the title. De Valera was a Stormont MP for South Down (abstentionist, of course) from 1921-29 and 1933-37, and was once arrested by the Unionist regime for straying north of the border. More on this little-known tidbit here.
FF organising again up North is a subject that arouses controversy similar to that with the UK Tories and Labour Party doing same - namely stepping on the toes of (and dividing the vote for) the respective local political allies such as the SDLP or UUP. While enrolling as an individual member of the Soldiers of Destiny in the North is now permitted, establishing cumainn and running candidates is still a long way off - presuming that the SDLP can meantime manage to survive the Provo electoral challenge, that is. But the establishment of a Fianna Fáil cumann within QUB is the first real step along such a path.
(As an aside, we recall Wexford Fianna Fáiler Malcolm Byrne - the subject of some attention recently - as being one of the loudest voices within the party to organise immediately in the six counties.)
p.s. Explaining the title. De Valera was a Stormont MP for South Down (abstentionist, of course) from 1921-29 and 1933-37, and was once arrested by the Unionist regime for straying north of the border. More on this little-known tidbit here.
| Permalink 
|
