Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Peter Hain's History Lesson
Peter Hain was on News 24 just now crowing about how "Tony Blair started off the Northern Irelan peace process with Mo Mowlam". Er, no, he didn't. It is arguable that Margaret Thatcher started it off but it is incontestable that John Major did. It is a disgrace that Tony Blair hasn't invited him to take part in the events surrounding the resumption of power sharing.
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35 comments:
Typical of Bliar, he will not share the stage with anyone else and hopes the public will think it,s all down to him.
As for Hain ?..
I agree with you on this one Iain, and can't understand why he didn't invite Major
Ken from glos says it all
" As for Hain...."
I accept that politicans will always try to take the credit for anything on earth sometimes, BUT I think that there are certain issues where it is important to give credit where credit is due.
I assume that as Tony Blair is looking for a legacy and Iraq is in flames; NHS worse; Education nothing special; devolution oh dear. The only thing Blair can claim as a legacy is Northern Ireland and he doesnt want to share it with anyone else.
What has been the greatest problem with Tony Blair is since about June 1997 people (and this must have started with him or his inner circle) have been talking about his legacy.
But you cant actually have a legacy unless you get off your ass and do something to get one!
Where does Hain buy that perma-tan finish?
As for Blair - it's his only 'legacy', and having got to power by ridiculing Major for the sleaze of that era, I don't suppose he would like others to be reminded of the sleaze factor now.
I am reminded of the time Major took Blair to Dunblane shortly after the shootings. It was the first time I had seen Blair on television. You would have thought it was Blair who was the PM.The way he positively basked in the public adulation and looked for the cameras left me in no doubt what we were in for.
No Tony won't share the limelight with anyone least of all his shadow.
If anyone seriously thinks that this 'power-sharing' arrangement will last more than the time it takes to cock a rifle then they really should have their bumps felt. Like all Blair 'achievements' it is a snare and a delusion; and I confidently predict that Norther Ireland will be reduced to a thuird-world province mired in sectarian civil war again with a couple of years. the lion does not lie down with the lamb; and while the figurehead 'leaders' in the slimy forms of paisely 9who is a shadow of his forme self) and McGuiness seek the limelight, and their ill-gotten places in the history books, the ordinary people of N. Ireland have no intention of letting their enemies get the better of them, let alone letting the nglish force this 'accommodation' on them.
Blair's achievement is precisely nothing: an empty gesture paid for by letting terrorists out of jail, putting killers into high office and all to get his cheesy grinning mig in the media. Like his 'dodgy dossier, the truth will out and in the meantime he deceives no-one of any intelligence at all.
GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
Blair and Hain's legacy in NI is to leave the polity dominated by two sets of gangsters having created the conditions where the UUP and SDLP and other more moderate parties were wiped out. So yes, that was started by the the idiot Mowlam. Some legacy.
Adolf Blair is whitewashing the past and rewriting history again.
As for his legacy, this is it:
http://conservativemindblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/blair-bans-hopscotch-onward-march-of.html
Heil Blair!
According to tessa jowell tony blair then sebastian coe won us the olympics.in his first speech blair ommited coe alltogether.labour is lies.only the moron minority (27%) thinK otherwise.the sexed up dossier will change this.
"It is a disgrace that Tony Blair hasn't invited him to take part in the events surrounding the resumption of power sharing."
Iain, how do you know he wasn't invited and declined to attend?
The "peace process" was actually started in 1974 when Willie Whitelaw invited Martin McGuinness around for tea and a chat.
It irks me that McGuinness , a terrorist ,is allowed to not only own but carry a handgun for his personal protection when law abiding mebers of the UK public are denied that right.
That decision was taken by Mo Mowlem.
If I were Northern Irish I'd want to join the other counties of Ulster and be a European Union region before Brown's economy collapses and Brown's state engulfs my remaining liberties.
blair has paid tribute to major
But Iain, didn't you get the memo?
According to the politburo, all history before 1997 has been declared nul and void. Nothing can be allowed to distract the loyal public's attention from the Dear Leader's achievements since Year Zero.
More seriously, although I don't hold Major in high regard, I do know he was a decent man.
As such, do you honestly think he'd want to have anything to do with the bunch of schysters, charlatans and incompetents currently in office? Even more, would he really want to be part of some NuLabour wankfest?
Personally I doubt it.
Major took an important step, but took nowhere near the kind of personal risk that Blair has in pursuing NI peace. I don't think a Conservative government could have achieved this, because their own unionist links were too strong, and the nationalists and republicans would never have trusted them.
It is inevitably a difficult situation with wounds on each side, but Blair, of whom I am no fan at all, has used all his political skills to make this work, and I pay tribute to him for that.
If only he'd been as wise with everything else.
How do you know he's not staying in for some Currie?
Someone used the c-word twice! I bet Iain Dale is really pissed off now!!!
Peter Hain has no sense of history. If he did he would be bothered about Zimbabwe now and of course he would be part of Ming Campbell's Yellow Peril. Rewriting history is just part of the job for Hain.
Didn't McGuiness admit firing the first shot on Bloody Sunday ?
Who says violence in pursuit of political ends doesn't pay, especially when met by appeasement by the other side?
I agree with those who imply that John Major is lucky (or sensible) to be out of it.
Getting the shooting and bombing to stop (or most of it), and keeping it stopped, has been an achievement. Landing up with an unsustainable power sharing executive between the two more extremist parties, with the mainstream parties in the middle more or less destroyed, is far from something to celebrate. Let's hope it lasts long enough to see Blair off the No 10 premises, but I wouldn't bet on it.
As for Hain, he is nauseating. Nothing new there then. What was it that happened to him in Putney during that difficult period for him after he left the Liberals and before establishing himself in the Labour Party?
Excuse me just a minute, but do we actually KNOW whether he invited Major or not? Reynolds was there.
"But you cant actually have a legacy unless you get off your ass and do something to get one!"
Unfortunately Blair did do this and ended up turning everything he touched into dust. Why can't we have a PM who just leaves us alone? At least Thatcher's legacy was about reducing the role of the state.
Ah so you noticed the deliberate snub to Major, Blair has no shame, nevr did!
1997 was Year 0 in NuLabour's spin...
Wasn't it Major that screwed up the peace process and the IRA had to remind him about it at Canary Wharf? Not his fault of course the UUP had him over a barrel. As any fule kno the peace process was started for real by JOHN HUME. You english always get Ulster wrong, doncha.
'c4' if Iain has an aversion to bad language then he'd probably know better than to invite comments on Peter Hain.
Iain: Do you have some proof that Major was snubbed? I think this highly unlikely myself.
As for the Bloody Sunday comment - what a day to be spinning that one.
Major did very little for the peace process. As for Maggie. She revitalize the IRA with the hunger strikers. The IRA were losing support Hume making progress. Then Maggie comes in bamm. Propaganda's victory and 13 more years of war. If she had given them the right to wear their own clothes. We wouldn't have the Shinners marching every year for Booby Sands and trying to tye them in with founding fathers/mothers of 1916.
Anglo-Irish agreement was not worth the paper it was written on.
As for Downing Street declaration not much in that. Hume had a far greater part to play then major. The IRA were losing alot of support was a reason why they brought a ceasefire.
Blair had an awfull lot to do with it. But the most credit goes to Mo .
Also I think kensort made a very good point. No one in NI forgets the full name of the conservative party. and that is a big issue.
Also Hain's move on water charges is why this happened. Clever move to get them to join together in hating him.
Blair paid tribute to John Major today (shame this was not mentioned by you). It is unlikely that there was no discussion with Major or his staff about an invite. I suspect, true to form, Major took the pragmatic and statesman like response.
I met Hain a couple of months ago. Nice man but a bit of a smug git who thinks he's funny!
A big part of what happened was the use of high ranking agents inside both sides. In the end, both the IRA and UVF et al were being at least partially controlled by Britich agents. Then they stopped.
Question for you - When did the policy of using agents who had commited major crimes start? This was the key - the crimes (including murder) made them above suspicion to their associates.
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