Jude Collins

Thursday 21 January 2010

Normalise yourself, please

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Have you heard them? As the noise of the media storm against Gerry Adams continues, little voices have begun to squeak up, advising anyone who will listen that were Gerry Adams to quit the stage, preferably taking Martin McGuinness with him although that might be asking too much, such a retiring action would move us all closer to ‘normal politics’. That is to say, unionism would be faced with a decent Sinn Fein, a non-contentious Sinn Fein, a Sinn Fein that looked and sounded much more like Fianna Fail. It'd have left behind its violent past.

Or to put it another way, wouldn't it be nice if Sinn Fein would change and engage in 'normal' politics'? Do what other ‘nationalist’ parties do and confine their nationalism/republicanism to an annual rant at Bodenstown. Wouldn't we all be so much better off? Unionists would have no problem shaking hands with them, we could all concentrate on jobs and education and health, and irrelevancies like the 5,000 British troops stationed here and that big MI5 centre on the shore of Belfast Lough and the fact that London still holds the real power levers for finance and, ahem, defence – all that would be set aside as the silly old out-dated set of distractions they are.

And here's a vision to rock your eyeballs: if all that happened, unionists might eventually think about learning Irish and playing Gaelic games. See? Just close your eyes and stop thinking 'Constitution' and start thinking 'Normal'. You know it makes sense.

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