Word: irishness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...there were two surprises. Norman Tebbit, the Conservative Party chairman who had just led the Tories to victory, resigned as Minister Without Portfolio. Though no reason was given, he reportedly wanted to spend more time with his wife, who was badly injured during a 1984 bombing attack by the Irish Republican Army. Cecil Parkinson, who resigned in 1983 in the midst of a sex scandal (he had fathered his secretary's child), rejoined the Cabinet as Energy Secretary...
...government already has them. "We've run a miserable campaign," conceded a prime-ministerial colleague. One factor was the heavy security for the Prime Minister, the target of recent threats by the Irish Republican Army. She has been surrounded by plainclothes police in bulletproof vests, and her schedule has been kept secret until the last moment...
...partially subsidized by government, it needs a modest organization to back its play: the nerveless trigger finger of George Stone (Andy Garcia), like Capone, Italian; the accounting genius of wimpy-looking, stouthearted Oscar Wallace (Charles Martin Smith); and above all, the mentoring heart and long memory of the Irish cop, Jimmy Malone (Sean Connery). He is a weary, steady man, very clearly seen by an actor whose every gesture is wryly informed by the humorous, and uncynical knowledge of a lifetime...
...writing about the Anglo-Irish Agreement and its effect on Northern Ireland ((LETTERS, May 11)), Ian Paisley Jr. says the agreement "endangers the civil rights of citizens . . . of the United Kingdom ((in)) Northern Ireland." He maintains that democracy there "has ceased to exist." Paisley is wrong on both points. The agreement declares that Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic will never be reunified without Protestant consent. As for democracy, the Anglo-Irish Agreement was specifically designed to foster democracy by granting rights to the large Roman Catholic minority, which until then was powerless and had consistently been denied its rights...
Paisley discusses only one side of the Northern Ireland situation. He contends that "democracy has ceased to exist since the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985." The sad truth is that democracy has never existed in the province of Ulster. The Stormont government, prorogued in 1972, was the embodiment of a majority dictatorship, and as such officially tolerated and promoted various forms of discrimination, social and institutional, against the minority population. Gerrymandering, housing and job discrimination, police brutality and an incredibly repressive state-security apparatus were all consistent manifestations of the "democracy" whose passing Paisley laments. Perhaps he should follow...