The Hidden Agenda

No surprise to me that the talks at St. Andrew's in Scotland have fallen apart. Sooner or later, the DUP and Ian Paisley would toss out another roadblock on the path to peace, and so they did. The whole issue of when Sinn Fein would recognize the Police Service, whether it would be now or later, became such an enormous stumbling block that the DUP contingent had to back up, all the way back to the starting gate.

If it isn't one thing it's another with the DUP, so determined are they to hold on to every speck of power that they can. Underlying all that they do is a deep fear, that London will abandon them and the six counties will be reunited with the rest, a nation once again, a unified country with Dublin as its capital.

Gerry Adams has never made any bones about his intentions to see Ireland unified, the position of the Shinners back during the civil war that followed the Easter Rising. In fact, he will soon go to the European Union and ask ever so nicely for some funds, tax breaks and exemptions from a few rules so that he can get the EU to put their stamp of approval on a bid to promote Irish reunification.

Sinn Fein will be looking for some political support in Brussels as well, to get the EU behind their drive to bring all of Ulster into the fold. They'll start small, of course, by promoting an all-island economy while demonstrating how partition has created pockets of misery along the border. Then there's that dependence on public funding that is keeping the north going. Without handouts from London, living in the north of Ireland would be Third-World poor, and the EU really should be pushing for reunification to make life better for those who live in that tiny corner of the island.

The pundits have found a precedent for all their demands, citing the situation in Germany in the '90's when the wall came down. And so, with 300 million euro of European Parliament funding and the approval of the EU, Sinn Fein is looking to tear down another type of wall, one that is made of sectarian hatred and bigotry. Look to France to be in favor of it. They helped us in our revolutionary war, didn't they? And they still don't like England any better now than they did then.