Tag: Irish nationalism

Martin McGuinness, Northern Ireland's deputy first minister, resigned in protest and subsequent elections saw his Irish nationalists Sinn Fein party almost win power. As the UK government's ranking official on issues related to Northern Ireland, Bradley has been tasked with leading the efforts to restore power-sharing to the region. On Friday, politicians in Northern Ireland reacted with dismay to Bradley's published remarks, accusing her of adding to the troubled atmosphere of the region's politics. "We are not surprised that a British government minister did not understand the intricacies of politics here in the North," Colum Eastwood, leader of the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party, told Al Jazeera. "The British and Irish governments, as co-guarantors of the Good Friday Agreement, need to meet urgently to agree a package of legislation to get Stormont back up and running. Border concerns The implementation of 1998's Good Friday Agreement requires cooperation from the British and Irish governments. This week, the Irish government announced they would seek a separate agreement with the European Union on the status of the border to avoid further delay in agreeing its form. In the case of a "hard Brexit", no agreement would be reached and a presumptive "hard border" would return - along with checkpoints, as was effectively the case throughout the Troubles from the 1960s until the Good Friday Agreement 20 years ago, and vastly increased waiting times for cross-border trade. In Northern Ireland the issue of amnesty for the Troubles is a controversial one: bloodshed was not one-sided and the legacy of violence is inherently complex. Her office did not respond to a request for comment.