Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson was assassinated by IRA gunmen 100 years ago and then all but forgotten
On 22 June 1922 Sir Henry Wilson, an army field marshal turned MP, unveiled a plaque to railway employees who had died in the first world war before returning to his stately home in Belgravia, central London.
He was a distinctive figure – tall, in uniform, with a facial scar that had earned him a nickname as the “ugliest man in the British army”.
Continue reading...Feared backlash fails to emerge despite leading Conservative warning of international law breach
Ministers believe they have largely muted Conservative opposition to the Northern Ireland protocol bill, even though one leading Conservative critic has said no MP should be voting for a breach of international law.
Leading opponents of Boris Johnson held off from publicly rejecting the legislation after it was published, despite the government’s fears beforehand that it would provoke a backlash.
Continue reading...The UK government hopes a little-known legal principle will overturn parts of the post-Brexit agreement
In justifying its attempt to unilaterally overturn parts of the post-Brexit agreement with the EU, the UK government has invoked a little-known legal principle known as the “doctrine of necessity”. The loophole is allowed by the UN’s International Law Commission to be used by a state facing “grave and imminent peril”.
But the government’s ex-legal adviser Jonathan Jones said the EU would find the use of the doctrine “completely unpersuasive”.
Continue reading...Court of appeal judges have rejected a last-ditch legal bid to block a flight due to relocate asylum seekers to Rwanda on Tuesday
Q: Your Northern Ireland protocol plan is holed below the water line because it has so much opposition in your party, isn’t it?
Johnson says the government needs to resolve the problems with the protocol.
Continue reading...Move could add to Europe’s travel problems, although airline does not expect widespread disruption
Cabin crew working for Ryanair in Spain have voted to hold six days of strikes at the end of June and early July, potentially adding to the disruption affecting air travel across Europe.
The Spanish-based staff in the USO and SITCPLA unions will walk out for two three-day strikes from 24 June to 26 June and 30 June to 2 July.
Continue reading...An Cailín Ciúin, as it is known in Irish, has earned more than €600,000 since its release last month
An Irish-language film has shattered box office records in Ireland and the UK and become a standard-bearer for a language seldom seen on the big screen.
The Quiet Girl has astonished the industry by quadrupling the previous record for an Irish language film, and by last week earning more than €610,000 (£518,000) since its release in mid-May.
Continue reading...Tory tensions high over risk of illegality in imminent bill to improve trade between Northern Ireland and rest of UK
Boris Johnson is being warned that he will repeat the mistakes of Partygate by backing “rule-breaking over the rule of law”, when he publishes plans on Monday that are expected to prompt a new Tory rebellion over Brexit.
Frantic legal and political negotiations have been taking place this week among Johnson, his cabinet and MPs in advance of the government’s bill designed to improve trade between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. The legislation will be published on Monday.
Continue reading...Draft legislation to be issued Monday, as Keir Starmer promises a Labour government would repeal law if it passes
Legislation to disapply parts of the Northern Ireland protocol will be published next week, but senior government sources acknowledge it is going to be a “difficult” process to get it through parliament.
The new laws are aimed at unilaterally changing parts of the protocol to make trade easier between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, but critics say overriding the post-Brexit treaty could contravene international law.
Continue reading...Fr Pat Collins says there is urgent need for ‘deliverance ministry’ amid ‘crisis of meaning’ in Ireland
The appeal for help sounds like it was channelled from the TV show Stranger Things. “Exorcist: trained teams needed in parishes to fight evil spirits.”
It is, however, the splash headline in this week’s Irish Catholic, Ireland’s biggest-selling religious newspaper.
Continue reading...Airline accused of discrimination after it introduces test due to ‘high prevalence of fraudulent passports’
Ryanair is facing accusations of racial discrimination after forcing South Africans to take a test in Afrikaans before boarding flights home from the UK and Europe.
The budget airline, which claimed the “simple questionnaire” was part of efforts to tackle fraudulent South African passport holders, is facing criticism for conducting the general knowledge test in a language that is the third most used in the country and had a controversial role in the oppression of black citizens during apartheid.
Continue reading...Former Brexit negotiator criticises Irish government’s focus on ‘all-island’ economy
Boris Johnson’s former Brexit negotiator David Frost has said the “weakness” of the UK’s position shaped the negotiations for the Northern Ireland protocol but blamed a lack of pragmatism in the EU’s approach for the current difficulties.
Frost said the deal he negotiated while in Johnson’s government would have run smoothly only if it had never been fully applied by the EU.
Continue reading...Gardaí confirm body of woman in her 40s has been found after search involving Irish naval service dive team
A woman in her 40s has died and two children are in hospital after a car plunged into a river in Ireland.
The incident happened at about 8.45pm on Friday, when the vehicle the three were travelling in entered the River Lee at Kennedy Quay in Cork city.
Continue reading...Digital wizardry and academic sleuthing have helped recreate a cultural treasure severely damaged in the conflict in 1922
In June 1922, the opening battle of Ireland’s civil war destroyed one of Europe’s great archives in a historic calamity that reduced seven centuries of documents and manuscripts to ash and dust.
Once the envy of scholars around the world, the Public Record Office at the Four Courts in Dublin, was a repository of documents dating from medieval times, and packed into a six-storey building by the River Liffey. It was obliterated when troops of the fledgling Irish state bombarded former comrades who were hunkered down at the site as part of a rebellion by hardline republicans against peace with Britain.
Continue reading...Micheál Martin visits Belfast to try to break deadlock over DUP’s opposition to Brexit protocol
Ireland’s taoiseach has said it is unacceptable for one party in Northern Ireland to block others from taking power, as he visited Belfast to try to break the deadlock over the Brexit protocol and power-sharing at Stormont.
After meetings with party leaders, Micheál Martin said the Northern Ireland assembly and executive should be formed while negotiations continued between the UK government and the EU over the protocol. “Our view is there should be parallel discussions,” he said as he urged the DUP to abandon its decision not to return to power-sharing until “decisive action” was taken over reforms to Northern Ireland’s Brexit arrangements.
Earlier he said it was “unheard of in a democratic world” that a parliament could not convene after an election. “We can’t have a situation where one political party determines that the other political parties can’t convene in a parliament,” he said.
Aidan Harte was thrilled to be asked to make a statue of a púca, a mythological mischievous spirit, but then his troubles began
In Irish mythology, a púca is a mischievous, shapeshifting spirit that can take the form of a horse and entice unwary travellers on to its back for a wild ride.
Aidan Harte knows how that feels. Eighteen months ago the sculptor was commissioned to create a 2-metre tall bronze statue of a púca for the town square in Ennistymon, County Clare.
Continue reading...Man held liable for the Omagh bombing, is due to face charges related to weapons smuggling for the Real IRA
The man found civilly liable for the 1998 Omagh bombing in which 29 people were killed has been extradited to Lithuania after a lengthy legal process.
The Irish supreme court ruled last week that Liam Campbell could be extradited to the Baltic country in relation to offences of smuggling, the possession of firearms and terrorism.
Continue reading...Latest updates: Maroš Šefčovič responds to Truss, saying EU keen to reach a settlement but stresses UK actions raise ‘significant concerns’
In the Commons the government chief whip, Chris Heaton-Harris, has just moved the writ for two forthcoming byelections - in Wakefield, and in Tiverton and Honiton.
Both byelections are expected to be held on Thursday 23 June - the sixth anniversary of the Brexit referendum.
Under pressure from some Conservative MPs, some of whom have been threatening to write letters of no confidence in Boris Johnson unless they get their way, ministers have retreated from banning “Buy One Get One Free” deals and from imposing a watershed of 9pm on junk food advertising. While some measures, such as rules on the positioning of unhealthy foods by retailers, will still go ahead in October, this U-turn adds to the long history of failed obesity strategies.
Humans evolved, when food was scarce, to indulge in calorie-dense foods if the opportunity arose. Now, the abundance of food and its particularly highly processed nature, which means we go on eating for a long time before feeling full, leads us to eat a lot of the wrong things. Food companies have an overwhelming incentive to design products that lead us ever further down this chemically induced addiction to foods that make us overweight, more prone to disease, and less able to work and enjoy life to the full. This is not freedom ...
Freedom is, most crucially, being free from oppression, violence or discrimination. But it is also the freedom of a child to skip and somersault; of an adult to enjoy running down a country lane or in a city park; of an old person to keep their quality of life until their final days ... These are the freedoms being denied to vast numbers of people who are the victims, not the free agents, in a system that wants to fill them up with salt, sugar and saturated fat.
It is therefore a terrible error to associate conservatism with a reluctance to protect people from their natural appetites being abused, in an industrial age for which they were not designed. If we could liberate more people from that fate, they could enjoy greater personal freedom and have some chance of a lighter tax burden.
MPs who have pressed, seemingly successfully, for the dilution of the obesity strategy are profoundly mistaken. They are acquiescing in a future of higher dependence, greater costs, reduced lifestyle choice and endless pain. For the government to give in to them is intellectually shallow, politically weak and morally reprehensible.
Continue reading...Archie Norman backs UK plans to scrap parts of protocol, saying lorries require ‘700 pages of documents’
The chairman of Marks & Spencer has backed government plans to override parts of the Northern Ireland protocol, saying that some food exported south of the border now requires 700 pages of customs documents, partly written in Latin.
Archie Norman, a former Conservative MP, called on the UK government and EU to come to an agreement, saying the rules for sending food between them were “highly bureaucratic and pretty pointless” given that British food standards were in line with or higher than those of Brussels.
Continue reading...Latest updates: UK prime minister meets Sinn Féin and DUP as Mary Lou McDonald suggests forming Stormont assembly is not UK government priority
This is from my colleague Jennifer Rankin in Brussels on the UK government’s mixed messaging over the Northern Ireland protocol.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin and Sinn Féin’s leader in Northern Ireland, Michelle O’Neill, have said they recognise there are “serious issues” in relation to the implementation of the Brexit protocol that Boris Johnson is planning to override in part.
They expressed serious concern about possible unilateral moves on the protocol by the British government, which would have a destabilising impact on Northern Ireland.
They recognised that there are genuine issues regarding aspects of the implementation of the protocol but these can be taken forward in the context of EU-UK discussions.
Continue reading...Foreign minister criticises ‘sabre-rattling’ from UK amid signs British rhetoric is softening over Northern Ireland protocol
Plans to shred parts of the Northern Ireland protocol “would send headlines around the world” that the UK is prepared to break treaties, Ireland’s foreign minister has said, as a British cabinet minister insisted the UK did not intend to break the law.
The business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, said the UK had “the right to act in a sovereign way” and to “reopen or re-examine the protocol” but denied the actions would constitute a breach of international law.
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