Clinton Gives Peace A Chance in Ireland

It has been said here and elsewhere, but it bears repeating: President Bill Clinton, fairly and unfairly maligned for all sorts of foreign policy mishaps, has helped win peace in a corner of the earth that has known intractable conflict for most of the millennium. Peace in Northern Ireland would be a stunning triumph for Read More

Did Vallone Praise Real I.R.A.’s Front in an April Speech?

A militant group that is being tied to the worst atrocity in Northern Ireland’s history received an official message of support and encouragement from New York’s City Council just four months ago.

Council Speaker Peter Vallone, currently a candidate for the Democratic nomination for Governor, presented a proclamation to leaders of a group calling itself Read More

Conor Cruise O’Brien-The Voice of Reason?

The fire that consumed three Catholic boys in Northern Ireland on July 12 was the same fire that took the lives of four black girls in an Alabama church more than 30 years ago. Hatred was its oxygen, bigotry its accelerant.

We Americans understand certain things about our society, so the Southern fire remains fixed Read More

After Adams’ Glamour, Hume Is the Real Thing

John Hume swept into town the other day to collect an award, to be congratulated for his long years of working for justice in Northern Ireland, and to raise the profile of the province’s Social Democrat and Labor Party, which he helped found a quarter-century ago. He traveled without entourage, without sycophantic Boswells, without celebrities Read More

City’s Irish Exiles Aren’t Thrilled

A ceramic portrait of Irish hunger-striker Bobby Sands hangs in the upstairs window of Hugh O’Lunney’s bar on West 43rd Street, his wan smile and political legacy looming large over the room in which some of New York’s Irish activists gathered to discuss the Belfast agreement announced in mid-April.

Sitting directly beneath the portrait of Read More

No Teacher’s Pet, D’Amato Barks Again

Alfonse D’Amato is running his mouth about schoolteachers again. He’s been attacking the teachers and their “liberal” union for months now, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to air an early re-election commercial with that same theme, and even inserting himself into the city’s mayoral campaign for a day or two.

This approach seems to Read More