Category Archives: General

Nobody can deny that Michelle O’Neill’s elevation was an historic moment

Posted on Tuesday, 6 February, 2024 by andypollak

Nobody can deny that the installation of Michelle O’Neill as the first nationalist First Minister of Northern Ireland last Saturday was an historic moment. For a statelet that was set up over a century ago specifically to ensure that NI … Continue reading →

Posted in General, Northern Ireland, Sinn Fein | 1 Comment

A glimpse into the strange, secretive party that stands on the brink of power in Ireland

Posted on Monday, 8 January, 2024 by andypollak

Over the Christmas holidays I read The Long Game: Inside Sinn Fein, by the former Irish Examiner journalist Aoife Moore. I was looking forward to reading this book enormously, since good books on this “strange, secretive party that stands on … Continue reading →

Posted in General, Sinn Fein | 4 Comments

A united Ireland is not inevitable – only persuasion can make it happen

Posted on Monday, 18 December, 2023 by andypollak

What is it about passionate nationalists that when they get less than a third of people in favour of their nationalist project, they still insist they are driving on to victory? That was the situation according to the second big … Continue reading →

Posted in General, Irish reunification, Northern Ireland | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Does Dublin’s anti-immigration riot mark the beginning of the end of Ireland’s image of openness and tolerance?

Posted on Tuesday, 28 November, 2023 by andypollak

Last Thursday morning I sat down to write a blog in which I was aiming to argue that Ireland (the Republic) had been hugely successful in integrating a large number of immigrants over the past 20-25 years, and that this … Continue reading →

Posted in British-Irish relations, General, Republic of Ireland | 3 Comments

What have the British ever done for us? Quite a bit, actually

Posted on Wednesday, 1 November, 2023 by andypollak

One of the recurrent themes of these blogs is that if we are going to welcome 900,000 Unionists into a ‘new Ireland’, we are going to have to accept and respect their passionate Britishness. And that is going to be … Continue reading →

Posted in British-Irish relations, General, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland | 2 Comments

A half-Jewish Irishman’s view of the war in the Middle East

Posted on Monday, 16 October, 2023 by andypollak

I am an Irishman from a half-Jewish background – the other half is Presbyterian, so I am utterly untypical of people in this republic. However as a person with such unusual antecedents, I feel reluctantly impelled to add my two … Continue reading →

Posted in General, Ireland, Europe and the world | 2 Comments

A crumbling ‘end of days’ feel in Northern Ireland as infrastructure totters

Posted on Thursday, 28 September, 2023 by andypollak

It’s not very often that this blog plagiarises a column from an Irish daily newspaper. But a truly shocking column by that fine Belfast Telegraph journalist Sam McBride1 is worth reprinting (almost) in full because it outlines in graphic detail … Continue reading →

Posted in General, Northern Ireland, The island environment | 3 Comments

Straws in the autumn wind around the Irish unity debate

Posted on Tuesday, 19 September, 2023 by andypollak

There have been some interesting straws in the autumn wind in recent weeks as politicians get ready for the new political term and general elections in both Irish jurisdictions in the near future. Leo Varadkar doesn’t very often talk about … Continue reading →

Posted in General, Irish reunification, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland | 3 Comments

The IRA’s Christmas present to the Niedermayer family: the murder of their father

Posted on Wednesday, 30 August, 2023 by andypollak

Earlier this month I saw ‘Face Down’, a powerful and heartbreaking documentary by the Dublin film-maker Gerry Gregg about the IRA’s 1973 murder of Thomas Niedermayer, the German manager of an electronics factory on the edge of west Belfast. The … Continue reading →

Posted in General, Northern Ireland, Sinn Fein | 4 Comments

The Border Region as a microcosm of opinion across the island

Posted on Monday, 21 August, 2023 by andypollak

I have a particular fondness for the border town of Clones; it was a place I visited frequently during my 14 years running the Centre for Cross Border Studies in Armagh. It was in the news earlier this month for … Continue reading →

Posted in Cross-border cooperation, General, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland | 1 Comment