‘NI secretary should have knowledge’

IT CANNOT be an easy thing being a Northern Ireland Secretary. Years after he ceased being one I saw Roy Mason the Barnsley MP being shepherded through crowds at Stoke City when his team where playing at the Victoria Ground . His security people looked very nervous. Nevertheless it must be a thankless task trying to plot a course through the “two tribes of Ulster” and one with which you will require security for a long time afterwards

Nevertheless you would expect some knowledge of the province or at least not to be so gauche as to proclaim your ignorance in a national newspaper which our MP Karen Bradley did in The Guardian.

However, there was a time when the politics of Northern Ireland were played out in all their visceral horror not too far from the Moorlands.

I recall a man telling me of an event he witnessed one June Saturday in 1996 as he walked the ridge above Bollington. Looking towards Manchester he saw a very odd phenomena of the light with an effect of a myriad of rainbows above the city giving an appearance of brilliant luminosity to Manchester. He was gazing towards the city at the precise moment the Provos detonated their bomb at the Arndale Centre destroying the City Centre with the prism effect of light pouring through millions of splinters of glass.

Yes, there was a time when knowledge of the politics of Northern Ireland really was a matter of life and death. Councillor Bill Cawley Grove Street, Leek