Blair calls for more effort to end segregation in Northern Ireland
TONY Blair has called for more effort to break down segregation in Northern Ireland and stressed the continued need to be “vigilant” about the threat from terrorism.
The former Prime Minister, who brokered the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, said there was no longer community support for terrorists in Northern Ireland but “you can’t drop your guard at all”.
Mr Blair said the breakthrough deal 18 years ago was “only a beginning” and there were still major barriers of segregation to break down in Northern Ireland.
He told Radio 4’s Today programme: “Some of the deep social problems and their political consequences still remain and what is true also is that it is still very easy for politics to break back into sectarianism.
“The answer to this is it takes a long period of time. I think in Northern Ireland we have got to be realistic, we have also got to keep working at it, because we didn’t stop working at it and I think you have got to do that if you really want the reconciliation to take hold.”
The attack on prison officer Adrian Ismay, who died last week after being injured in a dissident Republican bomb attack on March 4, and the threat of violence marking the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising showed the continued danger posed by terrorism, Mr Blair acknowledged.
But he said there had been a change in the attitudes of communities in Northern Ireland.
“I don’t think that support for this terrorism is there in the local communities today. But there will be some on the fringes that want to engage in violence and therefore you can’t drop your guard at all.”