PETER HITCHENS: Part of the UK will soon be ruled by Dublin. So much for the defeat of the IRA...

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It is now clear even to the dimmest that the IRA have won in Northern Ireland. 

Their political poodle, Sinn Fein, has toppled the Democratic Unionists as the largest party in the Stormont Assembly. 

It is hard to see how this will not now lead, in the fullness of time, to the transfer of the Six Counties of Northern Ireland to Dublin rule.

Her Northern counterpart, Michelle O’Neill, similarly emerged in a process about as transparent as a North Korean general election

And what rule will that be? Why, the rule of Sinn Fein, rapidly growing in strength in the Republic, now that its grislier figures are dead or in alleged retirement.

In Dublin, the party is ‘led’ by Mary Lou McDonald, who was mysteriously the only candidate for the job in 2018. 

Her Northern counterpart, Michelle O’Neill, similarly emerged in a process about as transparent as a North Korean general election. Both come from a pretty hard-edged Republican tradition.

It is still risky to speculate about who really runs Sinn Fein, but as recently as 2019 the Police Service of Northern Ireland confirmed its previous assessment that the IRA Army Council ‘retained its oversight’ of the party.

Such things are increasingly unsayable as they might ‘derail the Peace Process’, but there you are. On the same grounds we have had to ignore countless bomb outrages, murders, bank raids, protection racketeering, intimidation, and who knows what else, by both Republican and ‘Loyalist’ gangsters, since the Great Surrender of 1998.

This was sold to the Province, and to the British people, as ‘peace’. Many ninnies have claimed since that it was a defeat for the IRA and Sinn Fein.

The only response to this must be the most savage sarcasm. Was the ‘beaten’ IRA forced to accept the mass release of its men of violence from prison, and the effective end of any prosecution of those as yet unconvicted?

Was Martin McGuinness so vanquished that he was compelled against his will to attend a dinner with Her Majesty at Windsor Castle, dressed in humiliating white tie and tails?

In Dublin, the party is ‘led’ by Mary Lou McDonald, who was mysteriously the only candidate for the job in 2018. Mary Lou McDonald is pictured above with Michelle O'Neill on Saturday

Now we see beyond doubt the true outcome. The Democratic Unionists, who once elbowed the official Unionists out of the way by pretending they could save something from the wreck, are now crumbling. This is because they cannot save anything.

On one flank, their supporters are realising that the game is up. On the other, a more militant grouping is threatening to supplant them. They have nothing left to say.

Each day shows more clearly that the UK Government in London does not want the loyalty of the Loyalists, and wishes heartily that they would go away.

The creation of a customs frontier between Northern Ireland and the rest of the country is about as big a hint as you are likely to get.

So here it comes, and it will be a hugely significant moment in British and European history when it does. Because despite all the blather about ‘Good Friday’ and democracy, the handover of Northern Ireland to Dublin is the direct and undoubted result of a long campaign of ruthless murder, which the USA did not perhaps hamper or oppose quite as vigorously as it might have done.

It will be the first transfer of territory as a result of violence in Western Europe since 1945.

This is the hard truth, and, while I can see why a lot of people would rather not admit it, I think it is vital that it is openly stated – a total and unmitigated defeat, just as I said it was 24 years ago.

With the Bank of England warning (far too late) of inflation at ten per cent, I feel a need to remind you that on March 29, 2020, as Al Johnson plunged the country into months of mad, futile shutdown, I said: ‘Just you wait till you get the bill, in increased taxes, inflation and devastated savings.’ Told you so.

Condemned – by the lies of an evil empire

These days it is possible to get hold of almost any old movie, however obscure. But there are exceptions.

For years now I have sought to find a recording of Costa-Gavras’s powerful 1970 film The Confession. It is a proper professional movie, starring Yves Montand, right, and Simone Signoret – reasonably big names.

I searched and searched. I even contacted a company in Saskatchewan which specialised in locating hard-to-find videos and DVDs, and they admitted defeat. At last, thanks to the kindness of an alert reader, I have got hold of it and watched it for the first time in 45 years.

And you can see why it does not often get revived. The portrayal of Communist cynicism and brutality in forcing their own loyal comrades to parrot lies and so condemn themselves to unjust death is not a story Left-wing people will much like to see told.

Deep down many of them have never quite fallen out of love with the old evil empire, whatever they say now.

Two especially terrible scenes stay in the mind. One of the accused, who has been starved and beaten for months before being forced to give lying evidence against himself, has been dressed in one of his old suits and put under a sunlamp to hide the effects of his cruel interrogation. But his diet of prison slop has made him so thin that his trousers fall down as he takes the witness stand. In a prolonged moment of horror, everyone in the courtroom laughs, even the condemned man, though they all know that he is about to hang.

The other shows a pair of secret policemen, whose car is stuck in heavy snow, using the cremated ashes of the condemned to grit the icy road and go on their way. This actually happened.

Revolution that wrecked talent and promise 

When a Tory MP called last week for more state grammar schools, my heart sank. This is not because there should not be many more such schools, but because the Conservative Party is one of their main enemies and will never bring them back.

I have just finished writing a book on these schools, and one of the main things I have learned is that the Tory Party was never their friend, and was happy to destroy them in pursuit of votes.

The discredited Tory PM, David Cameron, Mr Slippery, had many faults. But at least he was honest about his hostility to grammar schools. Voters should learn from this. You need something better than the Tories, and soon.

Those who have bankrupted themselves to send their children to fee-charging schools, rather than endure the failed ‘comprehensive’ system, find that the great universities are open about discriminating against boys and girls with private education, even if they are academically more qualified.

The Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge is not ashamed to admit his university will give priority to state-school pupils – because they are state-school pupils. He says: ‘We have to keep making it very, very clear we are intending to reduce over time the number of people who are coming from independent school backgrounds into places like Oxford or Cambridge.’

The comprehensive revolution, a terrible enemy of promise, talent and true learning, is almost complete. And Britain is almost completely done for as a result.

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