Deputy First Minister Michelle O’Neill claimed only this month that 100 years of Northern Ireland is nothing to celebrate for nationalists or republicans. As the vice-President of Sinn Fein, she was speaking after Prime Minister Boris Johnson promised to set up a Centenary Forum and Centenary Historical Advisory Panel in honour of the occasion. Ms O’Neill claimed: “The north was built on sectarianism, gerrymandering and an inbuilt unionist majority and that is not something that I would ever celebrate.”
She also urged republicans to take part in the partition debate, which has been revived in the Brexit row over the Irish border.
Irish Taoiseach Micheal Martin said the centenary event was to try and understand the nation’s past, and acknowledged that the island of Ireland has “come a long way” since the tensions of 1921.
Unionists, on the other hand, will be celebrating that Northern Ireland has been a separate legal entity for a century in May 2021.
Republican party Sinn Fein has been slated for stirring up tensions around the special occasion.
Belfast publication, News Letter, claimed that the party even started an “unnecessary war of words” through similar comments first published last year.
The article claimed: “Unionist-dominated Mid and Antrim Council will surely not be the last council proposing to celebrate.
“There is nothing inflammatory or aggressive in such a proposal but when Sinn Fein issued a statement yesterday afternoon in the name of senior MLA Conor Murphy, it felt like the beginning of an unnecessary war of words that could last the best part of the next two-and-a-half years.”
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News Letter hit back and alleged: “Sinn Fein has become expert at rewriting history on this island and we can expect much more of the same between now and May 2021.”
The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP)’s leader on Mid and East Antrim Council Alderman Gregg McKeen said that Northern Ireland had achieved a great deal in sport, industry, tourism and entertainment over the last century, and that’s what will be celebrated.
Republicanism is a growing concern within the UK especially after Sinn Fein secured 37 seats — only one less than the largest party in the Dail, Fianna Fail — in the Irish general election earlier this year.
Unionism lost its Stormont majority in 2017, meaning the Northern Ireland Assembly is in a power-sharing agreement between the DUP and Sinn Fein.
Border poll discussions are also becoming increasingly intense and Ms O’Neill even claimed there would be a united Ireland within the next ten years recently.
However, as political commentator Sam McBride claimed in iNews back in 2018: “If Sinn Fein is serious about winning a border poll in the short to medium term, it needs to persuade unionists that they would be respected within a united Ireland.”
