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29 October 1998 Edition

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Dúirt siad...

Sinn Fein is a tapeworm in the body politic that should be flushed out.

David Brewster at the UUP conference last Saturday

 


May the God of Abraham curse you and may the widows' wails and the orphans' cries haunt you for the rest of your days.

Jean Coulter at the UUP conference telling Gerry Adams what she thinks of him offering to extend the hand of friendship to unionists.

 


We have to move the process forward and to do that the prisoners have to be released. There are people who have lost loved ones through the actions of the security forces and they have never even been charged never mind convicted. Those people are often forgotten.

Rosaleen McCorley, whom along with Marie Wright were the first republican Women POWs to be released from Maghaberry last week.

 


We are in the midst of a full-blooded public campaign by the leaders of unionism to renogotiate or unpick the Good Friday Agreement. Their stance is deliberately aimed at creating a crisis and raising the prospects of the collapse of the Agreement.

Sinn Féin's Gerry Kelly. Irish News, Thursday 22 October.

 


Free the Workers, Jail the Bankers.

Placards on the building workers protest in Dublin last Thursday, fater the jailing og two building workers.

 


These are two ordinary guys who feel very strongly about this. Our members are workers. They don't want to run a business. They are bricklayers, plasterers, labourers... They want a normal job with pensions, holidays and to pay PAYE and PRSI like ordinary people.

Building workers union BATU General Secretary Paddy O'Shaughnessy on the jailings.

 


If construction workers can spend nights in prison for protesting about manipulation of the tax code in the building industry then, by extrapolation, the guilty men in the banking scandal must be looking forward to spending several years behind bar... The government should do three things: (1) Lay off the credit unions (2) Lay into the banks and (3) Set up an inquiry into the building industry to sort out that brutal trade once and for all.

Tim Pat Coogan in Ireland On Sunday, 25 October

 


Maybe the old man with the bad back in the clinic in central London knows, but I suspect he won't tell us. Who knows, maybe he might have disclosed it tea with Thatcher a few weeks ago. Maybe they discussed hungerstrikers and the disappeared over the tea and scones. Who knows what small talk these historical collossusses get up to.

Tom McGurk writing in the Sunday Business Post on former Chilean dicator Pinochet's knowledge of death camps, disappeared political opponents and secret police files during his tenure as Chilean leader. 25 October.

 


Indeed many believe that decommissioning was put in place to force the surrender from the IRA under another name. There are die-hards on the British side who can never accept that the IRA were not militarily defeated.

Niall O'Dowd in his column in Ireland On Sunday, 25 October.

 


The 31st October is not a target date... it is a deadline. Slippage is unacceptable and not alone to republicans: It is not what the overwhelming number of people in this island voted for in the referendums. they voted for political progress within the framework agreed to on Good Friday.

Interview with Sinn Féin TD Caoimhghín O Cáoláin in the Tuesday's Irish News.

 


Even Sinn Féin's most outspoken opponents concede that the party posseses a formidable electoral machine.

Editorial in the Irish News on Sinn Féin's potential for growth in the 26 Counties. Tuesday 27 October.

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