New Northern Irish Terror

The first car bomb to go off in Northern Ireland in over a decade was detonated outside Newry Court House last night. The timing just after the agreement to devolve policing and justice to the Assembly speaks volumes as local Sinn Fein councillor Conor Murphy said:

"The fact that we're in the process of devolving policing and justice powers and there's an attack on a courthouse will not be lost on people.

"These people are trying to drag us backwards and ensure we have the British army back on the streets."

There was also only a 5 minute warning given by the dissident republicans who planted the bomb. Police were still evacuating the area when the blast occurred. It was "a cowardly action by those who want to drag Northern Ireland back to the past" said DUP Assembly member Willie Irwin, and it is a past that most Northern Irish people don't want to revisit.

My friends are the generation with children who grew up there not knowing the daily occurrence of bombs going off or suspect cars being detonated. Their children have grown up without the stringent security and armed checks getting carried out in certain areas. If even parties from the two extremes of the political divide have realised that they have to work together to make peace, justice and the police work within local frameworks, they did so because that is the mood of the people.

Many of those that I mentioned indeed moved back after a certain amount of security was secured in Northern Ireland. Some of us myself included found ourselves elsewhere when someone we loved wouldn't be in Northern Ireland because of the threat that they feared. So therefore the lesson of history is clear, it would seem, peace is good for the people, retention of your own and bringing in of others. Terrorism isn't and many will merely flee from both sides of the community.