[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 96 (Friday, July 17, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1331-E1332]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  STATEMENT REGARDING NORTHERN IRELAND

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. PATRICK J. KENNEDY

                            of rhode island

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, July 16, 1998

  Mr. KENNEDY of Rhode Island. Mr. Speaker, I am sure that all Members 
of this House and Americans everywhere who long to see Northern Ireland 
enter a period of peace, social justice and economic reconstruction 
have viewed with great dismay events these past few days in Northern 
Ireland. What is particularly troublesome and in some ways painfully 
symbolic of the conflicts that continue to plague the people on that 
troubled piece of earth, was the murder over the weekend of three 
innocent young Catholic boys, Richard-11, Mark-10 and Jason Quinn-9, 
who were burned to death early Sunday morning by a fire bomb reportedly 
thrown by practitioners of the worst kind of religious bigotry and 
hatred.
  Hopefully the tragic deaths of these three innocent boys will mark a 
watershed in the long and sad history of Northern Ireland's religious 
strife and men and women of good will who are committed to peace and 
reconciliation throughout Northern Ireland will work together to 
reinforce the fragile peace process underway in Northern Ireland. Those 
efforts should receive the strong endorsement and support from those of 
us in the United States who share that objective.
  Mr. Speaker, a growing number of my constituents are taking a closer 
look and a keener interest in events in Northern Ireland and this 
process is assisted by such statements as the enclosed editorial Trying 
to Get Beyond the Boyne published in the July 12 Providence Sunday 
Journal which I request to be inserted in the Record at this point. In 
my view, this editorial contains thoughtful observations on a very 
difficult and complex situation and makes the significant point that 
Northern Ireland must move past the anachronisms of the past and into a 
more enlightened and reasoned future if the peace process is to survive 
and prosper and I am confident that it can and will.
  I agree, too, with the editorial's observation that the President 
should move swiftly to name a successor to the recently departed 
Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith and that my good friend Paul Quinn, who 
is well experienced in Irish-American affairs makes an excellent 
candidate for this assignment. Mr. Quinn enjoys wide-spread bi-partisan 
support from my colleagues in the Congress and from governmental, 
political and community business leaders throughout Ireland and those 
in the United States who share our commitment to a more peaceful and 
prosperous day on the island of Ireland. He has made substantial 
contributions to relations between the United States and the Republic 
of Ireland and the North for more than 35 years and I know he will 
continue to do so for many years to come whatever the President's 
decision is regarding the next Ambassador.

                       Trying To Get Beyond Boyne

       William Trevor's After Rain is the tale of a boy--son and 
     grandson of proud Unionists in an Ulster village--who brings 
     calumny upon himself by refusing to march. We are given to 
     understand that the boy may be prey to a religious 
     hallucination of some sort, that he must pay for his 
     intransigence with his life, that his brother in the 
     paramilitaries must properly have a hand in his killing. Thus 
     does Mr. Trevor, the masterful Ango-Irish short-story writer, 
     draw us into the insanity of ``the Troubles'' in Northern 
     Ireland.
       The good burghers are pious and temperate Presbyterian 
     townsmen who once a year don the bowler and the orange sash 
     to commemorate their ancestors' defeat of the Catholic forces 
     at the Battle or the Boyne.
       The crazy person is the one who refuses to join in the 
     Protestant marching to fife and drum through the Catholic 
     neighborhoods--a ritualized rubbing of salt into the worlds 
     of the subjugated people's descendants.
       Thoughts of the fictional strife come to mind because today 
     is the 308th anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne, in which 
     the Protestant monarch of England, William III, of the Dutch 
     House of Orange, vanquished the Catholic King James II. In 
     the all-too-real life of Northern Ireland this past week, the 
     peaceful promise of the Good Friday accords has been 
     imperiled by violence in the buildup to this climax of 
     ``marching season.''
       Orange Order Protestants tasted defeat this spring when 
     Irish voters north and south--including a narrow majority of 
     Protestants--endorsed the peace process at referendum and 
     followed up last month by electing a veto-proof majority of 
     peace-accord supporters to a new self-rule assembly.
       A bitter pill for the hardliners is that the new first 
     minister of Northern Ireland, chosen under a peace process he 
     helped to create, is one of their own, David Trimble.
       Trimble, head of the Protestant Ulster Unionists Party, 
     built his base in the Orange Order but came to believe that 
     growing numbers of his constituents and co-religionists had 
     wearied of the conflict that has wasted three decades and 
     more than 3,400 lives in the North. This marching season, 
     having helped to forge the shaky peace, Mr. Trimble has 
     stayed on the sidelines as the order demanded the right to 
     march its traditional route from the town or Portadown, west 
     of Belfast, to the Anglican church in Drumcree and back. 
     Since the British government's decree that they shall not 
     march through a Catholic neighborhood in Portadown, Orangemen 
     have camped in a nearby pasture.
       Incidents of violence and rioting have ensued in the 
     British-ruled province in recent days, as Prime Minister Tony 
     Blair, Mr. Trimble and other moderates have sought a peaceful 
     way out of the impasse. Orange leaders have threaten a 
     general strike that could, they assert, paralyze Northern 
     Ireland. Well, perhaps not. Not if enough Protestant citizens 
     boycott the strike.
       The Clinton administration played an important role in 
     getting all sides through the negotiations that produced the 
     accord but has little policy role now except to cheer and pay 
     as the peacemakers face their first tough test in the 
     streets.
       (In an indirect way, however, President Clinton could 
     contribute modestly to the long-term prospects for Irish 
     peace by swiftly naming a successor to the recently departed 
     ambassador to Ireland, Jean Kennedy Smith. Paul Quinn, the 
     Pawtucket-born Washington lobbyists, has the experience in 
     Irish-American affairs to make him as good a candidate as 
     any.)
       The hope for peace in Northern Ireland is with a new 
     generation that, like Mr. Trevor's fictional youth, resists 
     its inherited duty of hatred. Let us hope that its quiet 
     force--which has won two historic votes for the pace-seekers 
     since Good Friday--will

[[Page E1332]]

     carry the day against the bowler-topped anachronisms on this 
     bloody anniversary.

     

                          ____________________