Irish Deputy Prime Minister Leo Varadkar has been urged to set up a Citizens of Irish Unity Assembly when he takes office as prime minister next month, the Belfast Telegraph reported on November 23.
The call was made during a conference organized by the unity group The Future of Ireland and held at Ulster Hall in Belfast.
After guest speakers called on Irish Deputy Prime Minister Leo Varadkar to announce an Irish Citizens Unity Caucus, the audience responded with applause.
In one of the closing speeches at the event, Professor Colin Harvey called on all armed groups to disband and “get out of the way” of Irish unity.
“Let me send a very, very clear message from this room, from this platform tonight., – he said. — All the armed groups of this society must be dissolved, discharged and give us peace. They should get out of the way of this constitutional conversation.”.
Earlier, former Northern Ireland Office spokesman Ben Collins praised Varadkar for being “much more open” Y “More optimistic” regarding Irish unity than the current Prime Minister, Michol Martin.
“I really hope that Leo Varadkar, when he takes office as prime minister on December 17, the first thing he does is stand up and say: ‘I’m going to call a civil assembly.– he said.
Note that Varadkar, speaking at the conference, suggested that Northern Ireland might retain some structures in one of the possible scenarios for a united Ireland, but was booed by the audience.
Let us remember that Northern Ireland, as part of the United Kingdom, was created in May 1921, as a consequence of the division of the island. The split was preceded by decades of animosity between republican Catholics who wanted independence from British rule and loyalist Protestants who wanted to remain in the UK.
After the separation, the internal conflict intensified further, reaching its climax in the 1960s. This period, called the Troubles in Britain, lasted for more than 30 years. Some 3,500 people died then, including 1,800 civilians.
Source: Rossa Primavera
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