The hurlers and the footballers are as far apart as ever
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This is sadly correct. I apologize to the forum. Anyone who would like to take back a like please feel free to do so.
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Clearly youâre not cut out for serious internetting
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I really despise this argument of âwe canât afford a United Irelandâ.
Talk about fumbling in the greasy till.
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Thatâs how you own up to a mistake,
Iâll give you a like for this and wonât take back my earlier like.
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Thats sad to hear.Hows wee Johnny keeping these days?
Wrong year, wrong title and wrong author.
âAlways rememberedâ. 14 likes as well, God help us.
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Thereâs two wee johnnys. Which one are you talking about?
Some people have to work hard for the likes, @Fagan_ODowd picks em up like confetti after a wedding 
Weâd manage - the EU will give plenty of help and funds and so will the septics - no matter how polarized it gets over there there are hapes of irish on each side and they are very proud of the role they played in getting the Belfast agreement done.
Leo on a podcast yesterday saying he wants a united ireland but we will need a new constitution for this
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Itâs not quite as bad as the idea that because there are some who might turn to violence we shouldnât be considering it either. I donât think there should be any suggestion that the future of the island should be left in the hands of lads like the fella convicted earlier this week of placing pipe bombs at a hurling pitch.
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Coolock says no ensures weâll have a new flag anyway. Thereâll be no objection to this or a new anthem now.
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In fairness, he did write a boook around 2009/10 saying leaving the euro could save Ireland.
I gave a like for the sentiment, and because that uucoam is fumbling in the greasy til as said above.
I wonder how much Kevin would be willing to bet on that.
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I think singing lessons should be compulsory in the run-up to reunification, for all citizens.
The Welsh do singing.
The Irish do what Philomena Cunk described as the pioneering new mode of singing that emerged in the 1960s - shouting.
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I enjoy the half-haymaker body language that some incorporate into the noteless meandering.
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THE IRISH NEWS:
Northern Ireland
A message to unionism from one of its giants: get ready for Irish unity
Alex Kane speaks to John Taylor, last surviving minister of the old Stormont government, about civil rights, John Hume, Ian Paisley, and the mistakes unionism keeps making.
John Taylor, Lord Kilclooney, pictured in 2023
By Alex Kane
February 28, 2026 at 6:00am GMT
JOHN Taylor, also known as Lord Kilclooney, who turned 88 last December, has had a remarkable political career.
He was first elected to the old Northern Ireland Parliament, for South Tyrone, at the age of 27 in 1965 and served as Minister of State in Home Affairs in the last cabinet and government.
He was subsequently elected to the 1973 Assembly, the 1975 Convention, the European Parliament in 1979, the 1982 Assembly, the House of Commons in 1983, the 1996 Forum and the 1998 Assembly.
Taylor served as David Trimbleâs deputy leader from 1995 and was elevated to the House of Lords in 2007.
As I say, a remarkable career, not to mention has record in business as proprietor of a chain of local newspapers.
But when I met him at his home in Armagh (where the union flag still flies daily over the house, serving as much as a guide to the exact location as a statement of identity), I reminded him that he probably owed that career to my Dad, who had saved him from drowning in Rossnowlagh harbour in Co Donegal when he was a boy.
âI had gone down a number of times and actually thought that was it. I was drowning and I couldnât get my head back above the water. And then along came your dad (a friend of Taylorâs parents), who had seen that I was in trouble and jumped in.â
He has kept his head above water since then.
His family was not an overtly political one (which was fairly typical of middle-class unionism at the time) and he only got involved in unionism when he joined the Young Unionists at Queenâs University, where he graduated in applied sciences and technology.
âI was a very active member and took part in lots of things and that stirred up my interest in a possible political career.â
Taylor became chair of the QUB Conservative and Unionist Association in 1959 and the Ulster Young Unionist Council in 1961. All useful profile-building.
Just before the 1965 Northern Ireland general election, the UUP member for South Tyrone, William McCoy, who had fallen out with the leadership over his support for dominion status (he didnât trust a British government to protect the long-term interests of Northern Ireland), stepped down and Taylor secured the nomination and the seat.
On February 25 1972, during his time as Minister of State at Home Affairs, he had another brush with death.
âI didnât know what was happening. I thought it was a bomb. It was my fault,â he recalls.
âThe police were with me where my office was in Armagh, and I told them to stay there while I walked the short distance to get my car, and Iâd come and lift them. So they stayed there.
âI went round the corner got into the car and started the engine-and thank goodness I did. That saved my life.
âTwo IRA men walked towards the car, firing at me. They hit me in the jaw. My foot jammed on the accelerator and as the engine roared like mad, it brought out a crowd.â
I asked about residual pain.
âI was in hospital nine times that year for operations and I lost most of my jaw. It never affected me at all. I returned to total activity.
âIn these last few weeks I lost a tooth that was hit by one of the bullets and I found it floating round my mouth and I put it in the bin here.
âBut it has effected my speech after all these years, and I find it difficult to pronounce some words for the first time since that assassination attempt. Itâs very odd but thereâs no residual pain.â
He says he was shot because he was blamed for internment, although it had been introduced by Brian Faulkner six months earlier.
Yet the willingness of the IRA to kill a cabinet minister shocked him and hammered home the reality that this was going to be very different from the paramilitary groupâs 1956-62 campaign.
I asked him about Terence OâNeill, whom he described as being very much an older establishment man.
âHe was a decent man but not the leader that unionism needed then. Brian Faulkner was very much a man of the people.
âIf we had had Faulkner a few years earlier as leader of the UUP we would have done much better. When he finally arrived as PM it was too late to save Stormont.â
What he said after that was both interesting and surprising.
âAnd history is going to repeat itself again â over the reality that there is going to be a united Ireland. Unionism needs to be prepared for that if we are to avoid more violence.â
He agrees that one of the long-standing problems with unionism is that it has never really been prepared for each crisis as it came along.
He is particularly critical of the DUP â âthe best supporters of Irish nationalism and they donât realise it, because they are very much a parochial evangelical organisationâ.
Had there, I wondered, ever been a British prime minister or government with a genuine political, emotional, electoral or constitutional attachment to Northern Ireland and unionism.
âI personally have never known a UK PM who was committed strongly to Northern Ireland remaining in the UK. Iâm sorry to say that even the Tory party, never mind the Labour party, was an unreliable friend.â He wouldnât trust Reform UK, either.
Since he seems so sure of Irish unity, I asked him if unionism missed out on a major trick by not reaching out to nationalism and trying to win at least some people over.
âI agree with that strongly. We should have. I think religious differences between Protestants and Roman Catholics played a part in making that reach-out impossible. And of course the Orange influence on key parts of unionism/loyalism.â
Should unionism have reached out to the Civil Rights Association in the late 1960s and talked about possible accommodation? Was that also a mistake?
âAbsolutely. We did miss a trick. Weâll probably miss it again in the future because we need to be thinking about the possibility of a united Ireland and what would be required for unionism.
âThere are things unionism needs to be raising internally about how it would manage and survive if a united Ireland did come.â
I take him back to Brian Faulkner and whether he regretted falling out with him over Sunningdale, and then being instrumental in bringing him down in January 1974.
Was the UUUC (United Ulster Unionist Council) wrong not to have a plan in place for when the power-sharing government came down?
His answer brings him back to what has become a running theme in the interview.
âYes. And as Iâve already said, unionism is going to make the same sort of mistake again. They are not thinking ahead or planning for anything that might come.â
I ask what he thinks of the current assembly.
âI think itâs important to have an elected voice in Northern Ireland, especially at Stormont. Unionists and nationalists have to work together in Northern Ireland in a way which is separate from working under Dublin or something like joint authority.â
What about Ian Paisleyâs legacy and the argument that his change of heart saved the Good Friday Agreement?
âHe was bad news for Northern Ireland â and whether the deal with McGuinness was a genuine change of heart, I have no idea.â
By contrast, he admits that he found William Craig â future leader of the paramilitary-linked Vanguard â fairly easy to work with.
But Taylor notes that Craig realised fairly quickly that the British didnât care less about Northern Ireland and that he didnât even the see the writing on the wall about the prorogation of the NI Parliament in March 1972.
Citing Craigâs experience as another reason why modern loyalism/unionism needs to remember how it was treated in the past, he adds: âIt hasnât really changed.â
Is there anything unionism can do to underpin the union over the coming years?
âI donât think there is much they can do at this stage. I think they are going to be caught on the hop â which may explain why their reaction could include violence. Although it wouldnât last."
I suggest that unionism might, in advance of a border poll, reach out to the thousands of immigrants who have moved here over the years.
âThey donât. But do you know who does? Alliance and the SDLP. The unionists ignore them totally. Big mistake.â
Taylor says he had a good relationship with John Hume.
âI was able to work very happily with John Hume. And he was a very strong nationalist.
âThe reason he was able to get recognised in America in a way that a unionist wasnât was because the Irish are so important in America.
âThere was no other figure in Irish nationalism then who could do what he did to energise support for Irish unity. No-one had the same presence on either side of the border.
âThe unionist community are not admired in the same way â even though Ulster Presbyterians helped to start the country. There are still parts and places in America which reflect the Presbyterian and Ulster Scots heritage, but they donât identify with Ulster unionism.â
Why was there no unionist leader of similar status?
âThe British in Great Britain have changed dramatically in the last 40 or so years. There has been a huge change in their thinking and sense of identity. A growth of a new sense of specifically English nationalism.
âOver here the influence of the Orange Order has changed. Maybe still influential in rural areas, but the swing away from religion generally has had an impact in Northern Ireland. Sadly, in my opinion.
I tell him that he has been accused of being deliberately offensive to nationalism in the past, offering examples such as saying in 1993, after an upsurge in killings, that âCatholic fears might be helpfulâ; telling a Young Unionists conference that the IRA was winning and that the SDLP was riding on the coattails; and comments about the shootings at Sean Grahamâs bookies that âthese Catholics would not have been murdered had the IRA not firstly committed the terrible slaughter of eight Protestants at Teebaneâ.
âAre you conceding that your language has, at times, been both crass and offensive?â
âI am.â
âDoes it worry you in any sense?â
âThere are always things you regret having said. But I still like to look forward and that is why I want to appeal to unionists to start thinking in terms of what is Northern Irelandâs position within a united Ireland.â
âYour political/electoral record in the UK is extraordinary. Any big regret?â
âNothing major that I regret. But right now, I regret that unionists are not thinking in terms of the changes that are going to take place.â
I ask how he sums up unionism today.
âUlster unionists are a minority within the island of Ireland. They have got to learn to live alongside the majority of Irish nationalists.
âAnd that also means Irish nationalists have to accept that Ulster unionists in Northern Ireland are a different breed and different type of people they will have to accommodate.
âWhich means that in any united Ireland there would probably have to be a separate institution in Northern Ireland in which unionists and nationalists would work together for the whole of Northern Ireland.â
(l-r) Ken Maginnis, David Trimble and John Taylor after talks with Tony Blair
(l-r) Ken Maginnis, David Trimble and John Taylor after talks with Tony Blair (Matthew Fearn/PA)
I ask if Ulster unionism is an entirely different identity from the type of nationalist identity now being expressed in England.
âI think the Ulster unionist people in Northern Ireland are totally different from English nationalists or similar types in England.
âUnionists in Northern Ireland, especially the DUP, have to learn to live with that reality.
âToday you have the TUV and Jim Allister, who is much more effective with the unionist community than the Ulster Unionists.
âBut the new leader of the UUP, John Burrows, has given more leadership in the past few weeks than the previous leaders did in the past number of years.â
On the future of the UUP and unionism, he states baldly that âunionism will not surviveâ.
âThe people in Great Britain are no longer interested in Northern Ireland and society in England and Great Britain is changing and at the same time society in Northern Ireland is changing, because the majority are going to be in favour of a united Ireland.â
John Taylor has long been viewed as a weathervane across unionism â and usually pointing in the same direction as mainstream thinking.
Thatâs why what he says throughout the interview is hugely significant; not least because I wasnât expecting him to be so firm about the inevitability of Irish unity.
He has been knee-deep in unionist politics for 70 years and has been a very significant player at key moments, including the downfall of Faulkner, his support for the 1974 Ulster Workersâ Council strike and his backing of David Trimble and the Good Friday Agreement.
As it happens, I donât agree that Irish unity is inevitable. But I do believe there will be a border poll â and sooner than some think.
Being prepared for either of those eventualities is essential for unionism.
You can agree or disagree with his pessimism about the union, but he is right about unionism not being able to afford being caught on the hop again.
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