It wasn’t the “US” who stopped supporting the Real IRA or the Actual IRA, it was the Irish Americans living safely in America and, to a lessor degree, Canada who were donating money to The Cause back home on either side. Tens of millions of Canadian and American dollars were spent buying guns for both sides in Northern Ireland.

Basically it comes down to Gerry and Ian gave the speeches, Irish Americans gave the money, and the Irish gave their lives. After 9/11 the Irish Americans, who had already cut way back on the donations, cut them altogether which killed the Real IRA.

The Irish people couldn’t stop any of this from happening. They had no guns, they had no votes, the British Government turned Northern Ireland into a prison camp, the funding for the militants was out of civilian hands and the lunatics calling themselves “Patriots” were what the insurgents in Iraq are now: fanatics who wouldn’t stop murdering for their cause.

The people with the guns have finally been marginalized so Northern Ireland will recover, they’ll be fine. Ireland is humming with new business and new wealth. That will spread North.

But Gerry and Ian, the Fucks, must never be celebrated for orchestrating a peaceful end to a useless and meaningless war they or their organizations started. They and their organizations are not, and have never been, Northern Ireland. They and their organizations have done everything they could to kill anyone who disagreed with their fanaticism.

That to me is something we should be really pleased about. The war over there is for now stopped.

As a Brit I am ashamed of the way my government handled the situation over there. As a half Irish Catholic I am ashamed at what certain sections of my heritage did in retaliation.

By simply saying “the US” pulled the plug completely disregards the work put in by NI herself and the people and voluntary sector organisations who have worked tirelessly and peacefully to try and bring both sides together.

I have friends who live, and grew up there, I’ve worked with kids over there.

If you had told me 15 years ago that Gerry and Ian would be sitting in the same room signing anything I would have laughed.

But the younger generation on both sides have seen what their parents bickering has got them.

The economy in NI was ruined by the war. Everyone became working class. In the end that’s what united them.

The dregs of fundamentalism that remain are more tied up in the poverty and who has control of drug culture on the big estates now.