Morrison slams Barry
In the course of what has been styled as a two-day
Œfact-finding¹ visit to the North this week, Dublin
Coalition foreign minister, Peter Barry, has made a
promise that the Free State¹s constitution would be
reviewed by his government in an effort to exclude from
it the claim to jurisdiction over thirty-two counties.
During this visit, Barry met privately with Official
Unionist, Alliance and SDLP politicians, as well as
media people and academics. It is understood that the
visit is in preparation for meetings between Barry and
the British foreign minister, Francis Pym, followed by
one with Northern direct-ruler James Prior.
Commenting on the visit, Sinn Féin¹s elected
representative for Mid-Ulster, Danny Morrison, said:
³Peter Barry¹s promise that the Free State¹s
constitutional position on the North will be reviewed,
will encourage loyalist intransigence and invite
further sectarian attacks to demoralise the nationalist
community and try to force them to accept partition.
³This move comes in the wake of attempts to re-write
Irish history, and the broadcasting ban on members of
Sinn Féin is there to ensure that the truth is
suppressed.
³The Free State government may well be prepared to sell
the birthright of the Irish people and capitulate to
sectarianism, but republicans will defend the Irish
people¹s right to self-determination, for which
countless people have died, including the patriot dead
upon whose graves the Free State stands.
³Mr Barry¹s so-called fact-finding tour also ignored
the elected representatives of a large section of the
nationalist people, namely those of Sinn Féin.²
Phoblacht 22 January 1983
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