The Master's Voice
by Meadbh Gallagher
``The Northern Ireland Secretary and a colleague
there..'' said the Sky News presenter, wrapping up
coverage of the joint press conference by Mo Mowlam and
David Andrews in Lancaster House on Tuesday.
The Sky slip aptly sums up the significance the Irish
government is accorded on the British horizon.
When Irish commentators talk of ``the two governments''
this and ``the two governments'' that, they deceive
themselves if not us about the scale of that
insignificance.
It need not be so, of course, and if anything has
nudged the Dublin government into adopting a more
assertive position towards its British counterpart it
has been the peace process pushed by Sinn Féin.
It could also be argued that Dublin has rarely been in
a better position from which to assert difference as
strength.
But such is the softly, softly line still being taken,
that to all appearances the two governments speak with
one voice and on all things. And the voice that's being
heard is not the Irish government's.
It's no wonder then that Bertie Ahern's soothing words
at a memorial to the murder in 1972 of 14 unarmed
civilians in Derry were all but ignored, even in the
South.
For while strong words on Bloody Sunday must come easy,
strong words on the killing of 14 unarmed catholics
civilians since last March - in a period in which
loyalists claimed to be on ceasefire - might come more
controversially.
d while Dublin dithers, Mr David Trimble, the
original cock-a-hoop, sat giggling on Tuesday as his
serious sidekick, Mr Jeffrey Donaldson tore up the
Framework document ``the two governments'' once claimed
to have exchanged solemn vows over.
Does not all the evidence point in the same old
directions again? That collusion is rife but never
claimed and never challenged. That a Dublin government
still chooses a policy of appeasement in the vain hope
that it will persuade bullies to talk. And that London
is listening to the arrogant fools who advise it that
this time round, it can really finally get the croppies
to lie down.
![[An Phoblacht]](http://republican-news.org/graphics/title_gifs/aprn.gif)