BLAIR AND ADAMS: SPOT THE DIFFERENCE

That s it, then. Or will be by the time most of you read this. Five more years of conservative government. Logical enough that most political journos from across the water that I talk to tell me to expect no change. One man who went to Mo reports back that Mowlam follows the straight Mayhew line: her security advisers will be the arbiters of any new ceasefire.
MI5, Military Intelligence and the RUC Special Branch will give the thumbs up, or down, for Sinn Fein to enter talks, then. Fat chance of that pointing a way forward towards peace.
And no more a person than David Trimble has repeated on Channel 4 what he told me the day after his first private meeting with Blair that he d been assured there won t be the width of a cigarette paper between the Tories and Labour on Ireland.
So it s just batten down the hatches, and break open the survivalists kit?
Probably for sure. But possibly not.
Aren t the similarities and parallels between Tony Blair and Gerry Adams interesting all the same?
Each took over leadership of a party which regarded its own past with reverence and led it into hitherto unexplored territory in search of support from elements who had never previously had time for its traditional beliefs. Each has had to be careful not to alienate long-standing supporters who remain vital to the party s organisational base.
So, symbolically, Labour switches from red to royal purple as its primary colour while Sinn Fein selected an azure-blue backdrop for its Monaghan Ard Fheis. Nationalise The Banks! becomes New hope For Britain , even as Brits Out Of Ireland! gives way to A Strong Voice For Peace .
Gone from the Sinn Fein gathering was the garish green-flaggery and the sulphurous sloganeering of years past, gone to the same ideological graveyard, no doubt, as the Red Flag at the close of Labour conferences.
It s not just symbolism and song. Each of the parties now has a leadership with a pragmatic approach to ideas long regarded as fundamental to their political purpose. Labour s commitment to State enterprise wasn t just a matter of policy, it was written Clause Four into the party constitution.
Britain s claim to sovereignty over part of Ireland long seen by Republicans as an intolerable illegality which must be removed as a prerequisite for peace was rendered in Gerry Adams Monaghan speech as the key matter which must be addressed in any negotiation .
In the context of Republican history and ideology, that represented as daring a policy revision as Blair s ditching of Clause Four.
And thus to the apt questions: could Blair and Adams do business together? And would the business they d do necessarily be of benefit to the plain people?
Yes and no.
A major money for citizenship scam has been uncovered in the Irish midlands. So I gather from the Sunday Independent. The scam is so serious that gardai have established an investigation team , based in Athlone.
The team has taken statements from at least six women allegedly involved. According to the Indo, the women were recruited to go through phoney marriages with Pakistani men living in England. This gave the men residency rights in the countries of the European Union.
The paper claims the women were paid #3,000 each. Some of them were already married and may now face bigamy charges. The men face deportation from the UK back to Pakistan.
Remember that other money for citizenship scam in the midlands three years ago? Then, it was revealed that a Middle Eastern man called Masri had been issued with an Irish passport after he d made an interest-free loan of a million pounds to C and D Foods, the family firm of Albert Reynolds. At the time, Reynolds was Taoiseach of the Fianna Fail-Labour Coalition.
It was conceded by all concerned that at least two members of Reynolds cabinet, the Minister for Justice and the Attorney General, had been aware of the process whereby Mr. Masri was being transformed into a million-pound Irishman. They knew that the Taoiseach s family firm was the beneficiary of this astonishing windfall.
There was nothing illegal or improper about any of it. And Reynolds himself had no inkling about any of it until it came out in the papers.
It had never crossed the minds of his cabinet colleagues while chatting at government meetings to refer, even in passing, to the fact that they were dealing with a million-pound transaction involving his family business.
When the story broke, Tanaiste Dick Spring paid a high-publicised visit to the Department of Justice to check out the paperwork and, presumably, question the civil servants who had processed the passport application. He emerged to announce that all was hunky-dory, there was no call for further investigation.
What are we to make of it all?
One obvious lesson is that if you chance upon a Middle Eastern or Pakistani chap who says he d like an Irish passport so as to be able to reside legally in the EU and wonders How much? , do NOT say, Three grand, let s get married . That way you ll go to the clanger and he ll be on the first boat back to the Bekaaa Valley, Islamabad or wherever.
DO say, A million quid, make the cheque out to Albert The Unknowing . That way, everybody s happy.
Another lesson is that with every day that passes we are a day closer to all the members of all recent governments being up against the wall. This way, everybody s very happy.

A fortnight ago, on April 16th, the chancellor of the University of Ulster, Rabbi Julia Neuberger, speaking at the opening of an integrated primary school in Castlereagh, described single-religion schools in the North as sectarian . All hell broke instantly around her.
Rabbi Neuberger didn t have Catholic schools or Protestant schools solely in mind. She hit out, too, at Jewish and Muslim parents in Britain who insisted on single-religion schools for their children.
Rabbi Neuberger was born in London in 1951. Her father s family had come to Britain in 1912 as refugees from poverty in Europe. Her mother arrived in 1937, fleeing Hitler. Her personal politics are moderate to the point of being boring: she once stood for David Owen s Social Democratic Party.
She must have been taken aback by the reaction of leading Catholics to her remarks at Castlereagh, and staggered by the response of the University of Ulster.
An Irish News editorial (April 17th) spluttered with anger against her. Two days later, the paper gave prominence to a report that Catholic bishops . . . have been in contact with the university to lodge their protest . It revealed that the Council for Catholic Maintained Schools was furious and had demanded an apology from her for the sense of hurt you have caused . A Catholic member of the University Court issued a statement to the effect that either she goes or I go . . . And so on.
Within two days, a spokesman for the University had issued what the Irish News accurately described as an unprecedented apology . It read:
The university has taken immediate steps to reassure our many partners throughout Catholic education . . . that the views were unequivocally not the views of the university . . . We deeply regret any offence that has been caused and restate our commitment to what the Council for Catholic Maintained Schools has called respect for diversity in culture and heritage .
The irony of a body which will not countenance Catholic children learning multiplication tables in the same room as Protestants calling for respect for diversity in culture and heritage was, obviously, lost on the spokesman for the University of Ulster.
What Rabbi Neuberger had said was right: the segregated schools of the North are sectarian, in the obvious sense that they reflect the existing sectarian division and in the ominous sense that they reinforce and perpetuate the division.
What the episode illustrates is the extent to which sectarianism has become accepted in the North. Orangeism is now defined by many Nationalists as well as by Unionists as an expression of Protestant culture , entitled to the esteem of all who have respect for diversity in culture and heritage . Increasingly, the main Nationalist objection to Orange marches concerns not the bigotry they celebrate, but the fact that they don t keep their bigotry to their own areas .
The underlying theory in all this is that Catholics and Protestants really are different peoples, and that separate development ( apartheid in Afrikaans) is therefore normal and natural.
Thus, a university apologises for having caused hurt by its chancellor suggesting that children should be educated together.
Dear god. n