A small boy careered into his parent’s bedroom and said: “Diana’s dead.” I said nothing and attempted to sleep on. My wife struggled into her dressing gown, disappeared, and a few seconds later was back, shaking me frantically with the news, fresh from Paris, of the crash.
The next day, Monday, 1st September, I had to get to north Belfast for nine o’clock; the traffic in the city was horrendous, so I took the back route via west Belfast. In Beechmount, the paint-smeared, fort-like police station flew the Union flag at half mast, but otherwise it was tricolours in every direction, as far as the eye could see.
Nothing here, I thought, to emulate what had already started in Britain. No books of condolences or piles of flowers. The elimination of the Crown from Ireland has always been assiduously sought by Republicans. From the argy-bargy in the 1920s about the oath of allegiance, through to the foundation of the republic in 1948, it did not seem to matter to De Valera et al. that Ireland was tied to sterling, that Ireland’s principal trading partner was Britain, or that the civil service, especially its upper echelons, was composed of appointees of the ancien regime. No-what mattered more than anything was the removal of all Crown connections. And this spirit is still with us. When they went to the first round of talks on 15th September, Sinn Fein were arguing for a 32-county republic, Ireland, a monarchy-free zone.
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