What Sunday has already taught us.

When the "Welcome Home" march for the Irish soldiers serving in Afghanistan was first agreed to by Belfast Council, I expressed my wholehearted approval and despite the various Republican planned protests and threats of widespread disorder, I stick by that opinion- if you live in a democracy you have a right to expect that decisions democratically reached (in this case by Belfast Council) are respected and their implementation carried out, even in the face of threatened violence- thuggery (or the threat of) should never be the sole determinant of what we are or are not permitted to celebrate/commemorate in our shared open spaces. However, the only additional proviso I would make now in this case is if the soldiers' families, who after all face the risk of (at the very least) verbal abuse and insults for the crime of wanting to publicly welcome their sons, grandsons and brothers home, decided that they would rather not run the gauntlet of Republican hatred and wished the Homecoming to be cancelled, I would fully understand and respect their right to do so.

Apart from that, no, there is a right, as British citizens, to publicly express our gratitude and relief that our soldiers have returned home safely- by doing so, it is not necessarily agreeing to the wars being fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is not trying to press our "Britishness" (whatever that may be) on anyone forced out of their bed on Sunday morning into Belfast city-centre to be publicly offended.

Even before Sunday takes place, there are two, perhaps intentional, side-effects of the planned Republican protests. The first is that the “devolution of policing and justice” has now been been well-and truly buried and I think we can say that the Republican sham of “Unionist Engagement” has also been put to rest. This episode has proved, once and for all, that the political maturity and tolerance required to trust letting the Toytown Parliament parliament take control of our policing system simply does not exist and I suspect post Sunday the final nail will also have been hammered into the Executive's coffin- Sinn Fein, in the eyes of their own electorate will have been let off the inconvenient hook that they've hoisted themselves up onto.

"Unionist Engagement" was an interesting theoretical concept whilst it lasted; it's all very well having cups of tea and scones with semi-detached COI vicars or loyalist terrorists, but when it comes down to the nitty-gritty of what defines and is important to us as British (not "Unionist", that's only the way we vote) citizens-there is absolutely no compromise whatsoever-the same old "Brits Out" mantra still applies- and the constant campaign to remove everything that is dear to us as British citizens living on the island of Ireland (eg our desire to publicly commemorate those who laid down their lives for our nation in the fight against fascism in WW2) continues unabated. If doubts previously existed, the events of the last few weeks have surely dispelled any illusions, the "war" continues and while we should be "grateful" it no longer involves our fellow citizens being targeted for the crime of being British in the wrong place at the wrong time, the cultural "war", the ultimate aim of which is a narrow, mono-cultural society where the right to be British has been completely removed, is one we, for the sake of future generations, also can not afford to lose.

Anyway, I've set out my opinion and I won't be commenting or posting any further on the subject here, if you’ve got the stomach for the ongoing "debate" (death-threats et al), I suggest you head over to Slugger o'Toole and join in the fun).

PS I shouldn't really have to say this, normal commenting rules apply.