Politicians exploiting partition for their own ends ensured its survival

IT was a year of hope in the North, with realistic signs of progress in that there was so little talk about ending partition. It was not even mentioned during the talks at St Andrews.

It was so different from what happened during most of the last century, when the partition question overshadowed Anglo-Irish relations.

Partition was the great smokescreen that was used to obscure some of our biggest political failings and thus distort or poison our politics for much of the century.