Violence in the north - Another year, another impasse

THOUGH not on a par with the ferocity used by Russian forces to reimpose the old Soviet hegemony in Georgia this week’s pictures of burnt-out cars on the roads of Armagh, the gun and bomb attacks on PSNI officers in Craigavon, were reminders of the violence we all hoped had been consigned to the past.

They sent a chill down the spine of anybody old enough to remember the darkest days of the north’s pointless tragedy. They would have confounded anyone who hoped that the north was becoming a normal society where politics work and deliver the kind of change and progress that ensures a society’s wellbeing, unity and progress.

The return of dissident republican violence, so very soon after the moving and powerful ceremonies marked the 10th anniversary of their greatest atrocity — the Omagh bomb that killed 31 people on August 15, 1998 — is a slap in the face for everyone who voted for the peace process and to consign violence to the past.