So Tina McKenzie, the European Parliamentary candidate for Ireland’s newest Unionist party, NI21, has been forced to sign a declaration pledging her opposition to “political violence”. Why? Because her father is Harry Fitzsimmons, a former Volunteer of the (Provisional) Irish Republican Army, who was divorced from her mother way back in the 1970s. Or at least that is the excuse given in public and to the news media to explain away the bizarre pledge-signing. The organisation that demanded it, Innocent Victims United, has stated that it will only deal with British Unionist parties like NI21, the DUP, UUP, TUV, APNI and the Conservatives while boycotting Sinn Féin, the IRSP, éirígí, and other elected Republican/Nationalist representatives it disapproves of.
No such requirement, of course, has been made of the numerous DUP and UUP politicians with links to various British terror factions. Nor indeed as far as I am aware was David Rose, one of the early members of NI21, forced to sign such a declaration. That would be the same Rose who was for many years the very public face of the PUP, the minor Unionist party that operates as the political wing of the UVF, a British terrorist grouping in Ireland. The difference between Tina McKenzie and David Rose? Well, why don’t we just start with her religion and go on from there.
British Unionism in Ireland. The same as it ever was.
AN SIONNACH FIONN 
well Séamus – you didn’t really expect anything else , did you?
Though I suppose it could have been sackcloth and ashes and marching behind a blood and thunder band!!
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Ah, not really no. There is always the sting at the end of the (Unionist) tail. I suspect that NI21 will remain a hard sell to Nationalists, despite the heavy promotion it’s candidates are getting over on Slugger O’Toole (it and the Alliance Party).
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Last chance saloon!!
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