No-one should be knighted for just doing their job and certainly not Tony Blair
I cannot agree with the editor’s opinion that Tony Blair should get a knighthood (‘Blair was a flawed PM but of course he should be called Sir,’ Ben Lowry, January 8, see link below)
Nobody should get an honour simply for doing their job, and certainly not if they performed dishonourably.
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Hide AdFor all his charm, Blair did great damage to the Union and to the integrity of government across the UK. H
e has rightly been criticised for his role in the murderous invasion of Iraq, but his fans continue to credit him for his role in the “Irish peace process”.
In fact the security forces terminated the IRA insurgency: Blair undermined them.
He deceived his partners in the multiparty talks, negotiating in secret with Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness terms of appeasement which would never have been made public but for the Downey trial in 2014.
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Hide AdThe sequence of events through which Blair abused the authority of his office is clearly set out in Austen Morgan’s Tony Blair and the IRA (2016).
The salient facts are these:
• Sinn Féin/IRA did not sign up to the Belfast Agreement in April 1998
• they continued to demand further concessions from the British government
• their main bargaining counter was the threat of renewed violence
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Hide Ad• Blair conceded their two main demands: the early release of IRA prisoners and an undertaking that specified IRA fugitives from justice would not be pursued or prosecuted.
These concessions constituted political interference in and undermined the operation of the criminal justice system.
If a victim of IRA terrorism had known what had been agreed, they could have initiated a judicial review with a strong prospect of success.
Blair usurped the role of the Crown Prosecution Service; overrode the professional advice of his Attorney-General; and abused the power of his office.
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Hide AdBut all this was done in secret, so no victim could have challenged it.
Dr WB Smith, Belfast 15
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