A Tragedy of Errors

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In this timely new book Sir Kenneth Bloomfield, former Head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service, explores a number of crucial questions in the immediate aftermath of PIRA decommissioning and attempts to re-activate the political process in Northern Ireland. Was it inevitable that Northern Ireland should undergo some three decades of costly violence? What, in truth, were those costs? Might the descent into catastrophe have been delayed or even averted if the main actors (defined as the parliament and government of the United Kingdom, the political parties and institutions operating within Northern Ireland since 1920, and the parties and institutions of the Irish Free State and Republic) had done things they ought to have done, or left undone things they ought not to have done? Are the political process and the peace process the same thing, and indeed how is peace to be defined?