JEREMY CORBYN HAS repeated his call for a united Ireland.
Speaking on The Andrew Marr Show on BBC One, the leader of the British Labour Party said it up to the Irish people to decide on a united Ireland:
“Quite honestly, the peace process has brought about a huge step forward. There’s a lot of cross-border agreement, there’s a lot of cross-border institutions.
“You go to Belfast, you go to Dublin, people travel back and forward all the time.
“The governments are in touch with each other, every hour of every day on different issues.
There is that kind of sense that there is one island of Ireland.
Corbyn also denied suggestions that he was a supporter of the IRA during the Troubles, saying he opposed violence on all sides.
“The violence was wrong on all sides and I have said so all along. My whole point was if we are to bring about a peace process, you weren’t going to achieve it by military means.”
Speaking about his decision to bring members of the IRA into the House of Commons during the 1980, Corbyn said:
I did make myself very unpopular with some people by a preparedness to reach out to the Republican tradition in Ireland, to say ultimately this war is unwinnable by either side.
He added that political dialogue was the only thing that was going to work.
“At the same time, secretly, the British government was also engaged in that [political dialogue] and then eventually in 1994 we got the first ceasefire.”
The Labour leader is due to speak at a conference fringe meeting organised by Sinn Féin later today.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say