[lg policy] Declassified files: Freudian slip in SDLP’s Irish language policy

[Harold Schiffman]

 Declassified files: Freudian slip in SDLP’s Irish language policy
[image: The SDLP]
The SDLP
00:44Monday 04 January 2016

A new SDLP Irish language policy was privately dismissed by the Government
as a crude attempt to outflank Sinn Fein.

The policy said “party spokesmen are encouraged to use as much Irish as
possible” and urged bilingual leaflets.

A memo by AJ Green in the Department of Education, released by the Public
Record Office in Belfast under the 30/20 year rule, said that the document
was “generally agreed to be foolish, divisive and reactionary, and to show
the SDLP in its greenest guise”. He added: “You will now note that we are
back with ‘the six counties’ (never Northern Ireland), and that the paper
attacks Dublin language policy as well as UK language policy.

“Although the paper has a strong whiff of Gaelic fanaticism, the unreality
of its proposals suggests pressure to be seen to outflank Sinn Fein. There
is a pleasant Freudian slip in the paragraph on the media: independent TV
stations are advised they have a duty ‘to give the Irish language ‘paper
recognition’!”

Read more:
http://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/northern-ireland-news/declassified-files-freudian-slip-in-sdlp-s-irish-language-policy-1-7142328#ixzz3wIAjhUq8


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