Goodbye "Sir" Ted
I've just finished a short report for tonight's Radio 4 1800 bulletin on Senator Ted Kennedy's contribution to the Northern Ireland process. He's certainly a man who provokes strong responses, as a quick visit to the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳'s forum proves.
There have been heartfelt tributes from nationalists and more guarded responses from unionists. Sir Reg Empey who spoke to me this morning before boarding a plane for a trade mission to Canada argued that the Senator's views had developed over time, becoming more balanced so far as unionists were concerned.
One claim made on a lot of the bulletin boards has been that the Senator was an IRA supporter, but the SDLP's John Hume, who worked so closely with him, argued that this perception was entirely wrong. Ted Kennedy he said stood simply for peace, justice and civil rights.
Even in demolition jobs like this piece by in the Daily Mail back in March, I can't find a direct quote from the Senator supporting the IRA.
Backing "troops out" was not the same as directly supporting IRA violence. The furthest Andrew Roberts goes is to accuse Ted Kennedy of condemning violence with "weasel words" and blaming the hunger strikes on British inflexibility rather than IRA intransigence.
Back in the spring, as this blog reported, some DUP MPs signed a Commons motion criticising Gordon Brown for awarding Senator Kennedy an honorary knighthood. Sammy Wilson, Jeffrey Donaldson, David Simpson and others reckoned it was in "poor taste" given Chappaquidick, the Senator's backing for a US arms boycott of the RUC and what they claimed was his support for the IRA's political wing.
With today's news, the party faced a dillemma: should they speak ill of the dead? They haven't been rushing towards our TV cameras, but instead put out a statement from the North Down MLA Peter Weir. He argued that whilst in the past Senator Kennedy's role had been "far from positive" his contribution to US political life had been immense and in more recent times he had recognised the "validity of the Unionist argument".
I'm 
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