An Phoblacht - Issue 1 - 2022

Vetoing The Protocol Protecti Restoring Cross-Community Consent

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Foreword by Baroness Kate Hoey Introduction by Jamie Bryson 5 January 2022

, ' K R O W T E N T IS L A N IO T 'ELITE NA G IN G N E L L A H C D N A N IO S U COLL THE STATE NARRATIVE

Published by Unionist Voice Publication

s Ltd on behalf of Unionist Voice

Policy Studies

EMMA McARDLE challenges the recent claims by Kate Hoey, of an ‘elite nationalist network’, highlighting the reality of how Hoey’s comments are another chapter in a long chronicle of brutal suppression of nationalist rights and voices in the Six Counties.

2022 might have gotten off to a slow start in a lot of houses, mine included, as the surge of the Omicron variant confined many to an impromptu 10 day ‘staycation’. It didn’t slow Baroness Kate Hoey though, whose proclamation in her foreword to Jamie Bryson’s ‘Vetoing the Protocol’ article, casts doubt on the constitutional aspirations of educated, successful and professional nationalists.

Hoey’s remarks were carried in the ‘Unionist Voice’ website on 5 January.

She wrote: “There are very justified concerns that many professional vocations have become dominated by those of a nationalist persuasion, and this positioning of activists is then used to exert influence on those in power”.

Behind the sneer, what Kate Hoey, recently elevated to the position of trade envoy to Ghana by Boris Johnson, actually denigrates is the growing demand for self-determination by the people of Ireland. Her claims of ‘activists’ infiltrating the professional class in order to pressurise those in power is a distraction. The truth is that the demand for

self-governance is growing among people of all backgrounds.

The people that Kate Hoey takes exception to have entered professional occupations due to hard work, intelligence, and the achievement of qualifications. The fact that some seek an end to British rule in Ireland is incidental.

• Kate Hoey and Jamie Bryson

anphoblacht  UIMHIR EISIÚNA 1 - 2022 - ISSUE NUMBER 1

The people that Kate Hoey takes exception to have entered professional occupations due to hard work, intelligence, and the achievement of qualifications Not content with her original remarks, the Baroness secured a platform in the ‘Irish News’ a few days later in which she doubled down on her assertion that an ‘elite nationalist network’

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