IF GAA regulations still prevented British soldiers and northern police officers from joining today, it would be completely understandable if the issue was the subject of prolonged and angry interventions by prominent unionist voices.

As it happens, when the Rule 21 ban was actually in place a quarter of a century ago, most unionists were largely disinterested and made little or no contribution towards the intense debate which eventually led to its deletion.

I have clear recollections of the developments which reached a climax in 2001, because, as the then editor of The Irish News, I had to supervise the passionate arguments which were played out in our columns.

The paper took the stance of pressing firmly for the deletion of Rule 21, on the basis that it might have had some meaning after partition but was hopelessly outdated in the post-Good Friday Agreement era.

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Opinion polls indicated that most nationalists endorsed our position – although some did not, and attempted to apply public and private pressure on us before the prohibition was finally removed by a special congress, just as the RUC was replaced by the PSNI in November, 2001.

Going........

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