There may be little appetite for further bloodshed from the Real IRA, and US president George Bush's new ultimatums on world terrorism may see further decline in support for Irish nationalists from the US.
The European Union also made formal protests through the British and Irish consulates in Atlanta, focusing on Hill's disabilities.
Terrorism (including Irish terrorism) emerged as the No 1 priority, followed, less predictably, by cyberwarfare.
A third driver was racism in the housing market: many new migrants in the 1950s to 1970s faced appalling discrimination with "No blacks, no Irish, no dogs" signs common in the windows of lodging houses.
As talks resumed at Stormont to revive the assembly, under the chairmanship of the Northern Ireland secretary, Paul Murphy, and junior Irish foreign minister Tom Kitt, Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness urged the hardline DUP to strike a deal as quickly as possible.
It was Bernardo O'Higgins, the son of an Irish engineer, who led the revolutionary army against the Spaniards.
That the party concerned is the Social Democratic Labour party (SDLP) throws into sharp relief that the de facto coalition of Irish nationalist forces has split.
The Irish government has also been opening an eye that had turned the other way to avert its gaze from numerous Provo transgressions.
Sinn Fein still used aggressive rhetoric for the benefit if its own supporters, while cooing with the British, Irish and US governments about the joys of non-violence.
A significant thread in the recent politics of Tower Hamlets is the legacy of the Battle of Cable Street, the legendary East End street confrontation involving the police, local Jewish and Irish workers and activists, and Sir Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists that took place on 4 October, 1936.
From creative street art to colourful campaign buses and choir singing, our readers have documented the Irish mood ahead of the referendum.
