Friday, March 21, 2008
éirígí: armed struggle is a tactic, not a principle…
Mick Hall has an interesting quote from a Northern Irish member of éirígí, a relatively recent phenomenon in Republican politics, which seems to have surfaced in Dublin much before organising in Belfast:
“The party defends the right of any people who are subjected to imperialist occupation to use whatever means they deem necessary to remove that occupation. However, we do believe that the elevation of military struggle to a principle as opposed to a revolutionary tactic has retarded the development of the republican project. The policy of militarism encourages elitism and stifles the initiative of our communities. Pursuing a military strategy at all costs also divorces the struggle from ever-changing contexts and hence, our ability to capitalize on them.”
Mick Fealty @ 11:25 PM
Nevin,
I am not going to defend the rotten edifice that is the Catholic church - I am only a “Catholic” in the sense that is the only way I can simply articulate the place I had in the society of the North.
However, the church was not in power. It didn’t control the police, the parliament or the government. So its guilt - like that of the idiots who ran the Nationalist Party - is minor.
As for compromise - Nationalists offered compromise at every stage from 68 onwards. Most (though obviously not all) Unionists weren’t even prepared to have them at the table until the 1980s.
OK, I know saying we’re heroes and them uns are the villains is always too easy in the context of the North, but I’ve never met one, just one, Catholic who regrets the destruction of Stormont.
I’ve met plenty who were (pragmatically) pro-Union, others who have left the North and never intend to go back. But never one who says they would prefer to have lived under another 30 years of Unionist hegemony if it meant the troubles never happened.
Posted by on Mar 23, 2008 @ 04:56 PMCS Parnell
“But never one who says they would prefer to have lived under another 30 years of Unionist hegemony if it meant the troubles never happened”
So then, the entire Catholic population believes that over 3000 dead was worth it because it got rid of the hated Stormont?
Dear Lord, what planet are you on? And, even if that nonsense were true, what planet would they have been on as they failed to notice that Stormont was gone by 1972 but the murders (on both sides) continued for another 25 years.
Oh well, I suppose that, if you supported it all, you may need to find some way to rationalise it and help you sleep at night.
PS you forgot to mention that it was all themmuns fault
Posted by on Mar 23, 2008 @ 07:17 PMIt seems that the only armed struggle that is called for these day is that of the PSNI and thugs.
Posted by on Mar 23, 2008 @ 09:16 PMCSP, nationalists found themselves in a dilemma. On the one hand they boycotted the state and on the other they were victimised because of that boycott.
Some nationalists and unionists were prepared to compromise but they were soon outflanked by the extremists. Perhaps if Lemass had remained in power for a bit longer he would have reined in the nationalist extremists rather that do what his successor did, protect the institutions, state and Catholic Church, at the expense of the institutions here. Perhaps if O’Neill and Lemass had done more groundwork in advance of their meetings there might have been a different outcome.
Isn’t it strange that though Unionist and Nationalists were guilty of discrimination in the allocation of public housing very little was said about places such as Newry where there allegedly was a ‘cross- community’ gentleman’s agreement?
If events surrounding 1966 acted as a significant factor in the outbreak of the Troubles should we not be making contingency plans in advance of 2016? As you might say, “It’s the constitution, stupid”.
Posted by on Mar 23, 2008 @ 09:28 PM“éirígí"… they might as well have just called themselves “prods out”. Yet another attempt to unite catholic, protestant and dissenter by a bunch of catholic-background men (and they will be men) with an irish-language named group. And their first actions… protest aginst British royalty, try to free some dissident republicans, and refuse to recognise the psni. Hard-core nationalism for those who miss it since the world moved on.
Posted by on Mar 24, 2008 @ 12:23 AMthey were victimised because of that boycott.
Ah right, that’s what it was. Glad you explained it, because, if you hadn’t, I could have gone on living under the false impression the taigs hadn’t asked for it.
Posted by on Mar 24, 2008 @ 03:15 AMUnimpressed, did you also expect Unionist and Nationalist councillors to be impartial in their allocation of houses and jobs? Would you be surprised if the allocation of houses in some communities is now (indirectly) in the gift of the paramilitary godfathers, a great leap forward?
Posted by on Mar 24, 2008 @ 08:48 AMFair play to éirígí for the work and campaigning they’ve done so far, refusing to see republicanism marginalised to the ranks of the gun fetishists and for keeping the spirit of Connolly alive and well when the establishment, north and south, would live nothing more than to see it buried.
Posted by on Mar 25, 2008 @ 04:11 AM“keeping the spirit of Connolly alive and well when the establishment, north and south, would live nothing more than to see it buried.”
Much as they did in the 1960s, Ciarn
Posted by on Mar 25, 2008 @ 12:23 PMCynic, I didn’t say they were supporters. But I will acknowledge a moral ambivalence - read the full length version of What ever you say, say nothing.
Actually, at any given time the majority of nationalists would have and did vote to end the violence. But that isn’t a negation of what I said either. I was simply recounting the mind game - go back to 1968 or live in today.
Nevin - I am sure nationalists were victimised because they boycotted the state. But that doesn’t explain the crooked franchise or the boundary gerrymandering, or the fact that the M1 ends at Dungannon or that a new University was opened in the only major town west of the Bann with a unionist majority, or the fact that the Bel Tel has never splashed a sports story that is about a Gaelic game, or that the only new town in the North was named after a man most nationalists despised, or that the countless myriad of big and small blockages and humiliations that were heaped on what every unionist politician loved to call “the minority”.
I am not asking anyone to declare their personal guilt. I am asking for a bit of honesty about why we ended up here.
Posted by on Mar 25, 2008 @ 01:45 PMCS Parnell @ 01:45 PM:
Enough of such mealy-mouthed harrumphing. Nobody was “victimised” because he/she was a “nationalist” or because he/she “boycotted the state”. If you want “a bit of honesty about why we ended up here”, take it from the horse’s mouth—or, if you can’t find a loquacious equine, try a lookalike, that “verray parfit gentle” baronet, Basil Brooke (reported by the Fermanagh Times, speaking at Newtownbutler, 12th July,1933):
There were a great number of Protestants and Orangemen who employed Roman Catholics. He felt he could speak freely on this subject as he had not a Roman Catholic about his place ... He would point out that the Roman Catholics were endeavouring to get in everywhere and were out with all their force and might to destroy the power and constitution of Ulster. There was a definite plot to overpower the vote of Unioists in the north. He would appeal to Loyalists, therefore, wherever possible to employ Protestant lads and lassies.
Posted by on Mar 25, 2008 @ 03:14 PMMalcolm,
I was (of course) aware of Brooke’s statement. but I also think the idiocy of the McAteer led nationalist party was a sight to behold.
They didn’t fight the unionists, they just gave up.
I was struck recently by Gregory Campbell’s remarks that he had joined the mob beseiging the bogside in August 69 because the civil rights marchers wanted rights he hadn’t got either.
How on earth did the North of Ireland end up in such a way that (almost certainly uniquely on the planet) people threw rocks (or whatever Greg and his pals did) to demand they didn’t get the right to vote?
It ended up like that because nobody bothered to fight it. Until, probably, the election of Gerry Fitt in 1966 most UK politicians were probably even unaware of the politicial slum they were nominally responsible for.
So, yes, the boycott was a big mistake.
Posted by on Mar 25, 2008 @ 05:07 PMCS Parnell @ 05:07 PM:
Poor old Eddie: the clueless leading the hopeless.
If Greg-of-the-Wife’s-Office-rental was lobbing rocks, he was doing so in the general direction of that lovely old comrade, Betty Sinclair. Eddie was only at the 5 Oct 1968 shenanigans because Betty and Fred Heatley went to his door and baited him to do so: even then he was complaining about the rough types with whom he would have to associate.
You are, sadly, correct in your assumption that most British politicos kept well away from all things Stormont, on the good belief that “he that toucheth pitch ...”.
I suspect an exception could, just about, be made for Harold Wilson: he’d never had much time for the whole Stormont regime. That dated back to 1940, when, as a Ministry of Supply factotum, he came visiting to see the dismal shambles the Craig/Andrews lot had made of ARP and other preparations, despite London’s substantial back-roll. Thenhen Harold, Chairing the Labour Conference (?1960), had the Starry Plough paraded through the final session, jut before the ritual singing of the Red Flag. Unfortunately, the 1964 and 1966 Labour Governments were so far up to the oxters in economic alligators, they were too late to wade into the NI cesspit. Anyway, it was probably well past the last chance anyway.
Posted by on Mar 25, 2008 @ 06:12 PMThe state of Northern Irleand was a fascist sectarian state with no legitimacy. Those Protestants who collaborated with it in any way were like Hitler’s Nazis or the white riff raff of South Africa.
This Orange state was founded and maintained on the bomb and the bullet. Cod yourself if you like but don’t try to cod the rest of us.The nationalists were left holding the baby. Wee Joe Devlin was beaten up in the House of Commons by MPs as others cheered. Sectarianism was a one way gun. The Brits used the Provos to deflect criticism and cause confusion by discrediting Catholicism and republicanism and allowing the mealy mouthed Huns and Brits to paper over the human rights abuses.
Huns by name and Huns by nature.
Posted by on Mar 25, 2008 @ 07:03 PMBetty would have been too pished to have wound up anybody
Posted by on Mar 25, 2008 @ 07:09 PMCSP. check out A T Q Stewarts, “The Narrow Ground” where you’ll find that ‘sermons in stones’ or ‘inter-communal clodding’ long predate the formation of the NI state.
I’d put up an alternative explanation for the gerrymandering: the decision by over twenty nationalist councils to ‘affiliate’ to the Daíl in early 1922.
Posted by on Mar 25, 2008 @ 08:55 PM“the fact that the M1 ends at Dungannon”
There’s probably something of the Belfast/Dublin factor involved there, CSP. Major routes radiate slowly from major centres of population. The M2 didn’t even make it to Ballymena.
Nationalists weren’t the only minority to suffer; socialists were looked upon with great disfavour too.
I read somewhere that Coleraine was recommended by the Lockwood Committee(?) but that group would have been selected by the Government. Unionists and Nationalists in Derry were equally cheesed off IIRC.
Posted by on Mar 25, 2008 @ 09:09 PM“were out with all their force and might to destroy the power and constitution of Ulster.”
That looks more like a reference back to the early 1920s, Malcolm, when some folks came up from Cork to lead the assault on the new state. And there was also the Battle of Belleek.
Posted by on Mar 25, 2008 @ 09:26 PMNevin @ 09:09 PM:
The Lockwood Committee’s 1964 Report hacked off a large number of interests.
The most inexplicable was poking a stick at the existing and successful Magee University College. I can give personal testimony that, in the 1960s, Magee passed on to TCD a succession of students noted for pneumatic pulchritude.
Oh, my fair Miss Ulster Bacon long ago!
Posted by on Mar 25, 2008 @ 09:36 PMNevin @ 09:26 PM:
Ah yes, the Battle of Belleek.
Joe Sweeney, who was pro-Treaty like most Donegal men, had reinforced his position at Pettigo. The A-Specials arrived by boat and took over Magherameenagh Castle. Having pushed their luck a step or two beyond the county boundary, the Specials were ambushed, and evacuated by pleasure-boat, losing their Lancia car. The Newsletter went ape, proclaiming an invasion of Polish magnitude:
INVASION OF ULSTER
Northern territory was invaded by huge forces of IRA men on Sunday.Now, I reckon in 1922, as now, it’d be pretty difficult to invade Ulster from Donegal.
However, Craig did has usual posturing, demanding full-scale retaliation. Churchill (as—note well— Colonial Secretary), never one to minimise a situation, sent in half a regiment, going against all military advice that the “invasion” was “a farce and exaggerated”.
Three IRA men and an “own-goal” A-Special were howitzered to death in the British invasion of Donegal. Lloyd George then got his kicks taunting WSC with:
Scots wha’ hae wi’ Winston bled.
Posted by on Mar 25, 2008 @ 10:03 PMMalcolm, do you mean pendulous protuberances? I had a blast from the past on the NALIL blog not so long from one such dark haired damsel who’d taken the Magee-TCD route - oh so many years ago!!
Posted by on Mar 25, 2008 @ 10:28 PMNevin @ 10:28 PM:
“Pendulous”? Perish the thought.
Gravity-defying, more like it.
Hair colour’s right, though.
Posted by on Mar 25, 2008 @ 10:36 PMPassions were running very high in the late spring of 1922, Malcolm, and both pro- and anti-treaty forces were active in Ulster; the blood was up and flowing freely; the whole place was in a state of near anarchy.
“Scots wha’ hae” is a strange song for a Welshman to regale an Englishman with.
Posted by on Mar 25, 2008 @ 10:46 PMI was thinking of the archaic definition, Malcolm: ‘poised without visible support’. It was the era of the swinging sixties and the flaming brazier.
Posted by on Mar 25, 2008 @ 10:53 PMNevin @ 10:53 PM:
Despite the Sage-Librarian of Hull University, the Sixties took some time to swing in McQuaid’s Dublin.
So, I’ve just had two personally catastrophic moments this evening:
1. The recollection this exchange has quiveringly forced upon me; and
2. Hearing that Monty Panesar has got a “Michelle”. This had me at a loss until I worked out the pun in “Five for 78”. [If all else fails, think “Catwoman” and “Batman Returns"].
Posted by on Mar 25, 2008 @ 11:15 PM
