Subject: COMMENTARY: Only solution in Ulster is British exit

Date: 08 21 01

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The Providence Journal - projo.com-opinion

8.20.2001 00:23

Only solution in Ulster is British exit

BY NIALL FENNESSY

REGARDING the long anti-Irish nationalist tradition championed by The Journal editorial staff, I am compelled to voice amazement at what seems to be a blatant policy of prejudice.

Going back to 1996, The Journal has displayed a sensationalism that apes the kneejerk emotions of the politically ignorant at-large. The political conflict in the northeastern counties of Ireland will not be solved by campaigns of disinformation.

The Journal's editorials irresponsibly adhere to the myths and stereotypes channeled through British government briefings. This failure, I believe, is deliberate. On Feb. 18, 1997 ("Exit long overdue"), The Journal pushes for the recall of Jean Kennedy Smith as ambassador to Ireland because of her "strident pro-nationalist views." 

When the Clinton administration suspended deportation hearings ("Irish stew," Sept. 19, 1997) against alleged IRA activists convicted in British kangaroo courts notorious for forced confessions and suspect evidence, The Journal felt that "political interference in our judicial process engendered understandable mistrust in the Ulster Protestant Unionists." On Aug. 1, 1999 ("Chill in Northern Ireland"), with the apparent collapse of the U.S.-led peace negotiations, The Journal accused a nationalist party of "inventing incidents of harassment and restricting the civil liberties of Unionist organizations."

The suspension of these talks, a splintering tactic historically favored by Britain, was welcomed by The Journal in that "the majority Unionists in Ulster should not have to negotiate their future with a fully armed IRA."

On this past June 29, ("Ulster on the edge"), The Journal attacked the apprehension of the Irish Republican Army about negotiating with Britain. "It is basically a terrorist group," you wrote, with "little claim to be heard, except by a minority of Ulster's Catholic minority." This minority, you would have us believe, was "far more enthusiastic about the accords than were Protestants, who felt themselves bearing the brunt of the pressure to make concessions from the accords' sponsors in London, Dublin and Washington."

An Aug. 3 editorial,"Same old Ulster problem," is predictably inept, stating that the lack of an IRA surrender of weapons "understandably scares Ulster's Protestant majority."

So far this year, there have been 280 unanswered pipe and petrol bomb attacks on the nationalist community. In areas where the two communities are integrated, deliberate campaigns of intimidation and arson forced many Catholic families to flee to the Republic. Beatings and stone attacks are common and severe. Catholic children are chased by mobs from school or altogether prevented from attending with the quiet approval of Unionist leaders. Plastic bullets, deplored by human - rights organizations across the globe, are indiscriminately used against nationalists only, severely injuring children and the innocent.  

Churches, as community strongholds, are vandalized and burned. Unionist rioting continues nightly along the "peacewall," which splits the Belfast communities, while the thoroughly Protestant police force targets nationalist homes with floodlights, standing idly by as bricks and bombs are thrown. A couple of weeks ago, staff at a hospital in the nationalist community were terrorized in the name of Britain by a rampant group unpursued by police. Most recently, two youths, one a Catholic and one a Protestant mistaken for a Catholic, were randomly gunned down by the Unionist militia.

British Unionism proves a racist entity. There is not, despite your assertions, a Unionist Protestant majority in the province of Ulster.  There never has been.  Northern Ireland, as it is erroneously called, is not Ulster. It is within Ulster. It occupies six out of the nine counties of Ulster. It is an artificial government gerrymandered as a Protestant nation for a Protestant people to benefit Britain. Currently, over 13,500 soldiers occupy this last colony of Western Europe.

Social conditions are poor. Unemployment is high. Housing needs are critical. And civil liberties are, by the very nature of the government, inaccessible to a massive percentage of the people. The Unionists, who you imply are a peaceable people, are well armed. They have been since their inception at the turn of the century, and are still so thanks to South African and Balkan sources.

That you habitually omit this evidence is anticipated. Britain, as a bedfellow of U.S. policy, strongly encourages such reporting. On Aug. 6, the British and Irish governments released a final "take-it-or-leave-it" proposition toward saving the Belfast Agreement. It will fail. The skepticism that Unionists have toward the agreement is not because of weapons held by the IRA. It is a skepticism about the agreement itself.

When Unionist leader David Trimble signed it in April 1998, he stated he was forever ensuring the survival of a British government in Ireland. But his party risks losing privileges of their British heritage. And they want out, as evidenced by roadblocks constructed throughout negotiations by his group. For example, consider the demand for a surrender of weapons; the prevention of internationally recommended changes to the British police force; a power of veto over the reform of government and civil liberties; Trimble's two predated resignations conditioned upon undeliverable ultimatums; and orchestrated campaigns of violence.

Despite this, The Journal makes deliberate misrepresentations ignoring the legitimacy of the Irish Republican movement. The crimes of an 800-year conflict are not dismissible trivia. Oliver Cromwell, forced emigration and starvation, the Black and Tans, penal laws, internment and executions are examples of British policy. Police collusion with Loyalist paramilitaries, the assassination of human-rights lawyers, and shoot-to-kill policies echo this trend.

They are not romantic inventions. Britain's occupation of the northeastern counties of Ireland is illegitimate and furthers violence.  It has to end. Political grandstanding and negotiations mean little. Concessions that establish basic human services for the nationalist communities are not concessions. A racist government is owed nothing for ceding privileges that should have never been denied.

The political conflict in the northeastern counties of Ireland is an ancient one that will not be solved within this current arena. A surrender of weapons that can easily be required by all parties is a smokescreen deflecting attention from legitimate political progress.

There is one solution only. Withdraw Britain from Irish soil. Let Ireland govern the Irish.

Niall Fennessy, of Providence, is a member of the Irish Freedom Committee, an organization dedicated to supporting the families of Irish Republican prisoners held in Ireland and Britain.

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