FRFI 150 August / September 1999
The IRA statement, published in An Phoblacht/Republican News on 23 July, reflects growing Republican frustration with a Northern Ireland Peace Agreement which has come to a dead end. Blair’s deadlines of first 30 June and then 15 July failed to force the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) into entering the power-sharing executive with Sinn Fein. During the course of the hectic, intense discussions, Blair and the British government were convinced that they would deliver IRA arms decommissioning. As Adams put it, they had stretched the Republican constituency to its limit: Blair called it a seismic shift’. For Trimble and the UUP this isn’t enough – they want arms decommissioning before power-sharing. BOB SHEPHERD reports.
Even the enabling legislation, published by the British government – on 12 July, ironically – with the supposed intent of acting as the framework for setting up the executive, wasn’t enough to shift the UUP. In this legislation, Blair’s new blueprint’, the Good Friday Peace Agreement was amended to allow Sinn Fein to be excluded from the executive should the IRA fail to decommission. The sole aim of this amendment was to strengthen the position of Trimble; centering the debate on the failure to set up the power-sharing executive around IRA decommissioning hides what is really happening on the streets of the Six Counties. It conveniently hides which section of society is under attack and where the violence is coming from. During June, leading up to the talks and the beginning of the loyalist marching season, there was an escalating number of attacks on nationalist homes and communities.
- 1 June: a petrol bomb was thrown at the home of a 63-year-old Catholic woman in Strabane
- 4 June: a Catholic solicitor’s office in Lisburn was set on fire
- 5 June: a pipe-bomb thrown through the living-room window killed 59-year-old Elizabeth O’Neill in Portadown; a second pipe-bomb attack took place on a house near the O’Neills’ family home; there was another pipe-bomb attack on a Catholic home in Hilltown, Co Down
- 6 June: families in Twinbrook, Belfast were forced to flee after two pipe-bombs were found next to Acacia Avenue Flats; two pipe-bombs were thrown in the Short Strand area of Belfast
- 7 June: a pipe-bomb was found outside St Mary’s primary school in Harryville; there was a petrol bomb attack on a Catholic home in Antrim town
- 19 June: Catholic homes in north Belfast were attacked following an Orange parade
- 29 June: a pipe-bomb was pushed through the letter box of a Catholic home in south Belfast
On 28 June the fascist loyalist gangs known as the Orange Volunteers and the Red Hand Defenders issued a joint statement which declared that they will not stand idly by and watch as our culture, heritage and religion are attacked’. The Orange Order applied for the right to hold 25 marches in Portadown between 28 June and 24 July.
The Orange Order marches on 4 July, at Drumcree, and 12 July, across the Six Counties, were, in contrast to previous years, relatively low-key. There is an expectation that in response to its so-called responsible attitude’ this year at Drumcree, the British government will allow the Orange Order to march down the Garvaghy Road later in the year. This responsible attitude’ didn’t stop loyalist marchers on 3 July from attacking a human rights activist from the USA outside a church near the Garvaghy Road. They broke her wrist and cut her head in the attack. On the evening of 4 July groups of loyalists threatened local nationalists and international observers at the bottom of the Garvaghy Road.
On 12 July, following the banning of the Orange march down the Lower Ormeau Road, the Orange Order provocatively moved their main Belfast rally to the Ormeau Park, next to the Lower Ormeau Road. Following this rally, Orange marchers attacked nationalist residents in Belfast’s Springfield Road who were protesting against what was the second Orange march through their area in three weeks. The RUC did nothing to stop the Orange marchers’ attack, confronting the nationalist protesters instead. In the run-up to 12 July in north Belfast in the Greymount area, two nationalist homes were set on fire on 7 July. On 9 July, another home was attacked. On 10 July a family of five narrowly escaped death when their home was fire-bombed. Four pipe-bombs were found in the area and there has been a constant stream of attacks against nationalist homes in the nearby Longlands area.
This is the reality of what is happening in nationalist working class communities across the north of Ireland. A continuous stream of sectarian attacks from loyalist terror gangs with no real defence from the Republican movement. It’s no wonder that Adams realised he might have stretched the Republican constituency’ too far in his commitment to Blair on decommissioning and has begun to backtrack a little.
Not only is the peace agreement’ at a dead end; so is the peace strategy of Sinn Fein. Blair says that the whole process is now parked’ until October, when another attempt will be made to set up an executive. In the meantime Senator George Mitchell has been brought back in an effort to square the circle. If it is successful and Sinn Fein get their two ministerial positions then, as Tony McIntyre, a former POW, writes:
‘Not only will Republicans be consigned to administer British rule for the foreseeable future (but) the acceptance by them of the principle of decommissioning has served to delegitimise and criminalise the previous Republican resistance to that rule.’
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‘The argument that the present political process can deliver real and meaningful change has been significantly undermined by the course of events over the past 15 months. This culminated in the failure last week to establish the political institutions set out in the Good Friday Agreement
‘Those who demand the decommissioning of IRA weapons lend themselves in the current political context, inadvertently or otherwise, to the failed agenda which seeks the defeat of the IRA.’
30 years since Labour sent British troops into the Six Counties
On 14 August 1969, the Labour government sent British troops onto the streets of Derry. It wasn’t, as popular media myth would have it, to defend the nationalist community from brutal loyalist attacks. The troops were sent into Derry to prevent a full-scale insurrection, which would have spilled over into the 26 Counties and once again raised the national question throughout Ireland.
For more than a year before August 1969, the situation in the north of Ireland had been moving towards insurrection. The Civil Rights Movement had grown into a mass movement, challenging Protestant privilege and forcing the Unionists in Stormont to accept one-person-one-vote. Battles raged on the streets between the nationalist working class and the RUC, and the Ulster Volunteer Force had embarked on a bombing campaign. In anticipation of the Orange marching season, Harold Wilson, Labour Prime Minister, gave Roy Hattersley, Minister of State for Defence, the power to send in British troops.
Stormont refused to ban the annual 12 August Apprentice Boys march in Derry which allowed thousands of Orangemen to parade through the Catholic Bogside to demonstrate Protestant ascendancy. On 11 August, the Derry Citizens’ Defence Association erected barricades around the Bogside to defend the area. The RUC used armoured cars and CS gas in attempts to break through the barricades, but failed. On 13 August General Freeland, the British army commander, was told that the RUC could not contain the Bogside for more than 36 hours. The next day British troops were on the streets.
James Callaghan, then Labour Home Secretary, explained their role: [the troops’] immediate orders were to relieve the exhausted police and prevent riots breaking out in the centre of Londonderry.’
The response of the British left was to support Labour’s use of troops to defend the interests of British imperialism! Socialist Worker, in a series of articles, stated:
‘Because the troops do not have the ingrained hatreds of the RUC and Specials, they will not behave with the same viciousness’
‘The breathing space provided by the presence of British troops is short but vital. Those who call for the immediate withdrawal of the troops before the men behind the barricades can defend themselves are inviting a pogrom which will hit first and hardest at socialists’
‘To say that the immediate enemy in Ulster is the British troops is incorrect’ (Socialist Worker, 21 August, 11 and 18 September 1969)
In its desire to keep its alliance with the left of the Labour Party and to defend its own middle-class position, the demand for the withdrawal of British troops from abroad was dropped from the Where we stand’ column in Socialist Worker. A demand that is still missing 30 years later!
The Militant Tendency (then inside the Labour Party), now known as the Socialist Party in England and the dominant force in the Scottish Socialist Party, supported the introduction of troops under the guise of concern lest there be a bloodbath. To this day they continue to court loyalism
‘A slaughter would have followed in comparison with which the blood-letting in Belfast would have paled into insignificance if the Labour government had not intervened with British troops.’ (Militant, September 1969)
The Communist Party, through its newspaper The Morning Star, called for decisive intervention from London – it called on British imperialism to reform the loyalist police state! (Morning Star, 4 and 15 August 1969)
Throughout the 30 years of the present struggle for Irish liberation against the forces of British imperialism, all these organisations have scabbed on the struggle of the nationalist working class. They have been determined to defend their middle-class positions of privilege against the interests of the oppressed. They have consistently attacked the armed struggle of the IRA, while equally consistently calling for a vote for Labour ever since. Now, without fail, they support the IRA’s ceasefire and push the myth that Blair and the Labour government have an interest in defending the position of the nationalist working class.
30 years of the Irish struggle has shown us that the Labour Party is a reactionary, blood-soaked defender of British imperialism and that the British left are servile defenders of Labour.
