Dear Readers,

On the night of Tuesday, October 8, a convoy of RUC [Royal Ulster Constabulary] armored Land Rovers pulled up in front of the Stormont buildings, the seat of government in the British-occupied six counties of Ireland. In a scene reminiscent of a military coup, heavily-armed riot troops and secret police stormed the offices of Sinn Fein [revolutionary Nationalist political party], arrested the office manager for alleged espionage and seized two CDs as evidence. At the same time, other secret police units raided the homes and offices of Nationalists in West Belfast. The next day's papers all headlined the police exposure of an IRA "spy ring" and David Trimble, leader of the pro-British Ulster Unionist Party and head of the local government, demanded that the British dissolve the local government, unless the IRA was disbanded.

On Monday, October 14th, John Reid, Britain's colonial governor of Northern Ireland ( the official title is Secretary for Northern Ireland ) announced the suspension of the elected power-sharing government and the re-imposition of direct colonial rule. The British governor attempted to justify this blatantly illegal action with the claim that allegations of IRA misdeeds had eroded confidence and made the power-sharing government impossible. As a precondition for a restoration of democracy in the Six Counties, Reid demanded that the republican armed organization, the Irish Republican Army, should disband.

In a speech on October 18th., Anthony Blair, the British Prime Minister, supported the actions of his appointee in Ireland and brazenly asserted that Britain had no intention of carrying out its obligations under the Good Friday peace accord, unless the Irish Republicans disband their armed organization. Naturally, no such demand is made on the Unionist paramilitary groups, even though they have carried out hundreds of bombings and arson attacks in the last eighteen months and have murdered over a dozen people in the last six months. After all, these murderous gangs are the historic allies and tools of British rule in Ireland.

Let's take a look at the allegations against the IRA. The current frame-up campaign began with the St. Patrick's Eve raid on the Belfast headquarters of the Northern Ireland secret police, the Special Branch. On St. Patrick's Eve, while most of the cops were out drinking, six officers from the British Army Counterintelligence, MI5, used their official passes to enter the gate at Castleraegh Police Barracks. Once inside, they used their electronic swipe cards to penetrate seven security doors to reach the computer center. At the computer center, the raiders overpowered the one cop on duty and then downloaded the computer files on former snitches and agents, who were in a protected witness program. The next morning, the police chief, Ronald Flanagan, gave a press conference in which he named the burglars ( they were British officers that he had worked with for years ), claimed that the cops had a variety of evidence against MI5 and warned the various protected witnesses that MI5 had their addresses and was probably out to kill them.

For two weeks a media frenzy focused on the British army spy apparatus and the police began talking about bringing a court action against the army. Suddenly, the police chief announced his retirement and his acceptance of a higher-paying government job in London. Coincidentally, all the physical evidenced seemed to vanish and the new top cop, Hugh Orde, began a investigation into alleged republican involvement. The British state-owned media, BBC and its affiliates, reported the anti-republican allegations as fact. And, to no one's surprise, a few of those in the witness program, were found shot dead...including one in the police parking lot.

The other allegations were equally bogus. The British Army seized several hundred beer bottles from a recycling center in the Ardoyne Nationalist community and claimed that the republicans were going to use them for fire bombs. A Palestinian freedom fighter shot ten Israeli soldiers using an aged sniper's rifle and BBC claimed that he must be an IRA man...presumably you have to be Irish to shoot that well. In the aftermath of the Israeli army slaughter in Jenin, a "former" British spy, now working for the Swedish Red Cross, claimed that the home-made bombs the Palestinian defenders used were of Irish design, and that the IRA was training the Palestinians! Perhaps we're supposed to believe that the pipe bombs had little Irish flags painted on them?

The big frame-up came in the South American nation of Columbia. Using faked evidence, supplied by the U.S. Embassy, the local police arrested three Irish republicans who had been attending a political conference in a rebel-held section of the country. The U.S. Congress attempted to force Gerry Adams, leader of Sinn Fein and member of the British Parliament, to appear before a witch-hunting committee. Big Gerry, told the Congressional snoopers to buzz off. Formally speaking, that was that, but the crude frame up still is useful to the British and their friends, as a pretext for political provocation. In Columbia, three Irish republicans still face frame up charges and will come before the kangaroo court in December....

In the months while the BBC concocted false charges against Irish republicans, Britain's loyal friends in the various Unionist paramilitary gangs stayed busy. In the last twelve months, the Ulster Defense Association, largest of the armed gangs, has carried over nine hundred arson and bombing attacks against the homes, schools and churches of Catholics and Nationalists. In the same time, they have killed six people that they believed to be Catholics and in addition have killed six members of rival Unionist gangs, in various drug turf disputes. Oddly enough, none of these gangsters have been arrested, even though the British police have thoroughly infiltrated their ranks. Of course that is exactly what any one would expect; these fascist-like gangs are immune because they are the loyal allies of the British, the UDA having been set up and funded by the British military.

* * * * *

The shut down of representative government in Ulster is not exactly new --the British have 'suspended' democracy on three previous occasions and always for the same reason, to promote the political fortunes of David Trimble. This time it seems a bit more serious in the aftermath of the British Prime Minister's speech on October 18th. In this speech, Anthony Blair, admitted that his government had failed to live up to its promises made in the Good Friday Peace agreement that had ended the fighting in Ulster.

The British head of government admitted, publicly, facts that everyone in Ireland has known for years; that the equality legislation is only a fig leaf, that the paramilitary police force has only changed its name and badges, that the courts and justice system are grotesquely biased against Catholics and Nationalists, and that the British Army has failed to withdraw from South Armagh and South Tyrone as promised. Blair further admitted that the Irish republicans and the 26 County State in southern Ireland had fully carried out all their promises in the peace agreement. Mr. Blair then announced that the British would carry out their treaty obligations only if the Irish Republican Army disbanded.

To put this in context, in thirty years of war, the British military, secret police and all their attendant fascist death squads were not able to defeat the IRA. Britain's inability to defeat the republican resistance was what eventually brought the British to peace talks and the historic compromise of the Good Friday Agreement. Now a British government seeks to re-write a treaty to obtain what they could not win in battle, the surrender of the IRA. This move is not only vile and treacherous, it is fraught with very serious danger. In effect, the British are saying that they will not allow a normal democracy in Ulster, unless the Catholics and Nationalists give up their right to armed self defense --this after admitting that the whole state apparatus is deeply undemocratic and biased against Catholics. To put the icing on the cake, the IRA is supposed to go away, while the various Unionist armed gangs bomb and burn the homes, schools, churches and shops of the Nationalist population and the British cops and soldiers do nothing.

Think about this, for the last five years the IRA has been on cease fire. In the last twelve months, the Ulster Defense Association, largest of the Unionist armed gangs, has carried out over nine hundred arson and bombing attacks. In the same period the UDA has admitted murdering five Catholics and one Protestant mistaken for a Catholic. In the same period the UDA has also claimed the murders of six members of rival Unionist gangs, during an ongoing drug war in North Belfast. (Amongst its other unpleasant features, the UDA, guardian of Christian morality, runs the rackets in Belfast and anyone, of whatever religion, who tries to muscle in is likely to get dead.) It is perhaps worth mentioning that the UDA is heavily infiltrated by the British secret police and has been used as a proxy to carry out political murders for the Crown.

Need I say that the British cops, whether they be called the Royal Ulster Constabulary or the Police Service, do not bother this charming pack of fascist gun men and drug dealers? Perhaps I should also mention, that during the last days of October, while Ulster staggered into political chaos, that leaders of the Unionist political parties and the leaders of the Unionist gun men and drug gangs, were sitting down in a secret meeting in South Africa, to plan their joint strategy. Things being what they are in Ireland, the details of the secret conclave will be public soon enough.

The republican and Nationalist response to Blair's provocation was nicely encapsulated in an An Phoblacht/Republican News headline: "Trust Me; I'm a British Prime Minister."

The Irish have over a thousand years of bitter experience to teach them the folly of trusting British politicians. The IRA responded with a terse communiqué reproving the British government for their silly demands and an announcement that the IRA was "ceasing it's engagement" with the disarmament commission set up as part of the peace process. I am not predicting anything, but the British government should recall that the last time they seriously provoked the IRA, the "cessation of engagement" was followed in due course by an end to the cease fire and some very costly bombings in London. In the wake of that bomb blitz, a previous British set down and did some serious negotiating, giving birth to the peace agreement that Mr. Blair is so blithely casting aside.

Why is the British government engaged in this dangerous game of provocation and brinkmanship? Why are they risking political disgrace and possible violence rather than allowing democracy to function in Ulster?

I believe the British and their Unionist clients are acting from a profoundly weakened political position. When the Good Friday agreement was signed, the major players (the British and the Irish Republicans) both believed they could advance their long term goals by political means. The Irish Republicans believed that if they were allowed to freely participate in the electoral process, if their ideas and words were freed from censorship, their press freely circulated and their political leaders no longer objects of repression and murder, then they would be able to increase their support base and begin to win elections. Based on this concept and demographic projections of a Catholic/Nationalist majority in the Six Counties in a couple decades, Sinn Fein stated its goal as a united Ireland by the year 2016.

The British signed on to the peace process in the belief that by drawing the revolutionaries into electoral politics, they could be politically marginalized. The British based their strategy on the continued stability and growth of the Ulster Unionist Party and the reformist Nationalists of the Social Democrat Labor Party. The British hope was that the SDLP would remain the political leadership of the Nationalist People and that the UUP, and especially David Trimble's faction of the UUP, would remain the political leadership of the Unionist People. The plan was that a compromise could be worked out between these two "moderate" parties, so that if Ireland were ever united, British influence would be preserved. These two parties were to be the granite pillars of British rule in Ulster.

But in the course of four years of political struggle, the granite pillars have turned to sand. Rather than being marginalized and politically isolated, the republicans have become the political leadership of the Nationalist community. The two cities of the Six Counties, Derry and Belfast both have Sinn Fein mayors. The republican party also leads the county councils of Tyrone and Armagh and is a strong presence in the other four counties. Rather than being swept aside by the reformists, the revolutionary party swept them aside and seemed poised to become the largest party in the elections scheduled for May. The suspension of the Ulster self government postpones this for a while. Very convenient for the British and their clients!

While the reformist SDLP slid into minority status, the UUP hasn't been doing all that well either. For the last six years, this reactionary party has been torn by factional disputes between the followers of Jeffery Donaldson and David Trimble. The UUP electoral base has begun to drift, rightists flowing into Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party and more liberal elements sliding into the SDLP. The British do not regard the DUP as a suitable ally, as its ranks tend to be filled with backwoods religious nuts and uncontrollable fanatics.

The outcome of the latest British census has thrown all varieties of Unionism into serious crisis, even though these results have not yet been published. In Ireland, secrets don't stay secret all that long and now every one knows that the majority of people in the Six Counties no longer identify themselves as Protestant. What was a possibility for the proximate future, in a couple decades, has become the reality today. The dogs in the street know the results; 48% of the population regard themselves as Protestant and 46% regard themselves as being Catholic. Seeing that the historic ideology of Unionism was "a Protestant State for a Protestant People", the demographic collapse of the assumed permanent Protestant majority poses a serious problem.

All the assumptions and presumed certainties that under lay British political strategy have collapsed. The normal functioning of democracy seems likely to lead to a rapid collapse of British in the very near future and so the current crisis becomes understandable. The British are taking a gamble to win a little wiggle room.

One element of the Good Friday Agreement that was carried out by both the British and the 26 County Irish regime was a historic compromise on their respective claims to sovereignty in Ireland. In return for the Irish government dropping their constitutional claim to sovereignty over the North, the British modified the Government of Ireland Act to permit reunification of Ireland any time the majority the Six County electorate so vote in a referendum. The UUP is already pushing for the next demand, assuming the republicans are silly enough to disband the IRA, a Unionist veto over Irish reunification. Perfectly understandable from their point of view, they, the UUP, have run a one party religious dictatorship for the past century and they see no reason to give up power and privilege.

In the coming days and months, every socialist, every supporter of democratic rights, every "Red," should support the Irish republicans in this clash with British imperialism. For the Irish people to win their centuries-old struggle for democracy and national unity, they will need the solidarity on the international working class. The victory of the republican struggle will not only redress a thousand years of imperialist misrule, it will remove the biggest obstacle faced by the Irish working class in their fight for socialism. Also, a victory in Ireland will be a great step forward for the workers and farmers in the rest of the not-so-United Kingdom and an important advance for the world anti-imperialist struggle. As the struggle becomes more acute, I urge every SeeingRed reader to support the Irish freedom fighters in their final battle to oust the imperial beast from their island.

Slan,

Roger

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