gam@amdahl.UUCP (Gordon A. Moffett) (12/07/84)
> = Terry Bermes > T. C. Wheeler refers to the IRA as a bunch of yellow-bellied terrorists. > No, I disagree. While I do have problems with some of their tactics, I feel > that they certainly have a legitimate cause. No one considered the French > resistance underground to be a group of terrorists as they tried to expel > an unwanted occupancy. If England refused to leave Northern Ireland, then > the Irish have a right to take their war (and it is a war) to England's > home front. Agreed it is a minority of the Northern Irish who want to be > independent of England, but it was also a minority of American colonists > who also wanted their independence. This sort of logic can be used to justify perpetual revolution. According to some English acquantances, not only is the IRA a terrorist minority, but Ireland (the Real one) really doesn't support the IRA or care to absorb Northern Ireland. According to them, it is the US-Irish who show the most support for the IRA -- people completely detached from the realities of Anglo- Irish politics. If the Northern Ireland Catholics were really oppressed, why is it only the IRA who seems to notice it? Northern Ireland is not exactly a South Africa, is it? Please no arguments or counterflames from the original "Disinformation Propaganda on ABC-TV" author. His credibility has been shot to hell already. -- Gordon A. Moffett ...!{ihnp4,hplabs,amd,sun}!amdahl!gam 37 22'50" N / 121 59'12" W [ This is just me talking. ] [ Note longitude correction; I am no longer in the Pacific Ocean ]
respess@ut-ngp.UUCP (John Respess) (12/12/84)
Gordon Moffett says that English acquaintances of his say that the American Irish are the main supporters of the IRA and implies that the trouble in Northern Ireland is being fostered by people who have no expertise in the relations between England and Ireland. That's one inter- pretation of what's going on in Northern Ireland, and one which has enough truth to it that it could be accepted as the whole truth by persons with an interest in doing so - e.g. the English. To cite examples, I remember a posting some time ago (by T. C. Wheeler, I believe) about collections at Irish football games in New York by groups which were only thinly disguised IRA front organizations. Recently a boatload of munitions from the US destined for the IRA was intercepted by the Irish navy. Ever since Irish immigration to America began, it has been a prac- tice for those who "made it" over here (and this probably includes most of the immigrants, Ireland being a relatively poor country) to send some sort of aid back to the old country - money for rent or per- haps to enable a relative to immigrate. Aid in the form of money to solve problems at home then, is thoroughly in the tradition of the American Irish. It can be argued - perhaps truly - that if this aid were to cease entirely the IRA would be forced to suspend operations. There's a side to the situation that the preceding interpretation ig- nores however. (Of course, there are many sides that it ignores, but I don't want to say anything yet about the Special Powers Act or the various Protestant paramilitary organizations because they are closely bound up with the violence from the republican side.) The IRA expects to be able to recruit young Catholics in Northern Ireland because the Catho- lics are an oppressed "minority" there. (A minority they certainly were at the time of partition, but as Joe McGhee has pointed out, the present numbers are much in doubt.) Systematically, they are discrim- inated against with regard to housing, enfranchisement, and jobs. (For the large part, money and government are in Protestant hands and a Protestant who hires a Catholic when there's a Protestant without a job is looked upon as disloyal.) But these are areas in which those not in power are relatively helpless. When even peaceful attempts to shift the balance are met with inflamatory rhetoric and violence, is it any wonder that a person's thinking turns from orderly redress to revenge? Listen: I want to make a suggestion for some reading that might throw a different light on the situation, Gordon, and do it much better than I can. Read the first chapter of "Too Long A Sacrifice" by Jack Holland. It's named "Ghosts" and that's an apt description because the antagonism between the two groups has been there since 1600 - the Protestant pre- sence in the north is a continuation of the plantation of Ulster by English rulers who dispossessed the Irish Catholics in the interest of having a loyal colony - and its driving forces are likely to be imper- fectly summoned spirits from the vasty deeps of the collective conscious- ness. It's a complicated situation and it seems that wherever there's a feature of it that can possibly be exploited by someone or other, it will be. (I know it's unfair to ask you to read something that you have to go look for (and I'm not being sarcastic when I say this, believe me - normal net communication is more like conversation than scholarship) but I don't want to reproduce what Holland says in an inferior form.) > If the Northern Ireland Catholics were really oppressed, why is it > only the IRA who seems to notice it? Northern Ireland is not exactly > a South Africa, is it? Whether or not you read "Ghosts" (and it wouldn't take long - it's only 36 pages long (with some pictures) - you could read it at a bookstore without even buying the book :-{) ), Holland more than once draws paral- lels between Northern Ireland and South Africa. As an example, a South African government official is quoted as being envious of the British in Northern Ireland who had the Special Powers Act (discussed at length by Joe McGhee earlier in this forum) to keep dissidents in line. So while it may not be "exactly" a South Africa it may not be as far away as we'd think. > Please no arguments or counterflames from the original "Disinformation > Propaganda on ABC-TV" author. His credibility has been shot to hell > already. Don't be too hard on Joe. Deplorable as his style is and much as his shameless self-promotion may make your gorge rise, his heart's in the right place as far as his sympathy for the Catholics in the north goes. Even if you don't agree with all his inferences, he has said some true things. ("Don't be too hard on Joe."? Did I say that? ... B' the jab- bers - let him have it! (Sorry, Joe, but this had to qualify for net.flame.)) John Respess (Bogman) respess@ut-ngp