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opinion/analysis
 Monday April 04, 2011 20:13 by Mickey
 Destroying the past to build a future on sand The last few days has seen a rush to be seen in the cameras condemning the actions that took place in Omagh on Saturday 2nd April. What is the point of all this hot air and rhetoric other than to boost the egos of those who are making the utterences. The death of anyone is a sad occasion, the sudden death of a loved one is devastating. Make no mistake this was a tragedy in Omagh. It is a tragedy because no-one has learned the lessons of the past. The purpose of this opinion piece is to express my sadness that there has yet again been another lost life as a direct result of the failure to resolve the conflict between Britain and Ireland. The partition of Ireland is still a crime, it was a crime when it was imposed at the threat of "terrible war" and it is a crime now. As it states in the 1916 Proclamtion - the long usurpation of a right does not extinquish that right. England's involvement in Ireland is wrong and will always be wrong. Having local administrators does not right that wrong. When the United Irish Men declared war on England's occupation of our country, there was a Parliament in Dublin. When Connolly and Pearse stood on the steps of the GPO in Dublin in 1916 and declared war on England there was a strong Irish Parliamenary Party attempting to bring about the peaceful resolution of the British/Irish conflict. In 1922 people voted for the Treaty of Surrender, yet the IRA (then labelled Irregulars) fought on and on and on. Today militant Republicanism standing on that historical platform consider it their duty to "do something". The cause for which militant Republicanism has always declared it was fighting for is still not achieved - the cause for which parliamentary nationalists have always worked towards is achieved. The work of the Irish Parliamentary Party and the SDLP has been generally delivered by Sinn Fein. Sinn Fein no longer represent the Republican position but have taken many people from the Republican position and placed them firmly within the framework of Irish Parliamentary nationalism. The view now of the "armed struggle" by these former combatants in SF appears to be that the entire 30 years of killing and maiming, prison and Hunger Strikes was to get jobs for Catholics! If they truly believe that then the Provisional IRA were merely sectarian killers, murdering for "civil rights" as British subjects. Because you can't have it everyway. Either it was a revolutionary war which was lost or it was a sectarian murder spree (as the enemies of Republicanism always claimed) to get jobs and positions for Catholics. If that is the case Sinn Fein can no longer take pride in the "Long War" - what glory is there in being a gang of sectarian killers? However, if the war in the six counties was part of the continuous war against Britain's involvement in Ireland, if it was part of the same struggle that Ernie O'Malley was involved in, then the present violence fits the same pattern and must be resolved within the same historical framework. It's grim that young Irish people are again killing for a cause that has been failed continuously over a period of over 200 years. Idealism is not acheivable and leaders with their eye on power will always sell the "cause" short. Such is life. The whole thing is perhaps utterly pointless but still gives people a sense of meaning and purpose. SF have no direction beyond political power at any costs. The present leadership are there as a result of the deaths of many many people. SF stand shoulder to shoulder with British police and call on young Irish people to join that same Britsh police force. Really where is it all going? "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." |
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Comments (5 of 5)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5Dont you mean a cowardly murder?Perpetrated by anti-democratic usurpers of the name of republican. Try to get into the twentieth century, if you cant manage the twenty-first. Our own 'government' are puppets of external 'invisible hands', and today's papers amplify the corruption and perversion of large numbers of our southern guardians of the global corporate peace(see Bellmullet). I'm not about to advocate an armed resistance spearheaded by mobster tacticians that would serve no-one bar munitions producers.
Change is generally, if for the better, incremental rather than produced by revolutionary wand-wavers setting bombs for people who are often motivated by a better sense of service to the people than their antagonists.
To label it tragedy, smacks of the stablishment's lexicon of euphemistic and self-serving spin. Tragedy implies some outside agency such as an implacable deity was the cause, rather than the ignorant worship of the shibboleths of nationalist rhetoric from the nineteenth century.
and that does not mean I'm so naive as to think the british security industry is incapable of 'masterminding' such atrocities. Those precedents are there, but you dont fight them by butchering ordinary british people in an exchange of competive brutality. Most of our county borders stem from british admintration decisions. Do we throw them out too. This fucking idiocy deepens borders. Thats more than tragedy, and more like treason against the people of the island, north south east and west. To say nothing of the reprecussions on Irish people who live in Britain, where many of us have relations, and where many of our children will be heading due to the failures of their Oirish republican governments to protect their interests.
The perpetrators of this shit will have to kill 98% of the Irish to realise their mirage of utopian greenery.
usurpers of the name republican? republicanism is about opposing imperialism not seeking an accomodation or compromise with it.are you saying you're in favour of collaborating with a british police force to protect british interests opus?
Mind you dont trip over all those other self serving middle class assholes in your condemnation of this attack.the prm killed ruc in 1997 i think and were no doubt condemned by the middle class sdlp etc.i wonder would you be saying that if your house was raided and trashed by ruc/psni backed up by masked members of the british army,or your son was arrested and interned by remand in maghaberry,or your son was found dead in strand road ruc/psni station?? or your children were held under 'stop and search' by the ruc/psni.maybe you should join sinn féin and call on people to become informers?
Pat - I think you have maybe said enough. enough to prove your bigotry and hatred, people like you will have to be content to stare longingly at your confrontational past while you continue to try to justify a non conflict of your own making.
Dare I say it but Ronan Kerr represents a new future and that scares people like you.
no i think ronan kerr represents a future that scares you!.
the cause of the conflict hasnt been resolved.
the british occupation is the cause of the conflict.if you want to bury your head in the sand
and think its all going to go away like people did pre 60's/70's then off with ya.
why are you not ag scriobh as Gaeilge?No compromise or accommodation??Why not just say NO SURRENDER?Thats the mirror image you recreate with your puritanical and dictatorial bigotry. Who the fuck appointed YOU judge, jury and executioner? Are you going to be the police force of this utopian republic you are pipe-dreaming for us all?I can smell the internment camps and firing squads from here.
If I was born in Belfast I would probably have been dragged into the shit was going on. I was the right age, and not a particularly cool head. Plus I was beside a kid in school who's family were b urned out of Belfast in the fifties. I consider myself lucky not to have been born that side. But I met both Protestants and Catholics living in England and beyond who were driven out by the shit I might have gotten involved in. It helped me grow up, and see through the dangers of pulling triggers for racists, of either side. No matter what the righteous excuses.
The ordinary british people were more onside with republicanism than unionism, and saw Paisley and his ilk for what they were. The guns and gelly delayed the solution some have learned has to be won over time and by degrees. Only children and the terminally and irreparably immature seek instant gratification. How many will ye kill before the argument has been won?In the end you build only fascism with guns, unless you know when to stop. A rare talent, in those who find a squeeze of the trigger saves a lot of hard work and thinking. Its a dangerous addiction, as is propaganda as opposed to thinking. But then you are probably crafty enough to steer some poor sucker into doing the dirty work while you cop the glory. Try turning the gun on yourself. Your smug bourgeois certainty is no part of working peoples thinking, though you probably have just enough history to sway the uneducated. What class do you represent, besides low class cowards. Oh and if 'republicanism is about opposing imperialism' can we be expecting you to show your republican courage by doing a suicide run against the global emperor, Obama?That should progress prosperity and health for the working class. Think about it. And grow out of it. Bitterness is no recipe for anything but its own amplification.