Do you believe in violence to achieve your political goals or would you favour strictly peaceful means? I’m going to assume most of you renounced violence as a method and chose peaceful protest or politics.
If I then asked you if you paid your taxes, virtually everyone would say they did – we’re law -abiding people and we know that taxes are used to benefit us all.
But while taxes make possible education, infrastructure and the rule of law, some of it is funnelled off to fund armed forces. And this is where the contradiction comes in. We might say we didn’t engage in bank robbery, but if we bought the gun and drove the bank robber to the bank, then we clearly believe in and help enact bank robbery.
So too with political force. Virtually every country in the world has its police and armed forces, all of whom are taught how to us physical force, including the killing of people seen as a danger. It’s only through our taxes that these violence-based organisations exist.
The question of political violence came up this week when I watched the documentary on the 1984 Brighton bomb, which aimed to kill Thatcher and members of her party. As we know, Thatcher survived but two other people died, including Sir John Berry, a Tory party member. The man who planted the bomb was Pat Magee, an IRA bomb-maker.
Magee over the years since his release has had ‘two or three hundred’ meetings with Jo Berry, John Berry’s daughter. What it has led to has been Magee thinking differently about what he’d done. Not that he renounces what he did but becoming more aware of the human tragedies that accompany such explosions.
In the documentary much was made of the cold-bloodedness of a man who’d set out to kill other people, people he’d never met. John Gummer an MP from the day couldn’t comprehend such cruelty. Norman Tebbit and his wife suffered severe injuries, and to this day Tebbit detests those responsible for their suffering.
You wouldn’t need to see the documentary to realise that the bomb killed and spread pain which most of us are lucky enough never to have experienced. But those who see Magee as a monster are engaged in narrow thinking.
As I’ve said, if you pay your taxes, you support state violence. If Magee killed and injured so many people in 1984, he did so from a context which the documentary detailed: Bloody Sunday in Derry, the Hunger Strikes, the brutalisation of many in West Belfast by the British army.
Danny Morrison, in the documentary, put it succinctly. Thatcher and her government were responsible for British soldiers in the north of Ireland. Had she removed these soldiers, there would have been no violence against them. And since she did bear responsibility for the British troops and for the death of ten hunger strikers, she was seen as a key part of the IRA’s warring opponents.
Sometimes people find or say they find such killings as barbaric and insane. But if there’s a war being fought, then if you commit yourself to one side or the other, you mustn’t be surprised if death is visited on you. Sometimes people hurt so much they can’t see this. I once wrote an article pointing out that Patsy Gillespie was killed because he worked in a British army base. I was abusedd on every side. But once you accept violence as a method, the core idea is to kill enough of the enemy to force them into submission.
As you can see, the BBC documentary this week was thought-provoking. If you haven’t seen it, I’d suggest finding it on iPlayer.
The widow of Patsy Gillespie and many others will doubtlessly remain unconvinced by this phoney non sequitur.
As will the loved ones of the hundreds killed by the British state and their loyalist allies. Your point being?
War is tragic, awful, brutal, deadly, violent, sad.
but in itself, it is not evil..
Somevpeople have no choice but war. Vietnam against tye French and then the Americans. Most of the Middle Eastern people against America and Israel. Algerians against France. Many Irish against the British occupation in 1916, 1918-21 and against in the 1970s..
War is not evil in itself, it is the things that leave victimized, brutalized, colonized people with no other options that are evil.
Very good jude free Palestine
Well said Gabriel and another Jude. John Patton like many diehard unionists does not get State violence -the Primary violence -nor do they want to get State violence because they were involved in it.. They just ignore the years of institutional violence perpetrated against one section of the community. The Truth will set us free.
Having watched the documentary it is both depressing and not really surprising to hear those British MPs and policemen spout the same rubbish about terrorists and democracy and the rule of law. They are still as arrogant as ever.
I have never met Joe McVeigh but among all the old shibboleths, he chooses to brand me a ‘diehard Unionist’ and, quite explosively, to impute my character by the suggestion that I had a hand in violence. In the early 60s , I voted for the old Republican, Neil Gillespie, in a Westminster election when a young Joe McVeigh was probably contemplating joining the most solidly Unionist grouping in Ireland, the Irish clergy.. For more than 50 years, I have lived in Scotland where I have actively supported the Independence Movement – scarcely the actions of one with the political beliefs that Fr Joe attributes to me.
Is mise le meas