‘ AMERICANS & IRELAND’S CONFLICT’ by Michael J Cummings

American activists  have worked   hard to educate  their fellow citizens  about  Britain’s murderous role in Northern Ireland.  Success of a sort for their efforts was achieved when President Clinton acknowledged  England’s deceit and  demanded an a end to violence  and more dialogue.     As the 100^th anniversary  of the Easter Rising approaches, it is worth remembering  the issues that gave rise to the Easter Rebellion in 1916 were also  at the center of the modern struggle:  democracy, rule of law, justice and  a cruel inequality.  So why did it take three decades of war  in six of the 9 counties of Ulster for the U. S. to realize that?

Advocates here …the Hibernians, the Brehon Law Society, NORAID, the Irish American Unity Conference and human and civil rights activists…were variously labeled  as Communists, gun runners, terrorists, dupes, dreamers  and dissidents.   Many Americans  would claim to be well read on the subject or knowledgeable solely because they were Irish-American or  born in Ireland.  Most, including public officials  and graduates from prestigious institutions of higher learning,  were surprisingly ill informed or comfortably ignorant.

Most  of those  opposed  to  the pleas for U. S. involvement were one of three types:   The Optimist; The Know-It-All; andThe Delusional.    The Optimists seemed satisfied with every report of progress  invariably promoted by  British media.  For example, a ‘reform’  involved the forced retirement of 1000 Royal Ulster Constabulary.    It was, in fact,  a two part scheme to provide  hush money to “…the worst of the lot…” and to mask many  being re-hired   months later for the unstated purpose of covering up  their dirty work.  Yet another scenario  is  the  well  received announcement that the Britain was to conduct independent inquiries into the murder of Patrick Finucane (1989) and the bombings of Dublin and Monaghan (1974).   For over two decades the British Army and MI-5 have used every bureaucratic and legal obstacle to prevent the truth being told. A  ‘reform’ announcement that  Executive authority was being returned to the N. I. Director of Prosecution Services  was later followed by disclosure that the ability to actually indict remains firmly with the UK Attorney General.

The Know-It-All, on the other hand, reckons the conflict is a ‘chicken or egg story’. The  IRA are  the antagonists while   loyalists and the British are  innocent bystanders responding in self-defense.  Many believed that the gun was introduced into Irish politics by the IRA but in the late 60’s it was Ian Paisley’s  Ulster Protestant Action group and the Ulster ConstitutionDefense Committee  that detonated bombs at the Ballyshannon power plant, at the Silent Valley Reservoir  and  during a 1970  trial where jurors were deliberating the fate of loyalist bombers. All were blamed on the IRA initially.   Paisley was  following the  1914  example of  loyalist leader Sir Edward Carson who was buying arms in 1914 to insure the  Irish Home Rule statute would never come into effect.  Then there is   Britain’s 40 years of lying  about soldiers being attacked on Bloody Sunday by  IRA gunmen to justify  their slaughter of 14 innocent and unarmed Catholic protesters.  The Saville Report proved there was no threat to the soldiers.  One later testified they were instructed “…to get a few kills.”  The Royal Ulster Constabulary and B Specials killed 8 of the first 9 people of the conflict including a 9 year old child.

Then we have the Delusional.  With  no more fact than your average British Army press release,   these people cling  to the proposition that Britain is the font  of all democracy and the rule of law.   However, British voting chicanery and violence in the North would shock  a Chicago Alderman.  Five elected Sinn Fein Councilors and 11 campaign workers  were  assassinated while performing such threatening activities as vote canvassing and the carrying of petitions.  Not for them  an arrest or trial by jury.   Britain’s MI-5 authorized Brian Nelson to purchase a cache of modern weaponry in 1985 from South Africa, despite a U. S. ban on arms sales and sanctions at the time. Then, in violation of British law  the arms were given to N. I. loyalist  death squads.  The effect?   From 1988-1994 229 killings, mostly innocent Catholics, were linked to those weapons.  This   not only was in  aid of the  apartheid regime but  against every tenet of international and human rights law.  The British cultivate these delusions with propaganda stunts  like periodic royal visits.   But how’s this for “Keeping up appearances.” Britain murders two  Subjects of Her Majesty, lawyers Patrick Finucane and Rosemary Nelson, but  duped the American Bar Association into hosting  a nationwide  tour of the  Magna Carta, touting it  as the foundation of democracy and the rule of law!!  Talk about being used, insulted and stroked all at once!     The  public  pays  homage to the 1000 year old sheepskin clueless as to  just how lawlessly Britain has governed in N. I.  No less a person that the late Speaker of the House Tom Foley testified before a House Foreign Affairs  sub-Committee on the International Fund for Ireland that “..there was no such thing as British oppression.”  Gives a whole new meaning to delusional, no?

The 100^th anniversary of the Easter Rising should not be an occasion to arouse old hatreds but to recognize the common injustices and cruelty  that  forced a resort to arms in 1916 and again in the 1970’s.  Britain  still buries  the bitter and violent legacy  of the North and blocks every effort to disclose the truth of their treachery.   Now is the time for America and Americans to shed their delusions and optimism about the so-called ‘special relationship’ and demand the type of full disclosure that can bring true peace.