‘Sinn Féin: red-lines, conflict narratives and remembering the past’ by Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair

Sinn Féin: red-lines, conflict narratives and remembering our dead

Equality of citizenship in a civilised modern society is not a privilege to be gifted by Unionist politicians. Sinn Féin must expose the red-lines within the UUP-SDLP sham union – before the resumption of Stormont are these parties able to agree a timetable to implement the following:

• Laws to enshrine women’s body autonomy and LGBT marriage rights;

• Enact our previously agreed Bill of Rights and Irish language Act, plus affirmative state actions to demonstrably display ‘parity of esteem’ for Irish nation(al) identity within the contested NI region;

• Release Legacy funds and implement the conflict investigation processes specified in our previously agreed SHA;

• Restore the previously agreed PfG plan to build a conflict museum and reconciliation centre at the MLK site.

Quell surprise, Unionists are again ‘outraged’ and condemn as ‘sectarian’ a Sinn Féin leader attending a commemoration for Irish Republican combatants killed by British state forces. The same sectarian Unionists who glorify British forces who murdered hundreds of Irish civilians and whom Unionists now demand must escape prosecution.

It’s time to rewind the outrage clock back to the grievances start point and consider the narrative of our ongoing British-Irish conflict from a different perspective…

Imagine, the Nazi regime succeeded in its plan to occupy Britain and over a lengthy period it killed, terrorised, tortured, imprisoned, deported, dehumanised and robbed a great many British citizens.

Got that?

Further imagine, that Nazi regime partly colonised say Devon and Cornwall and before eventually withdrawing from the other parts of Britain it partitioned that region and imposed colonial governance over it from Berlin – keep in mind that within this colonised region the native British were constantly being oppressed, discriminated against, sometimes murdered, burnt out of their homes and intimidated out of their limited job opportunities by the Nazi colonisers.

Got that?

Now.

Think – really think – what would be the attitude of the native British people to the above vista of injustice against their nation?

I believe it’s safe to assume British people would have opposed with every fibre of their being any such Nazi occupation and barbarism. All the aforesaid events happened but to the Irish nation in Ireland and at the hands of a British regime and British colonisers.

To be fair to them, today’s people of Great Britain would almost certainly have come to our assistance were it a different present-day foreign regime responsible for our actual occupation, the actual barbarism against us and the actual partition of our country at gunpoint just to suit a minority ethnic community in Ireland.

We Irish Nationalists continue to feel aggrieved on a number of fronts: our nation remains divided in our native homeland; our local British Unionist abusers now play the victim while ignoring British Unionism in Ireland killed roughly two million plus Irish citizens and abused millions more; those same Unionists started mass acts of violence against us during the 1920s and 30s, and in 1969 they set-off the initial bombs, murdered the first child, adult, pensioner, soldier and policeman and engaged in mass pogroms against the Nationalist community… all of which occurred before the Provisional IRA existed!

Given the above facts, it ought to come as no surprise that when we Irish see the British regime’s Union flag hoisted across our native homeland we view it exactly how we imagine the British in Britain would have viewed a Nazi regime’s flag hoisted across their native homeland.

In 1998, Irish Nationalists and British Unionists agreed a peace deal known as the Belfast Agreement aka the Good Friday Agreement. Since, elected Irish Nationalists have engaged in numerous reconciliation efforts. Conversely, the Unionist community continue to elect representatives who ignore or rebuff such efforts, advising that they can neither forget nor forgive the past (reactionary) violence against their community and state forces.

A supremacist exceptionalism mindset remains strong within political Unionism. If progress is to be made such must be countered by the British and Irish states in any new peace and reconciliation talks. This is the same pro-Brexit NI colony Unionist community who usurped the 1912 Home Rule Bill for Ireland approved by the UK parliament, and all because their minority community opposed that Bill.

If the contested northern region of the island of Ireland is to stop rotting in a poisonous self-destructive bitterness, both the Unionist and Nationalist communities absolutely must face the ‘real’ truth of our troubled past. Then, we must in good faith start working toward building a genuine mutually respectful shared future.