‘Ireland: ethnic cleansing and racism by supremacist British colonialists’ by Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair

Today, as a deflection tactic, some British Unionists in the Northern Ireland colony statelet mockingly dismiss the native Irish nation’s litany of legitimate ‘ethnic cleansing’ grievances and absurdly claim ownership of this victimhood issue.

Ethnic cleansing of the native Irish nation by foreign British occurred over a period of centuries, was extensive and brutal, and had lasting consequences. Though the British state long ago ended these evil practices, alas, varying degrees of similar tactics continued to be perpetrated by certain elected British Unionist/colonialist politicians and British terrorist gangs.

Let’s have a brief look at our relevant ancient history, our recent past and then what’s occurring in the here and now…

Ireland is the only European country that now has a population less than it had in the 1800’s. Our once estimated 10 million plus population was by the early 1800’s reduced to 8 million. Then, due to various additional ethnic cleansing policies, this already reduced figure was nearly halved by the time the majority of Ireland broke free of foreign British colonial rule in 1921.

At one stage in Ireland’s history of occupation, the British state had stolen and gifted to strategically planted foreign British colonists four-fifths of the land mass of Ireland. During these processes, those native Irish who escaped murder faced various ethnic cleansing policies: forced to live on virtual wasteland hillsides and bogs; forcibly transported to work to death on British Empire plantations in foreign lands; and/or obliged to flee to other countries in “coffin ships” on which many perished. A hint of what was occurring during those dark times can be gleaned from England’s 1652 Act of Settlement of Ireland which, in practice, deemed the native Irish traitors deserving of punishment:

‘Whereas the Parliament of England, after the expense of much blood and treasure for suppression of the horrid rebellion in Ireland, have by the good hand of God upon their undertakings, brought that affair to such an issue, as that a total reducement and settlement of that nation may, with God’s blessing, be speedily effected…’

Throughout the 1600s, foreign British colonists were extensively planted across Ireland’s northern province of Ulster. Their raison d’etre was then and remains true to this day: to aid and abet a foreign England’s colonial state, to suppress and dominate the most independent-minded and resolutely freedom-loving native Irish of Ulster.

In 1791, the British state passed the Roman Catholic Relief Act. This relaxation of penal laws allowed the native Irish nation to purchase land. By 1795, enraged British Colonists in Ulster were alleging they were victims of “ethnic cleansing” due to the native Irish being prepared to pay higher acreage prices. In response, British Colonists such as armed sectarian murdering terrorists Dan Winters and James Sloan et al formed the Orange Order terrorist group. It began murderously perpetrating  ethnic cleansing of those land-purchasing native Irish of the southern counties of Ulster (this terrorism is still regularly glorified and celebrated by the Orange Order).

In 1921, the British colonial parliament of Westminster in England imposed partition of Ireland with threats of ‘immediate and terrible war.’ Thus was carved out of Ireland’s 9 county province of Ulster the undemocratic 6-county Northern Ireland colony statelet with its artificial majority of British Unionists/colonialists.

During the 1920s, the new governing Ulster Unionist Party and Orange Order orchestrated a series of fear-instilling and inducement campaigns aimed at British Colonialist Protestants in the South. They were encouraged to evacuate their families and move their sectarian businesses to help bolster and grow the new Northern Ireland state: this campaign conjured imagines of dire retribution by the native Irish in the South and of salvation in the form of offers of new homes and new jobs in the “new Ulster state” [sic].

During 1920-22, UUP politicians and Orangemen incited a new wave of pogroms against the native Irish citizens of the new Northern Ireland state: hundreds were murdered and thousands injured; thousands had their homes and businesses destroyed; and additional thousands were hounded out of their jobs by British Colonialist mobs.

In 1964, British Colonialist UVF terrorists subjected the native Irish to a new wave of murders and firebombing of their businesses. In a subsequent related Court of Appeal hearing in 1969, the court in Belfast deemed this spate of attacks amounted to ethnic cleansing crimes.

14^th August 1969, during the Clonard Pogrom, eight citizens were murdered, hundreds were injured and fifteen hundred native Irish citizens homes were destroyed… these events ignited a thirty-year conflict deeply felt by those of us who lived through those terrible times.

In 1994, British colonialist UDA terrorists devised a Doomsday Plan to ethnic cleanse the NI colony statelet of its native Irish population. In response, a prominent member of the Democratic Unionist Party was reported as saying that thiscplan was ‘a very valuable return to reality.’

In 2004, British colonialist UDA terrorists  issued a new ethnic cleansing type warning that it ‘had drawn an “orange line” around [British] Protestant areas, beyond which [Irish] Catholics would not be permitted.’

Flash forward to the unfolding year of 2017, the old anti-Irish ethnic cleansing mentality of our supremacist British colonialists still prevails. That said, it’s radically morphed. For example”

• The Orange Order buys land to block native Irish Catholic purchases.
• A DUP Stormont Minister and Orangeman stands accused of anti-Irish/anti-Catholic housing decisions.
• A DUP Minister stands accused of  refusing to approve development of new Irish language schools.
• A DUP Minister is lambasted for cutting a tiny Irish language fund, and further refusing funds to other Irish culture groups whilemassively increasing funds to British Colonialist entities closely associated with anti-Irish and anti-Catholic activities.
• A DUP Minister changed the name of a state owned boat from its original native Irish name to a English name.
• A DUP Minister praises the burning of Irish symbols.

The above are but a mere sample of the relentless discriminatory and hateful conduct toward all things Irish.

“…there is no nation of people under the sun that doth love equal and indifferent justice better than the Irish…” – Sir John Davies (17th century Attorney General for English King James I).

Sadly, anti-Irish sentiment is not the only moronic and unacceptable trait to be found within certain quarters of British Unionist/colonialist community in Ireland. Alas, racism toward our newly arrived ethnic communities is a daily occurrence. This  filthy conduct  must end.

Finally, British Unionists/colonialists in Ireland must come to terms with the reality that the road ahead for them is one of being treated not as superior beings but as equal citizens.