Mick Clifford – and pro-British propaganda – by Joe McVeigh

Mick Clifford (Irish Examiner 8^th April) presents a totally distorted view of the conflict in the north-east of our country and adopts the morally superior attitude of the anti-republican propagandist. This attitude was also adopted by successive Dublin government ministers and the Dublin based media. This attitude was also adopted by Seamus Mallon who spoke disparagingly about republicans being ‘slow learners’ and who was opposed to talks with Sinn Fein. This dishonest attitude only helped to prolong the war in the north.

So the answer to Clifford’s question about why it took so long to end the war is that there were so many pro-British propagandists in Ireland in places of influence that the British side were determined to continue with their violence against republicans -using all the dirty tricks they had learned in their other colonies.

Successive British governments made it clear that they wanted to defeat the IRA. They had full support from their friends in Ireland.

The anti-republican pro-British propaganda in Ireland played into the hands of the British. The British leaders insisted that their role in the north of Ireland was a peace-keeping one! They claimed to be neutral in the conflict which they claimed was between the two local tribes. Nobody in the Dublin political establishment or in the media or in the Church hierarchy challenged this false narrative and so the British were off the hook and free to carry on as they liked in pursuit of their aim of defeating the IRA and destroying Sinn Fein.

I write as someone who is committed to justice and to peaceful means to achieve justice. I am also committed to reconciliation and the truth. I believe the truth is essential in order to counter the false narrative that has been put forward by those in the media and in power in Dublin.  I believe that if we are to find a way forward from the Belfast Agreement to lasting peace and justice on this island, we must always name the causes of the conflict in Ireland and put the responsibility for the conflict where it belongs. That is the only way this conflict can be finally resolved and a lasting solution found.

The British militarised the situation in Ireland in 1969-70 when they invaded Nationalist areas of Belfast and Derry and killed innocent people in Ballymurphy in Belfast in August 1971 and in the Bogside in Derry on Bloody Sunday 1972. The British killing spree continued throughout the six counties and indeed in other counties south of the border in Ireland. With the cooperation of Dublin, they built military towers and look-out posts along the entire border from Derry to Newry. The British also support from Dublin began blowing up roads and bridges along the border forcing local people to travel many extra miles and pass through military checkpoints where they were often delayed and harassed for hours. In this way they antagonised many people and provoked a violent backlash in many parts of the six counties. Violence quickly escalated. It took courage and skill to bring that cycle of violence to an end.

Unless there is honesty about the origins and causes of the conflict in the north then the erroneous narrative like that peddled by Mick Clifford condemning republicans as responsible for the conflict and for prolonging the conflict will continue. The late Fr Alec Reid said it well when he stated, in a recent recorded documentary, that “condemnations of republicans were a waste of time”. He said that “the reasons for the IRA campaign needed to be understood. The IRA needed to be heard.” Up until the late 1980s, few of those in leadership in politics or in the Churches in Ireland were willing to listen to them. Up until Bishopsgate and Canary Wharf few in power in England were prepared to listen to what they had to say about ending the violence and reaching a negotiated settlement. They preferred to accept the Dublin/SDLP version of the conflict.

We must be grateful that Fr Reid and others made such strenuous efforts to include republicans. They eventually persuaded political leaders in Ireland, England and the USA to listen to them. That approach eventually led to the IRA ceasefires in 1994 and 1996 and to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement which provides for a political way forward.

The IRA had made many previous attempts to engage with the British about a negotiated settlement but the British rejected all these efforts to make peace saying that the IRA had to be defeated and, therefore, the war had to continue –no matter what the cost in terms of human life.

Why would young men and women put their lives in such danger and be prepared to suffer so much if they were not driven to that by the circumstances in which they were forced to live? Why would they risk spending their lives in jail and why did some sacrifice lives on hunger-strike for the cause of justice and human dignity?

After the election of Bobby Sands and other republican prisoners the British could no longer say that they had no mandate.

Twenty-five years after the Belfast Good Friday Agreement, a majority of Irish people and freedom loving people all over the world recognise the integrity of the Irish struggle and the selfless commitment to justice of so many republican men and women.

One lesson from the conflict in our country is that if there is to be lasting peace and justice in Ireland (or anywhere else) the truth must be told and the working class nationalist people who have suffered most as a result of British colonial rule must be heard. The truth will set us free – not the pro-British propagandists in the media in Cork or Dublin