Join the British army and see the Middle East

The charitable way to think of Gavin Robinson’s denunciations this morning is that he feels the hot breath of Jim Allister on his collar and is anxious to be just as anti-republican and anti-nationalist as Jim. The considerably less charitable way to think of what he said is that he actually believes it.

So what was he voicing? He’s saying how disappointed and depressed nationalists and republicans have made him, by criticising a Derry Jobs Fair at Foyle Arena, which included a recruiting stall for the British Army.  Gavin figured that 27 years after the Good Friday Agreement, it was time Sinn Féin and the SDLP got over themselves. He further asked if this was how unionists would be treated in some future united Ireland.

Let’s back off this a bit, Gavin. Nobody disputes that the same British army in 1972 shot and mortally wounded fourteen totally innocent people in Derry. Likewise, nobody disputes that no soldier served a day in prison for their murderous actions.  This was colonial might at its most murderous.

Viewed in that light, did you really expect the relatives of those killed, or their neighbours, or anyone with a half-functioning memory to make room for a British Army recruiting stall – a British Army, as Francie Molloy pointed out this morning, which is involved in sending weaponry to Israel so they can kill more Palestinians?

Years ago in Canada, I found myself repeatedly asked to explain why Catholics and Protestants were fighting in Ireland. My answer was totally inadequate, which is why I wish I had a time-machine so I could tell them now. All of Ireland was colonised. The north-east of Ireland is still colonised. Where you have a colony, you have to have soldiers to keep the natives in place. We don’t see the British army on the streets of NEI now,  but that doesn’t mean they’ve gone away, you know.  Check out Palace Barracks in Holywood. And the spooks of British intelligence haven’t gone away either – check out that big building  not terribly far from Palace Barracks.

So Gavin, whether you believed it or not, it still stretches credulity that anyone would expect the natives to respectfully encourage the forces of the colonist to enlist young Irish men and women into their ranks. It’d be like asking those commemorating 1916 to have a wall honouring the names and memory of those who fought against Ireland’s struggle for freedom. Oh wait – there were people who favoured that happening. Mercifully, they were told where to go and what to do when they got there.

Listen,Gavin, you’ll never out-Britlove Jim Allister, so maybe quit trying. And if you weren’t trying to out-Britlove Jim, I suggest you hurry to your nearest psychiatrist. They may even have had a stall at the Foyle Arena – you could check that out They’d see immediately that you were a suitable case for treatment.