Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Lessons to Learn
One of the least known incidents of the summer of 1969 was the briefly-considered invasion of Northern Ireland by the military of the Republic of Ireland, in order to protect largely defenseless Catholic communities from well-armed Protestant vigilantes acting in collusion with the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the British army. Quickly abandoned as a means of protecting the nascent civil rights movement, due to the realization that it might provoke wholesale slaughter prior to their ability to arrive in defense of the Catholic communities in Derry and Belfast, the government of the Republic chose instead to set up refugee camps on the border to assist the tens of thousands of homeless Catholics either bombed or burned out by the fanatic Protestant fundamentalists led by fascists like Ian Paisley.
It was only after this murderous rampage by the ultra-right Protestant supremacist mobs that the IRA began preparations to defend from and later retaliate against the Protestant terrorists inflamed by Paisley's organizations. By August 1969, top members of the Irish government were involved in smuggling arms to protect the Catholics in the north.
Tim Pat Coogan's book The Troubles contains many lessons for those involved in civil rights struggles and civil disobedience as a means of reforming or bringing down undemocratic governments like our own. The British, after all, pioneered the use of outsourced terror and torture over centuries of colonialism, and perfected these modern techniques in Northern Ireland.
It was only after this murderous rampage by the ultra-right Protestant supremacist mobs that the IRA began preparations to defend from and later retaliate against the Protestant terrorists inflamed by Paisley's organizations. By August 1969, top members of the Irish government were involved in smuggling arms to protect the Catholics in the north.
Tim Pat Coogan's book The Troubles contains many lessons for those involved in civil rights struggles and civil disobedience as a means of reforming or bringing down undemocratic governments like our own. The British, after all, pioneered the use of outsourced terror and torture over centuries of colonialism, and perfected these modern techniques in Northern Ireland.
