LI In the event a pogrom was stopped by he arrival of the British troops. Many atholics, as Dr O' Brien rightly recalls, elcomed the troops as saviours. But the troops, and the government tho sent them, were onfronted with a bald alternative. hould they dismantle the Protestant scendancy, or snowd tney mamtamn it. most instinctively, they maintained it expense or une camone ommunities.
When, some years later, gradually hed ingerly these tish goverestant defuse be danver-shapid either aces, "power-sharing executive hattered by a Protestant strike in 1974.
Ever since, the British "democracy' as ruled Northern Ireland directly lirectly, that is, in the interests of rotestant ascendancy. ne roops have played out their timelonoured role of crushing Republican esistance. Through all this, sectarianm ane violence m Norment reare ave not diminished one whit. The whole of this revolting exercise as been carried out ropaganda chorus which has united he rulers of Britain, of Northern they who are responsible for the mess they have created, but the IRA, quickly "gunmen', the 'men of violence'. This chorus has now been joined, to the delight of the other singers, by Conor Cruise O'Brien.
word or tour nundred years or britisn government-inspired violence in Ireland; hardly a word of fifty years of violence by a Protestant government Protestant The directs all his wit, sarcasm and majestic language against the IRA Yet at each stage in the story Ireland the IRA enters the stage not as the initiator of violence and oppression but as the response to it.
pretends, arise in magical or mystical means to destroy the gains of the civil rights movement. It grew in strength and influence in 1970 and 1971 as the British troops made it clear that their sentiment and bias was not in favour of the oppressed minority but against it. against about "justifiable are 'mendacity victory in a long democracy La separate state. 3CDaldIC which ascendancy Ireland, and, in effect, of Southern | fighting, unaided even by a Carson, a well lose.
The chorus proclaims that it is not In his reflections' there is hardly a by both churches Ministers.
Minister himself.
and In the most recent phase, dealt with by SJOI Dr O'Brien's wordy philosophising Violence by state force and (Hutchinson). "unjustifiable IRA violence allows him | appeared in Books and Bookmen (sic). to duck the crucial question, the question which has to be asked in all such circumstances: which is the violence of the oppressed and which the violence of the oppressor?
Those who answer it does not matter; it is equally to blame'- those who describe the IRA or any other "terrorists' as though they were brutish animals without cause or explanation precisely which rich and corporations and governments shrug off their responsibilities even than mendacity.
O' Brien indulges turns the reader or the solution to Ireland's problems.
I wonder if Dr O' Brien really believes that, if the IRA were battered out of existence, the problems in the North of i Ireland would be any nearer solution. The truth is the opposite The Protestant extremists would see the destruction of the IRA as another series of victories.
They would demand not less from a "settlement but more. And if peace and were restored to the province, it would be on terms even more disastrous for the minority than There is no solution to Northern Ireland while Northern Ireland exists as Its existence as a CarTICS with it ar automatic Protestant ascendancy, and with it eternal civil strife.
The Protestant ascendancy depends for its survival on British support. It is the British presence, and the confidence that the British troops will, in the last resort, always protect their Protestant wins for the Protestant WRENITIV OF the Protestant people of the North.
If the British prop were withdrawr from that ascendancy, the Protestant extremists would lose their automat grip on the loyalties of the Protestant people. The Protestants would be faced for the first time with the prospect of bitter war - a war which they might In those circumstances there is at any Tae some nose ident masses Protestant working people would break away from ten extremists, and would respond to a call for a different sort of Ireland than the rotten parishes which have been held out to them for centuries But by now I have left Conor Cruise O'Brien far behind. His business is no Ministers, expses the mendacious is the mendacious His liberalism is now the ideology of the rich, the elevation into universal values which favoured the emergence favour ine continuance capitalist society'. He has become the Adlal sevenson of mis generation.
In some relief, 1 turn his book over, SENG glamore pho graph of ring COvEr SuIC reflection of 'Mr Stevenson's face, with its shiftily earnest advocate's expres *Herod: Reflections on Political Conor Cruise O'Brien This soon.
month the Constabular raided Northern Ireland's department They took details receiving unemployment security benefits. The details, said the RUC, were to be fed into their new computer.
This is only the latest stage in the practically the population - are filed in computers operated by the security forces.
The Army operating four main computer systems for a number of years.
in one svstem well over halt a million personal files are held. They contain the subject's age, description, jobs, habits, and details of movement. There are cross references to the person's relatives and friends. RECORDS The second system operated by the Army contains street records. These list the name, outlook of each person living in the houses in question.
This computer even contains the names of local dogs. The theory is that someone's identity can be checked by asking them the name of a dog in the street where the suspect claims to live!
CAROLICI records of vehicle numbers, the colour ame make or une car establishing how the vehicle could be checked at a road block. contains the car-owner's religion.
The final computer section used by the Army is the VCP (Vehicle Check Point) Index which lists all cars stopped at road blocks.
With these four computers now joined by information on claimants fed into the new RUC computer, anyone with access to these systems now has on record the name, employment record, address, political view, religion, pastimes and friends of the majority of the population in the North of Ireland.
ANTI-RIOT That is how near the British Army and the RUC have brought 1984 to the Six Counties.
As well as the sophisticated thought police, other recent developments in the organisation the reinforced the more practices of the North of Ireland's police.
With the growth of mass protest in the of Belfast, eisewnere, a special anu-not squad na. been established.
Showing a lack of originality, this force is known as the Special Patro Group. Like its London counterpart its personnel are trained on para-military lines.
In its armoury the SPG has riot helmets, visors, masks, plastic • bullet guns, pistols, pump action shotguns, Sterling submachine guns and American MI carbines.
It is known that the RUC SPG has had training sessions in England and, like the London SPG, in Army bases in Germany.
The arming of the RUC is in direct defiance of the recommendations of the Hunt Report on the RUC, which was WHEN British troops first went in to the North of Ireland the story forms such as the Prevention of Terrorism Act. GEOFF BELL looks at the latest developments in the technology of repression in the North of Ireland. They could be in your area Royal Ulster files security of families million people entire working have been every recorded occupation, and political riots in 1968-9.
Specials, 10 percent of holds code The file DISBAND occupation, name.
DeCI Constable have traditional and TIPPED hand-picked and shields, batons, gas Walther infamous For the seen.
in SIR KENNETH NEWMAN established in the wake of the RUC Hunt recommended the disarming of the RUC, the disbandment of the B and the encouragement of Catholics to join the police Ten years later there are still less than Catholics in the RUC; and while the B Specials have gone they have been replaced by the Ulster Defence Regiment, hundreds of whose members and ex-members have been convictca or Loyanst terronst onences The first Chief Constable after Hunt, Sir Arthur Young, also tried to disband the RUC Reserve Force, which had led the armed assault on the Catholic ghettoes of Belfast in August 1969. The name "Reserve Force has gone. But the SPG is the same group under a different The hope of the British Government is that the RUC will eventually take over the role of the British Army. It is Tor unis reason mey are being wamee and equipped as the Army itself has Certainly the head of the RUC, Chief Kenneth Newman, qualifications for "anti-terrorism' He began his police career in the Palestine Police Force, just after the Second World War. As a profile in the Observer put it recently, *after a short spell of clearing demonstrators from the Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem, he went to the Special Branch' From Palestine Newman went to London and as Chief Superintendent in the Metropolitan Police he oversaw thi police attacks on the anti-Vietnam war demonstrators in 96% To de Neommissonely tipped as Commissioner Metropolitan Police.
Whether he will bring with him the techniques of the Castlereagh barracks, the Sterling submachine guns of the RUC, computer techniques learned from the British Army remains to be But if you are on a file at your local social security office, start worrying.
Socialist Challenge 23 November 1978 page 9
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)KEVIN CAMBELL
was that they were going to bring 'British democracy". Instead the reverse has happened. The standards of "justice' long practised in the North of Ireland have come to Great Britain