by AN word *EARS DUDDY SACRIAND CuDIC CERALD DEERY 16 YEARS terror squads; for anything which will remove the IRA and thus pave the way to a so unon or tne asa quesuon Dr O'Brien is so busy IRA-bashing that he almost forgets to tell us what he thinks about the central political questions in Ireland. Is he, for instance in favour of partition? His answer appears to be "yes', since again and again he reminds us that a majority of people in Northern Ireland do not want a united Ireland'.
But where does that argument end?
majority people Fermanagh, for instance, do want a united Ireland. So do the majority of people in Tyrone, in County Derry, and probably even in County Armagh In short, there are only two counties in the whole of Ireland - Antrim and Down — where a clear majority want to be part of the United Kingdom. Even in these two counties, which include Belfast, there is a huge minority that wants the opposite The majority of the people in the Road, for instance, or Andersonstown want a united Ireland. Who ever asked all these people what they wanted?
O'Brien KEVIN CACAR 10°26 YEARS PETER CAINION OWN RS MARIE D H3 All "democracy" in that state, therefore, has always been, and always will be a farce.
The Protestant majority elected its governments and to •Catholic minority. All the organs of that state -the police, the "B' Specials, the law the civil service - were organised for the same purpose.
All hope for a non-sectarian labour movement was, inevitably in such a Ten years ago, in the wake of the May events in France and the rising of the people of Czechoslovakia, a new, more powerful civil rights movement was launched in Northern Ireland. The • Protestants reacted as thev a wavs had They sought to crush the movement by rights marchers were blud geoned at Burntollet. Protestant police in Catholic Derry organised a series of midnight terror raids. The 'B' Specials armed themselves for a decisive blow prodigious inquiry, entirely Protestant violence. It was directed at Catholic AnC something approaching genocide for the Catholic community.
THIRTEEN YEARS AGO, in his introduction to a collection of essays and reviews called Writers and Politics, Conor Cruise O'Brien issued a solemn warning to Western liberals:
*To those outside the rich countries who sickened by the "liberalism", the liberal voice excellence is that of Mr stevenson - inevoice narexozined to the world that the United States had notning to do with the Bay invasion: the voice that justified the exclusion of China from the United Nations on moral grounds; the voice Ulat reasons for supporting Belgian policy *From this viewpoint Mr Stevenson's face, with his shiftily earnest advocate's expression, is the ingratiating moral mask which toughly. society wears before the world it robs: "Liberalism" is the ideology of the rich, the elevation into universal values of the codes which emergence, and favour the continuance of capitalist society.
Yes. Conor Cruise 'Brien mused he himself was liberal. He did owe a commitmentto trecdom or specon and the press, academic independent iudgement dent judges'. Indeed, he felt he owed it to these freedoms to 'chip away" what he called the mendacity' - the Photo: DEREK SPEIRS (IFL) hypocrisy and sycophancy which Western liberalism often hid.
In this collection of essays there is one example of that 'chipping away'. It was written in 1967 as an introduction to a book on the Vietnam War. It is a sarcastic, furious attack American bombing of Vietnam.
Dr O' Brien denounces the exercise as "state terrorism'. No mucking about ten with a dennion or terrorism No problem inen about (of and "legitimate force' (of the state). The bombing of Vietnam was "terrorism' justifiable on intellectual grounds only protessors WHO KeD because children were being blown to bits in Vietnam I cannot imagine why this essay was included in this book. It was written in O'Brien', outspoken radical of the 1960s.
Everything else in this book is part of The osrien the politician of the 1970s. In all of them he turns his mind to political violence as in the Vietnamese essay, to ponucal violence carried our by state: and governments, but to violence which is directed against wha he calls 'democratic states".
* Democratic states O'Brien argues, have the defend themselves against 'violent conspiracies' against them from within. Further, these "violent threaten uS with a reversion barbarism'.
The truth is that this book does not seek to lay down general rules principles about political violence. It is, Socialist Challenge 23 November 1978 page 8