"Troops Out" delegation to Ireland
Even the dole office looks like a prison
Demonstration on the Falls Road. "THAVE become more and more convinced - and the only question is to drive this conviction home to the English working class - that it can never do anything decisive here in England until it separates its policy with regard to Ireland most definitely from the policy of the ruling class, until it not only makes common cause with the Irish but actually takes the intiative in dissolving the Union established in 1801.
Karl Marx wrote thse words over a hundred years ago and while much has happened since, the sentiment and anlaysis remain as pertinent today as ever.
We were part of the Troops Out Movement "85 Delegation to Belfast, a city divided by British imperialism.
We "see" the war in Ireland continuously on news programmes and on TV documentaries but we see it from a perspective which is defined by the very imperialism which has created the trouble and we see it from the comfort of our British living rOOmS. Being there made it real, experiencing even for a short time the repression and the State violence which is part of the day to day life of the Republican community.
By JANE GOSS and STEVE CLARE
Talking to the men and women of West Belfast, trade unionists, Sinn Fein activists, ex POWs, the families of people murdered by plastic bullets, women from Armargh Prison - the reality is a nightmare but it is a nightmare which has created tremendous strength and solidarity and a movement that will not and cannot be broken.
Belfast is a city at war. When we arrived our coach driver refused to take us to the Falls Road, so we had to walk from the City centre. Within 5 minutes a patrol drove by. two RUC landrovers, thick metal grills over the windows and vivid paint splashes marking previous encounters with the local youth. Sandwiched between the landrovers was a British Army ar moured personnel carrier, the head and shoulders of two soldiers protruding from the top. Both were wearing helmets with visors and holding rifles at the ready. Back they came the RUC stopping at the rear and front of the delegation while the military swung across the road and disgorged a squad of soldiers who took up position in doorways and behind garden walls. Meanwhile the Socialist Viewpoint, No. 7, September 1985, Page 21
RUC politely asked us what we were doing, reinforcing their request by pointing sub-machine guns at us. One woman took a photograph and Immediately had her camera taken from her and the film exposed.
This ever present military force was striking. It was common to walk round the corner and find soldiers in position, rifles raised, while the RUC questioned somebody. Many of them carried short, wide-barelled riot control guns slung over their shoulders. The armoured patrols would pass by every few minutes.
This was normality in West Belfast; the outward display of the British State desperately trying to initmidate the Republican minority. Yet what we were seeing was the policy of "Ulsterisation" or "normalisation" as the authorities like to call it. The use of the term would be farcical if it was not in such a serious setting. The policy indicates the replacement of British troops by the RUC as the main agents of internal security in an attempt to hide British responsibility and reduce British casualties.
However, trying to give the RUC a "beat bobby" image is not easy. They still need army protection, and the guns remain the same. For the people of West Belfast nothing has changed They know who the enemy is and continue to fight. Every symbol of British
occupation is a target.
The RUC forts are massive concrete structures surrounded by corruaged iron fences and barbed wire with sophisticated video and listening equipment covering every approach. Occasionally they come under mortar bomb attack!
Even the dole office looked like a prison with large chain link fences, double gates and video surveillance. These buildings and heavily armoured patrol vehicles are a constant reminder that the 6 Counties are subject to an occupation by foreign forces. On every available space in West Belfast, Republican murals and IRA and Sinn Fein slogans proclaim defiance and reinforce the knowiedge that the British State will never win.
Back in the Ardoyne where we were staying we had a chance to see what the war meant to the families who live in this environment. The night before we arrived there had been a riot a couple of hundred yards from where we were billetted. The street was full of bricks and the smouldering remains of a bonfire.
At ten to one in the morning a six year old had knocked at the door of
Maria, our hosts, to ask if their children were coming out to join in the attack on the Brits.
Joe had been in Long Kesh for four years and was only released 4 months ago. A nightly ritual was to jam a heavy iron bar up against the front door to delay the RUC if they chose to try one of their periodic raids. The clubs we drank in all had IRA posters up and held collections every night for Green Cross, the prisoners' aid fund.
The Ardoyne, like most Republican areas, is a community under siege, living with constant insecurity, but this is reflected not in withdrawal but in a warmness and friendliness that was almost tangible.
Part of the visit included a series of workshops with Sinn Fein on various issues including women, plastic bullets, POWs and trade unions. The session on plastic bullets was introudced by the relatives of some of the victims of the RUC and the British Army and included a video giving background information and case studies.
A plastic bullet weighs about 4 ounces, the same as a cricket ball, and is fired with a muzzle velocity of about 160 miles per hour. They can be lethal. Fifteen people have now died, seven of them children, many of them innocent of any "misbehaviour". Nora McCabe, for example, died in 1981 during the Hunger Strike. She was on her way to the local shop when an RUC jeep aproached and a policeman fired at net head from a range of about six feet.
In May of that year a staggering 16,656 rounds were fired, causing a number of horrific injuries including blindness and brain damage. In August 1981 an International Commission of Enquiry travelled to Belfast to investigate the use of plastic bullets. One of its members was Senior British Research Scientist Dr Tim Shallice, who wrote in the New Statesman, the conclusion seemed inescapable to members of the Commission: the Northern Ireland authorities were knowingly allowing widespread, indiscriminate and illegal use of a weapon whose lethal otential was well known. " Plastic oullets are still in use and a number of Police Forces in Britain have stockpiles for use in this country.
The ROC have received full sup port from the trade unions in the 6 counties and this gives some idea of the politics of the Northern Ireland Committee (NICTU) of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU). Historically the unions have been Protestant, although this is less true today with the expansion of the public sector.
Nevertheless, the autonomy of operation granted to NICTU constitutes a de-facto recognition of partition which was the price paid by the ICTU in order that they in turn would be granted recognition by the Stormont Government in the early 1970s.
Even their economic strategy for recovery, *The Trade Union Alternative" , is entirely a programme for the British Government to produce more Jobs and improve Northern liv. ing standards. At no point does it consider fostering liks with the South, for fear of being tainted with the Republican brush.
Like the Workers' Party and the Communist Party, their role has been one of collaboration. But perhaps the biggest problem tor people in Britain to recognise is that trade unions in the North are not very important. They have very little political impact at all and are regarded by much of the Republican community as largely irrelevant. After all, you need to have a job to be a trade unionist, and in areas like Ballymurphy, Turf Lodge and the Ardoyne, male unemployment approaches 80%.
A former Plessey steward said "It's important to realise that because the Northern Ireland Committee organises workers from both Catholic and Protestant traditions, that doesn't mean that they are immune from sectarianism. Quite the opposite. They don't try to challenge sectarianism, let alone its roots which lie in the structures of the state, and ultimately with the British control of the state.
However, it is women who particularly bear the brunt of the war. Being a mother is never easy. Being a mother in the war-torn 6 Counties is a constant hearlache and worry.
Listening to Maria describing the atrest of her husband, the hassle with the RUC, the pushing within Sinn Fein for support, the trekking to the prison, was amazing. She wasn't complaining but rather relating the everyday occurences for Republican women Fin the North. She is a remarkable woman and there are thousands more like her.
She talked about the constant Socialist Viewpoint, No. 7, Seplember 1985, Page 22 worry of the kids (aged 4, 6 and 10) being out, "But you can't keep them in. I always tell them to come home if there is trouble. I worry all the time. They know the Army and RUC shoot plastic bullets but they never think it will be them that get hit."
She talked about the fight she had at her son's school while her husband was still in prison and the teachers said her oldest son was slow (he had seen his father arrested when he was only 6). She said that she argued and fought with them:
"Slow! Last week he was watching TV and I turned over to watch some rubbish. He shouted at me: "Mammy!' he said, I'm watching a programme about South Africa. He told me about Apartheid and that it was wrong. It was white people picking on other people because they were black. And now the black people were fighting back.. he's slow? He had to go to see the school psychologist who asked him lots of questions. One of the questions was What do you want to be when you grow up He answered that he wanted to be a policeman. When we came out Tasked why he said that. He replied, Well, I thought it would confuse them. "
Women with older sons and daughters watched the anguish and desolation of their children's lives being wasted in British run jails, often put there by evidence provided by the new breed of Supergrasses paid perjurors — and sentenced by a ludge with no Jury
The strength of the women is the strength of the whole community. Maria said that she always knew that what was going on in the country was wrong. But she left it up to her husband to fight. Then he got arrested and was facing imprisonment under the evidence of Supergrass Christopher Black who was from Ardoyne and used to drink in the local club.
Maria was so outraged at what had happened that she started to fight and now there is no stopping her. She is active in the Women's Section of Sinn Fein and is challenging them on their attitudes to women organising and fighting back.
The lives of the women in the North of Ireland are taken up with the same fight as are the men's, but the women also have the traditional burden of dealing with the emotions involved, of holding the family together, of be ing strong and coping. They don't talk about it much and they don't complain about it. They do it daily. relentlessly.
Many women are also in prison. There is now particular emphasis on the degradation of the Strip Searches going on in Armagh Jail and there isan active campaign against them. One woman in Armagh has been strip-searched 200 times. Only remand presoners are strip-searched. On remand, you go to Court once a week - strip searched on the way out and on the way in despite the fact that the Court appearance may only be
ten minutes and the prisoner is never out of sight of the guard.
During trials women are often searched twice a day. One woman who was recently released from Armagh talked about how degrading it is and how angry the women feel. Stripsearches are just the latest tactic of the British to continue to harass and intimidate those who fight against the system.
Sitting in the Women's Workshop listening to the humiliation described by a young woman released ater 9 years (only 17 when she went in) made everyone aware of the immediate need for more people to realise what is happening in Armagh and for more interest in the "Stop the Strip-Searches Campaign" over here.
Irish women, like the Miners' wives, do not stand behind the men silently supporting them. They stand beside them, with them and sometimes in front of them. They give their lives, their children's lives, their health, their sanity - they give their all for the struggle for a United Ireland
One last memory is the August 11 March through Belfast commemorating the ending of internment. It was unlike any other demonstration that we had ever been on. It is ordered, it is disciplined, it is serious. It is done in active defiance of the British who attempt to control Ireland with guns, bullets and repressive legislation.
The March was led and punctuated by marching bands of mainly youth, in paramilitary style band uniforms. It was watched not only by the thousands of supporters lining the route but also by hordes of British soldiers and RUC, heavily armed and glowering with hostility.
At the rally at the end an army helicopter hovered harassingly overhead effectively drowning out the speeches. Danny Morrison, however, had the last "word". when at the end of his speech he held up a oster procialming "Victory to the RA". The applause of the crowd lef no doubt that they mean to have their FOR A NEW IRELA victory.
The message from the delegation was of solidarity with the fight for a United Socialist Ireland. The march, the picket of the forts, the work-shops and the talks with the local people all increased our knowledge of the realiJames Connolly once said. ty of the oppression in Ireland. As *the cause STOP THATS of labour is the cause of Ireland, the
14200 cause of Ireland is the cause of labour." VOTE SINN FEIN FASTER PARADE 1-00
Those of us who were there have a responsibility to ensure that the struggle for Irish independence is raised much more in the labour movement here, that the battle against imperialism which is at our doorstep is not swept under the carpet.
One of the slogans on the march was "British out of Ireland. Prisoners out of Jail. TROOPS OUT NOW!" THAT MESSAGE MUST BE HEARD.