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Rewriting History
“The first
casualty when war comes is the truth” said US Senator Hiram Johnson in 1917. We know only too well from our
own recent experience of reporting on the decades of conflict how true this is.
However, it misses the equally important other side of the coin – the victor
writes the history.
The
narrative of European colonialism, and especially of the British Empire, is
full of examples of this. The British public today still believes that the
Empire was great! While those in Ireland, in Africa, in India and elsewhere who
suffered from its exploitation and brutality see it as a thief, an exploiter, a
mass murderer, the purveyor of famine and poverty.
The English
claim they came to Ireland to civilise the barbarians. Colonial and western
powers often use the excuse to justify their colonial occupation and military
interventions. In recent years this was evident again in Iraq, in Afghanistan
and in Libya. The French philosopher and writer Jean Paul Sarte described it
well: “Terror and exploitation dehumanise, and the exploiter authorises
himself with that dehumanisation to carry his exploitation further.”
In the 19th century
British strategy in Ireland was based on this approach. We Irish were the
problem. They, the British were the solution. The British state presented the
Irish as ape-like in order to justify its use of coercion. O’Connell who was
leading a campaign to end the Union with Britain was described by the Times
as “scum condensed of Irish bog” and a “greedy self-serving
Satan.” In 1846 in justification of even greater coercion the Times
wrote: “The great obstacle to tranquillity in Ireland is the national
character – the character of the masses of the middle classes, of the senators
of Ireland … When Ireland acts according to the principles of civilised man
then she can be ruled by the laws of civilised man.” The 19th century
saw Coercion Acts passed every year by London to maintain its domination.
Following
partition successive British governments and media ignored the institutionalised
discriminatory and sectarian policies used by the Ulster Unionist Party
to maintain its control.
During the
years of conflict that followed the rejection by Stormont of the civil rights
very modest demands the British state and its military attempted to manage the
news. General Frank Kitson, Britain’s leading counter insurgency expert
wrote: “the press properly handled is one of the government’s strongest
weapons.”
Many
programmes were banned.The lie used by the establishments North and South was
that the British Army was needed to prevent civil war between Catholics and
Protestants. This narrative helped fuel the years of war. It made the job of
dialogue and conversation almost impossible. Sinn Féin was dehumanised and by
extension anyone who spoke to us was the target for vilification. John Hume
endured huge criticism for daring to talk to me about peace. The Dublin
establishment was outraged. Or pretended to be outraged.
Almost 25
years after the Good Friday Agreement the British establishment is still
fighting the war. The spooks and securocrats who run the British system know
the IRA was not defeated. Instead they facilitated and supported the peace
process. This is not acceptable to the war mongers and their cheerleaders on
the British side. They are also worried that the historic narrative is
increasingly exposing Britain’s illegal and violent actions during those years.
In addition, the fact that Sinn Féin is in government in the North and might
well lead a government in Dublin in the near future is intolerable to them.
It therefore
came as no surprise when the London Telegraph revealed at the weekend that the
British government is to commission a history of the ‘troubles’ beginning
in the 1960s up to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement. The Telegraph
story states that this idea comes from Britain’s colonial office in the North –
the Northern Ireland Office (NIO) – and that London will appoint a group of
historians to write this official history. This group of historians, appointed
by the government, will they claim, be independent of the government. Mar dhea!
Censorship
and bias in the reporting of events and the interpretation and analyses of
those events is a powerful weapon in any government’s arsenal. It allows it to
shape attitudes in society in its own interests.
British
governments are especially good at this. On the one hand they pose as the
defenders of free speech and democratic change while imposing censorship or
restricting debate and refusing change when it suits their national interests.
So, on the
19 October 1988 Margaret Thatcher introduced censorship restrictions on Sinn
Féin. Our voices could no longer be heard. Several days later the same Thatcher
visited Poland where she lectured the Polish government on the merits of
openness: “In modern societies, success depends upon openness and free
discussion. Suppress those things, and you are unable to respond to the need
for change.”
Of course,
Thatcher was not alone in employing this hypocritical policy. Successive Irish
governments imposed Section 31. The effect of state censorship was
pernicious. It rolled over into a revisionist history of recent Irish history
which encouraged partitionism.
The British government’s current effort to close down legacy cases is an example of this hypocrisy. The right of families and victims to truth are being set aside through the introduction of a statute of limitations. The British state is intent on hiding the criminal actions of its state forces and its use of state collusion with state sponsored murder gangs.
However hard
the British government seeks to do this; however many revisionist historians
they employ to bolster Britain’s view of history, the case of Pat Finucane; the
importation by British intelligence of South African sourced weapons for
Loyalist groups; the three reports by John Stevens; the role of state agents
like Brian Nelson, and of the Glenanne Gang; the deaths of hundreds of victims;
and the countless official reports by the Ombudsman and others into state
collusion, will continue to haunt the British government. No amount of
historical revisionism will change this.
Ratcheting
up the Brexit crisis
For those of
you unfamiliar with the language of Brexit, Article 16 is the legal mechanism
within the Irish Protocol which can be triggered if the Protocol is
creating serious "economic, societal or environmental difficulties"
that are liable to persist. This would involve one side or the other
unilaterally suspending parts of the deal.
The British
government has been claiming for months that the bar for invoking Article 16
was reached in the summer. In his efforts to heighten the sense of crisis
Jeffrey Donaldson has repeatedly demanded that the British invoke Article 16 if
the EU do not concede to London’s demands. Loyalist groups have hijacked
several buses and the Progressive Unionist Party says there is no longer a
basis for unionists supporting the Good Friday Agreement. The threat of
violence is being consciously whipped up by some in unionism to raise tension and
leverage concessions from the EU.
In contrast
a University of Liverpool survey found that most unionists do not regard
the Protocol as a priority concern.
More
significantly last week four senior U.S. Democrats who chair major
Congressional Committees - Gregory W. Meeks, Chair of the House Foreign Affairs
Committee; William R. Keating, Chair of the Europe, Energy, the Environment and
Cyber Subcommittee; Earl Blumenauer, Chair of the Ways and Means Subcommittee
on Trade, and Brendan Boyle, Chair of the European Union Caucus, - issued
a joint statement in which they called on the British government to end its
threat to use Article 16. The four US politicians warned that the full
implementation of the Protocol is “critical for ensuring Brexit doesn’t
undermine decades of progress toward peace on the island of Ireland."
Adding to
the pressure on the Johnson government the European Commission president Ursula
von der Leyen met President Biden in the White House also last week and emerged
saying that the EU has the support of the United States. Von der Leyen told
journalists that the EU and the USA share the assessment that “it is
important for peace and stability on the island of Ireland to keep the
withdrawal agreement and to stick to the protocol.”
But for now the
DUP and Johnson still appear determined to create a real crisis with the EU.
London has set a December deadline for a deal with the EU on British terms.
Will they won’t they trigger Article 16 as part of this process? We should know
soon.
Day of Action
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