The Trouble with the English: Understanding and Respecting Ireland
At the time of writing, Easter Sunday of 2016, it’s getting close to two decades since the Good Friday Agreement was signed. Millions and millions of mainland Britons will grow up never having known ‘the Troubles’ as anything more than history, not to mention those too young at the time of signing to be aware of much around them. The rest of the world, which only paid intermittent attention to the open warfare occurring in one of the world’s largest economies and most prominent western countries, has generally seen the Agreement as a good reason to ignore the history and legacy of the conflict, and a good reason to stop paying attention to Northern Ireland.
Neither is this blanking of the memory and existence of Northern Ireland uncommon in the United Kingdom itself, the union of which Northern Ireland is nominally a constituent nation. Northern Ireland’s prominence in the western mind has not so much diminished as inexorably ebbed. And in the UK this has promoted attitudes of such limited perspective as to be outright false , which are confidently asserted and rarely challenged. But the realities and lessons of Britain’s tortured history with Ireland are far too hideous and important. These things which happened, which were ordered by people and done to people, are not parochial, especially in the world we live in today. And the Irish, of both the Republic and Northern Ireland, deserve more respect regarding their past.
The misunderstanding of the conflict in Northern Ireland I see repeated most often is the notion that the Troubles were solely about the IRA (who named themselves for the IRA that had fought for Irish Independence in the 1910s and 1920s) vs the British State. The IRA did campaign against the British state. But not only were they not the only Republican terrorists doing so, there were also loyalist terrorists, most prominently the Ulster Volunteer Force and the Ulster Defence Association. This aspect of the conflict seems to elude many who reflect on the conflict in modern times.
These loyalist groups also killed civilians, primarily Catholics, with shootings and petrol bombs and good old brutal beatings. The estimate is that the UVF alone killed at least 400 people, with most of those victims being civilians. They also bombed (and attempted to bomb) Northern Irish infrastructure. The first member of the Royal Ulster Constabulary to die during the Troubles was shot by a member of the UVF. They bombed targets in the Republic of Ireland as well, such as Dublin’s RTE Television Centre in 1969, and conducted a bombing campaign against the Republic that lasted well into the 1970s. There are also now several serious allegations that the British state covertly supported these loyalist terrorist groups during part of the Troubles, with Joan Burton TD alleging that this was ‘endemic’. Many court cases involving these allegations are still ongoing.
But neither were the IRA and the other Republican terrorist groups noble freedom fighters. This is a perspective that was once associated with North America, particularly Irish identifying communities there, but in my experience in modern times this is more common among the more dogmatic of those opposed to the British state for various reasons. The IRA, and let’s be clear about this, killed civilians, and not just as collateral damage. They conducted murders of Northern Irish civilians, to intimidate, to damage people they saw as opponents, and for revenge against killings of Catholics or Republicans. They killed over 300 fellow Catholics, as a result of internal feuds, having dissenting politics, perceived or actual snitching. But they also became, over time, essentially a criminal empire, dealing in narcotics (having got their start in illegally importing goods across the border) and operating in an indistinguishable way from organised crime.
And last but not least, in their bombing campaigns against the British mainland, they were for a long time entirely willing to target civilians. The argument about whether or not a Head of State and their government constitutes a ‘legitimate’ target of violence belongs somewhere else, but even ignoring the bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton in 1984 which aimed to kill Margaret Thatcher, UK Prime Minister at the time, there are multiple occasions in which the IRA, or a splinter group of the IRA, bombed without sufficient warning as to the location of bombs or with incorrect statements of where the bombs were located. The deadliest such occasion on the UK mainland was the Birmingham Pub Bombings in 1974, which killed 21 civilians and injured another 182 people. The deadliest in Northern Ireland was the Omagh car combing of 1998, which killed 29/31 (one of those killed was a mother expecting twins) and injured over 220 people.And as for those who would justify the campaign either because of the IRA’s cause or because of a belief in the use of necessary violence to effect political change, the IRA’s attacks, particularly those of the IRA and its splinters in the early 90s, only damaged their cause, and directly led to the mood that allowed the Good Friday Agreement to come into existence.
Finally we turn to the British state. Whatever one feels about the British tit for tat responses to terrorism, there are multiple occasions in which the British state used a violent response to those who were not engaging in violence themselves. The infamous episode of 1972 known as Bloody Sunday, where a protest march against British practices of internment ended with 14 civilians killed by British Paratroopers, is also one that I find a surprisingly large number of people are not aware of, particularly outside the UK. The Saville inquiry into Bloody Sunday released its findings in 2010, declaring the killings unjustified and unjustifiable, making this the official verdict on the matter, not simply a matter of my personal opinion. Almost as deadly but even less well known is the Ballymurphy Massacre of 1971, where over a three day period British Paratroopers from the same regiment shot 11 civilians dead.
The British in NI also committed to practices of arresting anyone suspected of being an IRA member, no matter the level of evidence. These suspects were interned without trial and it was said that many were tortured. It is now known beyond doubt that the British did, in fact, torture these prisoners, and not as the rogue actions of elements in NI, but at the order of government ministers. The withholding of key information about these torture techniques led to a European Court of Human Rights ruling in 1978 that the techniques did not constitute torture, and this decision then legitimised similar torture methods utilised other countries. The consequences of British practices in NI had a legacy extending far outside its borders. This ruling, given the new information that has come to light, is now being challenged. The allegations of mass British collusion with the loyalist terrorists of NI are an ongoing legal matter, but the notion that this occurred is already considered solid by not only citizens of NI but also members of the Republic of Ireland’s government.
This is not a Golden Mean fallacy. This is not me arguing that all sides involved in the NI conflicts were too extreme and the truth is somewhere in the middle, because there’s one further side usually forgotten; the side of the majority of civilians in NI, both Catholic and Protestant. Some Catholics in Northern Ireland had relatives who joined republican terrorist groups. Some Protestants had relatives in the Royal Ulster Constabulary, in the British army, or who joined loyalist terrorist groups. Others still would have supported the actions of groups they maybe saw as fighting for them, even if they never took part themselves. But civilians in Northern Ireland are those who primarily suffered from the activities of terrorists. In addition to the effects of bombings, killings, and political radicalisation, Catholic civilians were effectively second class citizens, and some of the laws used to disenfranchise Catholics in Northern Ireland also disenfranchised poor Protestants.
This is not a case of using ‘disenfranchise’ as hyperbole, either, gerrymandering was perhaps the mildest method by which Catholics had little ability to vote in Northern Ireland; major unionist parties in Northern Ireland banned Catholics from joining them, Catholics were generally barred from joining the civil service in Northern Ireland, Direct Rule was imposed from most of the period from 1972–2007, barring a few attempts to reinstitute a Northern Ireland Assembly, meaning that nobody could vote at all for much of that period, which of course resulted in a status quo that favoured unionists even though even many loyalists were against Direct Rule as a principle. And an inability to vote in general impacted most on the most vulnerable and least powerful of society, which was most Catholics and the poorest of the Protestants.
Northern Ireland has changed a lot in the years since the Good Friday Agreement, but the long term impact of its conflict runs deep, as does its general neglect by the UK as a whole. This is not just economic, though Northern Ireland remains one of the poorest parts of the UK and suffered far more economic damage as a consequence of the 2007 Economic Recession and UK austerity policies than the rest of the country. The trauma inflicted on Northern Ireland’s civilians remains part of their psyche, and not through some bloody-minded inability to move on from the past (though some with such views do exist), but because of how deep the wounds go, and how deeply divided their society became. No amount of bloody-mindedness gives you an adrenaline rush when you pass the former house of a murderous terrorist, or an instinctive fear of parked cars.
Murals in Northern Ireland criss-cross its urban landscape, not just asserting political viewpoints but in many cases memorialising tragedies, one of Northern Ireland’s attempts to understand the horrors it experienced. Segregated schools and communities remain, ‘peace walls’ separating communities from one another remain. There are many crimes, committed by all belligerent sides, that are still being discovered to this day, and criminals that are accused but have not been prosecuted, some as a result of deals made between terrorists and the British government. There are still dissidents, as the prevailing term has become, who remain opposed to the Good Friday Agreement, who continue to seek opportunities for violence, though their numbers, support, and scale are minuscule compared to the IRA at their height. But those who ignore Northern Ireland’s continued plights and miseries, who think of it as unworthy of notice or special attention, are perhaps equalled by those who think that Northern Ireland is a land of no hope, best ignored to save peace of mind, best left to rot in whatever way makes the least noise. Both of these viewpoints erase the lives and experiences of Northern Ireland’s civilians, and given the violence and death they have suffered they deserve far better than that.
This Easter Sunday is the hundred-year anniversary of the Easter Rising of 1916, when Irish republicans rose against British rule in Ireland in the middle of the First World War. It’s an important legacy both in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, but today I’ve seen the Rising portrayed as whatever a given author has decided its significance is, regardless of how suited the actual events are to that author’s goals or opinions. In fact this article is in no small part motivated by the sheer amount of ignorance displayed by articles published on the anniversary, whose authors have no real excuse for their poor understanding of the Rising and its context, or their total misrepresentation of the same. This is not pedantry. Their ignorance is not harmless misunderstanding. The use of sanctioned platforms like national newspapers spreads these authors’ ignorance, turning their lack of understanding of Ireland into a wider chasm of ignorance among the British public. Those who do not understand the Rising likely do not understand the Troubles, perhaps even ignore them altogether. This cannot be allowed to stand unchallenged.
One article that particularly grabbed my attention was that of Simon Heffer, writing for the Telegraph, titled Easter Rising: it is time to apologise to the Irish. This article, clearly written with well intentioned-aims, is not actively hostile to Ireland or the Irish, but nonetheless succeeds in perpetuating several false understandings of the conflict’s nature. In general Simon Heffer allows himself to come to an easy, safe conclusion about the nature of the Rising and the development of subsequent events. He has the UK plead guilty to a lesser charge, by admitting to British wrongdoing but failing to actually commit to the fullness of these actions, or examine their consequences. The conflict is presented as one between an overly fussy, unpleasant parent and a misunderstood child, which is exactly as patronising as it sounds.
But his article suffers from far more than hesitancy over admittal to mistreatment and, indeed, atrocities. For one he divorces the issue of Britain’s history with the Republic of Ireland with that of Northern Ireland, which is still a part of the United Kingdom, referring to various wrongs committed by the British against those who fought for an independent Ireland but never any committed against those Irish communities that the British continued to govern. In fact, it’s as though a curtain has been drawn in his conception of what ‘Ireland’ refers to from 1916 onwards, as though the British behaviour in Northern Ireland from partition onwards simply has no bearing on a legacy of Britain mistreating the Irish and Ireland. An apology to Ireland over the response to the Easter Rising should be an apology to the citizens of Northern Ireland, even if there are a number of them that do not feel that way about British actions during the Rising. In other words, the presence of Unionists of dogmatic conviction in Northern Ireland should not remove the ability to apologise to Northern Irish as a body, just as the presence of dogmatic Republicans should not preclude apologies directed at the rest of the Northern Irish. And any conversation about British mistakes in Ireland must deal with Northern Ireland also.
Then, worst of all, the Irish struggle for independence is compared to the pro-Leave beliefs of some in the UK. I give the quote in full- “Many Britons now can understand how the Irish felt a century ago. We, too, want to govern ourselves, and determine our own future without the control of a foreign power.” (the link is the same as from the original article). Let’s be clear here, this comparison should be regarded as not only fundamentally flawed but deeply insulting regardless of your views on the UK leaving or remaining within the EU. At no point has hot lead been shot into the bodies of UK pro-Leave supporters or demonstrators by forces from other EU countries. French paratroopers did not go around extrajudicially murdering citizens they suspected of Pro-Leave activity, Czech veterans were not turned into a paramilitary police force used to attack civilian targets of opportunity across England. The EU is a compact that its member states entered voluntarily, without duress or coercion, and not only that but a compact that the UK has in fact voted to remain in by democratic vote on a previous occasion. We may well end up changing our minds about our decision, but it has always been our decision. Not so for Ireland under British rule.
At no point did Ireland democratically decide to become part of the UK, the initial conquest of Ireland was just that, a conquest, with the Irish Parliament being a creation and extension of English royal control over Ireland. It might have been sovereign over Ireland, eventually, but let’s not pretend it was an example of self-determination. Neither did its citizens vote to have its Parliament dissolved and folded into that of England, its members of parliament did, many of whom were bought or coerced into doing so. The EU has at no point attempted to, suggested, or even hinted that it might even consider abolishing the democratic assemblies of its constituent nations. The Pro-Leave argument in the UK is, rightly or wrongly, centred on whether the EU’s laws and agreements impinge on the UK’s sovereignty in an unacceptable way. That is in no way comparable to the situation that Irish citizens, Protestant and Catholic, found themselves in under British rule by the 1910s. Whether the EU referendum of June 23rd is a question of freedom or has nothing to with the struggle against imperial control over a people. The comparison is so gobsmackingly unsuited,that, were it invited to a posh dinner party, it would come in torn jeans and a sleeveless top with gravy stains.
One act of respect that anyone, in any country, can perform involving Ireland is to avoid appropriating the Irish struggle for independence, and the Troubles in Northern Ireland, as fodder for causes that it has no relevancy towards. Simon Heffer’s article joins a healthy international tradition, whereby Ireland’s treatment by Britain is variously used as evidence that Black Americans didn’t have it that bad, that armed struggle for a cause is always justified by the cause regardless of method or result, that torture can and should be used on prisoners, that internment without trial is a clever dodge around red tape, that negotiation with armed insurrections is always surrendering to the terrorists. There’s another act of respect that anyone can follow from the same logic, and that’s to learn real lessons from the reality of Ireland, the atrocities and peace process both. No, Northern Ireland isn’t a predictor of every armed struggle or deeply divided society, it isn’t a step by step guide to solve every conflict, it isn’t an answer to any debate about issues involving the use of force, legitimate violence, or how to achieve peace. But the Northern Irish have things that they understand deeply about the consequences and reality of such conflicts in a way that much of the western world doesn’t. The fact that NI, and the history of Ireland, can’t answer all questions is not a legitimate reason to assert that it can answer no questions at all, that it has no relevancy towards anything else going on in the world.
This is what makes Simon Heffer’s article so insulting to Ireland; he not only misappropriates the Irish struggle for independence for his own pet issue, in doing so he demonstrates that he hasn’t really learned why he and the British should apologise to the Irish, only that they should, and only for certain easily admissable things. This is also what makes the article and those like it so dangerous, by promoting the wrong lessons and wrong attitudes, by legitimising ignorance. The Northern Irish have, after much toil, struggle, and being surrounded by violence on all sides, put themselves on a path to peace. But to reach the end of their journey they need help, help that they are not sufficiently receiving. This is not merely a plea for the British government to pay more attention to Northern Ireland, but for everyone to pay more attention to Northern Ireland, to recognise its past and current struggles, to learn from its mistakes and successes. It is not such a large amount of attention to pay when general news from the UK ends up dominating foreign media at times, especially whenever there’s a new royal baby. There’s more than enough room in our heads and hearts for truths to be gleaned from Ireland, and Northern Ireland in particular, and to reject the misuse of the struggles of Irish people across the centuries. It isn’t just Britain that owes them that much.
