Northern Ireland: out of the headlines, injustices beget tragedies built on old hate - part 1

National Catholic Reporter, Oct 22, 1993 by Gary MacEoin

While Brian Faulkner was prime minister of Northern Ireland (March 1971-March 1972), 33,000 additional permits to hold arms were issued to Loyalists, while permits continued to be denied to Nationalists, even those who had received death threats.

To understand the role and importance of the IRA today, when their bombings in London are terrifying banking moguls who fear that international capital will flee to the safety of Frankfurt, as well as insurance moguls who are excluding "terrorist attacks" from industrial and commercial coverage, one must keep this chain of events clearly in mind. Twice before, in the late 1930s and in the 1950s, the IRA undertook bombing campaigns in Northern Ireland and in Britain. Both failed miserably because the social base essential to guerrilla warfare was absent.

Cathal Goulding, IRA chief of staff, later summed up the situation: "In August 1967, we called a meeting of local leadership throughout the country to assess the strength of the movement. We discovered that we had no movement."

The difference in the early 1970s was that the British government, after a few gestures to world opinion, reverted to its traditional role of protecting the privileges of "settlers" against the demands of the "natives" for equal treatment. Instead of dealing with the admitted grievances, it strengthened the polarizing structures.

A hastily constructed barricade of metal and barbed wire, cynically named the "Peace Line," to separate Nationalist West Belfast from the neighboring Unionist stronghold of Shankill has been gradually built up into a barrier as impenetrable as was the Berlin Wall. Adjoining houses have been demolished to provide a free-fire zone for the military patrols who prowl with automatic arms at the ready day and night.

A six-lane highway completes the isolation of West Belfast. This enclave is a war zone, with heavily fortified military and police posts covering all strategic points. Outside, life goes on with minimal evidence of social unrest.

The due-process provisions Britain had undertaken as a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights were suspended. The security forces were empowered to arrest, detain, remand in custody and intern without charge. Not surprisingly, the European Court of Human Rights found the United Kingdom guilty of torture in 1976, and of inhuman and degrading treatment of prisoners in Northern Ireland in 1978.

This is not an emergency measure. It is long-term normality as formulated by military strategists to deal with an intransigently hostile civil population.

To minimize costs of control, the worst slums -- always hotbeds of resistance -- are being gradually moved to new housing developments within the enclave. The concept is similar to the failed "strategic hamlet" project in Vietnam and the "development zones" in the Guatemalan highlands.

Each group of houses has a single entrance and exit. A couple of Saracens can isolate its inhabitants and prevent hostile mobilization. The cost to the British government is minimal, since it uses European Community social funds designated to help impoverished areas. Ironically, the housing conditions are infinitely better than before, but the joblessness remains. The new communities have no provision for industrial or commercial expansion. They guarantee to their members and indefinite future of meaninglessness, and they guarantee to the IRA the social base essential to the success of a guerrilla movement.