Robert Bandanza
August 18th, 2009, 01:39 PM
Mon, 10 Aug 2009 13:31:18 GMT
http://www.presstv.ir/photo/20090810/etesami20090810180836921.jpg
By: Kian Mokhtari
How do you keep a nice little toehold within a territory you have occupied and exploited for centuries to continue to intimidate the locals? The answer is you break it off from the main territory and treat it as a separate entity. You prop up a parliament that exclusively operates along your interests, and to back up the complete farce you set up brutal paramilitary forces to assassinate, imprison and intimidate your opponents.
And there is the history of Northern Ireland under British rule in a nutshell.
Ever since the drag queen dramatics of Edward Carson's Ulster Covenant getting signed in the blood of men loyal to the British rule, the entity known as Northern Ireland has remained a divided society.
Once the bedrock of Irish resistance to the advance of the English state in Ireland, the Plantation of Ulster by English colonists has resulted in Northern Ireland following a "different" economic, religious and cultural trajectory to the rest of the Island.
"The new autonomous region was formed from six of the nine counties of Ulster, being the part of Ireland which had the highest concentration of unionists. In large part unionists, at least in the region, supported its creation while nationalists-whose country Ireland happens to be- were opposed. Subsequently, on 6 December 1922, the Island of Ireland became an independent dominion known as the Irish Free State but Northern Ireland immediately exercised its right to opt out of the new Dominion".
The British retreat on the formation of the Irish Free State was not an act of generosity. It came after an incident called the 1916 Easter Uprising.
"During WWI, tensions continued to mount in Ireland. Irish nationalists, (known at the time as Irish Irelanders and later as Republicans) rejected Home Rule entirely because it involved maintaining the connection with Britain. They retained control of one faction of the volunteer movement, and in Easter, 1916 led by Thomas Clarke and James Connolly and others attempted a rebellion in Dublin's Nationalist elements from "old" Irish regiments from Munster and Leinster joined in great numbers as well."
The British forces and paramilitary known as the Black and Tans brutally put down the uprising. The reviled Black and Tans paramilitary became the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) later.
"After summary trials, the British government had the leaders executed for treason. The government blamed the small Sinn Fein in party, which had had little to do with it. The execution of the leaders of the rebellion gave rise to militant Republicanism, and Sinn Fein's popular support grew. The surviving leaders of the Irish Volunteers joined the party and assumed leadership in 1917 (The Irish Volunteers themselves would later become the Irish Republican Army in 1919)."
It is tragic that a moment of negligence and weakness in a nation's history could enslave an entire country for centuries. The Irish people managed to get most of their land back after 1916, bar Northern Ireland. The region is part of the greater entity of Ireland but the British toehold has to be maintained at all costs: mainly to the Irish. So a colony state was haphazardly set up and given a government and constitution loyal to the British crown - called the "Windsor Firm" by the natives.
In the 1960s, moderate Unionist Prime Minister Terence O'Neill tried to reform the system, but encountered strong opposition from both fundamentalist Protestant leaders like Ian Paisley and within his own party. The increasing pressures from extreme Loyalists for "No Surrender" led to even more communal strife, with elements both among the police and loyalists actively seeking to up the temperature. It ended up in a violent attack by a unionist mob (which included police reservists) on a march, at Burntollet, outside Derry on 4 January 1969 as the police looked on. Violence erupted after a Loyalist Apprentice Boys march was forced by the RUC through the nationalist Bogside area of Derry on 12 August 1969. This led to large scale skirmishes known as the Battle of the Bogside. Rioting continued until the 14th of August, and in that time 1,091 canisters, each containing 12.5g of CS gas and 14 canisters containing 50g of CS gas, were released into the densely populated residential area by the RUC.
Even more severe rioting broke out in Belfast and elsewhere in response to events in Derry.
The following thirty years of Irish civil disobedience to the imposed British rule came to be known as the Troubles. Another important milestone in the worsening relationship between the British army and nationalists was the Falls Curfew of 3 July 1970 when 3,000 British troops imposed a three day curfew on the Catholic Lower Falls area.
Then came the introduction of internment without trial for suspected IRA men on 9 August 1971, against which even the most moderate Nationalists reacted by completely withdrawing their co-operation with the state. The SDLP members of the Parliament of Northern Ireland withdrew from that body on 15 August in the same year. Tensions were ratcheted to a higher level after the killing of fourteen unarmed civilians in Derry by the Royal Parachute Regiment on 30 January 1972; or "Bloody Sunday" as it is remembered in Ireland.
Finally efforts to establish some kind of order and stop sectarian killings began to bear fruit with the 1983 replacement of the traditional Republican leadership of Ruairi O Bradaigh by Gerry Adams, which saw a move to political engagement.
On the other side of the divide a new leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, David Trimble, initially perceived as a hardliner, brought his party into all-party negotiations that in 1998 produced the Belfast Agreement ("Good Friday Agreement"). Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party or the UK Unionist Party stayed out of the deal. A said majority of both communities in Northern Ireland approved the Agreement by referendum on 22 May, 1998. The Irish Republic amended its constitution, Bunreacht naEireann, to replace a claim to the territory of Northern Ireland with a mere aspiration toward a United Ireland -the Nineteenth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland.
Northern Ireland today remains a divided society with a legacy of civil conflict and open warfare all through the 20th century.
The fact that Northern Ireland is not a separate entity from the rest of Ireland has been swept under the carpet with a British broom, but it is just a matter of time before the lump under the carpet trips someone up. However it's anyone's guess whether the party with its face in the dirt will turn out to be the imposed British rule or the aspirations of the Irish nation to become entire.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=103038§ionid=3510303
http://www.presstv.ir/photo/20090810/etesami20090810180836921.jpg
By: Kian Mokhtari
How do you keep a nice little toehold within a territory you have occupied and exploited for centuries to continue to intimidate the locals? The answer is you break it off from the main territory and treat it as a separate entity. You prop up a parliament that exclusively operates along your interests, and to back up the complete farce you set up brutal paramilitary forces to assassinate, imprison and intimidate your opponents.
And there is the history of Northern Ireland under British rule in a nutshell.
Ever since the drag queen dramatics of Edward Carson's Ulster Covenant getting signed in the blood of men loyal to the British rule, the entity known as Northern Ireland has remained a divided society.
Once the bedrock of Irish resistance to the advance of the English state in Ireland, the Plantation of Ulster by English colonists has resulted in Northern Ireland following a "different" economic, religious and cultural trajectory to the rest of the Island.
"The new autonomous region was formed from six of the nine counties of Ulster, being the part of Ireland which had the highest concentration of unionists. In large part unionists, at least in the region, supported its creation while nationalists-whose country Ireland happens to be- were opposed. Subsequently, on 6 December 1922, the Island of Ireland became an independent dominion known as the Irish Free State but Northern Ireland immediately exercised its right to opt out of the new Dominion".
The British retreat on the formation of the Irish Free State was not an act of generosity. It came after an incident called the 1916 Easter Uprising.
"During WWI, tensions continued to mount in Ireland. Irish nationalists, (known at the time as Irish Irelanders and later as Republicans) rejected Home Rule entirely because it involved maintaining the connection with Britain. They retained control of one faction of the volunteer movement, and in Easter, 1916 led by Thomas Clarke and James Connolly and others attempted a rebellion in Dublin's Nationalist elements from "old" Irish regiments from Munster and Leinster joined in great numbers as well."
The British forces and paramilitary known as the Black and Tans brutally put down the uprising. The reviled Black and Tans paramilitary became the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) later.
"After summary trials, the British government had the leaders executed for treason. The government blamed the small Sinn Fein in party, which had had little to do with it. The execution of the leaders of the rebellion gave rise to militant Republicanism, and Sinn Fein's popular support grew. The surviving leaders of the Irish Volunteers joined the party and assumed leadership in 1917 (The Irish Volunteers themselves would later become the Irish Republican Army in 1919)."
It is tragic that a moment of negligence and weakness in a nation's history could enslave an entire country for centuries. The Irish people managed to get most of their land back after 1916, bar Northern Ireland. The region is part of the greater entity of Ireland but the British toehold has to be maintained at all costs: mainly to the Irish. So a colony state was haphazardly set up and given a government and constitution loyal to the British crown - called the "Windsor Firm" by the natives.
In the 1960s, moderate Unionist Prime Minister Terence O'Neill tried to reform the system, but encountered strong opposition from both fundamentalist Protestant leaders like Ian Paisley and within his own party. The increasing pressures from extreme Loyalists for "No Surrender" led to even more communal strife, with elements both among the police and loyalists actively seeking to up the temperature. It ended up in a violent attack by a unionist mob (which included police reservists) on a march, at Burntollet, outside Derry on 4 January 1969 as the police looked on. Violence erupted after a Loyalist Apprentice Boys march was forced by the RUC through the nationalist Bogside area of Derry on 12 August 1969. This led to large scale skirmishes known as the Battle of the Bogside. Rioting continued until the 14th of August, and in that time 1,091 canisters, each containing 12.5g of CS gas and 14 canisters containing 50g of CS gas, were released into the densely populated residential area by the RUC.
Even more severe rioting broke out in Belfast and elsewhere in response to events in Derry.
The following thirty years of Irish civil disobedience to the imposed British rule came to be known as the Troubles. Another important milestone in the worsening relationship between the British army and nationalists was the Falls Curfew of 3 July 1970 when 3,000 British troops imposed a three day curfew on the Catholic Lower Falls area.
Then came the introduction of internment without trial for suspected IRA men on 9 August 1971, against which even the most moderate Nationalists reacted by completely withdrawing their co-operation with the state. The SDLP members of the Parliament of Northern Ireland withdrew from that body on 15 August in the same year. Tensions were ratcheted to a higher level after the killing of fourteen unarmed civilians in Derry by the Royal Parachute Regiment on 30 January 1972; or "Bloody Sunday" as it is remembered in Ireland.
Finally efforts to establish some kind of order and stop sectarian killings began to bear fruit with the 1983 replacement of the traditional Republican leadership of Ruairi O Bradaigh by Gerry Adams, which saw a move to political engagement.
On the other side of the divide a new leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, David Trimble, initially perceived as a hardliner, brought his party into all-party negotiations that in 1998 produced the Belfast Agreement ("Good Friday Agreement"). Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party or the UK Unionist Party stayed out of the deal. A said majority of both communities in Northern Ireland approved the Agreement by referendum on 22 May, 1998. The Irish Republic amended its constitution, Bunreacht naEireann, to replace a claim to the territory of Northern Ireland with a mere aspiration toward a United Ireland -the Nineteenth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland.
Northern Ireland today remains a divided society with a legacy of civil conflict and open warfare all through the 20th century.
The fact that Northern Ireland is not a separate entity from the rest of Ireland has been swept under the carpet with a British broom, but it is just a matter of time before the lump under the carpet trips someone up. However it's anyone's guess whether the party with its face in the dirt will turn out to be the imposed British rule or the aspirations of the Irish nation to become entire.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=103038§ionid=3510303