The IRA/Irish state War against the Loyalist working class

[terry666]

http://www.socialismtoday.org/40/loyalist40.html


Working class life

WHAT COMES OUT clearly in the sections dealing with the civil rights movement and the clashes which resulted from that in 1969-70, is that the conditions of ordinary Catholic and Protestant workers were hardly different. Taylor spoke to Billy Mitchell about this:

"But as a Protestant, weren't you a first-class citizen?
"Absolutely not. There was no difference. The guys that I ran about with had the same conditions that I did so please don't call me advantaged.
"Bath night?
"Tin bath and a rub down like the people next door. There was discrimination but not just against Catholics, the ordinary working class were discriminated against just as much as any Catholic".

Of course there was discrimination against Catholics in job allocation, and a denial of full democratic and civil rights (with the well-known gerrymandering in elections), but this exchange underlines the completely false argument of the ultra-left groups who tried to show that the Protestant working class led a 'privileged' existence. What 'privileges' they had were minimal compared to the common exploitation and misery which both Catholic and Protestant workers faced.

Many of the areas of Belfast were mixed, with Catholic and Protestant workers living and collaborating together. Andy Tyrie, who was to become the commander of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), at an earlier stage participated in attempts to bring both sides together: "We actually set up a peace group between Catholics and Protestants (in Woodvale) in a church on Springfield Road".

The events of 1969 and the early 1970s have been well documented. But Taylor's account is spiced with some interesting details. We always argued that a section of the Southern Irish bourgeoisie, particularly Fianna Fail, played a role in getting the Provisional IRA 'off the ground'. When asked why he had helped to supply £100,000 through a chain of bank accounts in Dublin and the border town of Clones to assist the Provos, Neil Blaney - then a Southern Irish minister - did not disclaim responsibility but declared: "We didn't help to create them (because that was the result of the IRA's own internal dynamics), but we certainly would have accelerated, by what assistance we could have given, their emergence as a force".

The perception was of the Irish bourgeoisie, or a section of it, collaborating with the IRA to coerce by 'terror' the Protestants into a capitalist united Ireland. This was an important factor in the emergence of the Loyalist para-military organisations and their vicious, murderous campaign against ordinary Catholics, as well as the bloody bombing of Dublin itself.

Conscious sectarian actions, detailed in horrific detail in this book, were not, however, the preserve of the Loyalist paramilitaries alone. The bombing, on 29 September 1971, of the Four Step Inn, a Protestant pub, provoked outrage and led some, like Billy Hutchinson, presently a leader of the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP), to become 'active'. The IRA never claimed responsibility but it was widely assumed that the rise of a new IRA chief-of-staff, Seàn MacStiofàin, had led to a decision to abandon 'economic' targets for a bloody bombing campaign.
These actions acted as a recruiting sergeant to the Loyalist para-military organisations. Repression of nationalists by the British state, together with the Loyalists' campaign, also served to drive many people into the ranks of the IRA.

[terry666]

The British and Irish Communist Organisations analysis of the conflict.



Initially the group considered that the Loyalist attacks on Catholics in Belfast and elsewhere were ‘fascist’ pogroms and that Catholics had a right to military defence. By mid 1970 this view had altered dramatically. The ICO began to argue that the British Army was in fact playing a progressive role in the north by virtue of its preventing a sectarian civil war. The ICO then began to formulate a view, based, they claimed, on Stalin’s writings on the ‘National Question’ which argued that there were two historic nations in Ireland, a Catholic nation in the south and a Protestant nation in the north, both of which were equally entitled to self-determination. By 1971 this view led to the ICO changing its name to the British and Irish Communist Organization (BICO). The adoption of the two nations theory saw BICO completely reject any claim by Irish nationalists to a unitary state as reactionary. They argued that socialist and republican organisations which supported a united Ireland were allied with the ‘Catholic, Nationalist bourgeoisie of the Republic.’ The cause of trouble in the north was ‘not Unionism or the Unionists. Responsibility for it lies at the door of the Southern ruling class which, on the basis of ‘one historic Irish nation’, has pursued a reactionary policy of national oppression for the past 50 years.’ BICO argued that capitalism had developed more rapidly in the north east of Ulster than elsewhere, producing a socially more progressive and dynamic entity. However the south had remained backward and dominated by the Catholic Church. The organization then poured forth a plethora of pamphlets examining the historic roots of capitalism in the north east of Ulster, the ‘right wing’ nature of Irish nationalism and the ‘mythology’ used to justify republican violence. Their research led them to conclude that historically in fact Ulster Unionism was a more progressive and dynamic ideology than Irish nationalism and that as the choice facing Ulster Protestants was between a ‘secular democratic British state’ or a ‘reactionary 26 county Catholic state’ BICO would defend their right to choose the former.
The BICO circulated these ideas far and wide publishing over 50 pamphlets by 1971 and setting up Athol Books as their publishing house. They also put their money where their mouth was, refusing to campaign against internment, arguing the measure was justified in a war situation. BICO contended that the civil rights movement, directed by the IRA, had pushed northern Protestants into a position where they feared the ‘war of 1922’ was being resumed and understandably reacted accordingly. By 1972 the group saw both wings of the IRA as the cutting edge of an irredentist Catholic nationalist movement to subdue Ulster Protestants and felt resistance to them was justified.



However along with the exaggerated sense of their own importance perhaps the least appealing aspect of BICO was their ugly vitriolic rhetoric, which at times bordered on anti-Catholic sectarianism. While they saw the assassination campaigns of the UDA and UVF as counter productive and un-necessary they were, according to BICO, ultimately only a response to IRA provocation. Loyalist ideology was never subjected to the vitriolic denunciations that all varieties of Irish nationalism were. For BICO Irish republicanism was simply ‘the malevolent insular ideology of a tatty-rag bag crowd of altar hugging gombeen men.’ (Workers Association, 12/10/74). BICO publications tended towards character assassination, waging a particularly vindictive campaign against Seamus Heaney, who they saw as the cultural embodiment of the back ward Catholic peasantry. They hailed that Ulster Workers Council strike of May 1974 as a triumph of Protestant proletarian solidarity against Dublin and SDLP rule. In fact BICO actively took part in support for the stoppage, distributing thousands of their bulletins in east Belfast, arguing that the SDLP, rather than any Loyalist group represented the closest thing to ‘fascism’ in Ireland. Brendan Clifford reacted to left wing criticism of the strike by declaring that ‘Catholics had never been safer’ in Belfast than during the period of the UWC stoppage. BICO actively sought contact and discussion with both the UDA and UVF, regarding them as having much more progressive potential than any republican group. When the IRA killed 21 people in Birmingham and Irish people in the city were attacked in response, BICO argued that such a reaction was ‘not totally unjustified’ because most Irish emigrants had refused to break from Irish nationalism, the ‘vicious ideology’ that bred ‘Ireland’s right wing terrorists.’ Unless Irish people in Britain rejected this ‘revolting’ Catholic nationalism then they would unfortunately be targeted by British workers looking for revenge after atrocities, just as innocent Catholics had borne the burnt of legitimate Loyalist anger in Northern Ireland. BICO instead called on British and Irish workers to ‘smash’ IRA terror.

[Ireland2007]

Someone to keep Factual company on my ignore list.

[Irish_Roman]

Someone to keep Factual company on my ignore list.

lol I might join you in that I think "Alliance" needs some company

[outside looking in]

another deluded fool. the poor protestant is the real victim in irelands troubles, sure didnt they have to hold school in a hedge.........

The perception was of the Irish bourgeoisie, or a section of it, collaborating with the IRA to coerce by 'terror' the Protestants into a capitalist united Ireland. This was an important factor in the emergence of the Loyalist para-military organisations and their vicious, murderous campaign against ordinary Catholics, as well as the bloody bombing of Dublin itself.

indeed.

[terry666]

another deluded fool. the poor protestant is the real victim in irelands troubles, sure didnt they have to hold school in a hedge.........

The perception was of the Irish bourgeoisie, or a section of it, collaborating with the IRA to coerce by 'terror' the Protestants into a capitalist united Ireland. This was an important factor in the emergence of the Loyalist para-military organisations and their vicious, murderous campaign against ordinary Catholics, as well as the bloody bombing of Dublin itself.

indeed.

When did the Irish hold school in a hedge ? You mean learn Irish.



The Irish had a free education national system in 1828, even before the English did.

No one is saying the Catholic working class weren't oppressed, but the reality is their standard of living including life expectancy was still higher then those in the South. Its a republic lie that the Catholic w/c had it hard and the Protestants easy.


The bombing of Dublin was in retaliation of the Irish state funding the IRA and sectarian bombings of Protestant pubs, like the 4 step inn.



"AS I STROLLED down the Shankill Road on the Sunday before Christmas, I noticed a wreath attached to the outside of the Shankill Leisure Centre. Curious, I read the inscription on the card, 'In loving memory of our darling son Colin Nicholl (age 17 months). Murdered by terrorists here 11/12/1971. Remembered always by mummy and daddy and his brothers … and … who never got a chance to love him'.

Young Colin Nicholl died in a no-warning bomb, planted in the Balmoral Furniture Showrooms by an IRA death squad on a busy Saturday afternoon. The infant died alongside two-year-old Tracey Munn when a wall of the former cinema building collapsed on top of their shared pram. A young auctioneer and a security man on the door also died in the explosion. No-one was ever charged with any of these deaths. Shankill Voices reminds us of this bomb attack and others that many people have either forgotten or never knew about. There was more than one 'Shankill Bomb'. Apart from the October 1993 atrocity that killed nine innocent people, two men died in an attack on the Four Step Inn in September 1971 and there were two separate attacks on the Mountainview Tavern. Five people died and 61 were injured in the second attack on Grand National Day in April 1975. Another three men and two women died in a bomb and gun attack on the Bayardo Bar in August of the same year. "



acts such as the above, the bombing of Protestant working class pubs/shops and neighbourhoods, was basically a declaration of war against the Protestant working class by the IRA and Irish govt who funded them.

[outside looking in]

acts such as the above, the bombing of Protestant working class pubs/shops and neighbourhoods, was basically a declaration of war against the Protestant working class by the IRA and Irish govt who funded them.

the bombings of such pubs and shops meant a united ireland was never gong to happen anytime soon. and the failure to connect with the protestant working class in a class struggle means that the whole working class, irrespective of political bent will get screwed again by the new administration, whenever they get it going.

there is a slight case to be made for the protestant working class, but not by you. see, you're a bigotted nutjob, plain and simple. you'll try a bit of revision and come to the conclusion that the catholic church and irish state were behind the troubles.quite simply, the protestant w/c had their chance in '69 to make a change, to change both their own lot and the lot of the 'other side'. the civil rights movement was there, if they had of stood up in a class struggle who knows were we'd be. but big ian came out full of bluster about the ira and rome rule and the protestant w/c fell for it. they fell in behind him and the lawyers/doctors of the uup and so consigned themselves to the role of servant. you know, doing the things the upper classes dont like getting their hands dirty with, stuff like shooting up w/c bars/shops on the falls and the bog. oh, and the odd bit of butchering.

[terry666]

Quote :

you'll try a bit of revision and come to the conclusion that the catholic church and irish state were behind the troubles


Reply :

An Irish govt minister admitted they funded the Provos.


QUOTE :

he protestant w/c had their chance in '69 to make a change, to change both their own lot and the lot of the 'other side'.


REPLY :

The anti-Protestant rehetoric of 50s Republicans and the Free state ment by that time any form of working class solidarity was impossible.

Even going back to the early 1920s republican Protestants in Belfast were prevented from laying a wreath to commemorate the Easter rising.


Like a standard blinkered Republican you dismiss the Catholic reactionary stance which was the norm of irish republicanism from the 1920s onwards and the attitude it created in the Protestant working class.

The stickies recognised this, why do you think they couldnt be bothered ?

They saw that reactionary inspired Republicanism reinforced the union.

[beardyboy]

What a load of bollox - the provos were formed because the stickies gave up the fight - the UVF were killing since 1965 and the IRA had only two guns on the Falls.

As for catholics being worse off - they were - they difference between working class prods and us were they got to be tradesmen and we got to be labourers if we were lucky - in the land of the blind the one eye man is king.

[The Trinity Politick]

I'll go one better. An Irish Minister for Justice no less collaberated with those seeking a war from the nationalist sides up North ( maybe IRA, not sure) and he wasn't ever convicted of it...

Disgraceful

Whats more, we made that man Taoiseach! Tis a funny ole world....