It
was only a matter of time before the re-writing
of the history of British Imperialism —which
is currently so prevalent in the UK media, due to
that nations current involvement in the military
occupation of parts of Iraq and Afghanistan—
would get around to Ireland, and it was always going
to be apologists for British involvement in the
north east of Ireland such as John Lloyd who would
lead the way, as he is a man who has always been
ready and willing to excuse the British State almost
any obscenity or crime committed in maintenance
of their wretched little statelet in the north east
of Ireland, whilst being only too keen whenever
the opportunity arose to condemn Irish Republicans
for asserting their right to take up arms to force
the British State to the negotiating table.
When
Priyamvada Gopal wrote her timely article in the
Guardian, The
story peddled by imperial apologists is a poisonous
fairy tale, she may have had someone like John
Lloyd in mind. What Lloyd and his ilk seem oblivious
too is that the English have never had a God given
right to rule over other peoples countries. Lloyd's
attempt to lessen the negative impact of foreign
domination, by trotting out, Monty Python like,
a handful of benefits which have flowed in the wake
of the Empire builders down the years would be pathetic,
if it were not part of a devious scheme to dismiss
the massive suffering British Imperialism inflicted
on those who suffered under its yoke.
He
could just as well have mentioned straight roads
on the part of the Roman Empire, or Railways that
ran on time in the British Raj, the good it would
do him, for such things matter not a jot to those
being oppressed. Those who suffer occupation, especially
by force of arms, will never welcome their oppressors
(bar the odd local satrap on the make), but rage
silently against the injustice that has befallen
them and, if no political avenues are open to them
to oppose this humiliation, then the bravest and
boldest amongst them have a perfect right to take
up arms to assert their right to national independence
and a life free from foreign rule.
Most impartial observers, the more so if their country
has experienced foreign invasion and occupation
within living memory, understand perfectly those
who resist do so from a position of weakness in
comparison to their oppressor's military prowess.
So they understand clearly that mistakes will be
made by Resistance Movements that may have unintended
and often tragic consequences; but they also realize
that, in the main, the circumstance that lead to
such tragedies lays not with those who resist, but
their tormentors. Not so the likes of Mr Lloyd,
who cries 'a plague on both your houses', having
concluded that the violence of the oppressed is
equal with, if not worse than, that of their oppressor:
never considering the obvious fact that there would
be no violence between the two sides if, in the
case of Ireland for example, the English had not
first invaded and then occupied that land.
Indeed
it is difficult not to conclude that in the warped
perspective of people like John Lloyd when an occupying
army commits crimes in the process of enforcing
their will on the local population, it is those
suffering under their yoke who are to blame, as
they should have known better than to fight militarily
against their more powerful tormentors. Is it any
wonder those who have, or are currently experiencing
occupation, often find common ground, whether it
is the Irish, the Palestinians, or the Iraqis? Of
course it is no coincidence that so too do those
who occupy other people's lands by force of arms,
such as the United Kingdom, USA and the State of
Israel, for like the forty thieves such governments
like to huddle together in morbid self justification.
Lloyd
implies patronizingly in a
recent Guardian article, that far from being
radicalized by personal experience, the young people
who joined the Irish Republican Army to fight the
Black and Tans in the Irish War of Independence
(21st January 1919–11th July 1921) were mere
saps, manipulated by Republican Godfathers. To get
a better understanding of why generations of young
Irish men and women risked all to remove the British
army and the State it represented from their shores,
it might have enlightened Lloyd if he had asked
some of today's middle-aged residents of West Belfast
what made them join the Provos back in the 1970s.
I guarantee that nine times out of ten they will
reply, to hit back at the likes of the Paras who
had regularly kicked the shit out of them on their
way home from school, work or the dole office. Something
similar will also be true of their grandfathers
who took part in the Tan War in the post WW1 period,
and it will be equally true of the young Palestinians
who resist Israeli occupation on the West Bank or
those Iraqis who oppose the US monolith in their
tortured land.
But
the truth is not on Lloyd's agenda nor on that of
any of the other pro-imperialist pens for hire,
for their task is to muddy the waters so that history
is all the easier to distort and mould into a mirror
image of today's power elites, so that those who
resist occupation and oppression today can be portrayed
as mere stooges or unrealistic fools who refuse
to recognize the political reality of their situation.
Take Lloyd's comment that Irish Republicans back
in 1919 demanded of Irish youth the following, "A
nation's young men were being encouraged to see
their lives as forfeit to the great national cause."
Perhaps, although I doubt few Irishmen and women
would have seen it that way, not least because every
IRA soldier who answered the call to rid their country
of foreign domination was a volunteer, free to make
their own mind up as to whether they would partake
in the struggle for national independence.
Something
Lloyd fails to mention, nor did he show an ounce
of shame about his failure to add, that only three
years previously the British State used this very
justification to CONSCRIPT millions of young men
into the Charnel House that was the trenches of
northern France during WW1, where almost two million
of them either perished or were maimed for life.
These young Tommys had their lives stolen by the
British State in a war that was fought over the
spoils of imperialism that benefited the English
Establishment alone. The more so after January 1916
when conscription was introduced due to the British
army's inability to replace those who had been killed
or wounded with volunteers. First it was for single
men only, but by May 1916 conscription was made
universal, although Ireland was excluded from the
scheme and the government pledged not to send teenagers
to serve in the front line, a pledge they quickly
forgot as a walk through any military cemetery from
this period will attest to.
Yet
Lloyd feels no need to mention this horrific fact,
but is ever ready to condemn Irish Republicans for
calling to arms the nation's finest to remove the
English yoke which had been about the Irish people's
necks for 800 years. A war, incidentally, that cost
the lives of 550 members of O'glaigh na hEireann,
650 civilians, 363 RIC and 261 members of the British
Army. True, every one was a personal tragedy, and
a heartache for someone, but compared with the mass
carnage of World War One it was small beer, for
in that totally unnecessary slaughter, 1,179,000
young men from the Great Britain and Ireland alone
were killed, and approx. Ten Million in the
war in total. Plus, it left a bitter legacy that
poisoned most of the 20th Century, not least because
the political and military leaders of the nations
who fought in WW1 sold their sons' lives so cheaply
in the fields of Flanders, on Gelibolu Peninsula
(Dardanelles) and the burning deserts of the Middle-East.
Today
we are going through a historical period without
precedent in living memory which is reminiscent
of the days prior to World War One. Once again the
oppressor is being portrayed as the hero and the
oppressed become the villains of the peace, the
more so if they refuse to bend the knee to US hegemony.
Thus the truth has become a priceless commodity
which must be defended at every pass without exception.
Those who represent politically the wretched of
the earth must not lie, even if it is for political
expediency. For if they do, it will return to haunt
and harry them as a weapon in their enemies' armory.
Those who oppose oppression must do so where-ever
we find it, having international solidarity with
the down-trodden as our benchmark, and remember
the barbarism that cursed the 20th Century did not
flow from a backward or third world state, but began
"in a country that was the pride of western
civilization in the arts, philosophy and sciences;
a country that before the hysterical propaganda
of WW1 had been regarded as a model of democracy."
(Failed States by Noam Chomsky)
