Northern Ireland: Who's Lost Track of Right and Wrong?
--Just about Everyone!
You know, I wonder sometimes about the sense of Right and Wrong among those people of Ulster who want to carry on being occupied by the British.
Imagine that a country, say, France, was invaded by Germany, a nation to its right on the map. Then, imagine that, far from being motivated and inspired to rise up in unison to kick the invader out, some people in the top right corner of France decided that they wanted to carry on being occupied by the Germans, and began to march up and down waving German banners, and even began to think of themselves as German despite being full of French DNA and being unable to shake off their telltale French accents.
Now what on earth would you expect the French Resistance to think of them? They'd be gobsmacked, wouldn't they? They'd be speechless. Who wouldn't?
Thankfully this story is only a fiction. But it might come as a shock to learn that there is a precise parallel to this story in the reality of Northern Ireland.
Here we have a nation which has been invaded by Britain, its neighbour to the right on the map, and far from the Irish people being motivated and inspired to rise up in unison to kick the invader out, some people in the top right corner of Ireland have decided that they want to carry on being occupied by the British, and begun to march up and down waving British banners, and even begun to think of themselves as British despite being full of Irish DNA and being unable to shake off their telltale Irish accents.
Now what on earth would you expect the IRA to think of them? They'd be gobsmacked, wouldn't they? They'd be speechless. Who wouldn't?
There is of course a Principle here-- the simple Principle of Right, as opposed to Wrong. Even Winston Churchill, a British Prime Minister, once admitted that any sovereign people in their own lands have the inalienable, God-given right to expel the invader and to punish with exceptional severity all those who have warmed their hands at the invader’s hearth.
The above being considered -- and it is simple enough to consider -- the so-called "Loyalists" in Ulster (loyal, that is, to the invader -- and this defines Treason in absolutely every western democracy) have, clearly and decisively, lost all track of Principle and jumped into bed with the invader. Of course it is true that an original colony of English people from London was set up in Derry, which subsequently became known as Londonderry, but the fact remains that most of the "Loyalists" are descended in the main not from the English but from the great mass of local Irish who treacherously aligned themselves with these invading colonists, in spite of their own fellow countrymen elsewhere in the island of Ireland who must have looked on in horror.
These "quislings", for want of a better word, only have one excuse for doing this, and that is that their religion is more similar to that of the invader than to their own fellow Irish in the rest of their island. But this excuse is very lame. After all, this is not the next world where religion is the prime life-governing factor; this is this world, the temporal world where, in any western democracy, religious persuasion is not a legal or moral defence to Treason.
There is something about the Irish. Something argumentative, bickery and violent. I have noticed myself, long ago, that Irish families argue more, and are less restrained and self- controlled than Saxon families. Invade any nation on earth, and the inhabitants will avail themselves of their principles and rise up in unison to get you out. But invade the Irish, and they'll start to fight among themselves. There is something intrinsically Celtic about this; the Scots were like it for centuries in the medieval period, and the English -- the Saxons-- particularly under Edward I, exploited them for it by practising the old Roman stratagem of "divide and conquer."
And the Irish know it--- they are far from stupid; on the contrary they have a Leprechaun-like sharpness which the more mellowed yeoman Sassenach generally lacks-- but they just don't seem capable of controlling the boiling heat generated under their skins by their feelings, and this invariably manifests itself in volatile violence, rather than the Sassenach's more rational approach, towards whatever was generating the heat in the first place.
As for the IRA, well we have already seen that their position, their cause, is absolutely Right. We can say this against any moral defence-- read again the first seven paragraphs of this page. But -- and in their case I'm afraid its rather a big "but"-- they have both astonished and shocked the world, not on one or a few occasions but by way of a general policy which persisted for 30 years, by throwing away the most excellent hand which Principle has dealt them and sinking into the wretched spinelessness of attacking civilian targets and murdering innocent people.
Words fail. If the IRA had been noble and chivalrous, like their (Celtic) Arthurian ancestors, then in the darling of the world's fancy they would have had absolutely everything-- both chivalry and Right.
Meanwhile the British, every bit the shameless exploiters of the situation just as their Edward Longshanks exploited the same phenomenon in Scotland, continue to cling on to the northern part of the island of Ireland and with their old colonial mentality, no doubt they will continue to do so until the Irish people finally find the unity-- and the scruples-- to kick them out.
But knowing the Irish, I have a feeling that that will be a very long time.
To summarise, in terms of Principle:
1) Shame on the Traitor: The Northern Irish "Loyalists" are wrong to the point of wretchedness in wanting to carry on being occupied by the invading power. Their excuse that the invader has a more similar religion is just not sufficient. Being full of Irish DNA and unable to conceal their obvious Irish accents, they do not have a valid excuse for wanting to be British. Again whilst it is true that the Loyalists were originally formed by a colony from London, it is also true that the great majority of modern Loyalists are so full of Irish DNA that any traces of English blood must be very faint indeed -- if in most cases they were ever present at all. And in any case, what right does a colony from London have to be in Ireland in the first place? There is a very large hypocrisy here on the part of the British: South Africa, Rhodesia and many other ex-Empire colonies can be returned to their natives while their British colonists have to be absorbed into the indigenous population --- so why not Ireland??
2) Shame on the IRA: The IRA have a wonderful case. Flawless, even. They are the Irish Resistance, pure and simple, and their position at least evokes reminiscences of the French Resistance in World War II and in particular the American partisans in own their wars against the British in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. But the adulation of the American people, which might have been waiting for the IRA, in their rising to the very same challenge which the Americans themselves had faced in kicking out the British, has been denied the IRA because of its shameless abandonment of the principles of Chivalry. These wretched IRA people had everything -- and they threw it away. In terms of human qualities, you don't go much lower than them. And who but the criminal and the wretch would ever help the likes of them?
3) Shame on the British: The British have absolutely no business whatsoever to be trespassing in someone else's country. They are practising their old colonial mentality which of course never had any justification. Needless to say, such amoral creatures as these will remain in Ireland for as long as they can exploit the situation, which they continue to do. In all fairness to the British, however, I do also detect a tone of concern in them for the fate of the Loyalists at the hands of the resistance if the British pulled out and left them to it -- unless of course they are using this as a further excuse to stay. Then again, perhaps the Loyalists, if they want to be British, should go and live in mainland Britain.
In conclusion, it is often said that the situation in Ireland is complex to the point of being insoluble. This is nonsense. The IRA and the south are absolutely right, and the "Loyalists" in the north who are not descended from the original London colonists are guilty of mass treason as indeed they would be under the laws of every other western democracy, while those who are descended from and do represent the original London colonists simply have no business to be there. The present position only looks complicated because the negotiators and arbitrators are bending over backwards to accommodate the view of these assorted traitors and colonial intruders. You can make a very straightforward situation look very complex indeed, once you start to do that.
--- Michael Alan Marshall