Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site oddjob.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxn!ihnp4!oddjob!apak
From: apak@oddjob.UUCP (Adrian Kent)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.legal,net.flame,net.nlang.celts
Subject: Re: Re: American Official Detained, Searched & Interrogated in North Ireland
Message-ID: <1043@oddjob.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 7-Nov-85 22:07:53 EST
Article-I.D.: oddjob.1043
Posted: Thu Nov  7 22:07:53 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 10-Nov-85 06:40:18 EST
References: <619@sftig.UUCP>
Reply-To: apak@oddjob.UUCP (Adrian Kent)
Distribution: net
Organization: U. Chicago, Astronomy & Astrophysics
Lines: 68
Keywords: Ireland, politics.
Xref: watmath net.politics:11874 net.legal:2541 net.flame:12669 net.nlang.celts:261
Summary: questions for a Sinn Fein supporter.

In article <619@sftig.UUCP> jmg@sftig.UUCP (J.McGhee) writes:
>Ah, John Purbrick. Good propaganda technique! Withhold just enough facts
>so that your audience gets the most erroneous and most damaging impression
>of your opposition. You must have studied technique at Whitehall in London.
    Your article, to which J.P. was replying, described (inter alia) the Maze
prison as a concentration camp. Was this propaganda? 

>	The world has come a long way since the time when a bill was
>introduced in the "mother of parliaments" in London calling for the
>**> CASTRATION <** of all Catholic priests, but we still have a long way
>to go.
    Yes, we have come a long way since this time, if it ever existed. Did it?
Does it have any relevance at all to Ireland in 1985?

>	I can tell you that an American Police Chief who recently travelled
>to northern Ireland, speaking from a podium outside the UN in Dag Hammerskjold
>Plaza, denounced the Royal Ulster Constabulary as being a completely sectarian
>force of repression which did not deserve to be described by the word
>"police" because they could not measure of to the standards of any police
>force in America.
       Which police chief? What does he or she know about Ireland? 
I don't want to suggest that all is well with the R.U.C. -  in particular they 
are certainly
overwhelmingly (not completely) sectarian (Protestant). Would you agree that
one reason - not by any means the only one - for this is that the Irish
Republican Army (military wing of Sinn Fein) make a special point of killing
Catholics who join the R.U.C.?

>	In the 1700's Protestants were not only participants in the Irish
>independence movement, they were its founders and principal leaders. These
>facts have been purged from the British histories of Ireland and a mythological
>doomsday scenario has been promoted by the British government whenever it
>refers to a United Ireland in order to promote a chicken-little "the sky
>is falling!" mentality among them.
>	You ought to be more careful about what you say, John. Some people
>may begin to suspect you of being a "Fenian plant" for feeding me "just
>the right questions".
>
>					J. M. McGhee

        At the risk of falling under similar suspicion, let me ask you a few
more.
Firstly, can we agree on a few basic facts about Ireland:
Northern Ireland - the part which is presently part of the United Kingdom -
has a population which is sharply divided on religious lines. The majority
( roughly 60% ) are Protestant, the minority Catholic. Nearly all the Protestant
community wants to remain part of the U.K., while most of the Catholic community
would like the north to become part of a united Ireland, ruled by the parliamentin Dublin which presently governs the south. Sinn Fein recognises neither the
British nor the Irish parliaments, and in particular aims to overthrow the
Dublin parliament and establish a socialist state governing all Ireland. 
Sinn Fein has the support of a (sizeable) minority of the northern Catholics,
and a (small) minority of the southern Catholics. 

Given this situation, what do you propose should happen to northern Ireland?
Would you support attempts to have it governed from Dublin, against the wishes
of the majority of its inhabitants? If so, why?
Or do you support Sinn Fein's solution? Again, why?
Why do you dismiss as British propaganda the view that withdrawing British 
troops and British rule from N.I. would lead to civil war?
(There is, as you ought to know, significant support in mainland Britain for
precisely this course of action. How do you explain an article by a former
southern Irish foreign minister (*) warning the British government that withdrawing troops could result in chaos engulfing the whole island?)
(*) Conor Cruse O'Brien, writing in The Observer, circa August 1984.)
There is some hope that the London and Dublin governments will soon agree on
measures designed to reduce inter-communal tension in N.I. - such as a joint
parliamentary commission to investigate minority grievances. Sinn Fein and 
the I.R.A. will denounce any such agreement as a sham organised by two bodies
which have no role in Ireland. Which side will you be on?