| From Unity, 5 April 2008 |
They shoot to killby Lynda WalkerThe 6th of March 2008 was the twentieth anniversary of the murder of Mairéad Farrell (31), Seán Savage (23), and Dan McCann (30). A number of events marking the anniversary were held in Belfast and Gibraltar, and the families of the three IRA volunteers laid wreaths in memory of them in the place where they were killed. At the time of the killing the families and communities from which they came felt the shock vibrations at the gunning down of these unarmed people. Many, however, were not shocked but were angry that the British army should carry out this summary execution, once again prompting some to say: “They shoot to kill, don’t they?”The British army have their history: here in Belfast the young people killed with rubber and plastic bullets, in Derry the twenty-eight who were shot (fourteen killed) on Bloody Sunday 1972. All around the world, the numbers would run into thousands upon thousands. This anniversary gives us an opportunity to reflect upon those events. The dead cannot speak for themselves, and the living cannot speak for them either, but we could speculate that Mairéad and her comrades might have been in Stormont with Gerry Adams and Martin McGuiness if the SAS had not killed them, and if the IRA had not sent them. Mairéad and the others travelled on false passports, one of which was reported stolen in Galway. It allegedly belonged to a Greenham Common peace activist who was under surveillance; if this is true, whoever stole this passport for Mairéad was doing her no favours. And it is suggested that the three were tracked from the start of their journey. Speaking at the commemoration in Gibraltar, Niall Farrell, brother of Mairéad, said: “I have to stress one thing: the war is over for those people who were involved from the republican movement in the North, but the war isn’t over for the SAS and the British army.” The British government tried to prove the SAS “innocent,” saying that the three were carrying weapons, discrediting witnesses, and even banning the documentary “Death on the Rock”; but there is no such thing as innocent in an army that is set to defend imperialism, an army who do the job that they are trained to do: defending capitalist society. Condemning the British establishment in no way suggests that the Communist Party of Ireland was supportive of the IRA military campaign. In July 1987 the CPI had engaged in debate with Republicans and others. In an open letter to the Provisional IRA the CPI said: “You cannot defeat imperialism without developing united action by the working class. Democracy in the anti-imperialist struggle must mean mobilisation of the mass of all sections of the working people, North and South, Catholic and Protestant. In addressing this appeal to you to stop your military campaign . . .” The letter goes on to to address other related issues, including the Gibson killings and the SAS ambush at Loughgall, with the slaughter of eight IRA men and one civilian. (See the Communist Party pamphlet Armed Struggle—a series of open letters published between July and September 1987, with the final reply in June 1988.) Some six years later we got the ceasefires. Interestingly enough, for all their opposition to British imperialism, some were significantly absent from anti-war demonstrations on 15 March and the anti-imperialist International Women’s Day events in Belfast and Dublin. One final comment, echoing Niall Farrell’s words that the war is not over for the SAS and the British army, and that is about the new recruiting campaign for the Territorial Army and the British Army, all of them with work-based themes. It seems to me that the trade unions would have something to say about this: recruitment aimed at those who are unemployed or in low-paid jobs, in need of all the excitement they can get. We need money to be spent on manufacturing jobs, not defence. One hoarding shows groups of men waiting for a helicopter to land, and the caption is: Waiting for a lift to work, Army style. Another portrays our boys (and girls?) jumping on a landing craft, with the caption, Clocking on, Army style. One newspaper ad reads: Call 50 non-responsive customers a day. Or call in an air strike? . . . Ever sat in work and thought, “there’s got to be more to life than this”? With the Army there is . . . The chance to get overseas. All the sport and adventure you can handle. The great rates of pay. What the ads do not show is the human “collateral” killing of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan people, and the loss of life and limb that goes with “the job.” Even “our Harry” felt obliged to tell of the “comatose heroes” who had lost their limbs; he travelled back with them from Afghanistan. Of course it’s nothing new. They got 200,000 Irish recruits for the First World War. Economic conscription was used then too, and the anti-recruiting songs reminds us that there was opposition then. As I was going down the road, feeling fine and larky, oh, A recruiting sergeant says to me, Well, you’d look fine in khaki, oh. The king he is in need of men, come read his proclamation, oh. We’ve a life in Flanders for you, ’twould be a fine vacation, oh. That may be so, says I to him, but tell me, sergeant dearie, oh, If I’d a pack stuck on my back, do you think I’d look fine and cheery, oh? Seems to me this new recruitment campaign is coming in on the back of the publicity that “Harry, Prince of Lies” got. He also called in the “air strikes”; but you can bet your bottom dollar that he’s not back in England working in a call centre. We have had it all before: the fur coat brigade calling on our young men and women to defend king and country. (“No sin to fight for England’s greed in some far foreign clime!”) We in the Communist Party of Ireland have come to the conclusion that the peace process now offers us the opportunity to explore, as a class, our common history and our common enemy. |
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