| From Unity, 19 June 2010 |
Imperialism built on a litany of atrocitiesby John MalloyIn 1819 a peaceful mass meeting in support of parliamentary reform at St Peter’s Fields, Manchester, was broken up by a murderous cavalry attack. This event, which resulted in eleven dead and five hundred injured, became known as the Peterloo Massacre and remained the largest number of civilians killed in the United Kingdom by the state until 30 January 1972, when those also claiming to act under the authority of the “rule of law” in a part of that “Kingdom” murdered fourteen people, thirteenof whom died on the day.Thirty-eight years after the event, twelve years after the second official (Saville) inquiry began, its findings have been published. The Prime Minister, Cameron, quoted its conclusions to the House of Commons: “Bloody Sunday was unjustifiable and wrong. No warning was given to any civilians before soldiers opened fire. None of the soldiers fired in response to attacks by petrol-bombers or stone-throwers. Some of those killed or injured were clearly fleeing or going to help those injured or dying.” Prior to publication, the establishment has been in nauseating but predictable pre-emptive form. The Justice Secretary, Kenneth Clarke, for example, described the inquiry as a “disaster in terms of time and expense.” This was merely the latest in a line of offensive statements and obstructions placed on the road to justice that have included the destruction of fourteen of the twenty-nine rifles identified as used on Bloody Sunday three days before Blair announced the fresh inquiry. Ten of those rifles were sold to private companies and two destroyed three months after Saville specifically decreed that they should be retained. The bloody thread of imperialism runs through these events. They are manifestations of the capitalist state’s absolute premeditated ruthlessness in reaction to what it perceives as the threat to the status quo, from which it, in every sense, profits. We saw it again in a recent inquiry into the hooding and inhumane treatment of prisoners in Iraq, with one such investigation (the murder of Baha Mousa) revealing that the victim was hooded for 24 of the 36 hours that he was in military “custody” prior to his death, in breach of policy that, it has been admitted, was officially in use in Northern Ireland prior to 1972. In the face of threat, therefore, the façade of capitalism—of bogus democracy and legal procedure—slips to reveal its true face: of secrecy, brutality, and cover-up, with infamous landmarks—Sharpeville, My Lai—and notorious agents—the “rottweilers” of the Parachute Regiment, the US marines in free-fire (shoot at will) frenzy in Baghdad, and, only this month, the Israeli Defence force assassinating peace activists. The poet Shelley, reacting to Peterloo, captured a contrasting fact amidst such slaughter, however. It is that despite the power of murderous reaction, blood-soaked and marked “I am God and King and Law,” another force survives and resists: “lions after slumber,” who, like the “ordinary” families in Derry, refuse to let the state murder with impunity. Rise like Lions after slumber In unvanquishable number— Shake your chains to earth like dew Which in sleep had fallen on you— Ye are many—they are few. |
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