'Fudge must yield to clarity' - O Bradaigh in Donegal

Monday April 21, 2003 13:26

by Ailin

"There is an end to fudge in the current process in the Six Counties, we have been told; now there must be clarity and the Provos have been cornered," said Ruairi Ó Brádaigh, President of Republican Sinn Féin.

He was speaking at the annual Easter 1916 commemoration at the place of execution of the Drumboe Martyrs in Stranorlar, Co Donegal on Easter Sunday.

For more than five years that process had lived on equivocation. The Stormont Agreement of 1998 had faltered and floundered because of the contradiction at its core.

It was sold to nationalists on the basis that it would lead to a free and united Ireland while unionists were persuaded it would strengthen English rule here.

The last two decades had seen a classic counter-revolution, as in the days of Charlie Daly, Se࣐n Larkin, Tim O'Sullivan and Dan Enright. The revolutionary movement had been stopped in its tracks on both occasions, a section of the leadership had been suborned from its allegiance and had brought its followers over to the side of the enemy.

The Drumboe Martyrs had fought to the death against the partitioning of Ireland and the creation of Leinster House and Stormont which had set aside the All-Ireland Republic of 1916 and the First Dáil Éireann.

Yet those who accepted in recent times what the Drumboe Martyrs had fought against on both sides of the Border now had the temerity to invoke their names to support treachery, thereby dishonouring them and all that they died for.

Meanwhile, a new Northern Free State under British control was being created at Stormont. It was proposed to place it on firmer foundations by basing it not only on the unionist population but also on as many nationalists as possible.

This involved people from nationalist families joining the British police in the Six Counties and enforcing the new arrangements at the point of a gun, if necessary. The end result will be to strengthen English rule, not weaken it, by the formation of a new Broy Harrier element within the British Forces of Occupation.

The report of the Stevens Inquiry confirmed the charges of collusion made by Republicans from the early 1970s. In that such collaboration was "widespread", it shows that the loyalist paramilitaries acted as the underground arm or hidden extension of the British Army of Occupation.

In this way the English government added proxy forces to their war in Ireland and blamed unionists for these dirty deeds while posing before the world as peacekeepers. Nationalists suffered while unionists carried the blame, all the while the English government was largely responsible.

Such shameful policies and actions should be exposed by every possible means and independent public and international judicial inquiries instituted. These should not be confined to the Finucane case alone, nor should they be held in private as in the case of the greatest single loss of life in the conflict, ie the Dublin and Monaghan bombings in 1974. The 26-County Special Branch had aided in the subsequent cover-up.

The renamed RUC and UDR are not "new" forces. They consist of the very same personnel which carried out an ignominious campaign of murder against uninvolved nationalists as a matter of British government policy.

Such deeds cannot be swept under the carpet. They are war-crimes and the forces which carried them out must be held to account. The very same methods were employed in the early 1920s when the British government imposed partition and the Northern Ireland statelet on the Irish people.

Charlie Daly and his comrades in the Irish Republican Army, Cumann na mBan and Fianna Èireann resisted the counter-revolution of 1922-3, just as the true Republican Movement today opposes England's alternative to Irish national independence.

Republicans would face up to the renewed onslaught of Westminster, Stormont and Leinster House; they would ensure that unionists would not suffer the humiliation so long endured by nationalists by providing a secure, comfortable and honourable place for them in the New Ireland.

For this task the most idealistic and high-minded of a new generation of Irish people would be needed, prepared to give service up to the noble standards of Charlie Daly, Seán Larkin, Tim O'Sullivan and Dan Enright.

In every decade since their time, Irish men and women, boys and girls had served the same ideals and in some cases had made the supreme sacrifice for national freedom.

"I am confident the coming generation will be just as generous and idealistic," he concluded.