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Last
week the Conservative Party confirmed the expulsion
of their Peterborough Councillor Neville Saunders.
The
reason behind his exclusion was his abject refusal
to withdraw remarks he had made concerning the suicide
of Royal Irish Regiment soldier, Paul Cochrane at
Drumadd barracks, County Armagh in 2001.
Mr.
Saunders who had been the leader of Peterborough council
had said that anyone who joined the Army “should
be prepared to deal with a bullet”.
Paul
Cochrane took his own life, after complaining about
abuse within the army at his regimental quarters.
Still,
Mr. Saunders remained unrepentant even though he admitted
that his remarks may have upset people in Northern
Ireland. Further more he stated that “What I
said was how I felt at that moment in time. An honest
politician does retract what he has said. ”After
this point he contended, ”I am uncouth, yes,
I agree, but I have done an awful lot of good for
the Conservative Party. ”
This
episode had begun after Saunders had received a letter
from Carrickfergus Council asking every council in
the UK to support an investigation into Mr. Cochrane’s
death. At that time Councillor Saunders had also stated
that he was fed up paying taxes to cover for the “lazy
Irish”.
The
comments of the former councillor had however been
sufficiently embarrassing for the Conservative Party
for them to send, Quentin Davies, party spokesman
on Northern Ireland over here to apologise for any
hurt caused to the Cochrane family. They had also
deemed the incident sufficiently serious, to involve
the party’s deputy chairman Raymond Monbiot to
lead the investigation into the debacle. The subsequent
spurning of the opportunity to apologise by Saunders
lead to his eventual dismissal from the Conservative
Party’s ranks.
Current
statistics indicate that from 1990 to May 2002, 1748
people have died in and around British military property
from what has been termed “non-natural causes”.
That Mr. Cochrane’s father had said that he found
the comments deeply insulting, did not seem to hold
any sway with Councillor Saunders at all. Mr. Cochrane
senior had been simply following the footsteps of
the parents of four young soldiers who died whilst
in service at the Deepcut base in the south of England.
These
parents reject the Army claims that the troopers died
as a result of suicide through shooting and have accused
the military of a cover up.
This
particular incident struck a number of chords with
me.
In
these times of supposed reconciliation with the “aul
enemy” it is plain as plain can be that English
attitudes towards Irish difficulties are changing
little. I have often heard over the years from many
English people that they really don’t understand
what we are all fighting about over here. From many
more I have heard that the English started all this
and should go home at once. I liked those people.
Although, I realise now that their shallow reading
of our situation was born out of nervousness and eagerness
to submit some of sort of apology for the sins of
their fathers, for want of a better phrase. These
English people now remind me of Harry Enfield’s
German character who felt an overwhelming compulsion
to “apologize for the conduct of my nation during
zee war”, but felt an even stronger compulsion
to crack under the strain and scream “Zis would
never happened under zee Nazi’s”.
As
you shall see I have no intention of trivialising
what I consider to be a very serious topic. This is
partly due to the fact that I have also encountered
genuinely likeable English men and women, whom I have
to say came from the geographical location of Birmingham
or above. The majority of those below this point and
heading towards London are those from whom I have
encountered the most hostility and bitterness, for
no other reason than I am Irish and because a particular
section of my community has been successful in the
past in sending their “brave boys” home
in coffins. These are the “Little Englanders”
like Mr. Saunders who feel proud of the British Army’s
contribution to life, and most likely the taking of
life in places such as these. He is not however sufficiently
generous with his pride to extend it to a British
soldier who was after all born in the UK, but who
spoke with an Irish accent. As the Christy Moore song,
”Missing You” once very smartly contended,
it doesn’t matter what you think you are in London,
if you speak with an “Irish” accent you
are condemned to be considered simply “Paddy,
Billy or Mick”. Whether you drown your Shamrock
or your Poppy in your stereotypical twenty pints of
stout a day, or whether or not your ancestors drowned
the Shamrock in their blood at Flanders or at Dunkirk,
you are sub-culture, a servile colonial to be treated
with the appropriate disdain. You are lazy, work shy
and rebellious and totally ungrateful for the noblesse
oblige that unselfishly structured the civilisation
that has improved your quality of life and without
which you would still be cowering in the bogs consuming
the vegetation that surrounded you for survival.
Thank
God for Walter Raleigh and the potato then, that really
saved our ungrateful Celtic arses!
Believe
me when I say that I am putting it incredibly mildly
when I tell you I am no fan of the British Army, but
I am always astounded when I encounter the opinions
of the Dads Army Fan Club. This disservice is done
not only to all sections of our society in the six
counties but also stretches, in my experience, to
these same people adopting exactly the same attitude
towards Brummies, Scousers, Geordies, the Scots and
the Welsh. These are the sections of British society
that whilst we feel uncomfortable admitting it, we
have probably much more in common with than the people
of the south of Ireland. Saunders and his kind are
the people whose attitudes put the flesh on the bones
of the lie that Britain has no longer any selfish,
strategic or military interest in Ireland. This is
also the type of faceless little establishmentarian
who would make these comments, but then defend to
the death “Ulster’s right” to remain
British.
The
legacy of the British Empire has left nothing but
discrimination, poverty and death for nationalists
and republicans not only in Ireland, but throughout
Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, Newcastle and Liverpool,
and of course in what are often glibly referred to
as “the Celtic peripheries” of Scotland
and Wales. It matters little to people like Saunders
that the inhabitants of all these places through economic
necessity fill the ranks of the British Army even
to this very day.
It
also still rankles with people such as these that
Ireland was the first to take the chance and succeed
in crumbling their shabby imperial façade.
It
matters little either that those from there as well
as Belfast, Derry, Dublin and elsewhere built the
places he probably feels so proud to pin his sense
of Englishness upon. To this day northern nationalists
are apt to refer to Dubliners as “Jackeens”
as it is claimed they waved the Union Jack as proud
as punch on every royal visit and again, whilst they
also spat, on the republican volunteers of 1916 as
they were hauled off to jail. Therefore the contention
that many nationalists make about being dowsed in
the blood of Pearse’s sacrifice is largely nonsense,
especially in the south.
The
tragedy of the North of Ireland is that Unionists
fail to realise that to a substantial proportion of
Britain they are viewed as simply Irish. The Ulster
Volunteer Force formed in 1912, led the charge under
the banner of the 36th Ulster Division on 1st July
1916, the start of the battle of the Somme and were
butchered in their thousands. In most major engagements
in British military history it has been the Irish,
the Scots and the Welsh that have always lead the
charge.
They
were merely Irish, Scots or Welsh men at this point.
It is only when the flag is lowered and the last post
sounds each rememberance Sunday that they are allowed
to be termed British. How true then was Connolly’s
assertion that his Irish Citizen Army served neither
King nor Kaiser, but Ireland?Connolly had served for
a while in the British army.
It
is the failure of Unionism to realise that being cannon
fodder inspires only a thin veil of loyalty from the
crown.
Unionists
will always be classed as minions, never co-equals
of the English. Blair in his quest to devolve the
UK seeks a strong stock broker belt in the south of
England, to rival the financial centres of the rest
of Europe. New Labour equals old Thatcherism and anywhere
north of Watford will eventually wither in the same
way it did under Papal Dame Maggie.
Had
he a time machine, I believe Tony Blair would assassinate
the original architects of the Anglo-Irish treaty
of 1921.
Blair
wants out of here. It is fantastic that those who
prevent from him doing so are the British/Irish, whom
he really does not have much respect for anyway. Always
remember that Englishmen fought for an English republic
long before it had entered any Irishman’s head.
In
1995 the BBC announced the winner of that years Noble
prize for literature was a British poet. It was Seamus
Heaney from Londonderry they said. In the same way
Barry Mc Guigan was British until he was beaten, then
he was Irish again, yet do not ever say that he is
Irish in his home town of Clones, believe me they
do not appreciate it!
Christy
Moore’s take on the Seamus Heaney incident was
to pen a song called “On the Mainland”.
Since
the English had chosen to claim Seamus Heaney, Christy
wrote that …“You never claimed George Best
or Alex Higgins, and you never claimed Bellaghy’s
other bhoys, but that’s the way things are upon
the mainland, where the Quare hawks are still sucking
the wee small birds eggs dry…. ”
That
says it all.
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