Sell-Outs?!?!?! Sinn Fein, The Good Friday Agreement, And The World

(These first four paragraphs are a new version of something from earlier, and are added 10/23/13)

This is a small collection of some statements I should make before the main part of the essay begins.

This essay is partly a response to the republican and left-wing critics of Sinn Fein. It is also a criticism of much of the world and especially the American Left, who overall during the conflict didn't do what they should have done, although overwhelmingly that failure is found between early 1994 and late 2001- after Apartheid, and before 9/11 (and among European and European-descended people). More importantly, I would say that today, to some small degree, more should be done than is being done. The gap is small, considering the situations in the North, in Syria, in Afghanistan and in the global economy, but a little more should be done. And even more importantly, it is intended as something that people should remember when the situation there worsens (and it quite possibly will at some point in the near future considering that the British Tories came back into power a few years ago). Lastly, it originated as a brief piece about why I am mildly pro-GFA, and developed into what it is

A big part of the essay is comparing the situations in Apartheid South Africa and in occupied Ireland. As far what I say about S. Africa- it's not based on the most solid research. I could be more familiar with that conflict. Looking at both conflicts there is one specific aspect that I found a number for N. Ireland, but couldn’t find for S. Africa. Shortly after I originally published this essay,I FINALLY found a figure that came close and, making some reasonable adjustments, I came up with a good estimate. I’m very open-minded about people offering better info, and if it’s from good sources. I might change some of this essay. Making the estimate I made for the deaths in S. Africa seemed necessary, or at least helpful, for me to make my point, and I wouldn't have to make that point if people had done what they should have been doing, and independent of the S. Africa comparison (which I might be a LITTLE bit off about) there's plenty of facts I've gathered which indicate that they were not doing what they should have been doing (i.e. certain organizations were not even passing resolutions, and other things I describe further down)

In this essay, when I say "left" you can toss in the progressives too, who are sort of leftists anyway

****

Why wasn't the republican struggle more than barely successful, and how was it very mildly successful and what can be done to make it more successful in the future? This post is partly intended as a response to republican and/or left-wing critics of Sinn Fein (yes, my blog is named after such a critic, but that doesn't change the fact that if you look at her actions and words throughout her life, I like about 95% of what she is about (it used to be named after Bernadette Devlin-McAliskey)) who claim that SF has abandoned republicanism and/or socialism. A big part of the point I will make is that such critics should be unhappy with those who did not put pressure on the British like they should have, instead of being mad at SF for compromising when it was clear that their community was tired of the war and it was clear that the armed struggle was going nowhere (which is mostly because the rest of the world wasn't doing it's part, which is largely not the fault of the republican family). I'm also doing it because the nationalist community continues to experience some degree of inequality and there is great potential for things to go backwards, and the rest of the world should do it's part to support them.

(Before, while, or after you read this, you should read "Catholic, Protestant, and Dissenter”)

A significant minority of the republican family, including people who were in or close to Sinn Fein until sometime in the late 1990s or more recently, are very unhappy with SF about the direction of the Peace Process. Some of these are militarists who don't care that in 1998 there was only about .5% of the Nationalist community that supported the continuation of armed struggle. Others oppose the Good Friday Agreement and SF on shaky-solid anti-Partition and socialist grounds, including the amazing woman this blog is named after, Eamonn McCann (who I generally admire), and many others.

In the late 1990s, I was mildly anti-GFA and ignoring how I've stepped up my criticism via this blog, more critical of SF than I have been since about 2000. But to a significant degree, a lot of the criticisms of SF from a socialist and republican perspective don't make sense to me. And the GFA is not that bad, although part of why I'm relatively pro-GFA is that I don't live there and about 99% of the Nationalist community voted for it (that figure comes from a very credible source who is also anti-GFA, Eamonn McCann, which I have more or less confirmed with other information). If I lived there, in the North, I'd probably still give some weight to popular opinion. But if you read the GFA, it isn't that bad, and as far as I can tell, if you take into consideration the larger context, it's significantly better than the Sunningdale Agreement of the mid-70s and the Anglo-Irish Agreement and Assembly of the early and mid-80s (if you just look at what's on paper, it's only a tiny bit better). It contains pretty good provisions on equality, human rights, and police reform. These have largely been acted on, and even if on paper they weren't any better than in the Sunningdale Agreement (and I think they were) there was more reason in 1998 to believe they'd be carried out than was the case in the mid-70s. When Sunningdale was being negotiated, SF was an illegal party- when that changed about half-way through the Sunningdale period, the British decided to balance it out by legalizing the Ulster Volunteer Force, a loyalist paramilitary which had been responsible for at least 26 killing of civilians in the year or so before- in the year while they were legal, they killed about 50 civilians. Also, internment without trial was still in operation, something the Nationalist community was almost solidly against. Also, internment, even at that point, was still disproportionately aimed at republicans, the security forces were still disproportionately killing Catholic civilians and republican paramilitaries, and it was just two years earlier that the British inquiry into Bloody Sunday aquitted the British Army. Also, it wasn't until 1992 that the UDA (formed in 1971) was declared illegal. In 1998, before the GFA, internment was long gone, the security forces were acting a little bit impartially (none of the loyalist paramilitaries were legal organizations), Tony Blair had announced a new inquiry into Bloody Sunday. In 1997, as Prime Minister, Blair issued a statement apologizing for British policy during the Famine, a first for the British Government.

(looking at election figures, it seems to me that there was about 5% of the Nationalist community who were not IRA supporters but boycotted the elections that were part of Sunningdale, and the Assembly in the early 1980s was boycotted by the Social Democratic and Labour Party, and the Anglo-Irish Agreement has been described by credible sources as doing nothing to help the Nationalist community) (UPDATE 4/1/09 regarding the Sunningdale deal, it's worth pointing out that the Unionists and elements of the British state brought that down, and since they didn't pull something similar with the GFA, which overall is significantly better, that might also be a reflection of their desire to avoid further conflict with the IRA (I usually don't bother doing this, but that's partly inspired by an article by Paul Larkin))

Although the cross-border dimension of the GFA is a little weaker than Sunningdale's, and the GFA required the Republic to water down the parts of it's constitution that claimed the North, there are cross-border bodies and those parts of the constitution are still there.

The GFA also prevented the creation of a Unionist-only government and more or less required the inclusion of SF. Now, the way the power-sharing is enforced has been criticized by leftists as institutionalizing sectarianism, and there's some truth to that- Members of the Assembly have to identify as Nationalist, Unionist or Other, and on crucial votes regarding power-sharing, there has to be a majority of both Nationalists and Unionists (or 60% overall and at least 40% of each side). In general, this probably does institutionalize sectarian divisons. But it does prevent a Unionist-only government and it makes it unlikely SF will be excluded. I've developed an idea that can get around this but the odds of it being adopted are very low (see the post "Joint Sovreignty Assembly").

The GFA included release of prisoners, which was very important for about 40% of the Nationalist community and probably sort of important for something like another 40% of the Nationalist community (the first 40% is based mostly on election figures, the second is based mostly on what I have heard about support for the hunger-strikers in 1981). It also involved loyalist prisoners, and although you could make an argument that since they overwhelmingly targeted civilians while republicans almost never intentionally killed civilians they shouldn't have been released, it was probably over all a good thing that they were released too. It did require decommissioning, which has now happened (with the largest republican paramilitary, the IRA) and even though an argument could have been made that since the IRA didn't start the latest phase of the Anglo-Irish conflict, they shouldn't have to decommission before the loyalists did and not until the police were mostly reformed and the Army were withdrawn, it's not that big a deal.

In the years since the GFA, there has been a lot of progress. Last I checked, very recently, the police were about 25% Catholic, up from about 8% during the conflict and before the conflict. In fact, at a graduation ceremony for police recruits, one wore a medal his great-grandfather (or something) won for service with the IRA during the War of Independence. And unemployment for Catholics is now only about 50% higher than it is for Protestants, whereas before it was roughly 2-2.5 times higher. The last 11 years there have been (exactly/almost exactly) 19 sectarian murders of Catholics, two murders of Protestants that were associated with Catholics, and 2 loyalist murders of Catholic civilians that were less than sectarian, more political (the entire conflict starting in 1968, about 825+ Catholic civilians were killed by the security forces or loyalist paramilitaries). Also, the Deputy First Minister is a republican and about 1/2 of the Executive is Nationalist or Republican.

SF still seems to have retained almost all the support they had prior to the GFA and have gained considerable support. In the 1997 Westminster election they got 126,921 votes- in the 2007 Assembly election, they got 180,573 votes, and that's when it was clear that SF was endorsing the police. Although I've only been reading an average of about 55 articles a week relevant to this the last 4 years, between what I have read, and these election results, I'm confident that a large-very large majority of the Nationalist community remains in support of the GFA. I did find a 2007 survey (by Northern Ireland Life and Times) that said that among Catholics, 73% thought the GFA was good, 2% thought that it was bad, and 21% thought that it didn't make a difference. There's a good chance that something like half of the 21% who say it didn't matter lean towards saying it did. Also, there's a VERY good chance that many/most people who said that were motivated by the fact that there's still poverty and/or the border is still there. Although the poverty is a problem (and it IS more likely to decline/go away in a United Ireland) and the border is also a problem, it's very unlikely that that 21% are saying that N. Ireland is as Orange as it was before the GFA. In the 2007 Assembly election, it seemed like the vast majority of republican and left critics of the GFA voted, and they got about 2-3% of the Nationalist vote. Probably only some large minority of that 2-3% support the continuation of armed struggle (there were 1-2 dissident groups some/most/all of whose members might have boycotted, but there's plenty of reason to believe that those groups would have only got something like another .5% of the Nationalist vote for the dissident position, and they're both pretty pretty solid against continuing armed struggle at this time).

On the subject of SF's record in government, I get the impression that it only mostly reflects their left-wing politics (Evidence for their politics is found, among other sources, in their newspaper). But I believe that's overwhelmingly not their fault and that there are good reasons for them to not take up the role of opposition. First, as far as I can tell, and although I have recently firmed this up, I'm still open to someone clarifying it for me (with a good source), the Assembly has very little influence (and it seems like zero control) over the amount of money available for the over-all budget- it comes from London. As far as the general direction of government, even adjusting for the fact that the Deputy First Minister is SF, they're only about 1/3 of the Executive. The other parties, to one degree or another, are economically and otherwise centrist or even right-wing. And as far as their own departments, SF members are often affected by decisions made by the Executive as a whole. A recent speech by Mark Langhammer of the northern part of the Irish Labour Party gave me the impression that SF is a much smaller part of the problem with the Executive than the Democratic Unionist Party are. As for taking up the role of opposition, that probably wouldn't be a good idea. First, some scum, and some idiots will believe them, will use that to say that SF are sectarian and don't want to share power with Protestants- staying in the Executive has the opposite effect. The odds are that the overwhelming majority of their Nationalist constituents, probably most of their "Other" constituents, and probably something like half of their voters will be unhappy if SF leaves the Executive.

(I'd also like to say that SF has continued churning out good republican-socialist material through, for example, their newspaper and their members and party organizations do good left-wing activism)

So, the situation is better now than it was. I think it's safe to say that although they were only barely successful, the IRA and the republican family in general were not defeated- even the British Army has said so. I also think that the British, and maybe the Unionists, negotiated the GFA a little differently than they would have if the weren't tired of fighting the IRA, and tired of the conflict's effect on the economy and the security budget, etc.

The nationalist community and to a smaller degree the republican movement were tired of the war and realized that total victory was a long ways off, and decided that if they could come out ahead of previous efforts at resolving the conflict, they would compromise. Some have argued that while the armed struggle should have been abandoned, the GFA should have been rejected, and SF in general should have approached the Peace Process differently. I have mixed feelings about that. It seems to me like the republican movement (and as I'll explain, this is largely not their fault) were in such a weak position, that if they had held out and even if they had been very successful at mobilizing mass struggle to replace the armed struggle (and the odds are they would have only been fairly successful, since the SDLP were not very into marches unless they were certain the odds of violence were low), they wouldn't have gotten any better than they got with the GFA (as far as pressure from the Nationalist community, between the IRA, the on average moderate level of mass struggle, and the election of nationalists and republicans, some very large majority of what could have been done was done and the British government already knew how the Nationalist community felt). What was missing in terms of putting pressure on the British government was almost totally beyond their control. (on the other hand, mass struggle, besides the periods around 1970 and 1980, seems to have been at a lower level than it should have been, and might have helped generate more international support for the Nationalist community (it's also possible that if there had been more support internationally, that might have inspired and nudged more members of the nationalist community to get out at public demonstrations and marches))

UPDATE 4/28/09 I am pretty sure that if they had rejected the GFA, it would have gone ahead without them and they would have been politically isolated until the cease-fire ended (it would have, without political progress and with the isolation) and then they might have been militarily closer to being defeated than they were in the 90s- at the very least, there's almost no way they would have gotten closer to victory than before, especially because in terms of SF's ability to generate international support and support in the Republic and Britian, their position on the GFA would have made that very dificult even if they dramatically changed their approach in a way I'll describe on this blog in a few days or so. They were simply not in a position to convince the world that their opposition to the GFA was right, and the level of hostility towards them would have increased.

I'd also like to address the claim that they are no longer republican. Aside from possibly stepping up their criticism of past IRA actions from close to zero to a little more than zero, they still defend what the IRA did. And I don't believe they have completely accepted the Unionist veto. If the British government says tomorrow that they're getting out and will sign a treaty with the Irish and in 10 years Ireland will be united, SF is not going to wave the GFA at Gordon Brown and say that's wrong, there has to be a majority.

Why were they only barely successful, why was the armed struggle going nowhere? Bearing in mind that they almost never broke certain rules regarding civilians, the IRA put overwhelming pressure on the British to withdraw. I've gotten the impression that more could have been done to mobilize mass struggle, but overall the republican family put a lot of pressure on the British. What was missing was international pressure. I'll get back to that in a second, but first I'll address an aspect of that. As far as I can tell, to some very large degree, republicans did not like the idea of a global boycott of the North. This might be because of the hardship it would have caused, although that hardship would have been alleviated by the fairly good welfare state the Nationalist population benefited from. Crucially, it might have put enough pressure on the British to get them to withdraw. On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if they dismissed the idea because they knew that they probably didn't have enough support internationally to make it successful. As far as I can tell, unlike with Apartheid South Africa, the global community put very little pressure on the British. (for future reference, and this was significantly not possible in S. Africa, a boycott could exclude N. Ireland and focus on Britain, to pressure the British government)

Was S. Africa much worse? My theory is that the last 40 years in the North, the situation for the Nationalist population (which is basically the same thing as the Catholic community) was about 90-95% as bad as it was for non-Whites in S. Africa the last 40 years before 1994. Sure, the oppression was much more formal and racial (even before the reforms of 1968-1970, no oppressive law in N. Ireland used the word Catholic) in S. Africa, but in N. Ireland there was widespread discrimination, anti-Catholic violence, repressive legislation used (unjustifiably) disproportionately against Catholics, etc. (it's fairly relevant that there is STILL a British law which says that you cannot be monarch of the UK if you're Catholic or married to a Catholic(UPDATE 4/18/17 In the last couple years or so, it was changed and now the monarch CAN be MARRIED to a Catholic)) (also, from the late 1950s until the late 1980s, although it seems to have been rarely enforced, there was a law which made it illegal to display the Irish flag). And there's a not-so-distant history where oppressive laws did use the word Catholic, plus the semi-genocide of the Famine- which is relevant when you consider it's basically the same government, and London made it clear that they had only partly moved on from being anti-Catholic (in the late 1990s, a former Tory Defense Minister, in a speech at a Tory Party Conference, said that the solution to the N. Ireland conflict was to, in one night, kill 500 people- and the odds are that he was thinking at least a very large majority of them would be Catholic/Nationalist/Republican). I'm not sure, but if you look at it on a per-capita basis, I’m pretty sure there were possibly more Catholic civilians killed by the security forces or by bigots as was the case with non-White civilians in S. Africa. It was at least 825+ (I have heard nothing to indicate that any of these catholics were not more or less part of the Nationalist community) in the North, and the equivalent in S. Africa would have been 37,000 (that's comparing the non-white and Catholic populations). I searched for the same information about S. Africa that I had found for N. Ireland and the best I found was (in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report) a figure for deaths caused by the security forces. I took that, as I describe towards the bottom of this post (starting with “The TRC offers a number…”) and did some work it, and came to the conclusion that the number of deaths of non-white civilians caused by either the security forces or bigots outside the security forces was probably somewhere around 23,000. A similar way to partly measure oppression is how many people were interned (N. Ireland) or detained (S. Africa). Based partly on the TRC report it was about 70,000 in S. Africa. If it were, on a per-capita basis, equal to what happened in N. Ireland, it would have been 90,000. Also, during most of the conflict in N. Ireland, the police could detain you for 7 days without charge, and that was a partial replacement for internment when internment as phased out in the mid-70s. There’s more about this at the very bottom of the post.

For a few reasons I'm doing this as a separate paragraph or two, but there's one last aspect of this that I kind of skipped- I'm not sure how much I was counting it before when I came up with the figure of 90%- probably not as much as I should have. There is something that is comparable to the formality of how Blacks couldn't vote, although it certainly falls short of being 100% the same. That is the role of imperialism. First, about 90% of the Catholic population (on average the last 40 years, about 38% of the population), and 5% of the Protestant population (I've been just talking about Catholics, which largely makes sense, but you should keep those figures in mind, although they barely change what I have written above), do not want the British running part of Ireland and want Ireland to be united. The fact that they were completely governed almost the entirety of the last 40 years (and when there was some degree of autonomy, it was very short of independence) by a government they quite reasonably consider foreign and hostile (for the hostility see most of the first half of this post), is something like 1/2 as bad as Blacks not being allowed to vote. Even if Nationalists had the maximum representation they could have achieved in the Westminster parliament, they would probably never have had any decisive influence over the legislation that governed them, as less than 1% of the UK population. Is it imperialism? Some will point to the Westminster elections that include N. Ireland as proof that it is not. But almost all of those same people will agree that Britain's control over all of Ireland before the South got it's independence was imperialistic and they also elected people to Westminster. They'll then say that the pro-British majority in the North means that's different. A large chunk of why that's not true is in the 5th paragraph (the first big one) in the post "Catholic, Protestant, and Dissenter." I'd also point out the following, mostly in terms of proving that the British presence in the North is considered foreign by a large majority of Ireland's population:
1) Right up until about half of them decided to compromise, the IRA in the War of Independence were fighting for all of Ireland to be free, not just those areas where Catholics were a majority.
2) They compromised when the British threatened "immediate and terrible" war.
3) Michael Collins (who negotiated the compromise and fought the Civil War against those who rejected it) believed the compromise could be a stepping stone (and it might have been except for the British and the Unionists engaging in some, at best, very questionable behavior, which is described here in the first episode review of that post) and after the treaty was negotiated he sent arms to the Northern units of the IRA and had a British official responsible for security in N. Ireland assassinated.
4) Until the GFA, the Irish constitution of 1937 made two significant claims to the North, and the GFA involved only watering those down.
5) The current President of Ireland is in her second 7-year term, and is from N. Ireland. she was born there, raised there, and (when she was first elected) had spent something like 60% of her life there. As far as I can tell, she didn't go through a citizenship process, and even if she did, I guarantee you they are not going to elect someone with a similar background in Germany President. Also, when she was up for re-election, no one ran against her- no one thought it was weird for a Northerner to be their President.
6) At this point, four of the top five parties in the Republic are organized in the North, and at least four small parties are organized across the island. Although roughly half of that is new, it kind of indicates how people felt decades before.

UPDATE 3/16/09 A little more on the comparison.
1) There was segregation in education, although Catholics seemed pretty happy with it, even though I'd be surprised if they had 100% the funding per-pupil that the (basically) Protestant schools had.
2) There was informal housing segregation, and often in mixed areas Catholics were intimidated out of their homes- about 8-10 times more common than Protestants being evicted from Nationalist areas.
3) Although it isn't formal, hostility towards mixed marraiges is about three times more common among Protestants than it is among Catholics (Northern Ireland Life and Times survey, 2008).

The conclusion I’ve reached is that Catholics in N. Ireland (1969-2008) had it about 90-95% as bad as non-whites in S. Africa (1954-1994). This is based on what I’ve referred to above. I’d say that the number of the deaths I’m looking at are about 30% of what I looked at when I came up with the figure 90-95%. The number of deaths of Catholics is very solid. As I explain towards the bottom of this post, the number of deaths for non-Whites is less solid but pretty good. If I’m wrong and the number of deaths I’m looking at in S. Africa is higher than my estimate, that wouldn’t affect very much. The better of the two approaches I took (for making my estimate) results in an estimate of about 23,000 deaths. If it’s actually 30,000, I would have to change 90-95% to about 80-85%, and that barely affects what I wrote below about how much work should have been done.

It varies from time period to time period and it varies considerably from country to country based on various criteria (how close their government is to London, what is their government's record on this, to what degree are they seriously busy with their own issues), but as far as I can tell, the world did nowhere near what they should have done on n. Ireland-  something like 1/3 of what it should have done the last 40 years. i break this up into three time periods. First, in the first 4-5 years of the conflict in N. Ireland, that should have attracted a lot of activity as those years were above average in terms of conflict deaths. Between then and 1994, it was very reasonable for people to do nothing or almost nothing about N. Ireland, considering the situation in S. Africa was much worse and deserved the attention it got (partly because the number of people who would directly benefit from the end of Apartheid was about 45 times greater than the number of people who would directly benefit from the.and of partition) (it’s also partly because most of the time we’re looking at, the S. African government controlled another nation (then known as South-West Africa) and because on a per-capita basis, S. Africa may have killed more people in the neighboring countries than loyalists killed in the Republic). But during the period 1994-2001 there should have been a lot of activity about N. Ireland. I’d say that people and organizations, in an average month, should have done around 10%-30% as much as they did on S. Africa in an average month. If this had meant investing a little less time and money in other issues, that should be acceptable. As I explain above, the nationalist community went through a nightmare during The Troubles. Also, and this is mostly aimed at American progressives and leftists, it’s not a huge detour from working on, for example, anti-racist stuff. The more people of color and the more white allies work on N. Ireland, the more racism will be eroded among a large chunk of Irish-American.

(If the world had done what it should have done 1994-2001, the Good Friday Agreement might have been better- the all Ireland dimension would have been stronger and the reform of the police would have been more rapid (even in 2009, it still is a problem). Also, some sectarian murders may have been averted and some anti-Catholic parades might not have been forced through Catholic areas, if the British government had been under more pressure to act appropriately regarding those two problems)

I'd also like to point out that the Nationalist community and the republican family did a lot to address other issues.
1) During the Spanish Civil War, some majority of those Irish people who fought fascism in Spain were former IRA members.
2) In the early 1970s, when the nationalist community was going through hell, they held anti-Vietnam war marches.
3) There's a bunch of murals in republican areas about the struggles of other people.
4) In the mid-1800s, Daniel O'Connell, the prime leader of nationalist Ireland, alienated most of his Irish-American support by advocating for the abolition of slavery.
5) James Connolly and Jim Larkin spent several years each doing union organizing in America.
6) In recent years nationalists and republicans have done a lot on Palestine, opposing the Iraq war, supporting trade-unionists in Colombia who are under threat, etc.
7) The ANC was so impressed with SF's anti-Apartheid work that they allowed a plaque commemorating the 1981 Irish Republican Hunger-Strike to be placed on Robben Island, which is a shrine to the anti-Apartheid struggle.
8) Bernadette Devlin, whenever she visited America, including her first two visits in 1969 and 1971, frequently stood in solidarity with Blacks and criticized racist Irish-Americans.

Going back to how much was done, here are some thoughts on that in relation to the American Left (as I'll explain below, the American Left should have given it greater attention than most countries should have given it):

1) As far as I can tell (this is based largely on knowing that this group did an article, or that group passed a resolution, etc.), the Socialist Workers Party, Communist Party USA, Committees of Correspondence, Freedom Road Socialist Organization, and the Socialist Party USA, probably did more (on a per-capita basis) than the average. I have a feeling the labor movement also did better than average.

2) On a liberal-progressive campus in a liberal-progressive city (University of Colorado at Boulder), my activism on the North was about 1/7 as successful as my non-NI activism on a range of leftist issues. On average about 25 people were at the NI events, about 175 people were at the other events (that's between 1994 and 2004; between 94 and 01 it was 30 for NI, 75 for everything else). (UPDATE 4/1/09 I doubt there were many cities throughout America with a N. Ireland group that engaged the left, so overall, nationally what I said is probably true). The point of mentioning attendance at these events is that among the rank and file of the broad progressive movement there is almost no interest in the subject.

3) The largest socialist organization in America is the Democratic Socialists of America. As far as I can tell, they were probably WAY below average on a per-capita basis. I have reason to believe that they and their youth wing have never passed a resolution on the subject, unless it happened in the last seven years, and that's unlikely. In various ways, although I didn't do the greatest job of changing this (I did a good job), it was made clear to me that only some large minority of the people in that organization were interested in the issue at all (which means that a small majority had absolutely zero interest).

4) Going back to Boulder, CO, the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center has been a very well-respected and successful progressive organization for decades. They often have some representation among the speakers at the official Martin Luther King Jr. day rally in Boulder. Carolyn Bninski, one of the two main staff people in the last 15-20 years wrote me in an email: “We may have anywhere from 5 to 100 people at an event.” In 2005 RMPJC organized three events about the North of Ireland. On average each one had 2 people in the audience. In 2008 they organized another event which attracted about 5 people. (RMPJC has been involved with at least two earlier events about the North, but in this paragraph I’m only looking at the ones where they were the only sponsor). The point of mentioning attendance at RMPJC events is that among the rank and file of the broad progressive movement there is almost no interest in the subject.

I should explain that I have good reason to believe a LOT was done on Apartheid. Students were occupying administration buildings as part of the divestment campaign- I assume that BEFORE they resorted to an occupation, they had done several other things- lectures, rallies, petitions, etc.

I feel safe assuming that internationally the Left fell short, because the odds are that if they had done what they should have, that would have had an effect on the American Left. In 2001 I was told that the last time the International Union of Socialist Youth (sort of the youth wing of Socialist International) passed a resolution on N. Ireland was 10 or 20 years earlier. In general, I have gotten the fairly good impression that countries in the European Union didn't do nearly as much as they should have done considering the conflict was inside the borders of the EU. (UPDATE 5/29/09 when Bobby Sands died, 5,000 people marched in Milan, Italy; but, as far as I can tell, the relevant population for the area would have been something like 3 million and at the time the city had some kind of centre-left majority, so with an event such as Sands death (100,000 people were at his funeral in an area with a much smaller population) there should have been something closer to 50,000 people (the population figures and political info I got about Milan for 1981 comes from wikipedia)) (UPDATE 2/5/12 In a couple of late 2011 emails to me, Uschi Grandel (who's with the web-site- http://www.info-nordirland.de ) said:

"The Ireland solidarity in Germany has never been very strong. During the armed conflict, there were marches and events in support of Irish Republicans, organized by a solidarity network, but not really strong ones. The supporters mainly came from left wing groups... .”

(UPDATE 1/6/16 Another post has information on how the ANC felt about the N. Ireland conflict)

Why does the American Left not care? Here are some reasons, backed up with some evidence for the more controversial points. (shortly I'll also discuss the role of the US government on this, as part of why the US left should have done something)

1) One small part of it is that groups in Ireland, I'm primarily thinking of SF, and their allies in America, probably could have reached out to the Left more. In 1998 I read an organizing manual for Irish Northern Aid (more or less SF's main support group) and it listed groups of people that INA (also known as NORAID) Units should reach out to. Irish-Americans were mentioned, so were Irish immigrants. The left wasn't mentioned, although unions might have been- I can't remember. Now, reaching out probably would have cost INA and SF some support, but in the end they probably would have had as much support as before, very likely even more, as a lot of Irish-Americans to the right of center will stick around anyway (also, to a small degree, INA has done some left-wing stuff in the past (and likely today), but that organizing manual indicates that in the late 1990s they weren't, and in earlier decades they were probably also doing less than they should have (this issue is discussed in more detail here)).

2) On a related note, I would say the same thing about people of color, LGBT groups, and women's groups- they were all missing from that INA organizing manual, which is relevant to why the Left wasn't interested. I realize that the abortion issue might have been a stumbling block with the women's groups, but SF was/is more or less the best party in Ireland of any significance, and in general is feminist (I'll very soon do a post on that). In general, whatever support INA and SF gets from these groups would cost them support on the right, but in the end they'd come out even, or, likely, ahead (most of the centrists and center-right people would have held their noses and stuck around for Ireland). And it would have attracted the Left. The mostly correct perception that people working on N. Ireland from a republican/nationalist/human rights perspective were all white, or the half-way correct perception that they were all conservative is part of why the Left was so uninterested.

UPDATE 4/23/09 Although the entire post should make this sort of clear, I am not saying that people had to support SF and/or the IRA to do something, although, on the other hand undue hostility towards SF and/or the IRA would be an issue- i.e. hostility towards anything remotely friendly to SF and/or the IRA.

3) The IRA occasionally did things that made it easy for people to throw their hands up in the air and say they want nothing to do with that. Based on a fairly scientific approach, it was only about .2% of their operations that they intentionally killed civilians, about .1% that they unintentionally killed civilians, probably something like .1% they tried to kill civilians and it didn't work. (many of the civilians they intentionally killed were less than completely innocent) (UPDATE 5/25/14 I just made my last and best estimate for these figures and it's in a new post here (I estimated that about .3% of their operations resulted in civilian death and probably about 2/3 of that was intentional))

I would point out that the last 4 years when Hamas was dominant in the Occupied Territories of Palestine, the world has done a lot. Now, on one hand, in general the situation for the Palestinians has probably been a little worse than it was for Catholics during the last 40 years, but on the other hand, Hamas' politics are horrible, and their military wing was probably trying to kill Jewish civilians at least some large minority of the time. On that last point, I think you could say something similar about the PLO in the past, although it was probably closer to a very tiny minority of their operations. This hasn't stopped the world from supporting the Palestinians a ton, and the difference in how serious the situations are doesn't explain that.

4) These next two will require a lot of evidence. I think they're the biggest two, they both add up to something like 2/3 of why the American Left didn't do what they should have done. Also, I believe that the people who embrace what I'm going to describe only make up something like a small minority of the Left each, although for the most part they're probably the same bunch of idiots. But I believe that they've had influence beyond their numbers, through their silence on the issue or by saying things that discourage people from working on N. Ireland.

I believe something like like a small minority of the American Left dismissed what was happening because of the skin color of 99.5% of the Nationalist population (there's at least one guy who doesn't have light-colored skin). This is based on the following:

A: In 1981 a group of African-American civil rights activists and documentary film-makers went to N. Ireland to make a movie called "The Black and The Green." (see this post). When they showed the movie in America, those Irish-Americans who commented said they liked it (I'm sure some of them didn't because they're racist scum, but they either lied or kept their mouths shut). The people who did criticize it were Black nationalists, who said something like "this is about White people, it's nothing to do with us, you wasted your time." I won't go into this except one piece of evidence, but the Nationalist population is not White. Bill Fletcher Jr. (among other positions on the Left, most of the last 10 years he was National Co-Chair of the Black Radical Congress) when he was speaking at a republican event in Belfast, was asked about those racist Irish-Americans (the question probably exaggerated how racist Irish-Americans are), and Bill said that they had become White, implying that they weren't before they came to America (on the other hand, aside from those who definitely are not White, the population in the Republic today is just as White as I am (basically the same for the Protestant population in the North). Also, if they ARE White, that doesn't justify dismissing their oppression. UPDATE 2/17/20 For more about the idea that Northern Ireland Catholics aren't white, see the last third of this.

B: In the late 1990s during the first incarnation of my group Students for Justice in N. Ireland, we did a petition to get the History Department to offer a course on Irish History. One time we left the petition unattended, and someone wrote a note that there were already enough courses on the history of White people (see above).

I don't know who wrote that note, but between this item and A, I should explain that I believe there are connections between nationalism among people of color and the Left, including White people on the left (of course some people of color who call themselves nationalists are leftists, but this kind of stuff probably comes from those who are not leftists)


(I wouldn't be surprised if, on the left, this problem with the skin color of N. Ireland Catholics is disproportionately and very much a problem with White people, not people of color; my experience indicates that)


5) The second large chunk of this is that the Catholic population in N. Ireland is Catholic. I estimate that something like a small minority of the Left is ant-Catholic, and I have even better evidence for this claim.

A: About 6 years ago there was a survey done of American non-Catholics which found that some significant minority (I'm almost certain it was 30%) believe that Catholics go along with whatever the Vatican says. Although I'm going to keep this fairly brief, that's ridiculous. There's plenty of dissent. For example, Spain is a leader in gay rights. As I describe here, Catholics in Ireland are not too far behind Spain. As far as I can tell, about 1/3-1/2 of European Catholic countries are pro-choice (outside of Europe, it's not as good, overall it's probably some small minority of majority Catholic countries). In America, probably some large minority of Catholics are at least 99% pro-choice, some very large minority support gay marriage, and some small minority oppose homophobia without supporting gay marriage (see item F below). As far as I can tell, overwhelmingly the worst the clergy do is inconsistently harass pro-choice Catholic politicians.

The thing is, the liberal positions of the Church (the death penalty, racism, war, economic justice) are not nearly as well known as the conservative positions (abortion and homosexuality). Odds are a significant percentage (maybe 30%) of the Left (and liberals, too) assume that all Catholics are conservative, and I've found evidence of that.

B: The first piece of evidence is that after a N. Ireland event I organized, a fairly prominent, progressive local activist came up to me and said that it was weird to think of Catholics as the good guys (she only showed up because a prof. she really likes was supposed to speak). Now, in all fairness, she also said that, as someone who's half Jewish and supports the Palestinians, she considers Jews to be the bad guys (that is, she's an equal opportunity idiot). And to a large degree her comment indicated some degree of concern for the Catholic population in the North. But it does indicate a problem.

C: I've heard at least one comment from a leftist that they're surprised to learn that on most issues, most American Catholics are liberal.

D: This one will take some time. I'll explain, shortly why this should have been condemned. First though, as far as I can tell, the Left failed to condemn the Dec. 11th 1989 disruption of a Catholic Mass in New York City by AIDS, pro-choice, and gay rights activists. Now, the Cathedral targeted was ridiculously bad on those issues. But it should have been condemned as a violation of the right to religious freedom, and that doesn't just refer to the Cardinal, but all the parishioners. If Palestinians and their supporters had identified a very anti-Palestinian synagogue and did the same thing, the left would have mostly condemned that. The difference in the situations facing Catholic Americans and Jewish Americans are not big enough to justify that double standard.

Although I think I mis-read something 4 years ago, if anyone has heard that the Mass was only disrupted by one demonstrator, that's not true, and I can point to evidence.

I have heard nothing to indicate that the Left condemned this protest. All I have heard from the Left is good stuff about the group most associated with the protest- ACT-UP.

E: I'm not sure this really counts as anti-Catholicism, in fact this person was fairly interested and fairly concerned about the Nationalist community. In all fairness, when she said this I don't think I knew anything about it that I know now. But she indicated she wasn't real enthusiastic about a United Ireland because Protestant women would be disadvantaged in terms of access to abortion. The thing is, while abortion is something like 99% illegal in the Republic, it is about 95% illegal in the North. Unless I missed an article very recently, the Abortion Act has not been extended to N. Ireland. And if it has, that's not because of a pro-choice majority there. And in fact, the Protestant population is a little bit more pro-life than the Catholic population (at a political level as evidenced by statements made during an Assembly debate on the subject) (I'm going to do a post at some point on women in Ireland).

The thing is, she was making this assumption about Catholic and Protestant attitudes on abortion that is evidence of anti-Catholicism on the Left. Her statement ignored all the CATHOLIC women who would like access to abortion (she also suggested that the abortion issue for Protestant women is more important than all the issues that argue in favor of uniting Ireland).

F: According the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, in 1996 "by a margin of 44% to 33% the public thinks that Protestants should have less rather than more political power. Somewhat greater margins want to see Roman Catholics (53% to 27%), evangelicals (51% to 27%) and Jews (49% to 27%) have less power." Odds are about half those people saying that Catholics should have less power (and that figure is greater than it is for any of the other main religious groups mentioned) are to the left of center, and the figure for people on that side of the political spectrum is probably 53% or higher. I'm going to keep this brief, but most or all of these people probably under-estimate what percentage of Protestants (Protestants are about three times more numerous than Catholics are in America) are pro-life and certainly must be exaggerating the percentage of Catholics who are pro-life- one Pew poll found it was a minority. Catholics are probably no more than a large minority of pro-lifers in America. When it comes to gay rights, Catholics look even better-  the homophobic ones are a small minority of homophobes in America (a 2008 Pew poll found that 45% of American Catholics support gay marriage, and I'd estimate there's probably a bloc of 10% who oppose gay marriage but nonetheless are dificult to call homophobic). These leftists I'm referring to probably look at conservative Supreme Court Justices and think Catholics having power is a greater threat to liberal goals than Protestants having power is. But look at, for example, conservative Presidents of the US and you'll see just Protestants. The Bible Belt is Protestant. And in general I'm not a fan of talking about this religious group or that religious being the problem, I'm simply trying to point out how wrong these leftists and liberals are about Catholics being the problem.

(Above I indicated that DSA is worse than other parts of the American Left in terms of work on the North; I'm pretty sure that doesn't mean that the two big problems I describe above are disproportionately common in DSA; aside from a tiny amount of blame that can be put on me, I don't know why they're so bad on this, but I'm pretty sure they're not full of anti-Catholic idiots) (I should explain at some point that I was fairly-very involved in DSA and it's youth wing 1994 until 2002 and fairly familiar for about 2 years after that)


Next I'd like to explain about why certain elements of the world's population should have done more. Briefly, looking at EU countries, I doubt their governments and people did what they should have done, considering that the conflict was inside the boundaries of the EU. I'd say something kind of similar about the British Commonwealth and NATO. UPDATE 3/22/09: Looking at EU nations Germany, France Spain, and Italy, they all have bigger populations than Canada and Australia. Those last two countries have their own pages on the Friends of Sinn Fein section of the SF web-site (of course there's also one for America), there's one for the rest of the world (actually, the new site, it's page, America, canada, Australia, no mention of the rest of the world). Sure, those 4 EU countries don't have the Irish diaspora, but they are bigger/much bigger than Canada and Australia. There should be enough interest to have the same degree of attention on SF's web-site. This tells me there isn't that much interest in those countries.

But what I really want to focus on is America. First, the UK is America's most important ally in the world. Now, I'll be honest, I don't have the greatest record of explaining this in the past, but it doesn't change the fact that huge chunks of the American Left (although what I'm saying here kind of applies to Americans in general) went brain dead and forgot this fact. The thing is, if you're organizing an intervention for someone (regarding, for example, drugs), you get that person's friends and family involved, not their enemies or strangers- the U.S. government should have taken a firm attitude with the British, and the American people should have pushed D.C. to do that. Then, and this is a little more hidden, although the Left could have looked into it a little, America's record on N. Ireland is not that good.
1) It seems that D.C. never privately put firm pressure on the British to dramatically change it's policy in N. Ireland and/or create a significant role for the South in the affairs of the North (or even, better, begin a process of withdrawal). If they did this privately, it didn't work, and they should have done it publicly (it's possible that to some degree that happened between Clinton and Blair, and had some small effect on the GFA, but the GFA could have been much better, and then there's the ultimate goal of a British withdrawal).
2) At some point, possibly for a long period of time, an American company was selling the UK the plastic bullets they were using in N. Ireland.
3) Although at some point in the 1970s the President or Vice President of SF did speak at a committee hearing of the US Congress, from 1983 until 1994 the President of SF was Gerry Adams (he has continued in that role, but first allowed into the U.S. in 1994), and he was not allowed into the US. During this time SF represented about 35-40% of the Nationalist community, and probably about 60% of the poorest, most oppressed half of that community.
4) During the entire conflict, something like 20 former republican volunteers went through either extradition or deportation proceedings. I think all the extradited were sent back to the UK, I think most of the deportation cases were deported. I know of at least one deportation, and this was probably the case with all of them, where the issue was that he said on the immigration paperwork that he was never convicted of a crime, and the U.S. government said that he in fact had been. The thing is, republican volunteers don't consider themselves criminals, and even the British government, to some degree, has recognized this by treating them as prisoners of war during most of the conflict. But the U.S. Government disagrees. There's evidence that somevery large majority of the nationalist community more or less supported the hunger-strikers of 1981 whose struggle convinced the British to extend status as prisoners of war (or political status, basically the same thing), which makes me think that some very large majority of the nationalist community was more or less unhappy about the extraditions and deportations.
5) More recently, about 6 years ago Bush was putting so much pressure on SF over policing and decommissioning that Blair told him to ease up.
6) Bush's Immigration had Bernadette Devlin-McAliskey deported, claiming she was a "threat" to the U.S. Devlin-McAliskey has little connection to violence, and half of that connection (the Battle of the Bogside) was widely considered completely justified; the other, there's less widespread agreement about how justified it was, but she was only associated with the Irish National Liberation Army for something between a few months and about a year in the mid-1970s. Although she has no chance of getting elected to parliament, she's still very popular among the Nationalist population.

(On a related note, the issue of N. Ireland can be used to drag Irish-Americans towards the Left (talk with them about how N. Ireland is not the only place with bigotry, national oppression, etc.). That would be most successful if it involved a left-wing group that appreciated the importance of the N. Ireland issue)

I'd also say that a lack of knowledge was part of the problem. The thing is, considering the fairly well-known history about what happened 1-7 centuries earlier, the sort of well known history from the early 20s to the early 70s, the connection the US had, and the fact that there was a serious conflict there, the Left should have looked into it (I did a good job educating people, but the fact that I didn't do a great job doesn't mean it's my fault)

So, that pretty much covers it- the American Left should have done a lot more on N. Ireland and had bad reasons for not doing as much as it should have. I should also add that, although the last thing I would say is that the international Left takes directions from their American comrades, it's likely they would have done more if they saw the American Left doing more. And to a significant degree what I just described (in relation to the skin color and religion of the Nationalist/Catholic population) was probably a problem in, for example, European countries as well (that is, those EU countries that should have done a lot more). I know that one year on Irish Indymedia, although the 50 or so responses were hostile, someone launched an attack on the participation by Catholic Left organizations on Indymedia, and although s/he called for a secular Indymedia, s/he seemed more hostile to Catholics than to any other religious groups.

As you might guess, I'm slightly-fairly hostile towards a lot of people on this, although it varies considerably based on their identity (that is do they have their own issues), their government, and what they've done (if as an individual you did about 20% of what you should have done (for example, writing a letter to your senator once every five years), I'm actually a little bit happy) (this overwhelmingly applies only to activists). Yes, as I indicated, the republican family made mistakes. But if you think I should be more critical of seriously oppressed people than I am of White, middle-class, heterosexual, male American Leftists (to one degree or another, religion is also an issue), you're going to be sorely disappointed. (the hostility I refer to can be negated by other things, and was overwhelmingly a reference to people who abstained or voted no when a resolution was put in front of them)

Well, some will point out that the situation now is good enough that nothing needs to be done. I'm familiar enough with the current situation to say that there's still a small amount of inequality, and as I'll explain shortly, there's plenty of potential for things to go backwards- and that statement doesn't require me to be very familiar with recent events.

First, last I checked, recently, Catholics were 50% more likely to be unemployed than Protestants and the police are only about 25% Catholic, while about 45% of the population is Catholic. The loyalist paramilitaries have barely done any decommissioning and have made it clear they are holding onto their weapons years after the IRA completely decommissioned (to be fair there's been very little recently in the way of sectarian behavior by the loyalist paramilitaries) (in the middle of the summer of 2009, a large chunk, perhaps a majority of some sort, of loyalist paramilitary arms were decommissioned) (the dissident republican groups are such a minor threat the British Army has almost no role in security at this point, and nothing justifies the sectarian murder that loyalist weapons might be used for). A recent Irish News column discussing an anti-Catholic sectarian attack which will likely result in death (he's in a coma) suggests that the influence the loyalist paramilitaries have in terms of promoting sectarianism would be less if they didn't have their guns, and points out that the British government keeps extending the deadline for decommissioning (in the middle of the summer of 2009, a large chunk, perhaps a majority of some sort, of loyalist paramilitary arms were decommissioned). Also, there are a lot of problems with the way the British government has been handling the issue of looking into the past- they are not committed to a process that is open and transparent and unlikely to be influenced by the government responsible for horrible things (I'm not incredibly familiar with that, see the Pat Finucane Centre for more). The Democratic Unionist Party, the largest party in N. Ireland, has indicated that they intend to bring down the North-South Council, a part of the GFA which made it fairly attractive to republicans and nationalists. It seems unlikely they'll be successful, but it does indicate that they have not moved on from their extreme positions as much as it seemed recently. At the very most, there has been a small decline in sectarianism among Unionists, and they, and the British government seems to partly agree, still think it's acceptable for Orange parades to go through Catholic areas (see this for why that's not acceptable).

More importantly, there is potential for things to go backwards. Most/all the progress that has been made recently, depending on how far back you look, has been under a Labour government. The British Tories have a past and present tight organizational relationship with the Ulster Unionist Party, and with their record, it's very likely that when they're in power, they will side with the Unionists on various issues. When the Orange Order, for example, want to march through Catholic areas, the Tories will back them up (if it's up to the Parades Commission, you'll see more Unionists on that Commission). They might also go along with the DUP on getting rid of the North-South Council. Things like that will probably result in increased support for dissident republicans, which will likely result in more attacks by dissidents, which will probably result in greater repression, and the security forces don't have the greatest record of only going after members of paramiltaries- they'll arrest or kill innocent people. The Tories would also be much more likely to encourage sectarianism to break any working-class, left-wing unity that emerges in N. Ireland. Lastly, it's not impossible that the UK could turn fascist at some point before the British and the Unionists rid their heads of the bigotry that affects N. Ireland, and if that happens, as bad as it would be for the British people in general, it would be worse for the nationalist population.

As far as how the Protestant population will be treated in a United Ireland, it's at this point that you should definitely read "Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter," I'm not going to reproduce that here, but the odds are ridiculously low that they'll be more than slightly mistreated, probably equal to something like 1% of what Catholics have gone through the last forty years.

So, it's still important for partition to be ended, and the world should work to educate itself about N. Ireland and put pressure on the British over human rights and equality issues and withdrawal. More generally, one thing that would help, although it will be quite an uphill battle, would be getting the British government to be more honest about their record on treating the loyalist paramilitaries one way while they were intentionally killing Catholic civilians and treating republican paramilitaries another way when they were attacking the security forces and destroying non-military property (with the republicans, about 99% of the operations were as described, with the loyalist paramilitaries, it was about 92%), or the fact that between the early 20s and the early 70s Catholics were treated in a semi-formal way as second-class citizens (London probably has done some of that, but could easily do more- the Protetants don't seem to have gotten the message). If the British government were honest about this, some minority of the Protestant population that is not currently anti-sectarian will move in that direction. You might even see the emergence of organizations frequently standing up to sectarian bigots and making it less likely that they'll engage in sectarianism.

I should also explain that it's not guaranteed that demographic changes will result in a Nationalist majority soon, even if there's a reasonably substantial shift among the Protestants. It seems like such a majority is about 10 years off. And, thanks to a senior member of the SDLP, the British might get away with saying no at that point. About 8 years a senior member of the SDLP, I think it was one of their MPs, either Mallon or McGrady, said that the spirit of the Good Friday Agreement now requires that there be a majority of Protestants in favor of a United Ireland (he actually said Unionists, but must have meant Protestants). London might seize on that to prolong their occupation.

UPDATE 4/23/09 And it's likely that a poll in favor of a United Ireland, if respected, will begin a process of negoatiation and then a transition that could last some number of years (at the upper end, about 30). First, since that's likely to be the case, if that transition period were to start now instead of in 10 years, that would be better. Second, putting some preassure on now would make it more likely that London will withdraw when they're supposed to. Lastly, during that transition period, it wouldn't hurt if the world kept up the pressure to make sure that it's done the right way- the nationalist community will be the subject of a Unionist backlash.

As I suggested when I said that the Protestants will not be treated poorly in a United Ireland, if Ireland is united, the national question and the conflict is almost guaranteed to go away over a period of about 1-2 generations. But the world has to do it's part.

UPDATE 2/5/10 I should have said that, considering things could definitely be worse in N. Ireland, and considering the other things on peoples' political agenda (the economy, Afghanistan/Pakistan, Iraq, etc.) at this point I don't expect people to do much on this, at most a little bit here and there (i.e. signing petitions), to keep things going in the right direction with the Peace Process.

UPDATES 3/16/09
Some of this has been referred to in this post and/or elsewhere, but here's some brief notes based on a conversation I had with a American Socialist who raised these issues:
1) The US Mainstream media got most of it's NI news from British sources, and since a large chunk of them are liberal, I can probably say similar stuff about a minority that's anti-catholic and dismissive based on skin color. As far as I can tell, the progressive media didn't do any better, when you consider the quantity, and the quality was probably on average not that great either.
2) SF and their American allies focused on Irish-America and largely ignored the Left. My theory is that half of their supporters were to the right of center.

UPDATES 5/29/09
1. I briefly mentioned this earlier, but considering how serious the situation was in the North in the early and mid 1970s compared to that in S. Africa at the time (bearing in mind what I have said about the two 40-year periods and considering that it's widely accepted that thing were worse in the North towards the beginning and worse in S. Africa towards the end), I would say that during that period, until the Soweto riots of 1976, the world probably fell short of what they should have done- I say that partly because it would have been so much work that it would have been remembered 20 years later and people would have shifted some effort to N. Ireland when Apartheid was smashed. That didn't happen, I guarantee you. The shortfall would also be reflected in the next item.

2. I readily concede that between 1976 and 1994 ignoring the North was 99% okay (if people refused to sign petitions, that's a problem, and it couldn't have hurt to maybe attend an event once a year, low-level stuff like that) but resolutions weren't being passed, although there is the related problem of what some resolutions were saying. If the left was passing strongly worded resolutions telling the Brits to get the fuck out and/or transform their record on human rights and equality, that sort of thing, that would have had an effect. In America for example, if the AFL-CIO (perhaps prodded in part by America's socialist organizations) had been passing such resolutions, lots of Democratic Party politicians would have said the right thing because they would have scored some points with an important constituency with no downside- they didn't have to worry about the powerful, well organized, and pro-Unionist English-American community coming down on them. This might have translated into enough preassure on the British to significantly alter what actually happened, and would have kept the issue alive for when Apartheid was no longer an issue.

*****

(UPDATE 1/24/11 I am working on cleaning up this last section- in about one month it should be easier to read, briefer, and hopefully more persuasive)

UPDATE 3/19/11 Below is the new and improved version.

This last section is where I go into part of how I arrived at the conclusions I made about comparing the situation for Catholics with the situation for non-whites. (It is also a new version- I took the old one which had become fairly cluttered and potentially confusing, and have made some significant changes). The main thing here is comparing the two scenarios in terms of the number civilians from the oppressed communities killed by the security forces or bigots. The second one is something similar with detentions/internment. With that one, I found solid numbers for both scenarios. The part about killing, the information on the S. Africa side is elusive.

In general I published this post sooner than I should have, before I had some facts nailed down- I did that because I had reason to believe that this post had the potential to prevent the murder of Sinn Fein members by republican dissidents.

I am very familiar with the Irish side of this comparison. I have done some research into the South African part, in addition to a small amount of info I already had.

I maybe should have read a book about the last forty years of Apartheid but I didn’t, for the following reasons:

1) If I can’t find the information I’m looking for on the internet I will probably need to read several books before I find the information I need.
2) Since I found a figure related to what I’m looking for, in the report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), I think I have gotten some good info from a good source without reading a book.

I have asked a couple of organizations for some info (either web-sites that will have what I need, or just the info that I need). I got some good stuff from Trans-Africa Forum (http://www.transafricaforum.org/), who also pointed me towards the Apartheid Museum (AM) (http://www.apartheidmuseum.org/). Unfortunately, the AM web-site is relatively tiny compared to the Conflict Archive on the InterNet (CAIN), a sprawling academic site about the Troubles in N. Ireland and I couldn’t find what I needed. I also read a BBC article which, if this information were available, should have given some of the numbers I need- the absence of that info makes me think that all I have to work with is what I found in the TRC Report.

I made one initial estimate about an important part of the comparison- how many non-white civilians were killed by the security forces or Apartheid militants in S. Africa between 1954 and 1994. That was done right before I published this post, but shortly after that I realized I had mis-identified the source for one of the facts I used in making that estimate, and felt very insecure about that estimate. I won’t say much more about that, and am going to, instead, offer the second (and at least sort of better) estimate.

The TRC offers a number for killings by the security forces (I’ve gotten the idea that there was very few bigoted killings by Apartheid militants, which would explain why there was no figure offered for that). It’s based on submissions to the TRC and probably represent a small fraction of the number of such killings.
The number is right around 3,100 (it’s displayed on a graph, so I don’t know exactly what it is).

The TRC has said what makes sense, that memory probably affected how many people came forward about events many years earlier, so, the total is probably something like 7 times higher (the odds are pretty low that less than 1/7 of such killings were reported to the TRC, as it was the time for victims of the Apartheid forces to get some kind of justice and at least have their stories told), That gives us a number of 21,700.

Then there are several adjustments that need to be made to have a good estimate of how many non-white civilians were killed by the security forces and bigots 1954-1994. I am adjusting these numbers with some guidance from the N. Ireland numbers. i.e. 10% of all the Catholics killed by the security forces and loyalist paramilitaries were members of republican paramilitaries. It could be significantly different in S. Africa, but I think this is the best way to do it short of reading several books or the entire TRC Report.

1. A significant minority of those killed by the security forces would have been armed anti-Apartheid fighters. I’m gonna go with 18% (the figure for the same category in N. Ireland), meaning that we now have 17,794.

2. About 1% would probably be white, civilian opponents of Apartheid. That makes the number 17,577.

3. I have a feeling that the number of non-white civilians killed by bigots outside the security forces is very low, probably much lower than the number I’ll offer. I think that 500 is a good round number (but probably way too high), which brings us to 18,077.

14,000 people were killed in S. Africa in the early 1990s. While negotiations were taking place, violence, mostly black on black skyrocketed. There is good reason to believe that the security forces had some role in the black on black violence. I think it would be reasonable to count about 5,000 of those deaths as being inflicted by the security forces (there was a small number of deaths in N. Ireland that were Catholic on Catholic and it’s possible the security forces were sometimes involved; but that number is probably so small that I’m not going to do with it what I’m doing with the 14,000 in S. Africa) That then makes it 23,077.

I looked at the population numbers for the Catholics and non-whites and used a number roughly in the middle of the two time periods involved (the non-white population in S. Africa was 45 times larger then the Catholic population of N. Ireland). If this aspect of national oppression was as hard on the non-white communities of S. Africa as it was on the Catholic community in N. Ireland, the number would have been right around 37,000.

There is a huge gap there. Even if only 1 out of 10 killings (of the sort we are looking at in S. Africa) were reported to the TRC I could still say more or less (less) what I have been saying in this post about how much work was done on N. Ireland.


When comparing deaths in detention (S. Africa) and deaths of internees (in N. Ireland) it could be said that it was about twice as bad for non-Whites as it was for Catholics. According to the Apartheid Museum, between 1963 and 1990, at least 100 people died in detention. There were no deaths of internees, but if you say there was one, and adjust for the different population sizes, S. Africa would still have had it twice as hard as N. Ireland. Lastly, keep in mind that internment lasted only about 5 years.

As far as the over-all number of people detained or interned, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission estimates that between 1960 and 1994 the number was 70,000 (the period I’m looking at starts in 1954, but I have gotten the impression there were few or no detentions during that first 6 years. In a five year period in N. Ireland, almost 2,000 Catholics (there's no way any of them were Unionist, they were more or less Nationalists) were interned. For it have been just as bad for non-whites in S. Africa, the number of detentions would have had to be 90,000; it’s also important to remember that internment in N. Ireland lasted only 5 years.