My Review of Larry Bond's 1991 Anti-Apartheid Novel "Vortex"

In a book report (it wasn’t very analytical) I did in 2022 about a sort of sci-fi/sort of techno-thriller novel with a left-wing message, I admitted that a big chunk of the fiction I read is by Tom Clancy or authors like Tom Clancy (1989-2009 it was about 70% and since 2009 it’s been about 25% (hopefully I won’t go to Socialist Hell)). As far as I can tell, the author of the book I just referred to (David Mace) is progressive. If you look at the books I’ve read in the Tom Clancy genre there’s a handful with some stuff that is liberal or even progressive. It’s usually a small island of progressive viewpoints (by characters you’re supposed to like) with an ocean of center/center-right politics. There is one book which is written by someone much more right-wing than left-wing but which can nonetheless be greatly enjoyed politically by progressives, if you think about it the right way. I’m talking about Larry Bond’s 1991 novel “Vortex.”

“Vortex” is about Apartheid South Africa, and a “last gasp” attempt by hardliners to maintain Apartheid and Afrikaner colonialism. I believe the story starts in May of 1992, although it’s not clear what the year is. I am not sure how much or how little progress was made in the Peace Process between Mandela’s release and May of 1992 (in reality). Towards the very beginning of the book the President of SA talks about significant progress being made, which prompts the main villain (Karl Vorster, a Cabinet member) to carry out something which is basically a coup, but which appears to be the ANC’s military wing (MK) assassinating the rest of the cabinet (although this is known by almost no one until the last 1/3 of the book, the MK operation was manipulated by Vorster and the Intelligence agency he runs). He then reverses the small number of reforms that had been made to Apartheid, invades neighboring Namibia, and turns the security forces loose against Blacks and any dissent by whites.

The situation becomes chaotic. The leader of the Zulu population (who, in reality, may not have been as militant as the ANC was during the anti-Apartheid struggle) calls for the rest of the world to take action against the new regime and his people take up armed struggle. A large chunk of the military in Cape Town refuses to massacre white civilian protestors and rebels against the government.

Things also start to fall apart for Vorster in Namibia, whose government asks the Cuban Army in Angola to help repel the invasion. Although this is more complicated, to one extent or another during most of the book you can root for the Cuban Army. The head of the Cuban Army in Africa (General Antonio Vega) convinces Castro that Cuba should resolve the conflict by invading South Africa and overthrowing Apartheid. With some help from other “anti-Imperialist” countries (including three Libyan units probably the size of battalions) three columns (probably around 2,000-3,000 men in each) enter SA from the east, north and west. Because the Cubans hid their preparations for the invasion the SA military is still focused on Namibia and rapid progress is made, especially the column approaching Pretoria from the West. Because it is a desert and a sparely populated area (and because he is psychotic) Vorster eradicates that column with a nuclear bomb. SA is on the verge of using two more nukes to attack strategic targets when the US military captures them and removes them from the country in a massive airborne operation. Shortly after that the US military lands something like a division on the east coast of SA (at Durban) and starts fighting the SA Army on it’s way to Pretoria. Naval aircraft start attacking the East column of Cubans.

As you might guess, the US military stops the Cubans from reaching Pretoria until they (the US) can get there first. The aftermath of this victory for the US is largely a GOP fantasy. Because of some significant friction with the Cubans (see below), the ANC abandons it’s commitment to socialism. There IS something about recognition of the trade-unions, something proposed by the occupying US military, but I think we’re talking about something that is probably engineered to foster a pretty centrist labor movement.

There are two large aspects of this story relevant to how close it is to being a progressive book.

First, the US government moves very slowly at each stage of the crisis and are usually far behind Cuba. And they (characters who are officials of the US government) are pretty honest about why they are initially very slow and behind Cuba, and they’re also very honest about why they DO send their own invasion force after Cuba invades- they don’t want Cuba to get credit for overthrowing Apartheid. I will add a lot of details to this in about a year when I read this book (for the 6th or 7th time) and take some notes, but in general, Cuba looks better than the US government.

On the other hand, there are some things Bond has the Cubans do that A) usually involve quite a bit of imagination on Bond’s part and B) make Cuba look bad. After one of his columns is wiped out by a nuke, Vega decides to compensate for that by using chemical weapons. In all fairness to Vega and in all fairness to Bond who was probably tempted to really slander Cuba at this point, they use NON-PERSISTENT chemical weapons which become impotent pretty quickly after they are released into the air. This means they’re not quite as indiscriminate as they would be if they were persistent. We don’t know how many battles involved Cuban chemical weapons, but there was at least one. And some small part of the nearby black population was affected, with some deaths.

Those black deaths contribute to the erosion of congeniality between the Cuban Army and the ANC’s military wing, Spear of the Nation. There is one bizarre incident that was a pretty good example of Bond trying to reassure most of his readers that he did not go commie while writing this book. The Cubans ask the black population in one town to help them make an airfield they took over functional again. There weren’t enough volunteers so a small number of Blacks were forced to help. This of course contributes to the conflict developing between the Cubans and the ANC. Bond does sort zig-zag a bit and quotes Vega’s thoughts, pointing out that he has Black officers on his staff- who he describes as brave and competent.

There is something I really need to say about Bond. Vortex is his second book. His first and third books are politically fairly centrist overall. His fourth and fifth books, I thought were racist towards Muslims and I will never read them again and I haven’t read anything he wrote after book five. (see this and this (and look for my name)). (I lost track of those two novels in my collection for several years but in the end I made a decision about 5 years ago to throw them away instead of taking them to a thrift store (I’m not totally okay with that, because it resembles book burning, but throwing them away was probably the right thing to do))

There is one last thing I need to get out of the way. In the very first sentence of the book, in a section that includes maybe 500 words, it sounds like Bond is saying that rural, uneducated Zimbabweans think that helicopters flying at night are “demons.”  There’s a bit more to that short first section, and I also think after I explain this next part, progressive readers will feel comfortable assuming that Bond is not racist towards Black people. In his first book (about a second Korean War), one of the main characters is an Air Force pilot who gets shot down behind enemy lines, and is rescued at night by a helicopter. This character does say that the helicopter appears like a demon.

It’s a massive book- 896 pages in paperback. If you’re not totally against anything military and you hate Apartheid, you will probably like this book. In about a year I will probably read it again and take some notes and have more to say.

We Need MORE Criticism of Hamas, not Less

 Since Oct. 7th I have read a lot about the war between Israel and Hamas, I have done a small amount of protesting on the street, I have gotten a letter published in the Boulder Weekly (a widely-read alternative newspaper), I have sent a few messages (in support of the Palestinians) to federal politicians, and I have also taken part in a fair amount of email discussion among a lot of the Boulder County people supporting the Palestinians. In those discussions I encountered two ideas that I think overlap and which I would like to address in this essay. First is the idea that it’s okay for the Palestinians to kill civilians because it’s an “asymmetrical” conflict where the Palestinians don’t have the resources, power, and environment to fight in that the Israelis have. The second idea is that the Israelis have the power to wage peace and the Palestinians don’t and therefore it is the former who need to take the first few steps or so towards peace and the latter can wait until those steps have been taken to reciprocate.

This essay will address these two ideas and to a lesser degree some other aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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Since Oct. 7th I have read something like 2,000 words a day about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict- 50% from the BBC, 10% from Juan Cole’s site Informed Comment, 10% from CNN and the rest is miscellaneous. Looking at the 30 years before that I probably read an average of 100-200 words a day about it and it broke down like this- 20% from Juan Cole and about 20% is from the BBC. The rest, about 60% is from various sources, some  mainstream, some progressive, including The Nation, the Washington Post, the Times of Israel, etc.

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Although I only have a BA, it’s in Ethnic Studies and mine includes three courses taught by Ward Churchill (I don’t think this affected how much I learned from him, but he was my faculty advisor (I got an A in all three of the courses he taught)). I have also spent a huge amount of time studying the recent conflict in Northern Ireland (in the last 26 years about 1,000 words a day on average), and that included some things that made me more familiar with the violence than most outside observers (A: I heard a lecture in 2002 by someone who had just months earlier been Chief of Staff of the IRA and B: in 2002 I was in the middle of two riots with the security forces).

In general, I support the Palestinians- in some ways more than many people who support them (in 2002 I got a CU-Boulder group called “Students for Justice in N. Ireland” to endorse the campus Coalition for Justice in Palestine), but in some ways less so (I wasn’t among the brave young people who went there in solidarity with them around 2002). I did a post where I do a pretty good of taking down Zionism and explaining why a one state solution would be better than a two state solution. Here and there in the last six months I say that although I condemn what happened Oct. 7th, I would support something that resembled what the IRA did during The Troubles (a detailed explanation of how I reached the conclusion that the IRA were (OBJECTIVELY) not terrorists is here and a description of the Republican Movement’s (1970-1997) strategy is here).

On the other hand I hate Hamas and always have. Recently I decided that I no longer consider the Palestinian Authority/Palestinian Liberation Organization to be worthy of my support.

I did a post about how incredibly appropriate it is to use the word Apartheid in relation to Israel. That is largely about Israel, East Jerusalem and the West Bank. In one way or another, to one degree or another, in the last 17 years residents of the Gaza Strip have had it worse than Palestinians in the West Bank (until recently Gaza was dominated by Israel even though it had no soldiers there (now it’s still dominated (if that’s the right word), in part because there ARE soldiers there)). Those Palestinians in the West Bank and in Gaza are state-less and thus very close to powerlessness.

So, it’s true that Israel is MUCH more powerful than the Palestinians, and is allied with the most powerful country in the world. The resistance is underground in East Jerusalem, Israel, and the West Bank. Israel has an advanced and conventional military that includes, for example, tanks. Does that asymmetry mean that Hamas shouldn’t be seriously criticized for focusing overwhelmingly on intentionally killing civilians Oct. 7th?

No, it doesn’t mean that. Crucially, the IRA almost never intentionally killed civilians and almost never unintentionally killed civilians and almost never TRIED to kill civilians (I explain how I came to those conclusions here). The IRA was of course an underground army and the British had, for example, many helicopters that were used extensively (especially in South Armagh, where, without helicopters, the British Army would have been defeated by the IRA). In the struggle against Apartheid, operations by the military wing of the ANC (in English known as “Spear of the Nation”) were even less likely to result in civilian death, and they were definitely fighting under difficult conditions.

I should say at some point here that I believe there is a spectrum between completely legitimate targets on one hand and completely innocent civilians on the other hand. This is reflected in my opinion of Hamas’ military wing and my opinion of the IRA, among others. It doesn’t mean that I think less-than-totally-innocent civilians are legitimate targets, but I don’t attach much value to such killings when deciding if I consider the group responsible to be a terrorist organization or something better.

Although I do not totally agree with international law on this, international law is so unfavorable towards the killing of civilians that I believe killing civilians is not excused by the conditions that an underground army fight under against a technologically and institutionally superior foe.

Although this may not be the fairest thing to say about them, it almost seems to me that progressive supporters of Hamas believe that there is something akin to a Law of Physics about the inevitability of underground armies intentionally killing civilians- their argument seems to be, “you don’t condemn an apple for falling to the Earth.” But there are at least two such armies that never or almost never intentionally killed civilians. One of them was totally successful (although it should be mentioned that their economic agenda was not realized, the ANC’s primary goal was the end of Apartheid) and the other was sort of successful (the Good Friday Agreement isn’t that bad and in recent years Sinn Fein and the EU have forced the British to create a border of sorts between N. Ireland and Britain).

The second and overlapping idea is that the Palestinians don’t have the power to wage peace and can only wage war until Israel takes the first few steps towards peace on their own. In my opinion Israel is a lot more responsible for the conflict than the Palestinians are. The average Israeli Jew is a lot more comfortable than the average Palestinian is and could survive the re-distribution of resources (i.e. water) that peace would require. I’m sure a lot of Palestinians would say that they have little or nothing to lose and that for decades now Israel has been brutalizing them and undermining the possibility of a two state solution and many of them will fight until Israel makes the first moves.

Although I am not a pacifist, A) I overwhelmingly support non-violent political efforts and B) what I’m about to say needs to be seriously considered by supporters of this theory that Hamas cannot wage peace at this point. The Black population in America was seriously dis-empowered in the decades before and during the Civil Rights Movement (there was SOME militancy and looking back at that history, I support some of that militancy). But Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was almost 100% against the use of violence and saying that he “waged peace” is putting it mildly- it was a scorched Earth version of “waging peace.” I have a theory that intentionally killing civilians in war is further from “waging peace” than exclusively targeting combatants. I am not saying that liberation movements out there in the world need to completely abandon the use force in order to respect the legacy of Dr. King. But I believe progressives should be careful with who we support when it comes to armed liberation movements. And although I am not going to go into a lot of detail beyond looking at the Civil Rights/Black Power era and N. Ireland, I also think we should ask ourselves, “what would Gandhi think?”

The Republican Movement (Sinn Fein and the IRA), as I mentioned above, conducted a very honorable struggle and DID do a lot of non-violent stuff. In all fairness to Hamas, they did successfully contest an election in 2006 and didn’t have much more in terms of opportunities for non-violent political efforts. But I am still going to point out that starting in the mid-80s SF members who got elected to local councils took their seats and engaged their unionist opponents non-violently and democratically- a move towards waging peace in the acutely imperialistic Thatcher years. When the conditions seemed right, in 1994 the IRA went on cease-fire for about a year. After a brief return to war, they went on cease-fire again in 1997 and to a VERY large degree have become less and less relevant and I wouldn’t be surprised if they pretty much ceased to exist in the last 15 or so years.

Although I’m not gonna go into much detail here (I talk about this in a 2009 post) the RM and the Nationalist community in general bent over backwards to make the peace process work. It would have been VERY reasonable if they had refused to sign up to anything that failed to guarantee a United Ireland after some transitional period. The republican argument is something I go into some detail about here. Around 1997-2005 the IRA took several steps leading up to the full decommissioning of their arsenal, steps that kept the Peace Process going forward, despite frequent provocations by their opponents (i.e. for about 3 months in late 2001 loyalists terrified little Catholic girls (aged about 11) on their way to school just inside a Protestant area (there’s a fairly good article about it here)). 

When the conditions seemed right, the IRA was quick to wage peace. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Palestinians in the West Bank or Gaza have less power than the 1998 Catholic population of N. Ireland, but it’s also relevant that on a per-capita basis, Catholic civilians might have been slaughtered in The Troubles to a greater degree than was the case with Palestinian civilians since 1967 (that is, until Oct. 8th 2023 when that situation changed dramatically) (below, starting with the sentence “As I write elsewhere 856+” I try to illustrate how the Catholics were slaughtered). Even though the Catholics probably had more power in 1998, when it came to support from the global community, the Palestinians definitely have more (i.e. the Catholic population of N. Ireland didn’t have a representative at the UN) (and the British, although I don’t believe they used this to win diplomatic battles with Dublin, are permanent members of the UN Security Council and have a veto and they might have benefited from that in terms of discouraging support for the IRA). I talk about the Irish half of that comparison with South Africa in the middle third of a post here (starting with a paragraph that begins by mentioning South Africa). Crucially, the US government was, to one degree or another, on the side of the British as I describe in note #17 of a post here. As I said, the IRA waged peace not when they had the global community behind them, not just when British politics made peace more likely, but when it appeared there was an opportunity to stop the violence and the inequality, the hate and the injustice. In 1994 that meant after very few moves by the British and the Unionists. In 1996-1997 there were a few more moves by the British, but also some provocation by London and the unionists- which was ignored.

As I was typing this I increasingly came to understand that in terms of power, the Catholic population had more than their brothers and sisters in Palestine. But what I wrote about the latter having more support globally is true. Also, in terms of forgiving your oppressors and waging peace, you have to consider what I write below about the Catholic civilian population, on a per capita basis, being slaughtered to such a great extent that it was possibly worse on a per capita basis than what the Palestinians have been through between 1967 and Oct. 7th (it’s not a perfectly symmetrical comparison and for multiple reasons I am not going to hunt down solid figures for deaths of the Palestinians, but you might agree with me when you read that section after the next paragraph).

I don’t think anything excuses much less justifies what Hamas did Oct. 7th. I’m not saying that they are anywhere near as responsible for the conflict in general as Israel is but Oct. 7th was a massive and (sort of) unprovoked escalation (I say sort of unprovoked because it was disproportionate to what Israel was doing- nowhere near as disproportionate as Israel’s response to Oct. 7th, but still disproportionate (you have to consider that targeting civilians is more provocative than attacking soldiers)). If they were fighting offensively as the IRA did, I’d be pretty supportive. Coming back to reality, what do I think Hamas and the PLO and the Palestinian people in general should do? I think their allies worldwide need to continue to take a stand and communicate to Israel that it had better stop bombing Gaza and allow humanitarian aid into Gaza like never before, and stop going towards what I think would be something fairly genocidal. And they need to get the US to stop supporting Israel. (I believe that when it comes to genocide  there is a spectrum between 100% dead and, at the other end of the spectrum, what Ireland experienced during the Famine). I have no idea how making Gaza livable for 2.2 million people will be accomplished in the immediate future. But worse than that is the possibility that Israel will try to push Gazans out of Gaza and into Egypt, which would be pretty genocidal. I have almost no idea what should be done beyond an end to the violence and a return of aid to Gaza and and an end to American support for Israel. Normally I would say that a one-state solution must be pursued as I argue here, but after what has happened to both the Jewish population and the Palestinian population, I am thinking of going back to supporting the two-state solution. I imagine the reality is there will be no peace process worthy of the name for a very long time.

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As I write elsewhere 856+ Catholic civilians were killed in the years 1969 to 2005 by either loyalist paramilitaries or the security forces. A comparable scenario in America would have meant around 67,000 unarmed people of color killed by cops or Nazi skinheads (etc.) in the same time period. A: based on what I’ll describe below, I would guess that the actual number for that was probably somewhere around 7,000-8,000; B: I'm not saying the racist system in this country wasn't, ideologically or programmatically, capable of killing 67,000 people of color in those years if the "rebellion" among people of color here had been as militaristic as the one among Catholics in N. Ireland; but the reality is that as bad as it was for people of color here in those years, it was, in terms of deaths, MUCH worse for Catholics in N. Ireland.

What makes me confident about my statement “probably somewhere around 7,000-8,000”?



1. Between 1996 and 2005 according to the FBI there were 38 racist murders. I have read that the Department of Justice officially estimates that for every hate crime reported to the FBI there might be 20-30 that aren’t reported because not all local law enforcement agencies report such crimes to the FBI. So I came up with 1,140 for those years.


2. I heard (from organizers of a Black Lives Matter protest) that in a 12 month period during a 2014 (apparent) surge in police murders of black people including those of Eric Garner in NY, Tamir Rice in OH, and Michael Brown in MO among other highly publicized such cases, that around 200 black people armed or unarmed, had been killed by cops in America. Although I’m very open-minded about accusations that cops plant guns, this country also has a ridiculous number of guns.


3. Bear in mind that decades ago the number of people of color and the number of cops in this country were both smaller or much smaller than they are today.


4. If it’s worth much, about 10 years ago I read a huge amount of what the Southern Poverty Law Center put on their web-site in the previous 10-15 years. I also got an Ethnic Studies degree if that’s worth much.


5. There was little or no talk about “Brown Lives Matter” so I get the impression that very few Latinos/Latinas/Chicanos/Chicanas have been killed by cops in recent years (as far as I know, even Arpaio’s sheriff’s department in AZ didn’t kill a single such person) and that might reflect the situation in earlier decades. I have practically never heard of Asian-Americans being killed by cops. And if Native Americans were being killed at a high rate in the 80s and 90s I would have heard (a massive chunk of my major was Native American Studies).
 

UPDATE 6/9/21 I just found a Democracy Now! story relevant to this. It's about the last 20 years, but there's a small overlap between that and the period I was looking at Catholics and people of color (1969-2005), and it's possible that what I said about this comparison is off a little. Bear in mind that the figure I refer to in item #2 above came from organizers of a Black Lives Matter protest.

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In that first part (ending just above this line) I addressed the issues of asymmetry in war and waging peace. Here I need to address some other aspects of Hamas that contribute to me being hostile.

I believe in being consistently against religious fundamentalism and social conservatism. Towards the bottom I will explain how I don’t have a racist double standard in the favor of the Irish.

Hamas is an Arabic acronym for “Islamic Resistance Movement” and they’re very friendly with Iran, so I think I am on pretty good ground saying they are fundamentalists. I’m not an atheist and I’m certainly not a NEW atheist (see this). I believe in the separation of religious institutions and the state, I believe in secular politics (although I have nothing against religious socialists I am not one myself) and I believe in “Intelligent Design” not creationism.

I won’t apologize for consistently being against social conservatism, including sexism and homophobia. I’m sure some readers are groaning at that sentence in this essay, but please read what I write below.

I get the impression there is something close to a consensus among American progressives that criticizing the allegedly misogynist attitudes of MANY Muslim men is inappropriate. Are Muslim women oppressed to one degree or another in many (perhaps most) muslim societies? I think the answer is pretty close to “YES, although I have gotten the impression that some progress has been made on the issue in recent decades. I need to make clear that I don’t support laws (in France, for example) where muslim women are banned from dressing in a way that might be considered religious and/or traditional and/or conservative. I believe that Muslim women are adults and don’t need the government, or male relatives, or random males in the street telling them what to wear, when men are not treated that way as well.

What about homophobia? In general I get the strong impression that the VAST Majority of Muslims are homophobes. I wish I had a lot of evidence specifically about HAMAS being homophobic, but I am comfortable just assuming that they are. I DO know that in recent years Hamas and Iran get along very well and Iran is DEFINITELY homophobic. I also read a brief accusation of homophobia that Meredith Tax leveled against muslim fundamentalists in her book “Double Bind.”

Do I have a racist double standard in favor of the Irish and/or Catholics? No. Republicanism is mostly secular. There were a few Protestants in the IRA (is Sinn Fein as anti-protestant as Hamas is anti-Semitic? See this), and there are a LOT of atheists in Sinn Fein. Going back to the IRA, I was told that at one point, perhaps in the mid-1990s, a significant minority of IRA POWs were housed together in the same part of the prison because they were all devout. But I am certain it was a minority and probably a small minority of the POWs.

The first (or at least close to the first) Vice President of Provisional Sinn Fein (the SF that Gerry Adams was President of for a long time), in the early 1970s, was a woman. In the era of the Civil Rights Movement (late 60s/early 70s), if there was only one leader of the CRM it was Bernadette Devlin (McAliskey). She was also perhaps the main leader of those, around 1980, who were supporters of republican POWs demanding political status. In the mid-1980s for one year SF was pro-choice and between then and now (or at least most of that time) their position was only MODERATELY pro-life, and they might be pro-choice today. In recent years the two most senior leaders of SF are both women. When Gerry Adams stepped down as President of SF he came out as pro-choice.

A handful of facts about SF and homophobia are here.

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(I believe that Hamas is anti-Semitic. This is primarily based on 2-3 facts. They’re religious fundamentalists and they went after Jews, and some of them raped Jews (if you can prove that they raped a lot of non-Jewish people, I’ll reconsider that statement). I have decided that the PLO are anti-Semitic (based on a BBC article here) and if THEY’RE anti-Semitic I feel comfortable assuming that the socially conservative religious fundamentalists are, too. When I have made this accusation in the past 1-2 American supporters of Hamas have said that the anti-Semitism of some Palestinians can be traced back to Europe- that doesn’t make it okay!)

There are two last things I need to say. This post is partly a response to a blog post  by a woman named Helena Cobban here. The main theme of her post is that “it’s past time to end the demonization of Hamas.” Combined with everything else I have written above, I need to explain that Hamas weakens, it doesn’t strengthen, the cause of Palestine. Large numbers of people in the world believe it’s wrong for civilians to be targeted in war. Large numbers of people believe that anti-Semitism is wrong. Hamas’ targeting of civilians and their anti-Semitism turn people away from supporting the Palestinians. I mean Oct. 7th did nothing to increase support for their people. ISRAEL’S REACTION has, and that might have been Hamas’ plan, but I think that was a pretty bad plan and doesn’t change the fact that Oct. 7th was anti-Semitic. I guarantee you there would be more support for the Palestinians if they were not associated with Hamas.

I imagine that when anti-Semitism in the Palestinian population is not challenged by American supporters of the Palestinians, it might be noted by the younger and more impressionable progressive activists who might adopt that bigotry as their own. That means that ignoring anti-Semitism among the Palestinians can have an effect on how Jews are treated HERE.

We need to criticize Hamas MORE not LESS.

Movie Reviews B

Emperor (IMDB Wikipedia)

I’m not sure how historically accurate it is, but overall it’s a fairly good movie. I’m glad that we defeated Japan in that war and it’s great that afterwards we became friends with Japan.  I also liked how one character, a senior Japanese politician who got along with the allies, pointed out that the British and Americans were roughly as imperialistic as Imperial Japan was.

I give it 2 stars out of 5.

Dr. Strange (IMDB Wikipedia)

Not anything political in this movie, but I do like super-hero stuff. I focus mostly on DC Comics stuff, but I also watch the live action movies about Marvel super-heroes.

I give it 2 stars out of five.

The Best of Enemies (IMDB Wikipedia)

This is an amazing movie. It’s a true story about a KKK leader rejecting racism. I missed the very ending when I saw it in the theater, but when I watched it at home recently, I learned that after CP Ellis transformed, he worked as a union organizer for the AFL-CIO. In general I was a little surprised at how class-conscious the Klan leader is but not that surprised. Obviously we have plenty of reasons to fight racism, but there’s one more- a lot of racists will become progressives when they reject their racist beliefs. And we need to recognize the role that unions have to play in fighting racism, as I’ve written elsewhere on this blog. We need to convince fiscally moderate and conservative Dems to support unions as a way to combat racism.

I give it 5 stars out of 5.

Easy A (IMDB Wikipedia)

This movie is about a teenage girl who lies about having sex for various reasons- for example a gay boy gets her to lie about them having sex so that he won’t be outed. She  kind of enjoys having an (inaccurate) reputation as a promiscuous young woman, but she also says towards the end that she doesn’t know when she’ll lose her virginity- but that it might be the next day or it might be on her wedding night or somewhere in between.

I give it 5 stars out of 5.

The Color of Freedom (also known as “Goodbye Bafana") (IMDB Wikipedia)

It’s based on a true story, although I’m not sure how historically accurate it is. It’s inspirational to see a racist journey through life to a point where he is friends with Nelson Mandela. This movie also highlighted the fact that Mandela was a driving force behind the armed part of the ANC’s strategy. In all honesty, the ANC’s military wing did a better job of not killing civilians than the IRA did, but the IRA wasn’t too far behind the ANC as I explain here.

Strategically Comprehensive

In a recent poem I created this rhyming couplet about Sinn Fein and the IRA (if you're not familiar with my poems, I should explain that I almost always write with someone else's voice, not my own)- “We started with defending our areas, now we’re on the offensive/The republican struggle is strategically comprehensive.” (The first line isn’t relevant to this but I think it’s a good rhyme) (it's a reference to the diversity of their tactics and strategy, for more on that keep reading). Not long after that I discussed with a friend in Dublin (who is also a left-wing supporter of Sinn Fein) the calls by some for SF MPs in the British Parliament (now, *7* of them!) to take their seats (the Democratic Unionist Party took 10 and there is one independent unionist). The argument that I read here and there in favor of SF doing it is that, in the context of a conflict over Brexit between most N. Ireland voters and most British voters (including what must be a majority of the Tory party), N. Ireland needs representation from more than one anti-Brexit politician (the DUP are pro-Brexit and the independent Unionist is anti-Brexit). More generally and especially after the DUP used it’s MPs to prop up the Conservative government, the argument is also that N. Ireland needs anti-Tory representation to try and help stop more austerity and other Tory initiatives.

My friend in Dublin felt that abstention should be seen as a tactic and that SF could embarrass the DUP in the state-wide Parliament and reduce the strength of the Tory/DUP arrangement.

Initially I wrote the following:

“I’ve been thinking of SF and abstentionism. My opinion of Devlin-McAliskey is not hurt by the fact that she took her seat, but I’m inclined to go with what SF says about them taking their seats. I mean, clearly their voters seem just fine with that policy. I also wonder, what is behind that policy? Would they see it as recognizing British rule over the Six-Counties? is it that they have [outside the European Parliament] absolutely zero desire to vote on laws that effect the British people the way British politicians [in the Westminster Parliament] pass laws that govern Irish people [in the North]? Also, isn’t there a good chance it would result in another split in SF- not necessarily a tiny one?

I’m open-minded about what you’re saying, but so far I’m more inclined to just back whatever decision they make about it.”

(although I usually read a LOT about N. Ireland current events in the Irish News and the BBC News, I don’t have the money or time to also read more than a few things a month from republican sources of news and opinion and thus am not REAL familiar with the current thinking in SF)

(Bernadette Devlin-McAliskey is described here)

I’ll return to talk of abstention TODAY shortly.

After the 1981 Hunger-Strike which saw prisoner Bobby Sands elected to Westminster, SF started contesting elections in N. Ireland- I believe for the first time since the ’69/’70 split that saw the Provisionals created. This was a major step forward strategically for the Republican Movement (what back then would have been called the Provisional Republican Movement and what are called in more recent decades Sinn Fein and the IRA). I believe that during most of the years 1982-1997 the PRM was doing almost everything they could do to A) put pressure on the British and the Unionists, B) strengthen their movement, and C) help people. (although I wasn’t doing N. Ireland activism at the time, I would have supported the 1994-96 cease-fire by the IRA (the now permanent cease-fire started in 1997))

I’ll be briefly describing (and here and there evaluating) each part of this effort.

Armed Struggle

First, I did some research and some estimating and some math and concluded that only in .3% of their operations did the (P)IRA attempt to kill civilians. A post about that is here. Also, even though SF’s vote was only (on average) 40% of the Nationalist vote this is not the end of the story. There is plenty of evidence that almost the entire nationalist community supported the 1981 Hunger-Strikers (see the middle third of this). There is also evidence that almost no one in the Nationalist community went to the police about crime and instead almost everyone went to the IRA (this is supported by a statement by Eamonn McCann on pages 22-23 of the 1993 edition of his book “War and an Irish Town” and by an article around 2003 in the Irish Times). Most Nationalists who didn’t support the IRA’s campaign nonetheless agreed more or less with the IRA’s goals and wanted Volunteers (IRA members) around- for defense during times of sectarian tension and for when crime HAD to be dealt with violently.

Armed struggle was many things. It was a statement to the world that (independent of  how that statement was made) Republicans and Nationalists in general had serious problems with being ruled by Britain and with the inequality they experienced at the hands of the British and most of their Protestant neighbors. It was a refutation of Thatcher’s “Normalization” policy. The deaths of British soldiers, RUC officers and UDR (a locally recruited British Army unit) members made the news and underlined the occupation as such (and kind of suggested the possibility that if it weren’t for the British Army the IRA could defeat the local security forces and loyalist paramilitaries to such a degree that it would change the attitude of the Unionist population towards (and in) negotiations with their Nationalist neighbors and the Southern state). Those deaths were also aimed at sapping the will of the British to remain in N. Ireland. The bombing campaign in England had similar goals- sapping the will of the British, making the news and occasionally (in ways that RARELY resulted in civilian death) giving the British people some small sense of the terror their Army inflicted on the Nationalist population. Bombing of economic targets specifically in both England and the North was aimed at pressuring the business community into pressuring the British and the Unionists to change their attitude to negotiation with SF (bearing in mind what I write in the next paragraph (with parentheses), some IRA bombs in the North and in England were aimed largely at just disrupting life for people, to hopefully put more pressure on British and Unionist politicians). Armed struggle might have shown the security forces that they couldn’t  brutalize the Nationalist community with impunity.  Attacks on loyalist paramilitaries were relatively infrequent and probably rightly so- I think an argument has been made that they helped the British with their propaganda about being peace-keepers between two mutually hate-filled tribes.

(about 99% of the time that the IRA bombed civilian property the plan was to place the bomb, leave, phone in a warning, the place would be evacuated, and the bomb would go off. About 99% of the time that that was the plan that is what happened)

When I offered .3% as a relatively solid estimate for IRA operations where civilian life was targeted, I was not counting their efforts to help keep loyalist mobs outside Catholic areas and (towards the very beginning of the conflict) their efforts to help keep the security forces outside of some Catholic areas. The former saw them viewed as defenders of the Nationalist community. The latter made the “no-go” areas (especially Free Derry) possible for about two years. Including that stuff would lower it from .3% to something like .2%

As part of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission process after the first democratic election in South Africa, the ANC partly justified it’s use of force by saying that by attacking the infrastructure and security forces of the Apartheid state they were encouraging others to resist in other ways- that is, they showed that it was possible to strike at the state oppressing them.

Mass Struggle

Mass Struggle might be defined as the mobilization of large numbers of people for non-violent political conflict where their numbers (not arms or money or political power) are their weapons and public spaces are their battlefields- what we saw with the civil rights movements in both the US and N. Ireland. Marches and rallies around the prisoners issue (roughly 1978-1981) were organized (frequently by members or supporters of the Provisional Republican Movement). In terns of getting people in the street it was a massively successful effort, but when the prisoners struggle was over mass struggle appears to have decreased. The nationalist community broke back down into it’s constituent parts and marched separately or not at all. But SF still did organize marches and rallies and such and some WERE very large. Such actions demonstrate how DEEP a movement’s support is, and can result in helpful confrontations with the security forces, in a way more widely accepted than armed struggle.

Young People Rioting

I don’t know how many of those young people were members or supporters of the PRM but I think this is very relevant to putting pressure on the British. This was closer to being mass struggle than armed struggle was and could have been the result of mass struggle. But it also contained some plusses that were found more with armed struggle. It was probably more likely to get in the news than mass struggle, it could have resulted in serious injuries for the security forces (and often did) and even in the absence of an injury it could have sapped the will of the non-local part of the British Army, who were reminded more deeply than usual that they were unwanted in certain areas. But as it was less lethal than armed struggle and less likely (probably a LOT less likely) to result in civilian deaths caused by nationalists and republicans, it was more acceptable than armed struggle to many people.

Elections

Although I feel safe assuming that the PIRA campaign had the support of about 40% of the nationalist community in the 1970s, it is helpful to be able to point to votes for SF as proof that almost half that community DID support the PIRA’s armed campaign in the years 1982-1997. I believe in both “parliamentary” and “non-parliamentary” methods for creating political change but I, and a LOT of people attach a lot of value to how much popular support underground armies have. Election campaigns also give another chance to interact with voters and with the media and explain a party’s platform. Elected politicians, even those who don’t take their seats, might get more respect and/or a larger audience of (for example) potential converts and and might get more assistance of one sort or another from other politicians or activists, etc. (although less relevant, elections were also contested in the South)

Local Government Battles

SF not only contested local government elections, when elected they took their seats. This resulted in two different kinds of important battles engaged in by SF councilors and activists. First, to gain equality within the council- MANY SF councilors were blocked from access to the chamber, and/or to funding they and their areas were entitled to. Second, battles over issues relevant to local government. For example, around 1990 (according to the 1993 edition of McCann’s “War and an Irish Town” (p. 43)) a SF councilor in Derry led a successful campaign against the building of a toxic waste incinerator outside the city. Lastly, in general I think that sitting on local government councils proved that they were willing to try non-violent democratic engagement with their Unionist political opponents.

Propaganda

Propaganda is often defined neutrally and just means putting out a party’s message. SF did one newspaper during this time. One thing that might be sort of unusual in such situations was the HUGE number of murals in areas that were at least heavily if not mostly republican. Murals about the IRA, murals about international struggle, murals comparing the experience of nationalists to the experiences of people of color elsewhere, murals about community issues like poverty or eating disorders, murals about other topics. (I am almost certain that at least 90% of those murals were commissioned by SF, SF members or SF supporters)


International Solidarity

SF has done a fairly good job of generating international solidarity with them and with the nationalist community in some countries outside Ireland and Great Britain. But as I have explained elsewhere on this blog, in my opinion they are handicapping this work by making their approach in America much more moderate than progressive. (although significantly different, semi-successful efforts were made to mobilize supporters in Britain)

There is one tool that was used against Apartheid and that is being used against Israel that they have not pushed and that is boycott of, divestment from, and sanctions against the UK (not UN sanctions of course because of the veto the UK has in the Security Council). SF might have been silent about BDS because they knew that they didn’t have enough support globally to make it work. I go into that in a post here, starting with the paragraph that begins with “Was S. Africa much worse?”


One reason I have done this post is to say that members and supporters of the Republican Movement (and others in the Nationalist community in the North, but I have focused on SF because I support them) have done almost everything they could do to get the British out. Which makes it even more infuriating when I think of how little was done by the Left in western Europe and by the Left in America.


Abstention Today

Going back to abstention in Westminster today, exchanging some emails about it with my Dublin friend got me thinking more about SF taking their seats. I wonder if Westminster could be/should be seen by SF as just another battlefield on which to push the peace process, equality and even Irish Unity. In general it could be a forum to raise those issues. Also, it could help build a broad-based movement of British people supporting the Nationalist community if SF were to consistently vote progressively on things affecting British people like austerity, the environment, etc. (there’s a small mystery for me- the Troops Out Movement, which had good relations with SF, seems to have evaporated??????)

I should say that I believe that what we are talking about here are tactics and strategy but not principles (I have supported the 1997 IRA cease-fire since day one). I believe that the PRM usually did a great job of using them during the conflict and has usually been doing a great job using most of them since the conflict died down and basically ended (I would say around 2005) (with the exception of armed struggle and rioting the others are still being used by members and supporters of SF).

IF SF decide to take their seats, I would not criticize them about that (possibly about some of their votes, but with the exception of abortion I doubt even that would happen).

No Surrender!!

Below are two new poems (for more on my poetry see this). They're both based on the same original and are both about the same thing.

For the rest of the poems, click the "Lyrics" label at the bottom.

“No Surrender (to the BA)” based on “No Surrender (to the IRA)” by Strikeforce UK, original lyrics are here.

1. This is basically set in the 80s, or the late 70s. and is about the IRA (it could be about other mainstream republicans also but I prefer to limit it to the IRA).
2. The BA is the British Army.
3. Westmacott was the highest-ranking British officer killed by the IRA and was with the elite SAS.
4. I give this poem four stars out of five.
**5. 43% of this version is me, 57% is the original.
6. UPDATED 1/15/16 Based on what might be called a fairly scientific look, only about .2% of the IRA's operations intentionally resulted in civilian death.

No surrender!

No surrender to the BA
Those evil bastards had better not stay
We stand within the nationalist community
We show the scum they cannot act with impunity

chorus
No surrender, no surrender, no surrender to the BA
No surrender, no surrender, no longer will they keep our freedom at bay
No surrender, no surrender, no surrender to the the British Army
No surrender, no surrender, we will drive them into the sea

loyalist terror attacks are going on still
And London don't give a fuck who they maim and kill
Herbert Westmacott went bye bye
And all you SAS fuckers are gonna die

chorus

No surrender!

We will smash that imperialist scum
No time to lose cos the battle's begun
We are of the global working-class
We won't back down and we’ll always kick ass

***********

“No Surrender (to the British Army)” based on “No Surrender (to the IRA)” by Strikeforce UK, original lyrics are here. (that gets the first line of the second verse wrong- it's what I have below)

1. This is basically set in the 80s, or the late 70s. and is about the IRA. (it could be about other mainstream republicans also but I prefer to limit it to the IRA).
2. The Rand was and is the currency of of South Africa.
3. During that 1.3 decade period, they were definitely pursuing revolution (ignoring conflict with the British state, I think what they probably had in mind was almost totally bloodless compared to most revolutions).
4. The Dail is the Irish Parliament. The second one was the first after the War of Independence. During it’s life there was the split which lead to the civil war and for decades until recently most (or almost all) republicans looked to it‘s surviving republican members for legitimacy. (It was only gradually, considering the violence and bitterness of the civil war, that many and then most and now almost all republicans recognize(d) the legitimacy of the Parliament and Government in Dublin in the last seven decades). (I think that mainstream republicans were a little slow to mostly and now totally or almost totally recognize the legitimacy of the state in the South)
5. I give this poem 4 stars out of five.
**6. 32% of this version is me, 68% is the original.
7. UPDATED 1/15/16 Based on what might be called a fairly scientific look, only about .2% of the IRA's operations intentionally resulted in civilian death.
8. Che is Che Gueverra, who has been credited with developing rural guerrilla warfare.

No surrender!

No surrender to the BA
We battle those bastards in the spirit of Che
Inspired by those who fight against the rand
We show the British scum that it's our land

No surrender, no surrender, no surrender to the BA
No surrender, no surrender, our revolution is underway
No surrender, no surrender, no surrender to the Brits
No surrender, no surrender, hit them with the blitz

Their terrorist attacks are going on still
And they don’t give a fuck who they maim and kill
Margaret Thatcher better wave bye bye
Cos Brit imperialists are gonna die

chorus
No surrender!

We will smash that British scum
No time to lose as the battle’s begun
We're loyal,to the second dail
We won't back down and we will never run

chorus

The anti-Apartheid Struggle and Republicans

I have mentioned Apartheid S. Africa several times on my blog in some connection to the Republican Movement. I've been aware of four connections between the two groups in recent decades, and a couple more connections between the two have just surfaced, which I’ll get to soon (I'm not sure they are as confirmed as I would like them, but the source for the new info seems like a good source).

First, here are the four connections I’ve been aware of for some number of years

1) A plaque remembering the sacrifice of both anti-Apartheid and Irish Republican Prisoners of war, is on Robben Island, which is kind of a monument to the anti-Apartheid struggle. That info was found here.
UPDATE 1/27/17  If that link is dead for some reason, I did a search of http://www.independent.co.uk using google and found a link to the article. It should show up here and is head-lined "Adams pays tribute to detainees' suffering." One quote from the article is:

The ANC changed its mind after Mr Adams's meeting with Mr Mandela who described Sinn Fein as "an old friend and ally''.

2) In 1981, as IRA (and INLA) prisoners went on hunger-strike, there was talk among ANC Prisoners of War of going on a solidarity hunger-strike. That's taken from an on-line only article in The Nation, by Tom Hayden- it was published some time in 2004, or 2005, or 2006. I can't find it online. When I do I'll update this.

3) In 2005 the Minister of Intelligence for South Africa visited Ireland as a guest of Sinn Fein and compared what he did as a member of the ANC's military wing during the anti-Apartheid struggle with what IRA members did during the Troubles. He spoke at republiccan events and at one point, according to the Irish Times said: "I could never accept that Sinn Féin has debased republicanism. They carried the flag of republicanism in the most difficult of times. ... The Irish struggle is a particularly heroic one." You can read at least a little of an Irish Times article about this here. If all you read there is the brief free paragraph, reading this from a Sinn Fein publication will make it clear what the Minister meant with his comments in that brief intro of the Irish Times article. I now have the text of the article and can email it to you if you want

4) In 1992 Nelson Mandela was on a British political talk-show and said that he supported the IRA. That information is found here (it's towards the bottom, says "mandela. and. ira").


There are some more pieces of information about this relationship. Those are found here, here, and here.

UPDATE 4/25/15 Another one here.

Tom

Star Trek: The Next Generation Reviews X

This is one of my posts where I “review” Star Trek episodes. I will be giving each one a star rating. I sometimes will make some comments about non-political parts of them that I like or don’t like. I’ll sometimes use the issues raised in the episode to discuss similar issues in real life. And I will sometimes simply high-light the progressive politics of ST. ST is in-line with the three original themes of this blog, as I explain in the first ST post where I offer some general thoughts about ST.

I’m not very familiar with The Original Series and there might be some small amount of material there that would affect what I say about Star Trek (i.e. how often religion is mentioned)

Lastly. multi-culturalism is such a pervasive theme in ST that I only comment on it when it goes beyond the norm (i.e. inter-species partners).

“In Theory” See this for a plot summary.

A non-political episode, I give it one star out of five.

“Redemption” parts 1 and 2 See this and this for a plot summary.

In this two-parter we hear and see more about how A: Klingon women are second-class citizens and B: Romulan women seem to be full partners with the men in government and the military.

When Data submits himself for discipline because he disobeyed Picard’s orders, Picard explains that “Starfleet doesn’t want officers who blindly follow orders without analyzing the situation.” He also says “the claim ‘I was only following orders’ has been used to justify too many tragedies in our history.”

Among other things that would be a reference to Germany in World War II. I’ve heard that in the decades since the war the German military does something that more or less gives members of the military guidance on when to disobey an order, sort of encouraging them to disobey under certain circumstances.

I give it three stars out of five.

“Darmok” See this for a plot summary.

A non-political episode. I give it one star out of five.

“Ensign Ro” See this for a plot summary.

This episode is about the Cardassian occupation of Bajor, “terrorism” and Starfleet’s Prime Directive. for my thoughts on ST’s idea of “terrorism” see this, towards the end of the review of “Defiant.”

The episode appeared to be an effort to raise the issue of the Palestinians, as elements of the Bajoran story are also found in the Palestinian story. I’m almost certain that on Deep Space Nine there was no talk about Bajoran refugees while Cardassia occupied Bajor, and yet in this episode it’s explained that the Bajorans were expelled from Bajor by the Cardassians.

There are three items about Bajoran culture.

1. Bajorans identify themselves by first saying their last name and then saying their first. Ro says that many Bajorans have stopped correcting people about that because they want to assimilate.

2. Towards the beginning, Riker tells Ro to take off her earring, an item of some significance for Bajorans. At the end, it’s implied that Picard will let her wear the earring.

3. Picard says that ancient Bajorans had an advanced culture when humans were not yet standing erect.


Then there’s the Prime Directive. It’s mentioned as why the Federation did nothing to support the Bajoran resistance to the Cardassians. A Bajoran leader criticizes the Federation for that. In general I’ve got kind of mixed feelings about the PD and generally support Starfleet commanding officers when they bend or break it. It seems like in general it’s a very good thing. But the Cardassian occupation of Bajor is one situation where the Federation should have intervened, at least by giving aid to the Bajorans (I’m open-minded about the idea of Starfleet pushing the Cardassians out themselves (one of my favorite books is about Cuban forces invading S. Africa to put an end to Apartheid (I wouldn’t be surprised if, if it had happened in reality, the ANC would have objected for various reasons, but it’s still overall a good story (it’s called “Vortex” by Larry Bond)))). It was not an internal matter for Cardassia, it was an inter-stellar issue. I mean Cardassia was only able to annex Bajor through massive force (and to one degree or another expelling the Bajorans). That annexation shouldn’t be recognized as legitimate. At one point Picard says of the resistance- “arming these people is a violation of everything the Federation stands for.” Ro says that she agrees, but then explains about how her father was tortured to death while she was forced to watch. She seems fairly sympathetic to the resistance. Picard is wrong about Starfleet arming the Resistance (not long after making that statement he becomes critical of an Admiral for his sympathetic attitude towards the Cardassians).

Lastly, although it was revealed that the Bajoran resistance had not carried out the attack on the Federation settlement, I would say that trying to get attention for your cause by attacking a 3rd party is a bad idea- if the resistance had the capability, they could have found Cardassian targets in Federation territory and attacked them. The IRA attacked British targets in other European countries (Germany and the Netherlands). On one hand it seems like it had little effect on what people in those countries thought about the North; on the other (and this was probably their main reason for doing it) it does make it easier to convince people that the IRA’s campaign was largely aimed at the British security forces and specifically the British Army.

I give this episode four stars out of five.

“Silicon Avatar” See this for a plot summary.

A non-political episode. I give it one star out of five.

Star Trek: The Next Generation Reviews D

This is one of my posts where I “review” Star Trek episodes. I will be giving each one a star rating. I sometimes will make some comments about non-political parts of them that I like or don’t like. I’ll sometimes use the issues raised in the episode to discuss similar issues in real life. And I will sometimes simply high-light the progressive politics of ST. ST is in-line with the three original themes of this blog, as I explain in the first ST post where I offer some general thoughts about ST.

I’m not very familiar with The Original Series and there might be some small amount of material there that would affect what I say about Star Trek (i.e. how often religion is mentioned)

Lastly. multi-culturalism is such a pervasive theme in ST that I only comment on it when it goes beyond the norm (i.e. inter-species partners).

“Datalore” See this for a plot summary.

A non-political episode. I give it two stars out of five.

“Angel One” See this for a plot summary.

This is a fairly political episode. It’s about a matriarchal society where males are considered stupid and are denied the vote. It’s sort of illustrating for men what women have gone through during many centuries and across most of Earth. One of the planet’s leaders label those who dissent “anarchists.”

Lastly, it also includes the Federation’s opposition to the death penalty.

I give it three stars out of five.


“11001001” See this for a plot summary.

A non-political episode. I give it two stars out of five.

“Too Short A Season” See this for a plot summary.

The political aspect of this episode is the issue of giving weapons to one or both sides in a conflict. I’d say that this is always a bad idea, considering which States are manufacturing weapons (and ships, planes, etc.). I imagine South Africa might be closest to being ethical arms dealers. In general, the world needs less arms and arms dealers are fairly repulsive (for more of my thoughts on that see this where I discuss the episode “Business As Usual”).

When I think of anyone selling/giving arms to both sides in a conflict, that is a horrible idea. Sometimes giving arms to one side (for example the Soviet Union giving training and arms to the ANC’s military wing) is good, but aiding both sides simply results in a longer war with all that that entails.

I give it two stars out of five.

Some new lyrics

So, this is another lyrics post. Some of these are really good, those will be towards the bottom, the okay ones will be towards the top. Also, three of them are about anti-racist skinheads, the first post I did with those songs contains some notes in the intro that you might want to read before you read those lyrics.

That's about it. Like I said, I start with the ones that are only okay and end with the ones that are the best. The ones that involve twisting lyrics I politically despise (see this for an explanation) will be identified with a ++ and I'll specify what the original is.

For the rest of the poems click on the "lyrics" label at the bottom (there are at least two pages worth of posts, so click on the "older posts" at the bottom of the first page).

(I've been and will probably continue to be, kind of lazy about indicating when the chorus is repeated twice at the end of the song, that sort of thing)

I just deleted one of the worst poems I've done, about the Black Panthers

1. RASH. About Irish anti-racist skinheads.
2. People's Democracy. About People's Democracy, the left-wing/civil rights/anti-partition group in N. Ireland that existed from 1968 until sometime in the 1980s.
3. Spirit of the Streets. Anti-racist skinheads.
4. PIRA. The IRA in N. Ireland.
5. Red Rider. Anti-racist skinheads.
6. Stoop Down Low Party. About how bad the Social Democratic and Labour Party in N. Ireland is.

UPDATE 12/12/10 I just took down a poem about the ANC. The quality annoyed me, AND I'm not sure I have enough knowledge about the ANC's struggle to write a poem about it, even a brief one.

*****

“RASH” based on “One Shot Paddy” by Justice, original lyrics are here.


1. V-E day refers to the day victory was declared in Europe during WWII.
2. the last two lines don’t rhyme in the original, which seems to work for listening to the original, and I’m going to keep it as is, just changing IRA to ARA.
3. Brown is the color of fascism.
4. RASH is Red and Anarchistic SkinHeads.
5. ARA is Anti-Racist Action, a group connected to anti-racist skinheads.
**6. 24% of this version is me, 76% is the original.
7. I give this song/poem three stars out of five.
8. I don't know why I kept the first two lines as they were in the original. I would have made more sense if the poem was about Irish SHARPs/RASH (I kind of bumped into (on the web) an Irish SHARP, and when he criticized me for my position on the North, I ripped him a new one). I might change that first verse, one way or the other.
9. I am now changing this poem to being about IRISH RASH, instead of American RASH.
10. AFA is Anti-Fascist Action (Ireland)

In Ireland many years ago or so the legend says
Saint Patrick roamed the hills and glens to drive the snakes away,
But now Ireland has anti-fascist skins- they’re bad news for the brown
Their name is RASH and it’s fash that they will hound!

[chorus]
The fash are getting worried they’ve all gone underground
If the RASH see them they know they’re going down
So the next time that you see the fash with their faces full of fright
Look out for the RASH and make sure that your laces aren’t white

Through the cities of Ireland these gallant heroes roam
They’ll wander through the streets they like to call their home,
And when they find fash they loudly charge forward and attack
It is then that you will hear the crack of bone as the fash are pushed back

Chorus

So if you’re home at night and the newsflash it is read,
The RASH has been at work – another fash bashed in the head
And when it comes time to celebrate V-E day’s cheer,
Remember the RASH and the gallant AFA!

Chorus

****

“People’s Democracy” based on “We Are The Law” ++ RACIST by Kill Baby Kill, original lyrics are here.

1. People’s Democracy was a militant, left-wing, and initially student part of the Civil Rights movement in N. Ireland starting in Oct. 1968 (it later became a political party and then around 1980 declined, and many members joined Sinn Fein and then it adopted another name). There’s more about them here, and the first 1/3 of this. PD doesn’t exist anymore, so this doesn’t violate my rules on publishing songs about actual organizations.
2. The first line is kind of a reference to the ambush at Burntollet.
3. The references to fighting are meant to be about 95% non-violent. I imagine there was some involvement with rioting (especially Devlin's role in the Battle of the Bogside) and there was some support for the IRA, but I think PD were largely about non-violence.
4. Probably something like 50%-60% of PD in 1969 were Marxist.
5. I’m not sure how into Irish pride they were, but I think the vast majority in 1969 identified as Irish and that probably went up to 100% about 2 years later, and I only like to change as much as I need to. Irish pride, most of the time is different than white pride. (I just heard something making me think that it's probably a small minority of northern nationalists that would talk about "Irish pride"; I still feel odd completely re-writing that line, so I'm going to keep it)
6. The Six-Counties is a republican term for N. Ireland.
**7. This version is about 46% me, 54% the original.
8. I give this song/poem three stars out of five.
9. PD were very anti-racist and had connections with the Black Panthers.

Rise up all you fallen marchers, rise up and take your stands again.
Let us march for a new tomorrow, let us fight until the day we win
Marching into countless battles, students marching side by side.
Nothing stronger than the troops of Marx, nothing stronger than Irish pride.

Student legions marching for radical change, starting in Oct 1968.
To all of those who cross our path: capitalism and sectarianism we do hate
Never will they take us down, we’re born to fight and so we will.
The Six-Counties are our battleground, for the working-class we’re fighting still.

Chorus:
We are marching on the street.
PD… we take on the elite.
We will win and you know why.
People’s Democracy will never die.

Irish men and women the time has come,
to take down all the Unionist scum.
Our marching days are here now,
to our mighty legions they shall bow.
So listen here, we are socialists,
we keep on fighting Brits and Unionists.
We keep on fighting til sectarianism ends,
to this government we shall never bend

2nd Chorus
We are marching on the street.
PD… we take on the elite.
We will win and you know why.
we’re People’s Democracy and we will never die.

*******

“Spirit of the Streets” based on “We Are the Law” ++RACIST by Kill Baby Kill, original lyrics are here.

1. “Spirit of the streets” is probably more associated with traditional, non-racist skinheads than with anti-racist skinheads (SkinHeads Against Racial Prejudice, SHARP) but I’ve seen SHARP youtube videos that included imagery with that phrase.
2. Skinheads have a sense of working-class pride and/or pride in being a skinhead. With the anti-racists, they do represent the best of the skinhead culture.
3. Skinheads wear different colored laces on their boots to indicated their politics or lack thereof.
4. The culture being referred to is the SKINHEAD culture, or subculture, which SHARPs feel is at risk from the Nazi skinheads (also known as boneheads).
5. The reference to workers seems to go a bit beyond how I normally talk about the working-class and anti-racist skinheads (traditionally skinhead is overwhelmingly working-class and probably remains so, or at least mostly so). If it does drift to the left, and only some small majority of anti-racist skinheads are more or less left-wing, that’s fine, I’m a leftist and that's how I'll sometimes write the songs.
6. In various ways, anti-racist skinheads are helpful to those who struggle en masse, even though probably something like 1/3 of anti-racist skinheads don’t really think about that (there’s a spectrum on this, and many are relatively non-political).
**7. This version is 33% me, 67% the original.
8. I give this song/poem three stars out of five.
UPDATE 2/1/11 9. As far as helping "those who struggle en mass." A: Although many/most SHARPs don't care about that much, if at all, the fact is that what they do is helpful for people trying to combat racism non-violently; B: I use that rhyme pretty often, because I often forget to try similar words like "last."

Rise up all you fallen fighters, rise up and take your stands again.
Let us fight for a new tomorrow, let us fight until the day we win.
Marching into countless battles, Skinheads marching side by side.
Nothing stronger than the skins of SHARP, nothing stronger than Skinhead pride.

Shaven-headed legions march for freedom, Nazis won’t escape their fate
To all Nazis who cross our path: change your laces before it’s too late
Never will they take us down, we’re born to fight and so we will.
Our streets are our battleground, for the working-class and our culture we’re fighting still.

Chorus:
We are the spirit of the streets
Skinheads… We’re the elite.
We wear our boots and you know why.
SHARP Skinheads will never die.

Workers now the time has come,
to save your class from the scum.
The boneheads’ days are over now,
to our mighty legions they shall bow.
So listen here, this is our town,
we keep on fighting the Nazi clowns
We keep on fighting for the working-class,
fighting to help those who struggle en masse

2nd Chorus
We are the spirit of the streets
Skinheads… We’re the elite.
We wear our boots and you know why.
we’re SHARP Skinheads and we will never die.

*******

“PIRA” based on “CYC” ++LOYALIST by Rab C. original lyrics are here (this is probably the most offensive thing I listen to, it might be upsetting)

1. The original is loyalist. This is about the Provisional IRA.
2. The smell is from the firing of weapons.
3. AK-47s are automatic rifles, RPGs are Rocket Propelled Grenades.
4. Peeler is police. Squaddies are British soldiers.
5. The Warsaw ghetto was one of the few places where there was Jewish resistance to the Holocaust. There’s a great movie about it called “Uprising.” (see this). You might think that this reference is innapropriate, considering that the IRA accepted aid from Nazi Germany and did some things that might have slightly benefited Nazi Germany. I did an entire post about this where I ripped the IRA a new one over it, and went half as far about Irish neutrality during the war. For my post on this, go here.
6. The RUC were, until 2001, the police.
7. The song, including the last line, is not an endorsement of continuing armed struggle past 1997.
8. This is the 3rd song in which I assume that republican paramilitaries wore combat boots. It just worked too well in some ways, and it’s possible some/most/all of them DID wear combat boots. UPDATE 3/11/10: A good source has told me that, yes, sometimes they did, but it was more common in rural areas.
9. The song describes something which probably happened zero or one time the entire conflict, although some things almost as intense probably happened something like five times. I’ve seen video of one gun-fight that was sort of similar.
10. The first two lines don’t rhyme in the original or my version, but in both it seems to work.
**11. 46% of this version is me, 54% is the original. Also I ignored one entire verse that I couldn’t do much with.
12. I give this song/poem four stars out of five.
UPDATE 2/1/11 13. As far as triangulating fire, I am almost certain that's something combatants in combat do, although I can only find a small number of web-pages with that phrase. I believe it refers to pinning your opponent down with fire from multiple directions, or something like that.
13. UPDATED 2/8/16 Based on what might be called a fairly scientific look, only about .2% of the IRA's operations intentionally resulted in civilian death.

All told their partners when they got home that,
They didn't know where the smell came from,
They attacked with AKs and RPGs and boots on their feet,
And they forced them all the way back down the street,
Cos they hate the Queen and the House of Lords,
They’re the band that defended the Lower Falls ward
All the peelers were acting like Nazi pricks,
And the Provos triangulated their fire and put them in a fix

It was the maddest thing that you ever did see,
All the young soldiers in D Company
They battled them good and they dealt them a real blow
They fought like the Jewish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto

When the Squaddies tried to intervene,
They got it too the best you've ever seen,
The RUC ran away in total retreat,
They left their colleagues behind, littering the street

The crowds all cheered as the Provos marched by,
All the soldiers with their head held high,
They clapped their hands and they stapmed their feet,
Republican Fighters are on the street.

So please love don't be mad with me,
Send my uniform out for a wee dry clean,
And if the peelers break down the door,
Tell 'em Ireland unfree will always be at war.

****

UPDATE 7/27/11 There used to be a poem here about the killing of five communists by the Klan and Nazis in 1979. Apparently there's VERY few anti-racists out there who believe that their deaths should be commemorated. There's also the fact that it had potential to give former friends and potential allies the wrong idea about my beliefs.

****

“Red Rider” based on “White Rider” ++RACIST by Skrewwdriver, original lyrics are here.

1. This is my 3rd song about Red and Anarchistic SkinHeads (RASH) exclsuively, which is kind of over-representing thier numbers among anti-racist skinheads, but A: I’m a leftist and close the political center of RASH, and B: I needed a color, and there’s not much of a color for the rest of the anti-racist skinheads (blue’s close, but doesn’t symbolize them the way that red symbolizes communism).
2. Historically skinheads have been into scooters, and I think that today is much more popular with anti-racist and non-racist skins than it is with Nazis. So, the “rider” part actually makes a lot of sense.
3. I’m tempted to de-sex the reference to fore-fathers, but it’s largely referring to, for example, those who fought fascism in the Spanish civil war or those who fought with the Allies in WWII (at the very least those who were motivated by anti-fascism and fought in the Atlantic/N. Africa/Europe, since we’re not talking about Japanese-imperialist skinheads), so the people I’m referring to would be something like 90% male. UPDATE 3/18/15 I added "fore-mothers."
4. Pride in this version refers to working-class pride.
5. Just like the other anti-fascist version of this song I’ve done, the reference to standing fast is a bit problematic, but works more or less, in this case, better than the other one if you consider that it’s calling on workers to oppose bigotry and fascism in whatever way they feel comfortable but to also support anti-racist skinheads (unless they're pacifists).
6. Just to be clear, that’s all peopleS meaning all cultures.
7. Overwhelmingly, when white supremacists try working within one of the two mjaor parties, it’s the Republican party (there's probably only some small minority of Republican tools who are aligned with the white supremacists, although there's a larger number that flirt with white supremacists) (I do know of at least one case where Nazi skinheads worked the election campaign of a Republican).
8. The culture referred to is the skinhead culture, which anti-racist skinheads feel is under threat from Nazi skinheads.
**9. This version is 23% me, 77% the original.
10. I give this song/poem four stars out of five.

You ride through the streets with your head held up high
For the working-class and your culture you're willing to die
Your forefathers and fore-mothers fought and your forefathers fore-mothers died
They died for a feeling they felt deep inside

Chorus
Red rider, red rider, your strength is your pride
red rider, red rider, you'll stand, never hide
red rider, red rider, your boots are your voice
You scorn the conscripted, you're fighting through choice

Your banners are unfolded, carry them with love
To fight for the working-class is a gift from above
Some fools will oppose you, true workers will stand fast
But victory shall be ours for the multi-racial working-class

You feel love for all peoples, disdain for the fools
The enemy's allied with the Republican tools
You fight for the working-class which shall be proud and free
And the only reward that you crave is victory

******

“Stoop Down Low Party” based on “Just Look Around” by Sick Of It All, original lyrics are here.

1. This is set sometime in the early 1990s.
2. Stoops are members of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, Sinn Fein’s moderate rival in the nationalist community. See this.
3. FF and FG are Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, the two main parties in the Republic and are right around the center on economics, especially FG, and FF has a history of corruption. They also don’t care about the North as much as they should, especially FG (recently FF started organizing in the North).
4. The Irish Army is often sent overseas on UN Peace-Keeping missions. Although I think that’s great (and I think most republicans would agree), and it’s unsure what republicans would have done if they had had control of it during the conflict, I like the idea of republicans complaining about how the Army is being sent over-seas when there’s a need for it in the North! Volunteers are members of republican paramilitaries.
5. Hoods are young, usually more or less apolitical nationalist youth who engage in behavior that they more or less shouldn’t be- basically criminal, although there’s a spectrum and probably some of it is what a lot teenagers do everywhere- smoking pot for example. Because there was no support for the police, Nationalists would turn to the IRA to deal with crime, and this created a lot of hostility between the IRA and their supporters (“Provos”) on one hand and the hoods on the other hand, especially since, as far as I can tell, some large minority of the time the IRA either went too far or should have done nothing at all.
6. The majority of Provos at that time would have been against homophobia, but I know that some large minority were homophobic.
7. The three groups I chose- Provos, hoods, and gay people, seem like the best substitutes for the chorus, and it pretty much makes sense. To whatever degree the hoods are political, they’re closer to the Provos than the SDLP and we’re talking about working-class Nationalist youth who don’t benefit from the SDLP’s moderate politics. The SDLP back then were also very homophobic.
8. The SDLP is very middle-class and elements of the nationalist middle-class about that time were doing very well.
9. The Lower Falls is a working-class nationalist area where, at that point, SF was getting something like 70% of the vote.
10. Although there were other problems with the education system (it was structurally biased against working-class kids (that’s in the process of being changed, by SF)), I decided to pick on the Catholic Church and their homophobia and moderate, almost pro-British politics.
11. The Dail is the parliament in Dublin, which has basically never shown as much concern about the North as it should.
12. Squaddies are British soldiers, an estate is basically a neighborhood. The hatred is aimed at the British government and the British Army.
**13. This version is 29% me, 71% the original.
14. There are places where the lines don't rhyme in either my version or the original.
15. The line about Irish mankind is off a little bit, but it says Northern Irish (within a couple hours of publishing I added Northern) so it's referring to the Nationalist population, it's pretty accurate, unemployment back then was pretty high for Catholics.
16. I give this song/poem four stars out of five.
17. The voice in this poem is militant and sort of pro-IRA. But many of his/her complaints would also be voiced by a lot of SDLP voters and some SDLP members.
UPDATE 2/1/11 18. In the 5th line of the 2nd verse, I just replaced the word "they're" with the word "London's."

The question the stoops keep asking me
how can one so young be so bitter and angry
well, the answer is plain to see
maybe if they weren't so blind they'd see what i see
i see the Brits patrolling on our streets
on every corner they're asking for ID
i start riots whenever I can
but sometimes the Brits just keep driving by
i see the repression and unemployment of Northern Irish mankind
the greed of FF and FG has made them blind
to our problems
Dublin sends battallions overseas,
Volunteers right here are fighting a war everyday

Chorus:
I see the hood that hates the Provo
Provo against the gays, neighbor against neighbor
and they're all too blind to see

When we fight each other it puts the SDLP at ease
it keeps us so busy, so they can do what they please
election time comes and they're out for votes
that's when you see and hear from them the most
The North is what London's calling a democracy
that's just another word for hypocrisy
Nationalist workers keep fallin' for the SDLP’s bait
And when they realize, it's always too late

Chorus

As the stoops get richer, the Lower Falls goin' hungry
i've seen the toll it takes on the workers family
education system that's obsolete
Preaches bigotry and tells kids not to riot in the street
see a father's fear, hear a mother's cry
what kind of a Dail watches our children die
The squaddies raid every single home in the estate
then you're gonna ask me why I hate

Why don't you open up your eyes so you can see
open up your ears so you can hear
take a look around and you will find
take a look around and you will find out why

One last note: Even with the songs that are only about 10% me (and at the upper end, one is 75% me), I have a request, although I don't have strong feelings or expectations about this. First, I want credit for these songs. Second, I'd appreciate it if the notes follow the lyrics around the internet. If you modify the lyrics further, please either make some notes for the changes if you leave some of my changes, or just provide a link to this URL so people can see my version. Although I'm not sure how many people will like what I'm doing with the lyrics, to one degree or another (depending on how much I changed them) I'm proud of these songs- and at the risk of getting a little personal, if people like the songs, I could really use the extra boost of getting credit for them right now (or if you don't like them, they were all written by Sarah Palin- that fascist, what kind of sick person enjoys altering racist lyrics?).

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.