Don't Vote GOP: Three New Poems

(this was originally published 4/27/20 but for some reason it stopped showing up, so I am republishing it now)

Here are three more poems. They are all based on offensive lyrics, I explain that here.

For all the poems, you can click on the "lyrics" label the bottom.

1. Stop the Klan. What you think it's about.
2. Irish Citizen Army. The Irish workers' militia of 1913-1916.
3. Don't Vote SDLP. What's wrong with Northern Ireland's Social Democratic and Labour Party.

“Stop the Ku Klux Klan” based on “Stand Up and Be Counted” by either The Klansmen in the 1980s or the racist assholes who originally wrote it several decades ago. Original lyrics are here.

1. In 2017 or 2018 or 2019 there were reports that caravans of refugees from Central America were traveling through Mexico on their way to the US. Trump used this, probably successfully, to whip up anti-immigrant hatred. These were definitely refugees and they were traveling in caravan for security.
2. I believe that there is a spectrum between democratic and undemocratic and I believe that, politically, the US is closer to the democratic end of the spectrum. But my thoughts about how we can make it more democratic politically are here. I worry greatly that Trump is a fascist, literally, and my thoughts about that are in the middle of a post here.

3. Trump is a racist. See this and this. There’s also his comments on the murder of an anti-fascist by a fascist in Charlottesville in 2017. And there’s this, that I published elsewhere on my blog:

[When asked about David Duke endorsing him, his] response in an interview was:

Well, just so you understand, I don’t know anything about David Duke. OK? I don't know anything about what you’re even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists. So, I don't know. I don’t know, did he endorse me or what’s going on, because, you know, I know nothing about David Duke. I know nothing about white supremacists. And so you're asking me a question that I'm supposed to be talking about people that I know nothing about.

4. The Torah is the main Jewish text.
5. My thoughts about religion are found here, although a lot of those posts are only partly relevant.
6. **58% of this version is me, 42% is the original.

7. I give this poem 3 stars out of 5.

8. UPDATE 6/1/22 I believe there's a spectrum between democratic and undemocratic and I USED to believe we were in the middle but closer to the democratic end of the spectrum. With what the GOP has done in the last couple years I think we might be closer to the UNdemocratic end of the spectrum.

Chorus:
Stand up and be counted, welcome the caravans
Stand up and be counted, and stop the Ku Klux Klan

We are anti-racists and love our democracy true
We always can be counted on, when there's a job to do
We educate our communities day and night, to keep them Klan-free
And proudly display anti-racist bumper-stickers, promoting diversity

Chorus

The Bible’s pretty cool, but so are the Torah and Koran
We believe in gay rights, so fuck the Ku Klux Klan
In search of peace and liberty, with the constitution in hand
We will defeat Trump to save our democratic land

***********

“Irish Citizen Army” based on “Blackshirt and Roses” by Razor’s Edge. Original lyrics are here.

1. This is written from the perspective of an Irish Republican in the 1970s, or 1980s or 1990s in Ireland. The Irish Citizen Army was started in 1913 during a general lock-out (where, in response to labor activism, an employer throws their employees out of the factory, etc.) in Dublin. It was formed to protect workers from attacks by the police.  In 1916, when the Easter Rising (an attempt at getting the British out) took place, while most of the moderate Irish Volunteers failed to participate the (admittedly much smaller) ICA participated fully and James Connolly, the leader of the ICA, was the de facto leader of the uprising. Connolly was a Marxist theoretician and union organizer and considered Ireland’s greatest socialist- there is a train station in Dublin named after him.
2. The Starry Plough is basically the flag of republican socialism, although some non-republican socialists use it. At one point about 10-15 years ago, and maybe still today, the youth wing of the Irish Labour Party used it.
3. Connolly was one of the few European socialists to oppose the nationalism of World War I. (The original refers to WWII)
4. Razor’s Edge were/are British and support(ed) the British and Unionist causes in N. Ireland.
5. **54% of this version is me, 46% is the original.

6. I give this poem 4 stars out of 5.

They created the Starry Plough, an emblem of the Irish working-class
And they spread Marxism, patriotic workers struggling en masse.

(Chorus)
Fuck the British Empire
Ireland still recalls
The Irish Citizen Army
Heroes one and all.

Opposed the nationalist war in Europe, they knew the real enemy.
With the European Working-Class, they were in solidarity.

The flame they lit was not extinguished, still burning in our hearts today.
We're carrying on the fight because the ICA led the way.

(Chorus)

Fuck the British Empire
Ireland still recalls
Connolly and the ICA
Heroes one and all.

************

“Don’t Vote SDLP” based on “Freedom” by Razor’s Edge. Original lyrics are here.

1. This is NOT written from my perspective, but the perspective of  the type of person I probably could have collaborated with politically if I had lived in the Nationalist community of Northern Ireland in the 1970s, 80s or 90s (I’m American). It’s from the perspective of someone who lives in a working-class Nationalist area in the 1990s and is sort of pacifist and a left-wing social-dem and doesn’t like Sinn Fein very much because of the violence and doesn’t like the Social Democratic and Labour Party for the reasons I give here (there are some more thoughts about the SDLP here, while discussing the episode “Rising Star”).
The thing is, the British Labour Party hasn’t ever organized in the North and recently had to be taken to court to allow Northerners to join, but they refuse to let the Party run candidates there (which is more of a good thing than a bad thing). There are multiple tendencies in the BLP when it comes to N. Ireland and I think the dominant one is to support their official sister organization the SDLP. I don’t think they ever called for the IRISH Labour Party to organize there and it wasn’t until tension developed between the ILP and the SDLP in 2001, 2002, and 2003 that the ILP started a transitional process of organizing there that was supposed to result in them running candidates as rivals to those of their official sister party. I did an essay/article/post PARTLY about that here.
So, this person has little or no options for voting (even if the BLP had been running candidates there, this person wouldn’t have voted for them (unless they were comparable to Tony Benn or Ken Livingstone)).
2. The red, white, and blue are the colors of the British flag.
3. The SDLP encouraged their supporters to do little more than vote. They were more or less against marching and probably against rallies as well. It’s true that non-SDLP supporters could have become involved and the inevitable friction with the security forces may have been difficult for stewards to control and a riot could have developed. But they still should have tried it, maybe with double the usual number of stewards. If there weren’t enough good stewards in the SDLP, maybe, in the 1970s and 1980s, they could have acquired the help of members and former members of the Official IRA, whose movement the Provisionals (SF and the IRA) had split from, and which was committed to a relatively non-violent path (I just think it would have been great if they HAD organized marches and I wanted to explain that they could have found a way to do it with a low risk of them turning into riots). The failure to offer mass struggle as an alternative to armed struggle weakened the overall effort to advance the interests of the Nationalist population.
4. The SDLP was socially conservative and although they probably did a better job of attracting Protestants than the Provos did, they were also closer to the Catholic Church.
5. Critics sometimes call the SDLP the Stoop Down Low Party.
6. In the 70s and 80s and probably the 90s as swell, I can imagine SDLP canvassers at election time being uncomfortable when whoever they’re talking with informed them that they’re gay. That homophobia is largely gone now, and I don’t think it was all that hateful in the first place, but they were homophobes.
7. They’re in the Socialist International and today maybe the SI almost deserves them, but with their social conservatism and moderate, almost capitalist, economics, they certainly didn’t belong there in the 1990s and 2000s and probably not in the 70s and 80s.
8. My thoughts about what the Provos did are here.
9. Razor’s Edge were/are British and support(ed) the British and Unionist causes in N. Ireland.
10. **66% of this version is me, 34% is the original.

11. This poem gets 5 stars out of 5.

Sell-out politicians always seem confused
They can’t figure out how to eject the red, white and blue
the only time you matter is on Election Day
so they can grab your vote and then tell you to go pray

(Chorus)
Options, no options
For pacifist social-dems in this community
Options, no options
The Stoops offer no mass struggle opportunities

A community defended by heroes but who then go too far
There are too many problems with their repertoire
But the only time you matter to the Stoops is on Election Day
They really want your vote unless you’re lesbian, bi or gay

Chorus

With their moderate instincts, the community gets left behind
if you think they’re helping us, you must be f*cking blind
the only time you matter is on Election Day
They’re in the International, but they’re pro-life and anti-gay

Sectraian Murder and Class in N. Ireland

In The Troubles, roughly 1969 until roughly 2005 (when the IRA decommissioned) Loyalist paramilitaries killed almost exactly 696 Catholic civilians, and the security forces killed almost exactly 161 Catholic civilians. 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 (based on what I’ll describe below, I would guess that the actual number for that was probably somewhere around 7,000-8,000).

I just sort of confirmed, using the Sutton Database on the CAIN site, what I sort of understood, that if you combine North Belfast and West Belfast and then look at South Belfast (North, South, and West Belfast are all, individually, roughly the same size as far as population goes, and both South and North had a small Protestant majority and West was about 85% Catholic), there were about 4.5 times more loyalist murders of Catholics in the former bloc than in South Belfast (in the former bloc, almost exactly 329, and in South Belfast almost exactly 74). I also looked at figures for the security forces, and the West/North combo had a figure 47 times higher than that of South Belfast (almost exactly 94 for the former bloc (27 in the North and 67 in the West) and almost exactly 2 for South Belfast). I just looked (using the very credible and academic site “Northern Ireland Elections”) at the 80s and 90s Westminster and 1996 Forum and 1998 Assembly elections (and 1-2 sets of local elections results that were grouped together based on Westminster Constituencies), and on average the SDLP did roughly as well as SF in North Belfast. So it's not because North Belfast was a republican stronghold, although obviously West Belfast was, but there were almost twice as many sectarian murders in the North than in the West. And although of course South Belfast was mostly Unionist, so was North Belfast.

So, in this post I'm sort of telling you what some of you already know. But I think it’s safe to say that WORKING-CLASS Catholic civilians were MUCH more likely than middle-class Catholic civilians to be killed by loyalists or the British (for Catholics, South Belfast is pretty much the only solidly middle-class area in Belfast). I think it’s because, as sectarian as the State was, a lawyer and/or professional or business connections and/or media connections and/or political connections to the Alliance (a slightly Unionist, mostly Protestant liberal democratic party, see this and this) help relatives or survivors put pressure on the police and Stormont (either the sectarian devolved government that died in 1972, or the N. Ireland Office of the British government, or the devolved, non-sectarian Assembly that has been there most of the time since 1998) to get who did it? I mean, in all fairness I imagine the SDLP (see this and this) always or almost always did what they could for relatives or survivors, even those who were working-class and/or republican, but, the SDLP was of course possibly MORE Catholic than SF and certainly much more Catholic than the Alliance, and was much more in favor of uniting Ireland than the Alliance and were much more likely to have contacts with republicans. I just confirmed what I knew which is that the Alliance was/is MUCH stronger in South than North or West. The likelihood of a victim's family or a survivor being close to Alliance politicians or leaders or activists was higher in South Belfast.


There is also some relevant stuff here, starting with the paragraph "I go into some detail...." and end with the paragraph "UPDATE 1/31/20...."

*****************

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 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.

Babylon 5 Reviews K

Years ago I did what you might call “reviews” of Star Trek episodes. I mostly just briefly noted what progressive politics were involved and sometimes used that as an excuse to talk about similar situations in reality.

Last year I finally watched all five seasons of Babylon 5, another sci-fi show, one I had thought of watching once in a while stretching back a couple decades. It isn’t as political or as progressive as ST but there’s some good stuff there- in fact, on one issue, a progressive take on the working-class and/or labor movement, B5 is better than ST. Because there is so little progressive material, I’m going to do one post for every four episodes reviewed, and only mention the episodes that have some progressive political stuff. I might ignore some of the more minor and/or less unique stuff about conflict resolution because from what I remember, it’s very common in this series. Also, although less so than is the case with Star Trek, multiculturalism is a big part of Babylon Five and I will also only be commenting on that when it goes further than usual. There are issues raised about telepaths- I’m going to completely ignore stuff about telepaths when reviewing these episodes. I also will probably say nothing about the conflict with the evil race the Shadows- sure, I could say Trump is as evil as they are or compare them to Nazi Germany, but that’s kind of silly (I’m sure there is nothing political about the Shadows, they’re just evil, like the Borg or the Empire). And I might skip most of the stuff about the conflict between B5 and the Earth government- I don’t remember it involving stuff like a strong capitalist agenda or racism or something.


**Season 4, Episode 18 “Intersections in Real Time”** See this for a plot summary.

At the end of the last episode, Sheridan is captured by Earth forces. This episode is entirely about him being questioned. They aren’t looking for information, but for a false confession that crucially includes him admitting to being led by aliens. Most of what the interrogator does is not torture (very little physical torture and none of the sort of non-violent torture that was also used at Abu Ghraib in Iraq). A good example of what his interrogator does is ask him first if he’s "controlled" by “outsiders” and then, before Sheridan answers, asks if he’s "influenced" by “others.” Sheridan says no, clearly (in my opinion) not noticing the difference between the two questions and/or thinking of the first question. But the interrogator then says that EVERYONE is influenced by others and Sheridan must be lying. Of course if Sherdian had said yes either at first or after being called a liar, the Earth gov’t would have taken that (recorded answer) as an answer to the first question.


**Season 4, Episode 19 “Between the Darkness and the Light”** see this for a plot summary.

There’s about five minutes that continue with an attempt to get Sheridan to say that the rebellion he led was really an alien conspiracy. About half-way through the episode he’s freed by Garibaldi, Franklin, and Lyta.

One other thing worth mentioning is that the Narn, the Centauri, and the League of Non-Aligned Worlds agree to militarily support Sheridan (more, apparently, than they already were). G’Kar says that since the Shadow war they “have begun working together as never before. In the past we had nothing in common but now the humans have become the glue that holds us together.”

On one hand it seems like the beginning of what we see very shortly at the end of the 4th season, which is the creation of something sort of comparable to Star Trek’s "the Federation." On the other hand, I don’t like the Earth-centric nature of these developments.


**Season 4, Episode 21 “Rising Star”** See this for a plot summary.

There are at least two political things in this episode.

First, the acting President of Earth says that Sheridan did the right thing the “wrong way.” That doesn’t make much sense. In his position, I’m not sure what else he could have done. I’m not saying that armed rebellion is the only way to deal with a dictatorship. There is always the option of mass struggle- getting people in the street, or sitting down in protest, etc. But, according to the acting President of Earth, dissidents on that planet felt like they couldn’t do anything. How could Sheridan have contributed to a non-violent resistance on Earth while in command of B5? He could have used non-violent methods ON B5 without breaking from Earth, but it seems to me that breaking away was more effective. It must have been more visible and inspirational to the rest of the Earth Alliance population than marches or non-violent civil disobedience on B5 (without breaking from Earth as they did (and which could have been more easily covered up in the media than what they actually did)).

The first battle with forces loyal to the President was kind of defensive in nature. I think that, considering there were other parts of the Earth Force that broke with the Earth gov’t, Sheridan, would have been doing the wrong thing if he had abandoned them. Then, the most immediate cause of him going on the offensive was the slaughter of civilians by Earth Force ships under orders from the President.

This reminds me of N. Ireland and the Provisional IRA’s campaign. I defend it in many places on this blog, but perhaps the two main things you should read are here and here. It would be kind of reasonable of people who disagree with me about this to point to the years where the PIRA’s campaign overlapped with the last 2-3 years of the Civil Rights Movement (1970-72) and say that the PIRA should have been on cease-fire during that time. First, as far as I can tell there was probably a majority and maybe a LARGE majority of members and supporters of the Provisional Republican Movement (what we call in recent decades, Sinn Fein and the IRA) that DID participate in the CRM. And during those years, even the Official IRA (the other side of the split that produced the Provisionals and the side which was fully in support of the CRM) was waging an armed campaign of some significance.

The Officials went on cease-fire in 1972 (not long after the CRM was kind of displaced by the PIRA’s campaign as the dominant answer to unionism and British imperialism) and have remained there since (well, until some time in the 1980s their cease-fire wasn't totally solid in different ways but it was close). I haven’t heard of the Officials organizing any large-scale protests and/or marches as a replacement for armed struggle, and they had the support of about 4% of the nationalist community in the 1970s and that went down further in the 80s and 90s. They were pretty irrelevant as an example of a better form of resistance.

The SDLP was getting a large chunk of the Nationalist vote. When looking at the 70s (when PSF wasn’t running candidates) and thinking about how much support they had in the Nationalist community, it seems unavoidable and reasonable to assume that they had the same level of support that they had in the 80s and 90s, which would have been about 60% (this is based partly on voting figures and population figures in the 1970s). But after the decline of the CRM, it looked like the SDLP were not organizing marches and rallies, etc. In fact John Hume, who was a very senior member in the 70s and was the SDLP’s leader in the 80s and 90s, was not a major advocate of marches during the time of the Civil Right Movement. He opposed three key marches during that time. And about 15 years ago, I read an article where a senior SDLP member poured cold water on the idea of organizing marches.

There are two more ways in which the SDLP didn’t represent a more populist, people-based and non-violently subversive response to what was being done to the Nationalist population. In general it wouldn’t hurt if you read this post about the SDLP. Items #4, #5, and #8 are especially relevant. #3 might also be relevant. As I wrote elsewhere on this blog:

In his 1998 book "McCann: War and Peace in Northern Ireland," NI socialist and trade-unionist Eamonn McCann writes, "the trade union movement is better placed than any other to purge the politics of this island of sectarianism. No other institution brings Catholic and Protestant workers together on a regular basis in pursuit of a common purpose which is antipathetic to sectarianism." McCann makes it clear that he doesn't think this potential has been tapped more than occasionally, and [Mark] Langhammer agrees with his analysis.

(Mark Langhammer is or was for a while a senior N. Ireland member of the Irish Labour Party)

I don’t know what SDLP members in the trade-union movement did or didn’t do along those lines, but the fact is they didn’t succeed in orientating that movement the way McCann and Langhammer suggested, and that might indicate that either A) they had almost no one in that movement and/or B) they didn’t try. As far as SDLP MEMBERS (not voters) go, they have been consistently described as being middle-class.

I don’t mean to totally acquit the Provisionals when it comes to this. Speaking of republicans in general, Bernadette Devlin-McAliskey called for them to do more work organizing people and less work organizing armies. What I said about the SDLP and the  trade-unions might apply, to a lesser degree, to PSF. As a more working-class party they probably had more members in the trade-unions, (but maybe not since they may have had more trouble getting jobs- because they were more likely to have a criminal record). I also won’t deny that Protestant and unionist TRADE-Unionists were probably less interested in what SF members had to say than what SDLP trade-unionists had to say. And lastly, although I’m certain PSF made more efforts to get people in the streets than the SDLP did, they weren’t ridiculously successful with it (that is, outside the context of the prisoners' struggle around 1980 when they were massively successful).

For more info about mass struggle in the Troubles, see this.


The other issue is something that was said about the creation of the Interstellar Alliance. As far as I can tell it’s similar to the Federation of Star Trek, but less centralized. While announcing the creation of the IA and inviting Earth to join, Delenn talks about free-trade (probably not anything comparable to NAFTA), a code of conduct for interstellar relations, a reserved but possibly very useful armed component, and more. At one point she says: “this new alliance will help less-advanced worlds improve their conditions.” It’s at moments like this when I wish I was about 20 times more familiar with the EU than I am, but it reminds me of the sometimes-met potential of the EU. The EU has, as far as I can tell, done a lot about civil rights and human rights and civil liberties. At the very least they have some potential to redistribute wealth around the EU. The Earth joins the IA, which requires them to recognize an independent Mars.


**Season 4, Episode 22 “The Deconstruction of Falling Stars”** See this for a plot summary.

This episode is more creative than most, and kind of special. We are shown a current affairs TV show discussion about 2-3 weeks after Sheridan defeats the forces loyal to the President. Then a similar show about 100 years after that event, and then a recording made 500 years after Sheridan’s victory and lastly, a hidden recording about 1,000 years after that event.

The first discussion involves an obnoxious supporter of the deceased President whose grip on power was broken by Sheridan. There’s a lot of talk from him about Sheridan being unsuitable as a leader of the Interstellar Alliance (IA). First, Sheridan is criticized for firing on "his own ships." What’s intentionally ignored is that there was a civil war raging, a war that Sheridan hadn’t started, and a war that involved the late President’s ships firing on their former colleagues in the Earth military. Second, he says that Sheridan arranged for independence for Mars “at gunpoint.” This ignores the fact that Earth was keeping Mars under Earth control, “at gunpoint.”

*         *          *          *

In the third part of this episode, we learn that one of two factions on Earth is preparing to launch a propaganda campaign aimed at weakening support for the IA by creating fake recordings of the top four Babylon 5 figures doing horrible things like summary executions, following speeches about how there will be no mercy. I am wondering how much of that is aimed at supporters of that faction, or undecideds, or the other faction. If it’s the latter, I guess it’s because they want to sow doubt and confusion about what the founders of the IA were really like.

Their motivation for this is that they feel the need and/or desire to colonize and conquer new worlds and the IA and it’s military (the Rangers) are obstacles. Which is exactly what they should be. The imperialist faction is also planning on launching a first strike, probably with nuclear weapons and aimed at civilian targets in areas their opponents govern. The virtual reality version of Garibaldi engages in some cleverness and warns the IA-aligned areas who strike at the military targets in areas governed by the imperialists.

(Full) Equality Denied

Although the Peace Process is probably secure for at least the next 2-3 years, there have been some spikes recently in terms of problems with equality for Catholics that are worth a post on this blog (there have been several other such times in the last 8 years that I said little or nothing about, but that’s largely because I wasn’t reading the Irish News, with more information than you get from the BBC, until Spring earlier this year). Besides the fact that the border is still there, there is still not total equality for Catholics in N. Ireland. Although this post is not an exhaustive list of that sort of thing in recent months and years, it pretty much covers all such issues in the last two weeks or so and covers a lot of stuff if you look back further than that.

1) July 12th is a major unionist holiday in N. Ireland and the night before most unionist areas have giant bonfires. In recent years and, I think, long before that Irish flags, effigies and election posters of both SF and SDLP politicians are often placed on the bonfire material before it’s lit. Recently attention has been drawn to the approving attitudes towards this of senior DUP members. (see this (as far as I can tell, the only response from anyone in the DUP has been defiance from former health minister Edwin Poots)). Although anti-sectarianism doesn’t demand this of them, SF is so committed to good community relations and the Peace Process that it has been opposed to burning Union Jacks for at least two years if not much longer.

2) A march in commemoration of the 1971 introduction of internment, something that was leveled brutally and almost exclusively at the Catholic population, took place Sunday Aug. 7th. It was organized by dissident republicans in Belfast but when they were banned by the Parades Commission from the city center, a SF MP, Paul Maskey said that it should be allowed into the city center (where according to the Irish News loyalists have marched in recent months).

3) Although there has been very little conflict (in terms of nationalist rioting or large-scale nationalist protests) around this in recent years, there is still the problem of loyal orders (especially the Orange Order) wanting to parade more or less through Catholic areas. To a small degree they (contentious marches allowed to go ahead) still happen here and there (at least 3-4 times in the last two years), and there is potential for it to become a serious problem next year. As far as why it’s wrong for such parades to go more or less through Catholic areas, see this.

4) In recent years Catholics have been about 50% more likely to be unemployed than Protestants. That’s much better than it was during and before the conflict, but still leaves something to be desired in terms of equality.


The Police Service of N. Ireland

A huge chunk of what I’m talking about is about the police. In general, I should say that although the 2011 census found that 45% of N. Ireland’s population had a Catholic ”background” (whether or not they believe in God, they are part of the Catholic community (they’re regarded as “culturally Catholic”)), in recent years only about 31% of police officers come from that part of the population (and only about 20% of police staff come from that community). That gap for police officers is narrower than it was during and before the conflict, but it’s still pretty large and I think one likely partial explanation for it is that there are likely still a lot of times that PSNI officers engage in “political policing” when dealing with Catholics, nationalists and republicans. That's partly based on some anecdotal evidence I've read in the recent past and partly based on a 06 June, 2016 article in the Irish News that reported on something probably relevant to this. In recent years average PSNI strength was about 7,500 officers and the Irish News said:

"In December The Irish News revealed Police Ombudsman had recommended disciplinary action or sanctions against an average of around 300 police officers in every year since 2010.

At the time the PSNI described the figure as "concerning", but added that it was working to reduce the number of Ombudsman complaints, which have averaged at around nine every day since 2010."

I don't know how many of these complaints are about hostility towards Catholics, nationalists, or republicans, but in any case it's fairly alarming.

(If you want some more of my thoughts about the police there, see this)

With that background in mind, there have been some fairly serious crises involving the police recently.

First, recently two offensive banners were put up in County Tyrone celebrating a deceased loyalist paramilitary leader- Billy Wright. One of the initial two banners referred to the killing by the UVF of three IRA members and one civilian in 1991. Despite a complaint about these banners by a member of the public, the police decided they were legal and said that some people wouldn’t be offended by them. This prompted outrage and an unheard of (in recent years) refusal by a senior SDLP politician to meet with a senior police officer (the one who had made the statement about offending people). The response of the police to these banners has also been compared with the removal by police in 2013 of a large sign in Enniskillen that was a derogatory statement about Margaret Thatcher around the time of her death.

Second, an independent (ex-SF) local councilor, Padraig McShane, was violently arrested at an Orange parade July 12th after getting into a confrontation with orange bandsmen who verbally attacked him in connection with an arson attack on his home in 2014. I haven’t heard anything about it in about 3 weeks, but the article I read said an SF assembly member was complaining to the police about the provocative behavior of the bandsmen who verbally attacked McShane.

if you want to go much deeper into this subject see the following:
https://www.policeombudsman.org/Investigation-Reports/Historical-Reports
https://www.policeombudsman.org/Investigation-Reports/Case-Studies
https://www.policeombudsman.org/Statistics-and-Research



So, the Statelet retains an Orange tinge here and there. I still believe it’s unlikely that Catholics will experience total, sustainable equality with Protestants in the British-occupied part of Ireland. Uniting Ireland should definitely still be towards the top of the agendas of progressives, republicans, and nationalists. I talk more in a post here about how Catholics have been treated and how a United Ireland would very likely not see the “tables turned” on Protestants and more generally about the argument in favor of uniting Ireland. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Policing in N. Ireland and Catholic Recruits

 UPDATE 11/3/21 A more recent update on this issue is here.

 

UPDATE 2/2/20 A new update on the subject is on the BBC site here. 

UPDATE 4/5/17 For some more recent information on this, see this.

There's one recent event about N. Ireland that I want to briefly mention.

That is, the status of reforming the police. It’s been awhile since I took a close look at things like what has happened with Special Branch, how is the Justice Ministry is working, etc. I get the impression those things are going in the right direction. As far as I can tell, the policing boards were a good idea. On the other hand I have read credible reports and comments indicating that there is still a problem with how nationalists, Catholics, and republicans are treated by the police.

To one degree or another part of reforming the police was the effort to increase the representation of Catholics in the force. For 10 years starting in 2001 there was a policy where for each Protestant officer hired, a Catholic officer would have to be hired. I like to think that the growing number of Catholics (from a nationalist background) had some effect on the behavior of unionist sectarians still in the force, and it might have had some other positive effects (beyond the fact that more often now than in the past, Catholics are sometimes contacted by Catholic officers who aren't sectarian as many of their Protestant colleagues are).

So, I think it’s fairly important, and now that it is being ended, that might cause some problems for the Peace Process.

At this point (mid-2016 and at least the last couple of years) the percentage of the officers that is Catholic is about 31% (and civilian staff of the police are only about 20% Catholic). According to the 2011 census, the percentage of the population that is from a Catholic background is about 45% (41% identify as Catholic, 4% were probably raised Catholic and probably live in Catholic neighborhoods and probably are nationalists but are probably atheists. Now, the gap is less than it was 15 years ago but I think it might be partially explained by the likely continuation, here and there, of "political policing" of Catholics, nationalists and republicans. There have also been many republican attacks, two of them successful, aimed at killing police in the North. It has been said that this might discourage Catholics from joining the force.

UPDATE 8/10/12 Several months ago I read a BBC News article which said that the drop-out rate for Catholic officers is higher than that for Protestant officers.

UPDATE 8/31/12 Several months ago I also read some articles on the BBC about how former RUC officers, who retired as part of the reforming of police, have been re-hired as civilians. There are roughly 300 of them, and at one point recently, roughly half were in sensitive positions (63 Intelligence Branch, 59 in Serious Crime, and 19 in Specialist Operations). For the most part I haven't heard this explicitly stated, but these former officers are undoubtedly vastly disproportionately Protestant, and I would say roughly the same thing about them being sectarian. There is some more info about this here. (UPDATE 7/5/16 According to Irish News article in June, this was stopped about 1 and 1/2 years ago.

I often like to talk about the activism I’ve done in the past. I also like reading things I wrote back then. Below (below the asterisks) is a letter I wrote that was published in the Irish News, the main paper read by the nationalist community in N. Ireland. It was written and published somewhere around September 2002.

Tom

UPDATE 6/10/16

From a 06 June, 2016 article in the Irish News (average PSNI strength during this time was about 7,500 officers) :

"In December The Irish News revealed Police Ombudsman had recommended disciplinary action or sanctions against an average of around 300 police officers in every year since 2010.
At the time the PSNI described the figure as "concerning", but added that it was working to reduce the number of Ombudsman complaints, which have averaged at around nine every day since 2010."

I don't know how many of these are about hostility towards Catholics, nationalists, or republicans, but in any case it's fairly alarming.

************

In a recent letter Patrick Clarke of the SDLP brings up something in relation to policing that I have wanted to comment on for a while. He says that if the SDLP hadn't signed up to the policing reforms then the RUC would remain as it was. I seriously doubt that would have been the case. If the SDLP had joined SF in demanding Patten (ideally minus the plastic bullets) as the absolute minimum acceptable to the nationalist community and anyone concerned about human rights, I think Blair would have had to go along with that. As much as I dis-like Blair, I doubt he would say no to both SF and the SDLP on an issue like this.

Also, I think the SDLP are somewhat mistaken when they talk about nationalists needing to take responsibility for their part in building a new police service. Sure, nationalists and their political representatives do have responsibilities at various stages of developing a new police service, and at a certain stage they should give it their support. But the SDLP vastly over-estimate the responsibility of nationalists and republicans in this project. The British government is the one with the power here, the one responsible for allowing, financing, and since 1972, running, the softcore version of the Nazi SS that was the RUC. They have the power to change the police to a large degree. I believe it is their responsibility to, through legislation and other moves, reform the police as far as possible before they expect nationalists and republicans to give their support by joining the police and the Policing Board. Ideally, I believe the government should, based on some criteria (such as Orange Order membership, suspected collusion, etc.) sack those officers who are the biggest part of the problem and replace them with Gardai, officers from Britain, or from other EU nations. This, along with other reforms such as those in the Patten Report, would create STRUCTURAL changes to the police sufficient so that nationalists and republicans could then participate in further developing the police service without worrying that they are simplying giving legitimacy to an un-reconstructed RUC.

Another aspect of the policing reforms has concerned me. The 50/50 recruitment effort doesn't greatly impress me. It's widely believed that the Catholic and Protestant sections of the population are almost equal, with both at about 47 percent. Without any sacking of unreconstructed sectarians and with a planned down-sizing of the force, it is unlikely that many recruits will be brought in. And if Catholics are to be recruited at roughly the same rate as they are in the general population, how long will it take to change the composition of the police from about 90% Protestant and 10% Catholic to something reflecting the general population? Decades is my guess, and I understand this recruitment policy is supposed to end after 10 years. If the police reforms are to work, this process needs to be speeded up to something like 75/25 Catholic/Protestant recruitment.

One last thing I think needs to be done as a matter of urgency is for the British government to put it's foot down and demand that the police crack down on loyalist paramilitaries. The police, as many other writers have pointed out, know who they are- they have much better intelligence on loyalists than on republicans because the former are less likely to kill informers, the history of collusion, and the fact that they largely come from the same estates and families. I'm not advocating they treat loyalists like they did republicans with internment and Diplock courts, but they are quite capable of arresting, jailing, prosecuting and convicting those who are involved in loyalist violence. And with the probability of a loyalist feud that will terrorize ordinary loyalists and probably lead to increased attacks on Catholics, it is even more urgent that this be done.

I have to admit, the SDLP do deserve credit for getting Hugh Orde into the Chief Constable's job, and I imagine he is pretty inclined to go after loyalists- the arrest of Andre Shoukri might be a sign of that. But that arrest barely qualifies as a good start- much more is needed. If Mr. Orde's subordinates drag their feet on this or continue turning a blind eye to loyalist violence, he needs to sack them without hesitation. Blair and Reid need to give him whatever support is needed in this effort.

As the Sinn Fein posters say about policing, nationalists and indeed all people in the North, deserve better. And the SDLP needs to join them in demanding this.

Tom Shelley
Boulder, Colorado USA

Oh no, Here comes a green tory

I have four more songs. I've sort of upped my standards as far as the quality of what I post and what I don't. At this point I've got something like three songs I'm not posting because I'm just not happy with them. So, these are all a bit better than the average I post- they're not my favorites, but they're pretty good.

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).

1. Never Again. Republican struggle in N. Ireland.
2. Oh, No, Here Comes a Republican. The GOP in America.
3. Blanketmen. The struggle of republican POWs in British prisons to be treated as POWs.
4. Green Tories. Moderate or conservative Irish Nationalists.

With the exception of the last one, they're all "Those Lyrics," see this for an explanation. There's not much difference, but the higher quality ones are towards the bottom.

“Never Again” based on “Tomorrow Is Always Too Late” by Skrewdriver, original lyrics are here.

1. Stoops are the Social Democratic and Labour Party, Sinn Fein’s moderate rival in the nationalist community. For what’s wrong with them, see this.
2. The no-go areas were parts of Belfast and one huge part of Derry where the security forces were kept out by barricades and armed IRA members. They were in existence most of the time between Aug. 1969 and July 1972 and acted as safe areas for Catholics being targeted for harrassment by the security forces and murder by the loyalist paramilitaries.
3. Since this takes place during the period Jan. 1970 to Jan. 1972, the people had started marching about 2-3 years earlier, but it sort of works anyway (it doesn't say when they awoke, so it could be 2-3 years earlier, and the statement that they're marching right now would be accurate).
4. The Tri-color is the Irish flag and the starry plough is the flag of socialist republicanism.
5. The general idea of the song is that in order to guarantee that the events of Aug. 1969 would not be repeated (1,500 Catholic families were forced out of their homes by loyalists, see this and this for more details) Ireland should be united and so the sooner that happened the better, and that involved putting pressure on the British through armed and other actions. Although things ended up not being catastrophic for the nationalist community, it was reasonable to think at the time that something at least as bad as Aug. 1969 could happen again. (I don't know how many republicans and nationalists saw it that way, but probably a lot)
6. Connolly is James Connolly, Ireland greatest socialist and greatest republican and a major leader of the 1916 Easter Rising, who was executed afterwards.
7. Pearse is Padraig Pearse, a major leader of the 1916 Easter Rising, who was executed afterwards.
8. Tone is Wolfe Tone, the grandfather of Irish republicanism who led a rebellion in 1798 and committed suicide when in jail awaiting execution afterwards.
9. Bombay St. was the main area where Catholics were forced out of their homes in Aug. 1969.
10. Long Kesh was the main prison camp holding republican paramilitaries.
**11. 32% of this version is me, 68% is the original.
12. I give this song/poem three stars out of five.
13. Considering the original, I should say that Irish pride is very different from white pride (most of the time). (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)
14. Skrewdriver was supportive of the Unionist and British causes in N. Ireland.
15. I changed the 2nd line of the 1st verse by removing the word "only" from bewteen "my" and "interest."
16. This is basically about the IRA.

The stoops say what we should do, but I don't want to know
My interest is revolution, and maintaining the no-gos
The people have awoken and are marching right now
‘cause we are loyal to the Tri-Color and the starry plough

Chorus:
Tomorrow is always too late
We should never sit around and wait
Tomorrow is always too late
Get out there and do something today

Our enemies are tories, unionists as well
Both these forms of evil are raining our death knell
We salute the troops of yesterday, who fought the British plague
And we will carry on your fight as the republicans of today

(Repeat Chorus)

We must remain true to our cause, for comrades thrown in jail
For their sake and sacrifice, we must never fail
For Connolly and Pearse and Tone too, and Bombay St. as well
For the proud Volunteers in Long Kesh, our efforts they must tell


(Repeat Chorus)

*****

“Oh No, Here Comes A Republican” based on “Oh No, Here Comes A Commie” by Skrewdriver, original lyrics are here.

1. It’s about a member of the American Republican Party, the GOP. It’s also about a republican who probably represents a very small minority of today’s GOP, if you add up all the things I say about him, probably between 10% and 40% of the GOP matches this description.
2. Looking to the past means looking at periods when women had more inequality, gays were in the closet, and people of color were "in their place."
3. In the 1968 election, Nixon used what was called the “Southern Strategy” of appealing to people unhappy about desegregation. It represented a major part of the shift of the South from the democrats to the republicans. In general, white supremacists are more likely to work with the Republicans than the Democrats.
4. Only some small minority of the support that the GOP gets comes from white supremacists, but it seemed like the best substitute.
**5. 44% of this version is me, 56% is the original.
6. I give this song/poem four stars out of five.
7. As I think might be obvious, there is nothing violent about this.

He looks to the past, he worships the upper-class
Nothing but air in his head
Appears in your eyes, peddling lies
Selling ideas that are dead

He's out there every single day
Talking 'bout the unions and the gays

(chorus)
On no, here comes a republican
elephant on his breast
Oh no, here comes a republican
Won't you give it a rest?

He hates his own land, he has a plan
To bring it all down to the ground
Confuse you with lies, installs his spies
Brings our destruction around

He just wants to see our nation declining
He wants the white man’s future to be shining

(chorus)

Support for his plans, comes from the Klan
People who only know how to hate
They wear robes of white, they’re so full of shite
Just like with Nixon in 1968

The elephant gets it’s support from these anti-semites
Hopes that they’ll help roll back our hard-won civil rights

(chorus)

Oh no, here comes a republican
the stars and stripes he flies
On no, here comes a republican
Won't you off and die?

******

“Blanketmen” based on “Justice” by Skrewdriver, original lyrics are here.

1. Blanketmen were republican prisoners who, in the late seventies until shortly after the end of the hunger-strike in 1981, wore blankets because they refused to wear a criminal’s prison uniform. In the late 1970s the British tried to break the republican family by criminalizing republican prisoners. See this and this (most of the last 1/2 is about the hunger-strike era). The prsioners resisted this effort, culminating in the 1981 Hunger-Strike when 10 men died, Bobby Sands was the first. This song is set in the mid 1970s before there was a large degree of support for the prisoners (from what I’ve heard, the first 1-2 years very few people understood what was happening to the prisoners and therefore very few people cared).
2. Most, perhaps all republicans who were “on the blanket” had been convicted by jury-less courts.
3. It wasn’t until the late 1970s that large numbers of people started to care about the prisoners.
4. The nationalist population were more or less terrorized by the British security forces and by loyalist paramilitaries, although they remained strong and determined to win and confident; but you could still say they were terrorized.
5. Orange is the color of anti-catholic bigotry in N. Ireland.
**6. 47% of this version is me, 53% is the original.
7. I give this song/poem four stars out of five.
8. Skrewdriver was supportive of the Unionist and British causes in N. Ireland.

My spirit is strong as I'm dragged from the court
My mother screams "Brits out" in support
One by one, they lock us all away
non-Jury “Justice” is the game they play

(Chorus)
Call that justice, well it just ain't fair,
How much longer before they care
Call that justice from an alien judge
Jailed for fighting for the land you love

In a blanket, your time you’ll spend
‘cause you won’t break nor will you bend
A degrading regime if you won’t be criminalized
you fight for your people who are terrorized

Chorus

Call this orange state a democracy
But it’s steeped in division and inequality
Here's the reality, an alien state
Locking up patriots behind prison gates

*****

“Green Tories” based on “Government Out” by The Oppressed, original lyrics are here.

1. Green Tories are Irish nationalists who would normally be members of a normal conservative party. It could also refer to republicans with conservative politics.
2. Fianna Fail is the largest party in the South of Ireland. They’re conservative populists, generally socially conservative, and corrupt and very cooperative with the United States.
3. The stoops are the Social Democratic and Labour Party, Sinn Fein’s moderate rival in the nationalist community. I describe what’s wrong with them here. Probably some large minority of them are definitely not Green Tories, but the rest, to one degree or another, are Green Tories.
**4. 32% of this version is me, 68% is the original.
5. I give this song/poem four stars out of five.
6. Only violence is part of the "revolt" referred to and the possibility of a future violent uprising by workers in the South.

You listen to their stories
you listen to their lies
You listen to their propaganda
They’re the bastards workers despise...

Chorus:
Hear the people scream and shout
we want green tories, green tories out

Fianna Fail coddles the rich
The stoops hold back the revolt
Neither party gives a shit
all they’re after is your vote

Chorus

To who will green tories answer
when corporations rule the state
If they answer to Washington
Irish independence will be faked

Chorus

So don’t listen to their stories
don’t listen to their lies
don’t listen to their propaganda
They know one day we will rise


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?).

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?).

In The Spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Someone I used to know, who I emailed partly because I thought she'd like the blog, teaches a course on Non-Violence in Social Movements, and told me that her co-teacher is about to do a presentation on N. Ireland. It made me realize that I have said almost nothing about the non-violent side of the N. Ireland conflict- the civil rights movement, the second peak of relatively/completely non-violent mass struggle around 1980, the most significant effort at opposing violence (the Peace People), and other issues about the North that involve non-violent struggle.

Although I am an IRA supporter, I generally am VERY supportive of non-violent efforts. This post will give some history about non-violence in N. Ireland.

I'm going to start this history with the civil rights movement around 1970, since earlier non-violent efforts by the minority didn't have much of a mass character to them (at most, form 1945-1951 there was activity that might have been about 1/2 comparable to the civil rights movement), and I'm not going to give a 90 year history of the subject- once again, I recommend Michael Farrell's "Northern Ireland: The Orange State." I also might not go into tons of detail, so I recommend the web-site Conflict Archive on the InTernet (very academic and neutral) and also this (not quite as neutral and academic as CAIN, but based on roughly four of the top 5-10 best books on the subject).

The Civil Rights Movement started in the mid- and late 1960s, depending on who you ask. The first civil rights march was on Aug. 24 of 1968 from Coalisland to Dungannon. Loyalists planned a counter demonstration which convinced the government to ban the civil rights rally, but it went ahead anyway, with a minor confrontation with the security forces and loyalists. At this time, and for a small number of years before, there had been a lot of work on the issue of discrimination in public housing. Not only was it causing great homelessness (usually not as we usually think of it, but a bunch of often large families living in one small house), voting in local elections was based on property, and although a significant minority of Protestants were also affected, it overwhelmingly affected Catholics because of discrimination in employment which affected their ability to buy a home and discrimination in the allocation of public sector housing. Activists in Derry, including Eamonn McCann, who had been working on that decided to organize a civil rights march for Oct. 5th. A loyalist organization announced that they would march the same route at the same time and the government banned the civil rights march. The civil rights march was attacked by the police with brutality that shocked the world when television footage exposed it. In response, at Queens University in Belfast, a lot of students, overwhelmingly left-wing to one degree or another, considered it their Vietnam (they were, to one degree or another already anti-Vietnam War, but this was closer to home). They formed People's Democracy, which was a mostly (but not exclusively) Marxist, militant and student group (although it lasted about 15 years and quickly developed beyond a student group). The main figures were Bernadette Devlin, Michael Farrell, and Eamonn McCann. PD organized marches and sit-downs in Belfast. When the government announced a series of reforms in Nov. which only addressed roughly 1/4 of the reformist demands of the broad Civil Rights Movement (there were three other things included which were not really addressing their demands). In response, the mainstream leadership of the CRM called a truce, but PD said they would march from Belfast to Derry starting Jan. 1st 1969.

The march was based, at least in one way, on the Selma-Montgomery March (in general, the CRM were inspired by the Civil Rights Movement in America). The idea was that the reforms didn't go far enough (they certainly did not, the main problem being that only two out of four major problems with the franchise was fixed; the other two were dealt with a year later after London got involved), that they were a "sham" and that a compromise would be done between the moderate unionists and the moderate nationalists. The PDs also were concerned about the deal ignoring issues of economic justice and the PDs were also more interested in raising the border as an issue than the rest of CRM was. In her book ("The Price of My Soul," about 1/2 of which describes the first year of the PD), Bernadette Devlin criticized the moderate parts of the civil rights movement for calling for anti-discrimination measures without also calling for measures that create more jobs (and also more housing) so that a more equal distribution of jobs and houses wouldn't mean less for Protestants. I'm sure she didn't mean that she opposed those anti-discrimination measures, but she felt it was very important to at least talk about universal economic justice as well. The PDs felt it was important to keep the momentum going, keep the pressure up, and test how much the unionist population and the police had changed. The unionists and the police didn't pass. The march took four days and was often attacked by loyalists. In one case, the police told the marchers that ahead on the road there was an ambush and recommended an alternative route- the ambush was on the alternative route. The next time, the PDs ignored that advice and there was no ambush on their route. The last day of the march, there was a major ambush at Burntollet bridge not far outside of Derry. The police stood by while loyalists, including many off-duty members of the B-Specials who were kind of like a regional national guard launched a vicious attack, many students were injured and/or driven into the river (in January). (in 1999, I attended an event commemorating this in Derry, and barely missed getting to take part in a march commemorating it). The marchers, their numbers swelled by people from Derry, were welcomed as heroes when they entered the Nationalist part of Derry.

The attack at Burntollet was followed up by police attacking a nationalist part of Derry, which saw the first use of violence by the people involved in the civil rights movement- although willing to be non-violent on marches and at rallies and such, when their neighborhoods were attacked, that was seen as something else. The civil rights marches continued until early 1972, but the general situation got more violent. After the events of Aug. 1969 when there was massive violence against the Nationalist community (which defended itself with violence), the British army came onto the streets. Within months the IRAs (there was a split at the end of 1969), and especially the Provisional IRA, began to assert themselves. The republican paramilitaries came into conflict with the police, and until about June of 1970, to a lesser degree the British Army (after June 1970 it was to a large degree). The civil rights marches continued. As a result of British involvement, more of the demands of the civil rights movement were granted- one-person, one-vote was established for all elections; the B-Specials, who were exclusively Protestant and notoriously sectarian, were replaced by the Ulster Defense Regiment, who developed a similar reputation after a brief period. No effective effort was made to combat discrimination in employment, which actually got worse. Not only was emergency legislation left on the books, it was extensively used through internment without trial, which became the main issue of the civil rights movement after it was introduced in Aug. of 1971. Internment lasted until the end of 1975, and while about 100 loyalists were interned, about 1,900 republicans were interned, but since during the first 1.5 years not a single loyalist was interned, the republicans interned would have been interned for longer periods on average. During this time, republicans were probably about 20 times more active than loyalists, but were overwhelmingly attacking the security forces and destroying commercial/non-military property without killing civilians while the loyalists were almost exclusively intentionally killing Catholic civilians. But despite that, republicans were about 19 times more likely to be interned. Also, two members of People's Democracy were interned despite the fact that even though they offered (non-material) support to the PIRA, they were mostly non-violent and did not consider themselves republicans. Also, the Chair of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association was also interned.

In late Jan. 1972, an anti-Internment/civil rights march was brutally attacked by the security forces- there are reports that some British officers started beating their own men to get them to stop beating the marchers. At the end of January Bloody Sunday happened, and 13 civil rights marchers were shot dead by the British Army in Derry. The march was already banned from the center of the city (the city was majority Nationalist and the center was in the part that was overwhelmingly majority Nationalist. You might want to take a look at this link for details, but the tiny amount of violence aimed at the British Army didn't justify their aggression, and for years now almost everyone agrees that the people killed were innocent.

Although there was a flury of united Civil Rights marches immediately after Bloody Sunday, it's widely agreed that Bloody Sunday killed off the CRM, and launched the armed struggle of the IRA (the one which was at the time known as the Provisionals). And I’m sure some people, to one degree or another, did not want to march if the British were going to simply kill them. As far as I can tell, during the next 5-6 years after Bloody Sunday, mass struggle was something like 1/4 of what it had been between 1968 and 1972. At some point in 1978 and increasing until the 1980 and 1981 Hunger-Strikes there was a return to mass struggle which by 1980 was on roughly the same level as was seen around 1970.

(The MASSIVE anti-internment march fired on on Bloody Sunday was primarily organized by a senior politician of the moderate SDLP, not Sinn Fein)

For about 5 years in the 1970s convicted and interned prisoners, loyalist and republican, were treated as political prisoners, or as prisoners of war (although I'm not sure how appropriate it is to use the term POW in relation to the loyalists). In the mid-1970s this was phased out with internment and was completely ended in 1980. Although it's worth pointing that internment was quickly replaced with other emergency legislation including detention for seven days and non-jury courts, the important thing is that all the republican and loyalist prisoners were the result of a political conflict, and the republicans, with some negligible individual exceptions, could easily be called prisoners of war (the exceptions could still be called POWs, but with a little less justification). Besides the level of support shown for the hunger-strikers which I'll describe shortly, there's reasons to believe that the vast majority of the nationalist population supported the hunger-strikers, including most of the roughly 60% who did not usually express support for the IRA- that is those who were calling on the IRA to go on cease-fire. The thing is, at that point the events of Aug. 1969 were still fresh in people's minds, and those who were too young and not nearby heard about what happened. the thing is, the IRA had been demilitarized in the years before that, and offered almost no defense- the overwhelming amount of defense came from people, usually young, throwing rocks and petrol bombs and building barricades. Afterwards, grafiti claimed that IRA stood for "I Ran Away." After that, almost no one in the Nationalist community wanted the IRA to disarm (that only became popular around 2000) or disband (I suppose in the last few years that might be slightly popular, although there's probably a majority who are happy with the IRA remaining in a very stood-down manner, and as a veterans organization, or something like that). Also, because there was almost zero support for the police in the Nationalist community (the SDLP were fairly consistently hostile to the police until 2002, and as recently as 2001 there was solid evidence of how Nationalists felt about the NI police when 5/6 of N. Ireland units of the Gaelic Athletics Association voted no on allowing the police to be members of the GAA) people would turn to the IRA. So, even among those who were not normally considered IRA supporters, almost no one was unconcerned about the prisoners starving themselves to death to be treated as prisoners of war.

UPDATE 3/8/16 Somewhere in this part of the post I should say that, based on what might be called a fairly scientific look, only about .2% of the IRA's operations intentionally resulted in civilian death.

The effort in support of the prisoners started small, it was about 2-3 years before there was mass struggle, but there were a lot of important actions like the mothers of the prisoners wearing blankets (since the prisoners wouldn't wear prison uniform, they wore blankets as part of the first phase of their protest) at protests. Everything I've read indicates that during this period (starting in 1978 and increasing until the brief and unsuccessful hunger-strike of late 1980, and then continuing during the second one from the Spring until the Fall in 1981, during which 10 men died) there was a huge amount of activity. According to Bernadette Devlin-McAliskey (who was the most senior leader of the campaign in support), who has often said that republicans should spend more time organizing people and less time organizing armies, there was a return to mass struggle (she probably meant since the sharp decline of the Civil Rights Movement). There's reason to believe, based on election figures and reasonable assumptions, that a large majority of people who normally voted for the moderate rival of Sinn Fein, the Social Democratic and Labour Party voted for Bobby Sands (one of the hunger-strikers) when he was elected to parliament (the SDLP didn't put up a candidate). Also, John Hume, the leader of the SDLP, made statements criticizing the British government and suggesting that a lot of nationalists who weren't IRA supporters were supporting the hunger-strikers. There were 100,000 people at Bobby Sands' funeral, and even adjusting for the likelihood that some small minority (maybe 10,000) were from outside N. Ireland, it's worth pointing out that (including children, the disabled, the sick, and the elderly, many of whom probably stayed home) the nationalist population was about 500,000 at that time (UPDATE 5/22/09 it was a work day; unemployment among nationalists was probably no more than about 20%; Belfast, where the funeral was, at that time had a nationalist population that was probably something like 70,000 and the area within roughly an hour's drive of Belfast Local Government District might have contained something like 300,000 more nationalists at the most; so about 90,000 nationalists is a pretty high figure, assuming that there were also a lot of people who kind of supported the hunger-strikers but couldn't stomach attending a republican funeral) (about half the nationalists more than an hour away from Belfast were in the constituency that elected Sands).

For more information, see this.

(UPDATE 3/1/17 In recent years there has been a controversy over  a children's play park in what used to be called the Newry and Mourne local government district. The park was named after one of the dead hunger-strikers. Most of the time, most of the SDLP councilors voted in favor of naming it that way)

(UPDATE 7/9/17 From another post: "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 version 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 available for defense during times of sectarian tension and and when crime HAD to be dealt with by force.")

Since the hunger-strike ended, the mass struggle seems to have gone down to something probably just above what it was the 7 years after Bloody Sunday. Ogra Shinn fein (SF Youth) do a lot of demonstrations and some stuff that could be called direct action (there was also activity by Republican youth that often involved petrol bombs), but they seem to have not been very broadly based among nationalist youth. In 1988, in commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the Civil Rights Movement, marches were held that seem to have been well-attended, and every year there's a very successful republican march to mark the introduction of internment. There are other marches and rallies, but everything I've read indicates they are not at the same level as they were in the periods around 1970 and 1980, (I also saw a few nationalist protests which have influenced what I'm saying here).

One aspect of this I'd like to discuss is the record of the SDLP, who claim to be inheritors of the civil rights movement. I'm sure there's some truth to that, but not as much as they would have you believe. As far as I can tell, in the 70s a large majority of SF members could say they had been involved in the CRM and in the 80s, some large minority could say the same thing. In 1988 a meeting was held at which participants in the Civil rights movement were invited to create a committee which would do work in commemoration of the CRM. Although it appears that the SDLP didn't participate for some reason (same thing for most of the non-Provisional part of the republican family, although at that point the Provisionals would have represented some very large majority of that family), it probably represented between about half and some large najority of the CRM and I have heard nothing to indicate there was a rival effort of similar success by the SDLP (I'm almost certain that in a video of one of the commemoration marches, you can see the leader of the SDLP, which indicates that they did not organize a rival effort). The committee did attract three of the 4-5 top people in the civil rights movement, including the person who was probably at the very top, Bernadette Devlin-McAliskey, plus Eamonn McCann who was probably either #2 or #3, and Michael Farrell, who was probably either #4 or #5. The video leaned towards supporting the Provisionals and took two subtle digs at the SDLP.

Also, the SDLP did not have a perfect record on the civil rights movement. John Hume, who was a senior figure from the beginning and became Leader of the SDLP in 1979 and remained Leader until 2001, opposed three of the most important marches in the civil rights era. He opposed the second march, the one in Derry that really got the CRM going (he refused to co-sign the paper-work for the permit), he opposed the Belfast-Derry march by PD, and he opposed the march that was fired on on Bloody Sunday. Also, when interment without trial was introduced, part of the response was a rent and rates strike, basically refusing to pay the local councils taxes and rent on public housing (it was originally an effort associated with the SDLP, but became very popular with the entire civil rights movement). Towards the very beginning it was estimated that 16,000 households were on the strike, which would have been something like 1/3 of that Nationalist population, probably something like 2/3 of those with public housing, and it probably grew as it became clearer that (for the first 1 1/2 years) not a single loyalist was going to be interned; those figures probably went up to about 2/3 and 4/5, although they might have fallen a bit not long after the government started interning a small number of loyalists. In 1974 there was a power-sharing government for N. Ireland as part of an effort to resolve the conflict. While internment continued, an SDLP minister announced that there would be no amnesty for people on the rent and rates strike, increased the amount of money that could deducted from the social security payments of those on the strike and introduced a punitive fine for people on the strike.

Going back to the 1970s, there was a movement that I should discuss. The Community of Peace People was a short-lived movement in 1976 which made a call that was sort of universally aimed at stopping all the violence, and they were more successful than similar efforts before and since- the two women at the center of it won the Nobel Peace Prize for 1976. It started when the three children of one of the two women, Anne Maguire, died after being struck by a car driven by an IRA member who lost control after he was shot by the British Army. The Peace People issued a statement calling for an end to violence but were frequently criticized for often specifying the paramilitaries and not the security forces. For a brief period of time they were very successful, but as it became clear that they were not going to criticize the security forces their support in the Nationalist community declined. At one point there was going to be a peace march from a nationalist area into a loyalist area. The trade-unions announced that they intended to march as a bloc with their banners. Some loyalists threatened that there would be trouble if that happened. The Peace People said they also opposed the unions taking part as a group, and the unions told their members to instead march with their families. It's not clear if the PP opposed union participation before or after the loyalist threat. If it was before, that indicates some large degree of hostility towards the unions, if it was after, that indicates that they were willing to erode the effectiveness of their campaign in the face of threats of violence, which isn't really in-line with their movement of standing up against the paramilitaries. The thing is, since the conflict was fueled partly by poverty (even though with a poverty-free N. Ireland it would still make sense to unite Ireland, the sectarianism of the loyalists is fueled by poverty, as is the tiny amount of sectarianism of the nationalists and to some degree support for republicanism- although as you might guess I don't have a problem with that republicanism). The unions can address this, can generate support for progressive responses to poverty, and can glue together working-class nationalist/unionist solidarity, and if the unions had been integrated into the marches, that would have been much better. As you might guess, I still wouldn't be crazy about the Peace People as I would have largely supported the armed struggle, and the Peace People were saying nothing about the border (aside from some vague references, they also seemed to have said very little if anything about justice (i.e. discrimination); they were something like 75% PEACE and 25% anti-sectarian). Around the beginning of 1977, they even said that the violence of the security forces "is not as bad" as that of the paramilitaries. Within several months, the large Peace People marches were over with.

That's about it. Aside from the period around 1970 and in 1980/81, the mass struggle has been relatively low. Besides those two peaks it was probably only sort of comparable to what happened in Apartheid S. Africa, or during the Civil Rights Era in the American South.