Conference tallis::celt

1229.0. "Letter from Danny Morrison" by KOALA::HOLOHAN () Tue Jun 22 1993 16:01

  I am not fighting for anybody but myself and family, and those in West
Belfast and elsewhere in nationalist areas, who consider themselves
oppressed.  No one I know of in this jail has lifted a gun or planted a
bomb in the name of the people of the Twenty-six Counties.  The
nationalist experience in the North has been that within a six-county
state, civil rights aren't achievable.  However, having national rights,
being a part of a nation, might bring some guarantee of equal
opportunity, an end to discrimination, and peace.  But if you in the
Twenty-six Counties don't want a united Ireland, just say so.   Don't
use IRA killings as an excuse for truncating your nationality and
identity, the fact that you consider yourselves far too new-fashioned to
be old-fashioned.  Your peace marches are built on lies:  the lie that
the IRA created and sustains violence:  the lie that the IRA are
responsible for loyalist violence: and the lie that the British
Government is neutral, its representatives avuncular, it's armed forces
peace-keepers.  When the Irish Times refers to republicans as
"misbegotten, pagan litter" (Kevin Myers, December 4th) it can come as
little surprise that the demonisation should extend from the IRA
Volunteer, to the Sinn Fein councillor, to this or her mother and
father, to th electorate, to the entire nationalist community, so that
you should spit on the names of your dead children and rip up their
photographs.  Second-class in life and second-class in death.  In your
sophistication, your smugness, you aloofness, your hypocrisy and your
forgetfulness, you are as guilty for prolonging this conflict as I am
fro participating in it.

                Danny Morrison
                H-Block 3,
                Long Kesh

(from the Irish Times, 4/12/93)