Conference tallis::celt

1241.0. "Border Busters" by KOALA::HOLOHAN () Wed Jul 14 1993 16:23

  Article pulled from usenet:



                         BORDER BUSTERS
                       by Brian MacDonald
              from the Irish People. June 19, 1993.


                           **********


Last month's call by pro-British (Unionist) politicians for the
complete sealing of the border between the six and 26 counties
in the aftermath of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) attacks on
the commercial centres of several towns, confirm the existence
of a laager or siege mentality within Unionism. I have written
in the past that British pandering to that mentality has had
enormous complications for the communities close to the
straggling land frontier between the two states.

It does not seem to matter that none of the recent IRA commercial
targets were anywhere close to the border, nor that the vast
majority of such attacks are clearly initiated from within the
northern statelet itself; Unionist paranoia inevitably looks to
the south as the critical source of logistical support for those,
like  the IRA, who refuse to accept partition of Ireland and the
continued existence of the Northern Ireland statelet.

Limited Democracy

The recent electoral successes by Sinn Fein--the political party
which represents the demands for separatism--were at least as 
significant as the IRA attacks in prompting the calls for border
closure. The expression of separatist demands through the limited
democratic process which does exist in northeast Ireland is
extremely worrying to unionist politicians and to their political
overlords in Westminster.

Since partition began, every possible effort has been made to
make the border a social, cultural and economic divide as well
as a political frontier. To that end, we have witnessed in recent
years an attempt to justify partition on an intellectual level.
Archeology, history and even mythology are used in dishonest
fashion to support a spurious theory that the North of Ireland
was always separate from the rest of the country. A fake 'Ulster'
identity has been spawned. though recent genuine research has
demonstrated that the North of Ireland, while it has a regional
distinctiveness, was also very much a part of the emergent Irish
people. The two-nations theory has been exposed as a mask which
merely serves to cloak the anti-democratic partitionism of an
historical and social elite.

Geography

Given the nature of the border, running as it does through
communities that have existed since the dawn of history, and
with few natural geographic features to distinguish one side
from another, the task of partitioning the minds of persons
close to the frontier has not been an easy one. How could it be,
when the border line cuts through fields, villages and individual
houses? Unionist attempts to achieve their objective includes the
allocation of identification "permits" to southern individuals
working in the North, a system more familiar in South Africa. But
the clearest expression of the wish to impose separateness
between the two parts of Ireland has been the periodic strategy
of closing roads along the frontier. This strategy has undermined
the day-to-day intercourse between communities in 
border areas, disrupting established economic links and, more
significantly, weakening social ties.

Clones

Clones, County Monaghan, sits on the southern side of the border
and was once a bustling market center for a catchment area that
principally included parts of neighboring County Fermanagh.
Today, that catchment area is in a different state, separated
since the 1920's by customs posts and occasional closure of the
roads. The combined effect of this has been to distort entirely
market areas in the border areas so that today towns like Clones,
which depend on the free movement of the people within their
traditional economic communities, have been devastated.

Ironically, the second World War and the resultant shortages into
1950's of foodstuffs and other goods in the British economy,
postponed the full economic impact of partition, as northern
consumers came south to shop for necessities not obtainable in
the six counties. By the end of the decade, however, the closure
of all but one of the networks of cross-border railways, and
the renewed border road closures of that period, dealt a
crippling blow to economic and social life in the region.

Reassurance

The road closures of the late 1950's and early 1960's were, as
always, as much a psychological reassurance to Unionists as a
deterrent to the IRA, which was at the time engaged in a renewed,
though limited, campaign to undermine the northern state. The
defeat of that campaign, though in reality due to the republican
failure to sustain political support, was attributed by Unionists
to the road closures and to the policy of internment without
trial. It was therefore inevitable that, with the outbreak of the
current conflict in the late 1960's and early 1970's, the
Unionists would return yet again to these tactics.

This time, however, anti-partiionist political opinion had been
mobilized, and the policy of internment merely added fuel to the
fire of opposition to partition and British rule. Road closures
met with massive resistance from local communities. Moreover,
their justification on the grounds of 'security' became less
and less credible as the IRA campaign continued and indeed
intensified. And so a stalemate developed, a few roads remaining
closed after massive cratering operations, but the majority
staying open, allowing what remained of economic and social
contacts to continue across the border.

Electric Fence

Such contacts were largely confined to Catholics, whose
orientation remained as much to Dublin as to Belfast. But
for most of the Protestants, the siege mentality of their
Unionist leaders had a profound effect. I remember a shopkeeper
with whom we did occasional business. who lived less than
a kilometer into Northeast Ireland, a middle aged woman and a
Protestant. She patronized our drapery shop, and my parents
invited her on a trip to a fashion show to Dublin, only to
discover that she had never been to Dublin, not indeed any
further south than Clones town which was two miles away. Her
experience was far from untypical, though there had been a
continuing tradition amongst middle class Protestants to holiday
in the costal resorts of County Donegal or Sligo, both in the
26 Counties.

In 1979, a delegation of Unionist politicians visited Israel.
They returned full of enthusiasm for the manner in which the
Israelis had effectively sealed their border with neighboring
states. The Unionists demanded the introduction of a similar
strategy in Ireland, with suggestions as ludicrous as the
introduction of electric fencing along the entire frontier.
In June 1980, the British government responded with a new
campaign of road closures, this time allied to the creation of
permanent vehicle checkpoints (PVCs) on the remaining open roads.
The strategy has been to funnel the population through these
checkpoints, thereby monitoring the movement of the traffic
across the border.

Most roads were sealed, using massive concrete bollards encased
in metal, or catering, or both. In a number of instances, these
were supplemented by British bases. In other words, soldiers
were being deployed to guard roads which they had already closed!
Once again the strategy met resistance from local communities,
including many Protestants who were equally cut off from outlying
parts of their farms and from their market centres and churches,

In some cases, such as South Armagh, the public resistance proved
successful and the British abandoned road closures in most
of the area, opting instead for hugh watch towers from which they
monitor traffic without impeding it. While this strategy creates
its own problems, it does at least permit the free movement of
everyday traffic.

Blow

Elsewhere the strategy has dealt a deathblow to entire
communities. Apart from the inconvenience of travelling long
distances to find a road that remains open, motorists have
had to contend with delays at the PVCs themselves. There have
been repeated allegations of harassment by soldiers, women
travelling alone especially becoming victims of persistent
sexual innuendo. The PVSs have an almost exclusive "local"
focus, and photomontages of republicans from the area are taped
to the walls of the pillboxes. For these persons and indeed their
families and the wider community in which they live, travelling
through a checkpoint inn an ordeal, with long delays, persistent
searches and repeated abuse from military personnel.

Most strangers travelling through a checkpoint on an occasional
basis will have no problems, being waved through by soldiers who
appear courteous and apologize for being there at all. "Blame the
terrorists" a sign advises those passing through the PVCs and are
naturally less inclined to pass through them, thus breaking
the remaining economic and social ties with their neighbors
across the border. For those who cross the border in either
direction to their places of work, the PVCs have to be endured
and it has been these persons who have suffered the most.

Aiden McAnespie

Few more so than a young man named Aiden McAnespie from
Aughnocloy in County Tyrone. He passed through a veritable
gauntlet of abuse everyday as he travelled the short distance
each day from his home to the County Monaghan border across
which he was employed as a factory worker. One day as he walked
through the same PVC to a football match just yards away, he was 
shot in the back and was killed. The soldier who shot him claimed
that his weapon had discharged accidentally, though 
eyewitness accounts of the incident refute such claims. In any
event, the soldier is free today, while Aden McAnespie remains a
symbol of what can happened to anyone from the "terrorist"
community who has to pass through a PVC.

His death, and the subsequent dismantling of the Berlin Wall,
have motivated a determined campaign in the border areas, north
and south, to have the roads reopened. Calls for an end to the
current British strategy of closures are supported by public
opinion at all levels in the 26 counties and by the two main
nationalist parties in northeast Ireland.

Cross-border associations with no party political affiliation
spend weekends reopening roads which the British then reseal.
Some crossings have been reopened and closed again up to
forty times, and the landscape becoming reminiscent of a battle-
zone in trench warfare.

Excuse

Britain's sole defense for the strategy is that the closures are
a necessary "security" measure. But it we are to judge the
effectiveness of  the strategy using this criterion, then it has
clearly failed. IRA activity has not been stopped for the simple
reason that it does not originate across the frontier, but 
within northern Ireland itself. Whatever degree of logistical
support may be provided from supporters in the South to the IRA,
there is no evidence to suggest that this has diminished because
of the closures.

Far from heralding an end to violence, the closures and PVCs have
heralded a massive militarization of the border area, with
bigger guns and bigger bombs being used. The PVCs inevitable
became the target for IRA attacks, the extent that there are
now British observation posts guarding border checkpoints, which
in turn are trying to protect military installations which are
further from the border. More cynically still, PVCs and other
military installations are deliberately positioned close to homes
and schools as insurance against attack, forcing one school to
relocate its pupils and many families to abandon their homes. The
strategy has, therefore, become part of the problem and has
certainly provided no solution to the conflict in the border
region.

What is has effectively done has been to reinforce community
division, weakening still further the links that exist between
the people in the two parts of Ireland. Most in the 26 Counties
will not cross the border, so terrified are they of the array of
fortifications and weaponry that greets them at the PVCs. This
has in turn contributed to a growing partitionist mentality and
an absolute lack of understanding of  the truth of their own
country, an ignorance sustained by the most heavily censored
broadcast media in Western Europe.

Isolation

Northern separatists for their part have an understandable sense
of isolation and even  of betrayal as they feel abandoned by the
southern political opinion. The failure of Dublin politicians
to address the issue of border roads in a forceful way has
increased that sense of isolation and betrayal. Unionists on the
other hand have been reaffirmed in their siege psychology,
looking inward on themselves, distrusting everyone else, trapped
in an historical timewarp.

As we enter the era of open borders across the EC, recognizing
the importance of  the importance of the free movement of peoples
between states and the regions of western Europe, it is worth
remembering that the border which separates the people of Ireland
is more real and more fortified than ever in the past 70 years,
a monument to British divisiveness, and an obstacle in the way of
peace, justice and reconciliation on this island.

(article accompanied by photos showing local people engaged in
anti-border activity, such as filling in craters, rebuilding
bridges and picketing checkpoints.)
                            ********

Brian MacDonald writes regularly for the Irish People newspaper.

The Irish People is available from:

The Irish People
363 Seventh Ave
New York, NY
10011

$30.00 per year.

    >>> The recent electoral successes bu Sinn fein.
    
    What successes, they lost their only seat in Westminster, which was
    held by Gerry Adams, to Dr Joe Hendron of the SDLP in West Belfast last
    year.
    
    Joe.

 re. .1

 Excerpt below from note 1214.11 and .12, describing
 the most recent elections.

The coucil seat previously held by SDLP councilor 
Joe Hendron was lost to Sinn Fein.  

Sinn Fein polled 77,984 votes overall, representing a 
10,000 increase from 1989, returning 51 councillors, 
an overall increase of eight seats.

Hendron declined to run for re-election, claiming he would
be too busy with his duties an M.P. in London. Hendron
won his MP seat from Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams when
in a British-brokered election deal, the Ulster Defense
Association (UDA) a loyalist paramilitary group, agreed
to deliver their votes to Hendron in their small section 
of West Belfast in the hopes of unseating Adams. Sinn
Fein's vote held in republican West Belfast, but the
UDA's intervention on behalf on Hendron put him over the
top. Now Sinn Fein can point out that without the loyalist
vote (election lines being drawn differently in Parliamentary
and city elections) Hendron and the SDLP could not have won
the MP seat or can they win in republican West Belfast.


                        Mark
 

Mark H.,

The scenario outlined in your previous note is an example of Tactical 
Voting.

This happens all over the UK. The idea is that you vote in such a manner as 
to deny victory to the party you hate the most, not to elect the party you 
like the most.


Mark R.

     re .2
    
    To say that the voting agreement was British brokered is just
    s***-stirring. The arrangement was a local one and as pointed out by .3
    was an example of tactical voting. The fact remains that in the
    constituency of West Belfast the sitting MP is Joe Hendron of the SDLP,
    not Gerry Adams. Also this shows the limited appeal of Sinn Fein. They
    have maybe 10% of the votein Northern Ireland. In the Republic their
    recent electoral showings have been on the order of 1%. Hardly a
    democratic show of strength.
    
    Joe.

  re. .4

The coucil seat previously held by SDLP councilor 
Joe Hendron was lost to Sinn Fein.  There's a nice
fact for you.


                Mark

I can't speak for the situation in Northern Ireland but where I come from 
(West of Scotland - not a million miles away), the local elections are of 
limited significance.

They tend to be used as a protest vote or as an indication of peoples 
secondary preferences. In many cases, councilors are returned simply 
because they are nice people - the colour of their politics is immaterial.

I can give a few examples :

The recent local elections in England and Wales were a disaster for the 
Tories. This, to those not in-the-know, may seem strange coming so soon 
after their general election victory. The answer is quite simple. Millions 
switched as a protest vote. It's not often I agree with John Major but his 
description of the electorate giving him a "bloody nose" is quite accurate. 
Come the next General Election, these same voters will, by and large, vote 
Tory again.

I used to live in a town just south of Glasgow called Uddingston which is 
part of the Hamilton parliamentray constituency. This has been a safe seat 
for Labour for years now - consistently providing Labour with it'd third 
largest majority in Scotland. However, for over twenty years our councillor 
has been a Liberal.  This is because people like her and see her as being 
good at her job.  Everyone recognises that her victory, election after 
election, is not a mandate for her Liberal politics (we always voted Labour
when it really mattered). I suspect the same applies to Sinn Fein in West 
Belfast.


Mark

    Mark in .6 is correct. The scenario he describes is very common in the
    UK.
    
    Laurie.