Conference tallis::celt

1517.0. "Sectarianism" by XSTACY::BDALTON () Tue Oct 10 1995 14:17

A colleague sent me the following text, which may be of
interest to those seeking a socialist persepective on
sectarianism in Northern Ireland. N.B. It's long!

Workers Solidarity Movement

Talk given by Andrew Blackmore in Dublin, February 5th, 1992

SECTARIANISM

This talk is about sectarianism in the North. Sectarianism is
something that has existed to a greater or lesser extent in Ireland
since the plantations and must be overcome if socialism can be
introduced in the North.

Like racism in South Africa, sectarianism is not just something that
came out of thin air. As racist laws are enshrined in the South
African constitution, denying blacks equal rights to whites, so is
sectarianism an integral part of the northern state.

When the state was formed it was designed deliberately so that
Protestants would have a permanent majority, six counties was the
perfect size. 3 counties would have been too small and 9 counties
was rejected because it would have meant a majority of Catholics.

By 1923, the Stormont government had set about gerrymandering the
electoral boundaries to secure Protestant controlled councils and
MPs were elected. This was so effective that the nationalists went
from controlling 25 local councils out of 80 in 1920 to only
controlling 2 at the next election in 1924.

The most famous example of Gerrymandering was in Derry, with a 66%
Catholic majority was fiddled to return a Protestant controlled city
council. The Catholic population in that city increased so fast that
Stormont had to gerrymander again in 1936 to keep the unionists in
control!

Not only did the state twist and turn the electoral boundaries
whichever way it suited them to get unionists elected but they also
abolished PR and only allowed people paying rates to vote. Both had
the effect of decreasing the Catholic/nationalist representation. v
Others devices were used to favour Protestants, the allocation of
houses by councils was purely arbitrary and since letting a house to
someone meant one new ratepayer, and so one new voter, Unionist
controlled councils were strongly against giving houses to
Catholics. And from the start of partition Protestant employers were
urged to employ Protestants only.

Northern Ireland was truly a Protestant State for a Protestant
people. This was not because there was something inherently superior
about Protestants in Northern Ireland, nor was it because
Protestants were naturally in favour of retaining the union with the
British empire and Catholics were naturally in favour of becoming
independent.

The reality was that there was a clear economic reason for dividing
the working class on religious grounds. If Ireland had achieved
complete independence from the British Empire it would have resulted
in huge losses for the textiles and shipbuilding Industry
concentrated in the North of the country.

They relied on selling their goods to the rest of the Empire - the
Belfast shipbuilders were part of the triangle of Glasgow, Liverpool
and Belfast which supplied Britain with the bulk of its navy and
commercial ships. In 1907 95% of goods manufactured in Belfast was
exported to the British Empire. In was cheaper to ship goods to
Glasgow than to send them by rail to Dublin.

If Ireland was to become independent, the raising of tariffs,
economic wars etc would have seriously damaged the profits of the
industrialised North. The rest of the country was much less
industrialised and still largely based on farming which is why the
Southern bosses wanted independence with the protectionist policies
that could go with it.

So there was a clear difference of interests between the bosses up
in the North and the bosses in the rest of the Country. Likewise it
was more vital for Britain to hold onto the industrialised regions
of the north than any other part.

In order to keep the North British, the bosses of the North and the
British ruling class exploited the difference in religion between
the majority Protestants in the North East of the Country and the
majority Catholics everywhere else. They used the old imperialist
ploy of divide and rule to split the working class. Divide and rule
meant working on the working class so that one section allies itself
with the bosses and sees its interests as being the same as the
bosses. The enemy is made out to be the other section of the working
class which is made out to be the main threat to standard of living,
jobs etc. Thus by dividing the working class, the ruling class get
to rule.

In the early 1900's, sectarianism was encouraged to grow politically
and militarily. The ' Solemn League and Covenant' which was against
Home Rule was signed by 400,000 people in 1912. Unionism began
increasing its military presence as well.

The UVF, a private unionist army was recruited from the orange
order. The Orange order was and is a Protestant only club and has
been a strong breeding ground for the Protestant supremacy politics
of sectarianism. The UVF was taken over by a retired British General
and in April 1914 they landed 25,000 rifles and 2.5 millions rounds
at Larne. The arm were for the express use of fighting against a
united Ireland.

They were backed in their organisation against Irish Independence by
the Tories and the British military establishment. In July 1912,
Bonar Law the Tory leader said " I can imagine no length of
resistance to which Ulster will go in which I shall not be ready to
support them." As we know, the Unionists managed to create partition
and the Orange state was created with sectarian divisions and has
been that way ever since.

But of more interest to us as socialists than why were anti Catholic
laws made, is why did the Protestant working class believe the crap
that they were better than Catholics and should unite with their
bosses to keep Catholics down.

The working class in Northern Ireland has always been poor and the
Protestants have always been told that there are only a few jobs
going around. Catholics are made out by Unionist leaders to be a
threat to their jobs unless they are kept down. This is what is
called playing the orange card. Any show of strength by the
Catholics is portrayed by Unionist leaders as a direct threat to the
livelihood of the Protestants. The orange card is also used against
the left wing Protestants who go on strike.

This has been why Catholics have been attacked murdered kicked out
of their homes and pogromed with the full support of the British
government and the Northern Irish ruling class throughout the
history of this state.

Two weeks ago over 15 ,000 people commemorated the twentieth
anniversary of Bloody Sunday where 14 people were murdered by
British paratroopers. For those people their only crime had been to
go on a civil rights march.

The first Bloody Sunday is now hardly ever mentioned. It took place
in 1920 in Derry. That time it was after the Catholics had done
something completely inexcusable - they had elected Sinn Fein to the
city council. This incensed the Unionists and gave confidence to the
Nationalists. After the local head of the RIC was shot by the IRA,
the UVF started firing indiscriminately from the walled city into
the Catholic Bogside, the RIC did nothing to stop them.

Fighting broke out for a week, Catholic families were driven out of
the Protestant Waterside and Prehen areas. Several Catholics were
stopped by the UVF, asked their religion and shot dead. The
Catholics sealed off the Bogside and shot the son of the Governor of
the Apprentice Boys and another Protestant.

Like in 1972 the British troops moved in in force. They fired on the
Catholics, using machine guns and occupied the city with 15,000
soldiers. The UVF were left unmolested. The final death toll was 18,
14 Catholics and 4 Protestants.

In order to create a socialist Ireland, sectarianism which can lead
to what happened above needs to be confronted and defeated. This is
not going to be easy. Protestant workers are told that it is good to
keep down Catholics because it means that Protestants will get the
jobs, and houses. They are not told that because they fight
Catholics instead of uniting with them that the working class of
Northern Ireland has higher unemployment, and lower wages than
anywhere else in Britain.

In order for us as anarchists to work out how we will convince the
majority of the Unionist working class to our views we should look
at some examples of how sectarianism was beaten, albeit temporarily,
in the past, analyse it and find out what went wrong so that we will
not make the same mistakes.

For a time the 1919 strike looked like it had won Protestant workers
away from their bosses, but these hopes were pinned on shaky ground
and the increased support for class politics was only temporary.

During the First World War the shipyard and Engineering workers had
been working 54 hour weeks and once peace came they wanted to get
back to the old conditions. The bosses were having none of it. In
fact this action was part of a UK wide movement as there were
strikes in Britain as well at the time, especially in Glasgow.

The strike was voted for by 20,225 to 558 at a public meeting, after
they had marched to the city hall.

On the 25 January the strike started and from the beginning it had a
big impact on the city. Gas was cut off, electricity limited to
hospitals and essential services, trains stopped and any shop
turning on lights was stoned. By the end of the first week there
were 40,000 out and 20,000 others laid off by the businesses closed
due to having no power.

The strike was solid for the first 3 weeks despite the orange card
being played. The Belfast Newsletter of 8 February called the
strikers "Bolsheviks, anarchists and the hirelings of Germany" The
Belfast Grand Orange Lodge condemned the strike. The state then got
more involved. The Defences of the Realm Act was invoked to make it
illegal not to supply electricity. 3 magistrates were moved into the
city to deal with the increased number of arrests. The army was
moved into the power stations.

After four weeks the strike ended with a 47 hour week won and what
seemed to be 10's of thousands of Protestant workers won away from
unionist politics to class politics.

A few months later 100,000 took part in a May Day march to Ormeau
Park in a Protestant area of Belfast and listened to speeches
demanding more labour representation. And next January Labour
candidates won 12 seats out of 60 on the local council elections
where they had previously held none. This included one Labour
councillor who topped the poll in the Protestant stronghold of
Shankill.

And at the next May Day march there was another massive
demonstration with a resolution passed supporting the Bolshevik
Government in Russia.

However this shift to the left was short lived. By the end of July
there started a massive pogrom against Catholics, and left wing
Protestants. According to the Catholic Protection Committee, 10,000
Catholic men and 1,000 Catholic women were expelled by Protestant
workers from the shipyards, engineering works, and linen mills. The
Labour vote at the 1921 general election was minimal.

To see why this happened, we must look at the political composition
of the strikers and how the Unionist bosses reacted to the growing
"socialist threat".

In order to coordinate the strike, a strike committee had formed
composed on one side of trade unionists (like the mildly
anti-partition members of the Independent Labour Party such as
Charles McKay, James Baird and Sam Kyle) and on the other side
members of the Unionist Labour Association such as Robert Weir and
William Grant who was later to be a Unionist MP and Cabinet
Minister.

The Unionist Labour Association was obviously pro unionist and
allied to the bosses politically. There was only a slight
disagreement on the hours of labour that workers should have to
work. William Grant said afterwards that he had voted against the
strike and had only joined the strike committee to oppose the
socialists that were on it.

The two sides of the committee had opposing views on partition and
so "to preserve unity" as they said the ILP said that "politics have
nothing to do with the hours of labour". The Independent Labour
Party made no effort to win the majority of Protestant workers over
to the anti-partition side in case they caused a split in the
committee.

So while Labour was popular when it came to fighting on purely
economic issues like a reduction in hours worked, it had won very
few anti-partition Protestant recruits.

While the anti-partition side avoided politics the unionist side did
not. Edward Carson along with other Unionist leaders was deeply
concerned that the workers would break with Orangism and develop
their class consciousness. At the same time the IRA was waging a
highly successful guerrilla war in the South and Unionists were
worried that the Protestants would link with this. The Orange card
was laid out.

Carson made a violently inflammatory speech at a Orange rally at
Finaghy outside Belfast calling on the government to get rid of Sinn
Fein and all it stood for. He then called on the UVF to do the job
for the government making it clear what sort of violent methods they
should use. He then went on to say about the Independent Labour
Party:

"those who come forward posing as friends of Labour care no more
about labour than does the man on the moon. The real object and the
real insidious nature of their propaganda, is that they mislead and
bring about disunity amongst our own people and in the end, before
we know where we are, we may find ourselves in the same bondage and
slavery as is the rest of Ireland.

On 17 July Colonel Smyth, head of RIC Munster was shot dead by the
IRA. He was a well known Orange man and had told the RIC a month
before "The more you shoot the better I will like you, and I assure
you no policeman will get into trouble for shooting any man.

Carson's speech, the murder of Smyth, the IRA actions, combined with
the fact that all jobs were under threat in the post war depression,
brought sectarian tensions in Belfast to breaking point.

On the day of Smyth's funeral a meeting was held at the gates of
Workman Clark and Co shipyard. It was decided to kick the Sinn
Feiners out of the shipyard and the pogrom started. Armed with
sledgehammers and other weapons the Catholics were attacked, beaten
and driven out.

It quickly spread and as I mentioned before left wing Protestants
were also removed, including James Baird a labour councillor, and
Charles McKay ILP and chairman of the old strike committee.

The Protestants by carrying out their purge of 11,000 of their
"disloyal" workmates had made their jobs safer and stopped what was
called the "socialist threat".

The anti partitionists of the strike had not been prepared for the
backlash against them and they suffered for it. Loyalty to the
Unionist bosses had been reaffirmed with a vengeance.

The Outdoor Relief Strike 1932

It is worth looking at the Outdoor Relief Strike of 1932 to see if
any lessons had been learnt from the 1919 strike.

As before capitalism was having a depression. Wall Street had
crashed and the industrial countries were feeling the pinch. In
Northern Ireland the two biggest industries, textiles and
shipbuilding were taking a hammering.

The famous Poor laws which had been scrapped in the South and
Britain were still in use by Stormont in the North. There were also
many restrictions concerning who got unemployment benefit and who
didn't. Those who failed had to apply for what was called Outdoor
Relief.

For a married man to qualify for Outdoor Relief he had to do two and
a half days 'task work' per week on what were called Outdoor Relief
schemes, which was work such as mending roads and laying pavements.
There was no Outdoor Relief for women, and single men only got
anything if they were lucky enough to get task work.

Because there were so many unemployed there was not enough task work
for everyone for every week so the men had to take turns. In the
weeks that you didn't get task work you were paid in kind, which
meant being given a donation of food. So on many weeks there was no
money to pay bills, buy cloths or to spend on entertainment.

At the time of the strike there was crippling poverty in Belfast. A
survey showed that 37% of working class families were living in
absolute poverty. This meant such a lack of food, clothing or fuel
as to endanger health. Tuberculosis killed off 45% of people between
the ages of 15 and 25 and a quarter of all children dying under the
age of one, died in the workhouse.

Despite the unemployment crises the government didn't give a damn.
The last time the government had met had been to extend its summer
holiday by a month until November.

However the unemployed were organising to fight back. Here in the
south the Irish unemployed workers movement was holding large
demonstrations, one as large as 1,000 in Longford and in Britain
there were Hunger marches taking place alongside disruptions of
political banquets and invasions of factories to appeal for an end
to overtime and speed ups.

The Revolutionary Workers Group had formed in Ireland. This crowd
later went on to form the communist party of Ireland but at that
time, the early thirties, Stalin's crimes were not widely known and
it was the only socialist organisation of note that was active.

The RWG argued for a fighting response to the dole queue and managed
to win around a large amount of unemployed. An Outdoor Relief
Workers Committee was set up and Tommy Geehan of the RWG who was
also a delegate to the Belfast Trades Council called for a strike by
the ODR workers.

They held a mass meeting on September 30th and voted to strike in
four days time if their demands were not met which were abolition of
task work, and an increase in payments, no payment in kind, all
street work to be paid at trade union rates, adequate outdoor
allowances for all single unemployed men and women who are not in
receipt of unemployment benefit.

Since their demands were not conceeded they were out on strike the
following Monday. It was 100% solid, there was no task work being
done. That evening a crowd of 30,000 marched from Frederick St to
the Custom House steps where a mass meeting was held. This was the
first time since 1919 that workers had ignored the bigots and united
on class lines to fight for their own interests. Catholic and
Protestant made common cause against the ruling class.

The strike went on and by the end of the week rioting and looting
had taken place in the main Catholic and Protestant areas. Despite
baton charges by the RUC, the army being put on stand by, and
partial offers of improvements from the Lord Mayor, the strike
continued. When a demonstration was banned on Tuesday 11th, the
fighting got serious. Hand to hand battles took place on the Falls
and Shankill against the RUC, with the RUC starting to use their
guns.

However the government came up with a strategy to beat the strikers.
Instead of firing indiscriminately at both Catholics and
Protestants, the RUC were told to only shoot at Catholic areas. The
Orange card was being played. The strikers were told that the IRA
were using the ODR strike as a cover to overthrow 'protestant
rights'.

The newly formed sectarian Ulster Protestant League said that they
"deplored that these unfortunate conditions were used as a cloak by
the communist Sinn Fein element to attempt to start a revolution in
our province. We also greatly deplore that some few of our loyal
Protestant unemployed were misled to such an extent that they
associated themselves with the enemies of their faith and
principles. We congratulate the government of Northern Ireland on
the firm steps they have taken to preserve law and order in our
city.

In fact the IRA who had many members on Outdoor Relief at the time
had given local support to the strike but had no real influence in
the organisation or course of the strike.

There was little success in rekindling sectarian hatreds during the
strike and they won big cash increases in their relief pay. But
relief to single persons was not won and there was heavy criticism
of the strike committee for ending the strike before winning this.
Two were shot dead, one Catholic and one Protestant and 15 were
injured from gunshot wounds - all in Catholic areas.

There is an article on the ODR strike in our pamphlet NI and BI from
which I got part of this account. I did not read it word for word in
case some of you have read it already.

I will go on the look at some of the problems of the strike, and
they again come partly from the politics of the leaders of the
strike in this case the RWG. Firstly it was Stalinist policy at the
time to refuse to work with any other groups on the grounds that
they were what they called "social fascists". So the RWG were not
heavily involved in Trade Unions and so it was very hard to
implement their plan for a general strike. If that had happened the
potential for winning an outstanding victory would have been much
increased.

Also, being a communist party they confined themselves to being the
leadership of the strike and made no effort to give people the
confidence to fight for themselves. The unemployed were encouraged
to listen to speeches and then fall in behind as they went on a
march, shouting the correct slogans.

But most importantly, for this talk, they did little to promote anti
imperialist and anti capitalist ideas within the Protestant working
class. At the barricades when they were all fighting together was
the ideal opportunity to win Protestants away from support for their
bosses and over to class based anti imperialist and anti
partitionist politics. As it was the unity was based more on common
suffering than common beliefs and so it was easily broken.

After the strike Unionist politicians started having success in
stirring up sectarian hatred again. On 27 August Senator Sir Joseph
Davison, Grand Master of the Orange Order made a speech saying "
When will the Protestant employers of Northern Ireland recognise
their duty to their Protestant brothers and sisters and employ them
to the exclusion of Roman Catholics? It is time Protestant employers
realised that whenever a Roman Catholic is brought into their
employment it means one Protestant vote less. It is our duty to pass
the word along from this great demonstration and I suggest the
slogan should be "Protestants employ Protestants"

Without the unifying pressure of the strike, these words had an
effect and sectarianism increased. At a Unionist rally called to
protest against the Catholic Church being allowed to use the Belfast
Corporation owned Ulster Hall, Protestants were told by Dorothy
Harnett to "get training in firing", a mob coming home from this
meeting attacked Catholic homes in the York St area of Belfast.

Violence increased until the 23 June 1935 when the aftermath of an
Orange parade resulted in three weeks of sporadic riots. 56 Catholic
homes were burnt out in the docks area. Mobs attacked the Catholic
ghettos of Short Strand, Sandy Row and Peters Hill. Many people were
killed and when the shipyard reopened after the July 12 holiday, the
Catholic workers were expelled again. This time there were only 200
out of 4,000 workers to expel.

Anti sectarianism, is not just a thing of the past. Now in the past
two decades there have been lots of examples of Protestants and
Catholics being anti sectarian.

One short and successful example was the DHSS strike of August 1986,
only six years ago. After the Anglo Irish Agreement there had been a
big rise in the number of sectarian attacks against Catholics by the
UDA and the UVF.

In Lisburn Catholics and Protestants are not divided into separate
ghettos, most streets are mixed. This is why they were picked by
loyalist terrorists who wanted to separate the Catholics from the
Protestants. The UDA had made threats to the DHSS, health board and
housing offices of Lisburn that Catholic workers in them were going
to be killed. The object of the threat was to terrorise the
Catholics and force them out of their jobs.

In response all 124 DHSS workers walked out in solidarity with their
threatened workmates. Catholics, Protestants and those of no
religion stood together as workers. The next day 2,000 workers in
another 12 offices joined in and the following morning 14 offices
were shut. Without any lead from their national officials, local
activists of the union (NIPSA) had organised the strikes and had
found that nearly all staff were eager to stand up to the
hate-mongers. Action also took place in the Eastern Health and
Social Services Board. Since then workers in the DHSS have had the
confidence to fight back together each time the bigots try to split
them. Their example has led to a similar stance recently being
agreed by workers in Northern Telecom.

Conclusion

The great thing about these examples is that it shows that
sectarianism can be beaten. If it happened before it can happen
again. But we must learn from the historical examples.

Catholic and Protestant workers in extremely divided areas like
Belfast or Derry have only got together under specific
circumstances. That is when they have been thrown together to fight
for a common objective. They will not get unite just by us arguing
that you have to be nice to each other.

Nor will the Catholics and Protestants get together after British
initiatives like the Anglo Irish Agreement or the Brooke talks, no
matter how well he can sing. Since it is in the interests of the
ruling class to keep the working class divided they are hardly
likely to arrange talks which could possibly link them together. On
the contrary such talks have always led to a big increase in
sectarian violence as Protestants see their interests threatened. 36
Catholics were killed in a spate of murders after the Brooke talks
last Summer.

Unity has the best chance of occurring when it is clear that both
Protestants and Catholics will be materially better off by getting
together. That is why they united in the 1919 strike and the Outdoor
Relief strike and that is why they united in the Jim Larkin led
strike in 1907, which I hadn't got time to go into.

But in order to keep them united it is crucial to win the anti
imperialist pro socialist battle of ideas with the Protestant and
Catholic workers while you have the chance.

Obviously it is in everyones' interests to have an anarchist
society, where bosses and exploitation have been removed and there
will be a rise in living standards for the whole working class. The
problem is convincing Protestant and Catholic workers of this, and
in the heat of the struggle is the best time. People are in those
times confident enough to realise that they can overthrow the State
and run society for themselves.

Not only is it probably the most profitable time to argue anarchist
politics, but if they are not argued for and won, there will
certainly be a Unionist backlash as Protestants realign themselves
with their bosses and see the main threat to their livelihood yet
again as the Catholics instead of British Imperialism and the
Capitalist system.

  That was an excellent article.  Thankyou for posting it.
                     Mark

    I had a feeling you'd like that Mark.
    
    It was fairly interesting up until it got to the bits where it
    theoretically said...
    
    �They did this, They did that. We're innocent."
    
    Selective journalism at it's best.
    
    
    CHARLEY

    CHARLEY, I'd be interested in knowing what bits *specifically*
    you didn't like, and why.

    O.K. 
    
    I'm not trying to start an argument here.
    
    The IMO the note is openly biased. All the way through the note there are 
    examples of Protestant and British armed forces' atrocities resulting in 
    death and 
    injury.
    
    I'm not saying terrible things these didn't happen , But in the note there 
    are no mention of any Catholic acts of violence. What..there hasn't been any
    for 90 years????
    
    This carrys on from another discussion in another topic.
    
    Most people in this conference, when debating the "troubles" would like
    to read an informed, knowledgeable account involving both sides of an
    argument - not the tiresome "they did this and that and we're
    completely hard done by, justified and innocent" or the "we'll just skip the
    naughty things that we've done" routine.
    
    
    
    CHARLEY
    
    

    these terrible things - sorry

 Charly,

	I rarely if ever contribute in the conference on matters related to the
"troubles" and I didn't regard the original note as such. Political it was yes,
but in the aspects of politicism which most consider mainstream. Capitalism
versus Socialism. Yes there is real politics in the North as in everywhere
else...the point the article was making is that if by association you are linked
with a culture which supports one shade, it's very difficult to break from it
even if by status you are more aligned with another. 

	There was nothing I read which suggested that acts of violence were the
domain of any single group; however the fact that the causes of many were as a
result of gerrymandering and bigotry is undisputed. Much the same was done in
the UK in the 20's and 30's and dare I say 80's - remember the miner's strike. 

	What I find sad is that you imo are following the same tit for tat idiom
and responding to Mark just cos thats the way it is in "another discussion in
another topic". Please try to be more constructive and factual. Keep the
theoretical stuff out of it. 

Sean

    You've totally missed the point of .4
    
    
    CHARLEY

/* Written  5:59 AM  Oct 11, 1995 by peg:guardian in igc:p.news */
/* ---------- "Interview with Sinn Fein's J Neeson" ---------- */
From: The Guardian <[email protected]>

The following article was published in "The Guardian",
newspaper of the Socialist Party of Australia
in its issue of Wednesday, October 11th, 1995.

Contact address:
65 Campbell Street, Surry Hills, Sydney 2010 Australia.

Fax: 61 2 281 5795

Email: <[email protected]>

Republication is permitted with acknowledgement.
Subscription rates on request.
------------------------------

                Black taxis -- a unique transport system

JIM NEESON is a Sinn Fein activist and the managing director of a
community taxi service in Northern Ireland. He was in Australia
as the guest of the Australian Aid for Ireland and spoke to "The
Guardian" about his work operating a unique transport system in
Belfast:

In 1969, in Belfast, the complete infrastructure of society broke
down. Among other things, buses were burnt as barricades. Whole
streets and areas of the town were blocked off, and the bus
companies and the Government decided that they would take the
buses off the streets. As far as they were concerned, the people
that lived where we were in the ghettos didn't need buses.

On top of that, the authorities, trying to ghetto-ise us, had
been knocking down whole streets of old houses near the city
centre in what they alleged to be reforms, and then tried to move
us out into the suburbs...

People started to give each other lifts into town. Whoever was
lucky enough to have a car would take four or five people and get
some money for petrol.

There was also a taxi system operating with London-style black
taxis. We don't know why or how it happened, but nearly all of
the drivers of these taxis were Catholic. Being Catholics, these
drivers couldn't work in any of the Protestant [loyalist] areas
of the city.

The black taxis normally carried four or five people, but in
those days, with no buses running, they might have put about a
dozen or 14 people into them -- like a van. Passengers were
charged a nominal sum, and that's how the community taxi service
was born. It could provide work. It was a fairly ad hoc
arrangement.

At that time internment had just been introduced and hundreds and
hundreds of people had been suddenly slammed into jail and their
families depended on us for support. Those who were lucky enough
to escape the net of internment felt they should help those who
hadn't, so the Prisoners' Dependents' Fund was set up. Most of
the people who had any sort of a job in those times always
subscribed something towards the prisoners.

Also, when people came out of internment they were obviously
marked by the government. And any who had work when they were
interned could not go back to their jobs because they had been
interned and so they were considered to be terrorist suspects.

So the black taxi service was able to offer work to anyone who
had been in jail and had been released. If a man wanted a job and
he could drive, he could work with us. We've kept that policy up
from day one.

At that time, there were riots, our armed volunteers [IRA men]
were on the streets, and we had our own no-go areas where the
British Army couldn't enter. With the comradeship that comes from
being at war, and where people knew they couldn't win on their
own, everybody's door was open, and people used to come and go
freely in and out of the houses.

Anyway, as a result of all this the black taxis, -- the Falls
Taxi Association, as it was called -- became very, very big, too
big, and like many co-operatives it destroyed itself. Being big,
we started to employ people for the sake of employing people. If
someone said he needed a job, we'd give him a job...
Consequently, the whole thing got out of control and went
bankrupt.

It just wasn't performing the duty that we thought community
transport was supposed to do. The British saw a chance then, to
move in and destroy it, because they regarded it as part of the
republican movement, as a place where prisoners could get work,
and which allegedly supplied money to the IRA.

Our insurance company pulled out overnight and left us on our own
with nothing, thanks to British pressure.

I went in to run it around the time of the hunger strikes. We in
the republican movement thought that if we didn't go in and run
it then the Brits would take it from us, and we'd lose it and we
would lose the jobs that it gave us. So I went in to run it, and
to do so as an efficient business.

James Connolly, the socialist who was executed by the British in
1916, said there is no point in tearing down the Union Jack and
putting up the green [Irish] flag if the conditions of the people
remain the same. It's not the flag that counts -- it's the
conditions people work in. So we decided that we should show how
the taxis could be run as a community business by the people for
the people.

About this time, [when Free Belfast and Free Derry were being
administered by the IRA] aid and funds of one sort and another
were coming in, but the British kept talking of "normalising
Ulster". They said the government would provide jobs. But we
thought, "No, we're the government of this country. We're the
provisional government of Ireland -- of all Ireland, not just one
or other of its parts."

We felt it was our duty to hold our country in trust till all
Ireland is free, and we felt the need to prove that when the
country is eventually united and we assume the responsibility of
government, then we must be able to point to economically viable
achievements. And the black taxis are just that.

We have created 300 jobs with the black taxis. There are 250 of
them working in West Belfast [the main republican areas], and 25
or 30 in the rest of the city.

It is a unique transport system. As in some countries, like the
Philippines and Turkey, to name only a couple, our taxis offer
service on the shared-ride system -- you can't have the taxi to
yourself. The taxis follow fairly fixed routes and passengers pay
the driver when they get out.

When we started we couldn't go to England, where these taxis are
manufactured, to buy spare parts. So we sent people over to buy
taxis. These replaced worn-out taxis, which were then
cannibalised to keep other taxis on the road. After a while we
became quite sophisticated in keeping our fleet operating.

According to British government figures we carry 15 million
people a year. About six people work in my office and we run
maybe 10 different small related businesses, garages, repair and
filling stations selling diesel.

The money coming in from that whole network goes straight into
the economy of West Belfast. That is the important part to us,
because we have never had money from the British.

Since the cease-fire last September we have asked for money, but
in spite of the so-called International Fund for Ireland
amounting to millions of dollars, we haven't received anything
from that. That fund is supposed to be targetting social needs,
but it isn't.

The same people and the same classes who had the money before are
getting it now. The distribution of funds is vetted politically,
and the fund's donors -- the governments of Europe, America,
Canada, Australia, New Zealand and others -- are not informed.

The republican movement and the IRA have attracted a number of
small businesses, but these have been denied access to funding
for development either on the ground that they are associated
politically with the IRA or are situated in republican areas.

Attempts have been made to entice them into government-aided
business parks by offering assistance on that condition. This is
unacceptable to the republican movement.

That's why the taxi service has always been so important an
enterprise. In fact the loyalists tried to create a similar
service.

But they were interested only in the profits they could make.
Their ideas are built on sectarianism and privilege. They've been
used to that all their lives even though they too, are working
class.

In the Belfast shipyards, in the mills, in the ropeworks which is
one of the biggest in the world, they were always able to get
jobs because the loyalist government favoured them. They
destroyed any trade unions not run according to their own
sectarian ascendancy politics.

They took bad money [low wages] and worked for the employers for
next to nothing because they were against "Fenians" [the term
they use for Catholics and republicans] getting jobs. If you were
a Protestant loyalist you had a job, and that was that. [But
protestants, too, suffered high rates of unemployment - EB]

So it's no surprise their taxi service didn't prosper the way
ours did.

One thing that few people know about is that they came to us
about 14 years ago because some decent people among them were
really trying to model their work on what we were doing. But they
had only a few taxis and they came to us for help because they
were having difficulties insuring their taxis.

We got insurance for them and they still have that insurance. But
it didn't stop loyalist death-squads killing our drivers. I've
often had the awful responsibility of going to the homes of
drivers that have been killed, to tell their families the
terrible news. Although I've enjoyed my job and I'm very
committed to it, it has been tinged with the sadness of many
funerals.

I remember being in Castlereagh Interrogation Centre [one of the
notorious centres where republicans were tortured] and the police
came in and said, "We know who you are", and they threw down
photographs of me and the black taxis at republican funerals, and
they said, "You're a bloody undertaker!".

The police, the British army and British intelligence, have
always considered the black taxis as IRA. We are not in the IRA,
obviously, because -- as Gerry Adams said -- it would be illegal
to be in the IRA and we, therefore, couldn't operate.

But the Brits have always had us in their sights because we are a
part of the republican movement that is managing to put something
back into the west and north Belfast
economy.

The Guardian                | phone: 61-2-2126855
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Australia

    Thanks, CHARLEY, for your useful comments in .4, which set
    me thinking. You wrote:
    
    > IMO the note [.0] ia openly biased. All the way through
    > there are examples of Protestant and British armed forces'
    > atrocities resulting in death and injury.
    
    Like you, I've been working on the assumption, frequently
    heard in the British and Irish press, that "they're each
    as bad as the other", so I spent yesterday evening trying
    to find evidence of Catholic sectarianism against Protestants
    during the period that the base note was  dealing with.
    My library is small, and I have only six history books
    which deal with this period, so I'm sure somebody else
    will be able to improve upon my research, but what I
    did find was rather shocking.
    
    I could find relatively little in the way of Catholic
    discrimination against Protestants in Northern Ireland
    between 1922 (when the state came into existance) and 1969
    (when the current 'Troubles' started). What I *did* find
    was endemic, systematic sectarian discrimination against
    Catholics, usually initiated by the Unionist upper-middle
    ruling class in order to keep the Catholic and Protestant
    working class disunited. Northern Ireland, it seems,
    was founded specifically on sectarian lines. Catholics
    were seen as fifth columnists supporting the southern
    state, and who therefore ought to be suppressed
    for the good of the state There were public requests by
    Stormont ministers that Protestant employers should only
    employ protestant labour, and that anyone employing
    Catholic labour was disloyal. Bishop and Mallie
    described the period rather succinctly, I thought:
    
    "The institutions of Northern Ireland had been 
    rapidly turned to the Protestants' overwhelming
    advantage. Within the six counties Protestants
    outnumbered Catholics two to one. As politics
    were conducted along sectarian lines, the Unionists
    had a perpetual majority at Stormont, the seat of the
    Northern Ireland parliament. It was, as its first
    Prime Minister, Sir James Craig (later Lord Craigavon)
    boasted, 'a Protestant Parliament and a Protestant state'.
    It had its own police force, the Royal Ulster Constabulary
    (RUC), backed up by the 25000-strong Ulster Special
    Constabulary (the 'B' Specials [formed from the UVF]),
    whose main function was to stifle republican activities,
    which they carried out with great success".
    
    Well, I'd like to quote more and from other historians
    as well, but I don't have the time. Suffice it to say
    that I was dismayed at what I found.
     

    Thanks for the information and for your research time.
    
    
    CHARLEY

    Very true Mr Dalton...my history books agree with you. the protestant
    attitude being that a catholic is a republican and a republican is not
    loyal to Stormant so why give a job to an unloyal soul when there are
    loyal souls waiting in the wings. It is, of course, a very paranoic
    attitude.
    
    The worst form of political sectarian stormant policy was the division
    of Derry (or Londonderry as it is also known) into the following three
    wards: SouthWard, NorthWard and Waterside Ward. It must be remembered
    that Derry has a significant catholic majority yet eligable voters for
    these three wards were as follows (Pop Source 1966)
    
    	SouthWard	NorthWard	WatersideWard
    	11,185 voters	6,467 voters	5,549 voters
    	10047 Catholics	2530 Catholics	1852 Catholics
    	1138 Protestant 3946 Protestant	3697 Protestant
    
        8 nationalist	8 Unionist	4 Unionist
    	Councillors	Councillors	Councillors
    
    So you see a Catholic Majority of nearly one third of the population of
    derry becomes a 12-to-8 minority on the Council - the same council
    which decide who should recieve council accomodation and who should
    not.
    
    It should be noted that one of the major grievences that gave rise to
    the civil rights marches in 67 was local council accomodation
    allocation.
    
    Shaun