Speaking out aboul Britain's longest runnina wai

Scan page 8

British war in Ireland.

It highlights the historic liberation struggle in Ireland and elsewhere while showing the repressive nature of the British Army, with statements from British soldiers involved in that repression.

The first few pages give a competent account of the role of the British army in Ireland (1169,1922) and of the Irish people's continuing resistance to these conquests.

They show the increasingly brutal attempts by Britain to crush this resistance.

A weakness of this section is that a lack of class analysis means that there is no explanation of why it was that. partition was accepted by one section of the Irish population.

- Weakness Another weakness is that there is no similar account of the period from the 1920s onwards.

After giving an account of the wars, fought by Britain against the Irish, the pamphlet shows how repression in Ireland was linked to the maintenance of the army as a force of the ruling class.

It shows how the raising Oh the first enular army (in seventeenth century) was coupled by the ruling class "with suppression of the Irish and defence of the protestant religion"

An account of Cromwell's campaign against the Irish rebels is given but the pamphlet also points out that a number of regiments, influenced by the Levellers, refused to fight in Pamphlet • A quote is given from pamphlet of the time:

"Fellow soldiers. Oh! the ocean of blood that we are guilty of! Oh! how those deadly sins of ours do torment our consciences! What have we to do in Ireland, to fight and murder a people and a nation which have done us no harm? We have waded too far in that crimson stream already of innocent and • Christian blood."

Despite these protests the war continued with terrible suffering for the Irish people, but Ireland was never fully pacified.

There were risings in these were futile against England with her naval fleets, her army, her police and spy system.

Training ground

The pamphlet shows the importance of Ireland as a training ground in repression for the. army.

During the late eighteenth century the army was given its first internal role in Britain, against the working class, setting up military barracks in and near working class towns.

To quote Tory Prime Minister Pitt:

"The circumstances of the country, coupled with the general state of affairs, rendered it advisable to provide barracks in other parts of the kingdom. A spirit had appeared in some , of the manufacturing towns which made it necessary that troops be kept near them."

Luddites

This new use of troops against the working class is emphasised by E.P.

Thompson in The Making of the English Working Class where he mentions the Luddites:

"For weeks whole districts were virtually under martial law. And one military command, in particular, established a reign of terror with arbitrary arrests, searches, brutal questionings and threats, for which we must turn to Irish history in search of comparison.".

This use of the army against the British working class, which is far from ruled out in today's struggles is inseperably linked with the struggle in Propaganda The pamphlet draws out the propaganda techniques used by the army on its own forces.

For example, in an army booklet Notes on N: Ireland' (which purported to give the troops some background to the current situation) a so-called "IRA oath" was reproduced.

The oath dwelt heavily on blood and vengeancegiving the impression of the Republicans as violent fanatics.

The oath itself, however, was a fake dreamt up in 1918 by Ulster Loyalists trying to discredit those fighting for national independence.

In other publications such as Soldier, an official army magazine, the Unionist population is painted in generally more favourable terms than the Catholics.

Role in Aden

Using statements from soldiers involved in repression around the world, the pamphlet shows a link between the army's roland Malaya with that in Ireland.

Vivid descriptions are given of the violence meted out by these "guardians of law and order":

'In 1971 I was posted with my unit, the first battalion Royal Greenjackets, to Belfast Mulhouse barracks.

My first encounter with army brutality was when a mobile patrol ‚came under nail bomb attack, and the patrol lifted a man who they though might been the thrower.

1 was watching the company TV when he was dragged into the camp. He was shown to all the others in the TV room.

He was then taken into the passageway and was repeatedly hit in the stomach and balls with rifle butts. Then the rest of the soldiers joined in with their fists and boots.

He then had his fingers broken by a corporal who jumped on them while two others held his arms out. All this happened within about ten minutes of him being dragged in."

Emphasis is placed in the pamphlet on the lies and promises which draw the young unemployed into the army.

'Death of a soldier' A republican prisoner the Long Kesh concenition camp wrote a tional account-factually quite typical-entitled 'Death of a Soldier' which sketches the life of a British soldier from his origins in the Glasgow slums to his death on the streets of Belfast.

Lloyd Hayes, black, and a former soldier, gives an account of the attitude of the army to its black troops.

"We were always on show, on camp open days and when civilian and military personnel from Black African countries visited."

He describes the racial prejudice within the army:

"The NCO always seemed biased against us, we were always more severely punished than the others."

"Black soldiers refused go out on patrols because we were being used for night foot patrols while the whites would do the cushy vehicle patrols."

He goes on, to draw a parallel between the oppression of blacks and that of the Irish. His article finishes:

"We must no longer be part of a murdering army of Britain that itself has brutalised our race and plundered Africa and the West Indies.;

"One day the British army is going to be used against us in Britain when we declare war on racism, unemployment and police harrassment. So brothers and sisters don't help them win that war."

The pamphlet touches on desertions and sucides by British soldiers serving in Ireland-but it would have been useful to give some concrete figures of these cases.

Imaginative use of pictures, cartoons, poems and songs fill out • a pamphlet full of useful information for those fighting for the removal of imperialist troops from Although the authors' sympathies scream from the pages of this pamphlet, its weakness is the lack of even a brief statement of policy on the Irish struggle.

This is despite the fact that Editor Alistair Renwick has a long history in the campaign to bring the truth about the role of British troops out into the open and the struggle for the removal of those troops from Irish soil.

Alongside a clear programme of solidarity by British socialists this pamphlet can be used to help end Britain's first and longest • running colonial war.

ĞAl joinsche ARINTY ON No.

Edited by Alistair Renwick from Information on Irelan, End Road, London W.14.

Price 30p plus p&p UNITED TROOPS Saturday 7 October at 1 p.m.

Scan page 9

ad dan faslad

----- pull-quotes -----

1798, 1802, 1848 and 1867 but as Engels pointed out,