PHOBLACHT
IRELAND ser stare
Republicans will never forget !!
and in the ongoing struggle to end
Editorial from An Phoblacht/
Republican News injustice and bring about a free peaceful Ireland will carry it in
Republican News November 12 their hearts and minds forever.
ENNISKILLEN
SEE OFINION
The terrible price of
TRAGEDY
British rule
WHAT THE
"Republicans will never forget it, and in the ongoing struggle to end injustice
ILR.A. SAIN and bring about a free, peaceful
Ireland, will carry it in their hearts and minds forever"
HE REPUBLICAN MOVEMENT, its members and supporters everywhere have been shocked and shaken by what happened in Enniskillen last Sunday [November 8]. We do not try to excuse or defend the action which caused the deaths and injuries inflicted by the IRA bomb.
The most telling criticism of this disastrous IRA action has come from republicans themselves.
To the families and friends of the dead, and to the injured, the sympathy of republicans goes out. It will be no consolation to them, and will be scorned or ignored by those who do not wish to understand the suffering of all of our people.
But bereavement and injury are things republicans deeply understand because they have experienced them at first-hand so many times. "The consequences will be with us for a long time"
After the dead, the injured and their relatives, it is republicans who have directly to lose from this action. Its consequences will be with us for a long time to come because of our sorrow and because our enemies — the enemies of the Irish people — are so strong and have been strengthened by it.
Those enemies who have inflicted so much suffering on our people for centuries - and in particular in the last 20 years -have been quick to use the grief of the victims of the reaction of people generally to further their political ends. The British government has secretly revelled in the opportunity this has given them to justify their occupation of our country. When the emotions of this week have eased, the vast majority of the Irish people will will recognize the talk of Margaret Thatcher and Tom King [British secretary of state for Northern Ireland] for the hypocrisy that it is.
The current phase of the war in the Six Counties, which enters its 20th year in 1988, has wrecked many lives. Our people, nationalist or unionist, are not to blame for that war, no more than they are responsible ultimately for the death and suffering which foreign interference has brought to our land over hundreds of years. Generations of Irish people have tried to end injustice and bring about change by peaceful means and have been met with British violence.
Twenty years ago, the present phase of nationalist resistance to British-sponsored injustice began with the campaign for civil rights. It did not begin with the IRA going out to shoot RUC men or British soldiers, but with ordinary Catholics demanding simple reforms within the Northern state — votes and houses and jobs. The guns and batons which were used against them by the forces of the state are now part of history. Many people have died since, but the basic injustices which existed then - the denial of civil and national rights — are still maintained and defended with British guns.
If that was not the case, there would be no IRA. There would be no support for the IRA or any reason for the IRA to exist. But the support and the reason are facts and will remain so as long as Britain continues to deny our people the right to national self-determination. Where there is oppression, there will always be resistance; where there is armed oppression, there will always be armed resistance.
Those who this week have hypocritically hidden behind the bereaved and blamed the IRA for the entire war are not interested in peace. They have thrown in their lot with the British government, which holds the key to peace, but which, by enforcing its unjust rule here, withholds it. There can be no peace without justice. If the IRA laid down its arms tomorrow, it will not bring peace.
Next Sunday the Catholic pulpits of Ireland will thunder with denunciations of the Republican Movement and the bishops will brand as sinful anyone who supports the republican cause. It has happened many times before, and has changed nothing, least of all the injustice which is the root cause cause of violence.
The statement which will be read out is one of the most dishonest that has ever emanated from the Catholic Hierarchy. It refers to the "present campaigns of republican violence" and implicitly lays the blame for the violence and deaths in the Six Counties on republicans. It links the Republican Movement with the renegade criminal elements responsible for the kidnapping and maiming of John O'Grady. This is a lie and the Catholic hierarchy knows it as well as everybody else.
Double standards about peace
In attempting to morally blackmail people, the hierarchy is showing its doublestandards about peace. It says that it "sympathizes" with the "police force" in the Six Counties, but that it is "sinful to join organizations committed to violence or to remain in them". . They are clearly saying that British violence is not sinful. We strongly contest that view. The bishops have not tried to end the war but have taken sides in it - the side of the powerful, the establishment.
The position of republicans has not changed. But not because we want this war. Our people have suffered bereavement, physical and mental injury and long years of imprisonment. We go on because the state of our country demands it and because we know that peace with justice cannot come short of a free Ireland. Armed resistance to British rule will bring that freedom because it is ultimately the most necessary political weapon against an armed aggressor and the only one the aggressor will heed. The experience of oppressed peoples all over the world and, most of all, in our history, proves that. That is the tragic context in which the Enniskillen bombing took place. Republicans will never forget it, and in the ongoing struggle to end injustice and bring about a free, peaceful Ireland will 5 carry it their hearts and minds forever. * December 7, 1987 • International Viewpoint
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