War on funerals FUNERALS became battlegrounds in Belfast twice in one week. On March 16, a Loyalist assassin attacked the crowd gathered in Miltown cemetery for the burial of three Republicans —Mairéad Farrell, Seán Savage and Danny McCann — who were summarily executed in Gibraltar on March 6 by a British elite counter-insurgency unit. The Loyalist gunman had a firearm as well as hand grenades. Since possession of firearms is illegal in Northern Ireland without special permission (which Catholics rarely, if ever, get), the killer could have expected to have the upper hand over a weaponless crowd. For example, during the rise of Nazism it was not uncommon for individual or small groups of Brownshirts to attack large gatherings, to show the superiority of a trained and ruthless elite over "mere numbers."
HE LOYALIST killer, however, badly misjudged the determination of the nationalist youth. Although he killed one of them and wounded others, they overwhelmed him, and he had to be rescued by the state forces.
A few days later, on Saturday, March 19, at the funeral of the Republican killed on Wednesday, two armed British soldiers clashed with the funeral procession, were overwhelmed by unarmed young people and executed by the IRA before the state forces could intervene. Since then, the British authorities have tried to make martyrs out of the two soldiers in order to whip up British public opinion against the Irish nationalist resistance.
The hypocrisy of the British authorities is equal to their imperialist and racist arrogance. They have even gone to the length of proposing to award the two soldiers posthumous medals for "forbearance" for not firing into the crowd. The Loyalist killer certainly could not be said to have exercised any "forbearance," but the nationalist youth overwhelmed him just as surely as the two soldiers. Moreover, he had the benefit of surprise. In the second case, the youth were ready for an attack. Eye-witnesses say that at least one of the soldiers fired a shot, but was immediately disarmed. The IRA has announced that it believed that the two British polic tatters E CHOES of the last grenade explosion had scarcely died away following the massacre of mourners at Miltown cemetery in Belfast before the British government began a campaign of racist lies and disinformation. There was no sympathy for the victims. The Sun asked, "Who's to blame?" and answered "Mairéad Farrell, Seán Savage and Danny McCann....they conspired in their own deaths." The Daily Mail took up the same theme: "Now, even as their bodies were being interred, they have triggered a counter-terror. They would have enjoyed that." The Times argued that the massacre had proved the need for a British shoot-to- kill policy.
Although anti-Irish racism is one of the formative traditions of the British ruling class, they normally like to distance themselves from the sadism and rabid communalism of their Loyalist guard dogs in
Ireland. But when they think that they can get a section of British public opinion going with them, they bay just as loudly.
Running up and down the scale, the British bourgeois and reformist politicians did not neglect the dulcet tones of pious moderation. Tory and Labour leaders, who a week before the Miltown funeral had been vying with each other in cheering and glorifying the SAS assassins in Gibraltar, solemnly informed the dead and injured that their tragedy had proved the "futility of violence.
Official statements about the events in the churchyard attempted to minimize its significance. The killer, a Loyalist called
Michael Stone, was declared to be a madman with no connections with the Loyalist military organizations. He was supposed to have carried out the attack on his own. An unmarked white van that sped away from
IRELAND were members of the SAS elite force that assassinated the three Republicans in Gibraltar.
It is important that the facts and the context of this incident be clearly understood because it is obvious that the British authorities intend to use it as a pretext for a "legal" lynching of as many nationalists as they can.
The author of the following article, a leader of People's Democracy, the Irish section of the Fourth International, is a cousin of Seán Savage and was with the family at Miltown cemetery on March 16 when the attack occurred, within the area spattered by gunfire.*
Gerry Foley •y in JOHN MANULTY the scene belonged to the RUC traffic branch. The total absence of armoured patrols was supposedly the result of requests from the Catholic Church and Catholic bourgeois nationalist politicians that the state forces maintain a "low profile" at the funeral.
Police sped away from the massacre
Even this version totally discredits the
RUC. According to them, a number of heavily armed police sped away from the massacre, leaving unarmed young men to tackle the killer and capture him at the cost of further death and injury. "Madness" has been used before as a way of explaining away Loyalist killings.
In fact, extreme sadism and a psychopathic indifference to their victims' suffering is a political characteristic of the
Loyalist "death squads."
It quickly emerged that Stone was a leading figure in Loyalist paramilitary circles.
He had close connections to the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), which is the leading Loyalist terror gang, responsible for most of the sectarian assassinations. It nonetheless remains a legal organization, with many contacts in the state forces. He also had close ties with the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), a smaller group.
Stone has now been linked with a whole series of Loyalist killings of civilians. He was formally refused membership of the
UDA, but was subsequently used by members of its leadership for undercover kill- 5 ings. He was armed with weapons from a
IRELAND consignment of modern arms obtained by
Loyalists in January.
Two other Loyalists are now being questioned about the organization of the atrocity. The "Ulster Freedom Fighters" (UFF), a cover name used by the UDA to distance itself from the sectarian murders it carries out, admitted killing a Catholic civilian the day before the attack and offered support for Stone.
The attack would have been impossible without collaboration from state forces. All
Republican funerals since the H-Bloc hunger strike have been surrounded by a ring of steel. This was the true of the funeral cortèges for the "Gibraltar Three" up until the evening before the burial. The killer could not have acted without intelligence from the RUC.
RUC collaboration must indeed have gone a lot further than offering information. They have evolved a two-minute response time for military incidents in West
Belfast. It took them 15 minutes to return to Miltown cemetery — just in time to rescue Stone from a group of Republicans.
Among the weapons used by the killer was a Rugar pistol with its number filed off.
These are standard issue to the RUC.
What is more, Britain's responsibility goes far beyond direct collaboration between members of the state forces and Loyalist groups. The Miltown atrocity was an inevitable outcome of their own policy decisions.
### Constants in British policy
The following have been constants in Britain's Ireland policy:
• Aiming for the military defeat and physical smashing of the Republican resistance.
• Isolating and criminalizing that resistance.
• Ulsterization — replacing troops, whose death causes a political reaction in the imperialist mother country, with native forces drawn from the Loyalist community.
The "shoot-to-kill" policy is one element of British strategy. The troops and police involved in these murders had to be protected. Through a whole series of court cases, the silencing of John Stalker's investigation, the release of Private Thain after his conviction for murder and the official and media praise for SAS assassins, all legal restraints were removed from the state forces.
The "Battle of the Funerals" was a second element. Begun during the hunger strike, when it became evident that the H-Block protest would not succeed, it focused on armed salutes by Republicans, and used force to prevent this. In fact, police statements talked of "paramilitary display." Anything could serve as the focus for attack: gloves and beret on the coffin, drap6 ing the coffin in the Irish flag, or just police suspicion that a display might take place. International Viewpoint #138 • April 4, 1988
At one INLA [Irish National Liberation Army] funeral, mourners were arrested for lining up behind the coffin. This was supposed to constitute a "guard of honour." The funeral of Lawrence Marley, an IRA member murdered by Loyalists, was held up for three days, and subjected by the police to wave after wave of attacks.
### Republican funerals physically assaulted
When this policy of calculated savagery was joined to the policy of Ulsterization, an explosive mixture was formed. The sectarian RUC, with all legal restraints removed, turned every Republican funeral into a circus of vile abuse combined with physical assault.
For a time, this policy seemed to be working. A series of ambushes led to the death of leading Republicans. Their funerals were subjected to brutal attacks, and their families and friends assaulted and humiliated. As a bonus, through the Anglo-Irish Agreement, the British were able to draw on the full collaboration of the Irish bourgeoisie and win church support for their attacks.
This cosy relationship held up until after the Gibraltar deaths. The Irish airline, Aer Lingus, rejected a request for a charter flight to take the bodies home. One Fine Gael TD (teachta Dala, member of parliament) called for blocking entry of the bodies into the country and diverting them to Belfast.
John Burton, a former Fine Gael minister, made the position of Irish capitalism clear: "We have sensibilities, and we have interests. The British are not being very gentle with our sensibilities - but what they are doing is in our interest."
But it was too late to avert the reaction that the neo-colonial politicians feared. The "sentiments" that Burton was talking about were the support of working people for Irish freedom and independence and their resentment at British insults. They began to move into action, and mobilized in their tens of thousands behind the cortège accompanying the three bodies as it drove through the formally independent 26 counties to the border.
### Tens of thousands mobilize for funerals
After crossing the border into the British enclave, the cortège became the focus of an RUC riot. It and the mourners were attacked on a number of occasions. The police joined with Loyalist gangs in stoning the coffins, and finally kidnapped the bodies to prevent demonstrations of support in Belfast.
The home of Danny McCann was put under siege, with mourners assaulted and the
Sinn Fein statement on the May 19 incident BELFAST REPUBLICAN Press Centre spokesman
Richard McAuley made the following comment on the events leading to the deaths of the two British soldiers in a telephone interview on March 21:
"All of those who were there, including the journalists and priests...all believed that the funeral was again under attack, that we were facing a similar attack to that which had occurred on Wednesday, and people reacted accordingly.
"The sad thing about this whole situation is that, apart from the fact that the two soldiers were killed, the people who were involved in challenging them, attacking them and dragging them out of the car were the same people involved in confronting the Loyalist gunman on Wednesday. Yet on Wednesday, they were being hailed as heroes, and their behaviour was described as courageous. On Saturday, in exactly the same circumstances as far as people at the funeral were concerned...they behaved in exactly the same way as on Wednesday."*
family subjected to constant abuse and expressions of glee at their son's death. The British had backed themselves into a corner. They were under a great deal of international pressure. Southern workers were beginning to mobilize. Tens of thousands of nationalists were going to attend the funerals even in the face of the threat of death or serious injury. To deploy the RUC would mean a bloodbath. Reluctantly, it was decided to concede defeat. But it was easier to launch the RUC on the resistance than to draw it back.
Elements within the RUC made the contacts to ensure that the Loyalists would carry out the attacks they themselves were prevented from making. Loyalist politicians, traditional mouthpieces for RUC discontent, argued that the massacre proved the need for "firm policing."
Loyalist violence, however, is not coun ter to state violence but supplementary to it. That is why the bourgeois Catholic party, the SDLP, despite showing their reliability by immediately ruling out RUC collaboration in the killings, will not get satisfaction from their calls for the banning of the UDA.
### Potential and power mass action
After a long period of demobilization, we have again seen the potential and the power of mass action. It was the breath-taking bravery of nationalist youth that defeated the assassin. It was mass mobilization, plus support in the South and internationally, that held the state forces at bay.
The deaths of two British soldiers at the funeral of a victim of the Miltown killer is one of the most bizarre incidents of the troubles. It seems now that they were involved in some private adventure rather than constituting an assassination team. In the course of that adventure, they drove at high speed into the cortège and drew and fired a gun.
The manner of their death was shocking. But the way that they threatened the crowd with their car and their weapons set off an explosive confrontation that developed with a lightning rapidity. The mourners had had friends and relatives killed and injured only two days before, and they had good reason to suspect the involvement of the British forces, who had served only to rescue the killer. The pattern was set for what happened.
The shock of these killings may give the British some leeway, but their overall policy is in tatters.
The credibility of their native collaborators is at an all-time low. The discussions of strategy and policy in the anti-imperialist movement have not yet, unfortunately, led to the building of a unitedfront organization.
But the conditions for united action and broadening the resistance have greatly improved. *
IRELAND • MIDDLE EAST