Ah so much grist to the intelectual mill this late night!
Where to begin? Well, let us spend a moment in Canada. This is not really off the thread, my dear Crowhugger. As our brother Brendy points out, the argument is not about who should stay and who should go home, other than people who draw pay from a government accross blue water, to shoot the origional inhabitants in order to impose a political policy. I work in Quebec on matters of Native rights, and what is wanted is soverienty and jursidiction over those matters, like hunting rights and fishing rights, which remove self determanation from origional Canadians. Now, those Canadaians who are gaining ecconomic power by the subjigation of native people and the destruction of native land and rivers say that it is too late to give the land back, however, what advocates for native rights and natives are saying is STOP TAKING IT, forget giving it back!
Trevor, my brother, I would that you would read with a bit more care. I wrote that for matters of security, as with ANY army, there are limits on speach when on active duty. However, there is a lively exchange of ideas, some in conflict with current policy and some of that exchange very public, by ex-members of the IRA, so the concept of faceless etc. is not at all accurate. Much more accurate would be to call the SAS a faceless group of terrorists, as not only are they prohibited for life, from disclosing their actions, when their actions run afoul of British law, as with the Shoot to Kill assination policy, and the crown names a loyal Subject to investgate (commissioner John Stalker) and he in fact does his job and uncovers illegal actions, he is defamed and his career ruined and his report is religated to the dark resesses of the classified vault. That strikes me as much more permanent a state of facelessness.
I do think we need the kind of light that the process of reconciliation in South Africa promises. I know many, who have forgiven wrongs in their hearts the way that I have. Yet, that forgiveness can only be meaningfull and more universal with a process of reconcilliation. That can only happen with an end to secrecy and an honest coming together to learn each others histories.
By the way, Trevor, I felt it more than disingenous at the time, that McBride, whos father was put up against the wall, whould suggest the same to those who inherited his own fight.
Also, much of what I know about the occupation of Ireland, I know, not from -Republivan guff that their publicity machine spews forth to gullible foreigners - but form my own observations as a photo journalist in Belfast, and what I gleened while living in the west of Ireland, and from the findings of international courts, whos opinions I read while working in a defense firm which represented Joe Doherty.
As to singing sentimental republican songs, anyone who has heard my band knows that I do not sing republican songs in that context. I have lost enough friends in that conflict to have no sentimental feelings about it. If I sing a republican song, it is in a context that I take much more serriously. I have sung such at memorials or small gatherings of family and friends, for dear freinds who lost brothers and sons during the 1981 hunger strike, and I assure you, little of how I feel was learned from such songs, though a few occationaly express the loss some us us feel when we remember remarkable men and women who should have had better opportunity to make social change than that which England and NATO offered them.
Lets hope we all keep walking towards peace and justice, remembering the words of Dr. King, that - the arch of history bends inevitably towards justice.
All the best
Larry