Hi Friends:

Doing a bit of back filling, there has been so much raised here, in a single thread trying to set out an understanding of at least seventy years of history, with emphasis on the past forty years...

Teribus' question about what the NYPD would have done if there was a bombing campaign in New York brings up a good point, and speaks to the value of a film about Bobby Sands. We had a bombing campain in New York, and other parts of the US for a number of decades which had the potential of becoming very like the situation in Ireland. A small number of communities during the seventies (Puerto Rican Nationalists, the American Indian Movement, SDS Weathermen, Black Panthers and a few others) were involved in violent response to the COINTELPRO policies of the Federal Government, which nearly drove the US into urban violent unrest, what was the difference?

Well, let us look at Puerto Rico. The history of Puerto Rico has a number of similarities to Ireland. In the light of growing political success in organizing to free the island from domination by the US, the US began a program of encouraging islanders to leave and come to mainland cities (resulting in Ned Valero, or Eamon DeValera being born in New York) while bringing large numbers of Cubans to change the voting patterns in Puerto Rico. During the Truman administration, in the 1950s, Puerto Rican nationalists shot at senators from the gallery of Congress. For the most part, the US underplayed the danger of the violent resistance, and as a result, it did not grow in violence, until, during the Nixon years, and the COINTELPRO days, the Federal government took offensive actions against a number of armed, but not very violent groups. Prior to this, for example, the Black Panthers were armed against police violence in their neighborhoods, but were there to observe arrests, start food programs, but the murder in their beds of the leadership of the Chicago Black Panther party sparked a huge escalation in violence in response. The same was true in FLAN and other Puerto Rican groups. Unlike the British response in the northern counties of Ireland, however, there was much less lethal violence against the peaceful protests against COINTELPRO. There was potential for that, however. When, at Kent State, the National Guard, opened fire on a student protest killing four students, there was both national outrage and increased sense that the Federal Government was at war with those calling for change in the US. But, the US had no interest in a war with progressives in the US and policies were changed. So, after these times gave rise to armored car robberies, bombings, without the Federal Government, or local police forces being provoked into arrest without warrant, roundups and torture for information, and all the other package of responses we saw in the six counties, the violence grew more sporadic and melted away.

So, without writing a book, what is the germ of the story about NATO and Ireland, and its relationship to the "controllable" war in Ireland? As France and Spain withdrew from NATO, we began to see, off the coast of Ireland, each fishing season, trawlers being towed under by their nets as British subs planted listening devices to monitor Soviet Subs which were using Ireland as a lee to lie of the coast of Britain. Irish politics were rather complicated at the time, Sinn Fein had been getting some votes, but not taking seats in the Dail. Fine Gael was descended from the extreme right wing of the 1930s, the Blue Shirts, who had been opposed to Irish independence in the first place, and then there was Finna Fail, whose public face was in support of nationalism, but with a wink and a nod. So ... after the IRA in the North disarmed, and the violence against the republican and civil rights movement persisted, Jack Lynch and Charlie Haughie funneled money to the IRA units in the North on the condition that they would split with the then unified IRA led by Cathal Goulding in Dublin. This formed the Provisional IRA. Some believed that it was to amalgamate more political support from republicans in the South, who were voting for republican candidates but not being represented ... making Finna Fail the party of southern republicanism. But, there were those pesky subs...
Before the modern satellite system, one relied on listening alone for subs. Now, there is a split in the IRA ... and trawlers are being dragged down off the South west ... and oddly enough, a priest in Mayo announces that the statues in his parish are moving, and Knock will be the Lourdes of Ireland. This causes some mirth in Ireland ... but, suddenly, American businessmen are buying up farms in Mayo, and building an international airport. Many are scratching their heads. Then, a NATO document is stolen from an office in Europe. The document describes the "Icarus Plan" and it seems a bit far fetched at the time. It holds that if the USSR crosses into western Europe, say Western Germany, NATO will demand an end to Irish neutrality, an event that would likely happen, but, who is to say? If Ireland has another DeValera in power at the time, NATO will take Irish airports and use them as staging grounds for US air attacks. Well, as much as this seems like a spy novel, it explains why Finna Fail would rearm the northern republicans, not to support northern nationalism, in opposition to Whitehall, but, in support of British plans to destabilize the North, while not destabilizing the South, in order to keep Ireland from being a unified nonaligned nation.
Well, this might seem a little too complicated to work. But, well, then again the army council of the IRA was infiltrated right up to the top, we find, and British Intelligence has been found to have led loyalist hit squads ... and then, the same year that the Soviet Union breaks up, three years of secret negotiations with the IRA begin. Ireland sets aside any worries about neutrality, during the first Gulf War, and suddenly, as if by magic, peace is possible in Ireland. Sinn Fein breaks ties with progressive causes from support of Black Panther prisoners in the US, to well ... you name it.

The point of all this, is that wars are never fought for the reasons that are apparent on the surface. That is why, I don't make heroes out of either side, or villains out of one side and not the other. War is the problem. It is simply a poor choice to vilify the IRA or make heroes out of them, or doing the same to the British soldier. Both fought in a conflict which was against their personal and class interest, and were led into it, not by history as written in the books, but history as written in the back rooms of government offices. So, can films begin to tell these stories, maybe, hopefully as part of a greater truth and reconciliation process.