Post by earl on Apr 23, 2008 17:28:03 GMT
Seen this in the Guardian. Seems like a very simplistic view of things if you ask me.
The other 1968
May 1968: Why the inspiring uprisings in Northern Ireland have been airbrushed out of the official leftist history of 1968
When you hear someone mention the year 1968, what images come to mind? Paris, perhaps, where students and workers swept through the streets, occupied universities and factories, and eventually caused the collapse of the De Gaulle government? Maybe you think of Prague, where, from January to August 1968, there was an eight-month period of liberalisation, a new and freer idea of what it means to be a citizen, until the Soviet military invaded and ruthlessly crushed the reforms. You might also think of America, where in 1968 the radical Black Panther party was facing down racist officials across the US, while students protesting against the Vietnam war clashed with the cops.
What about Northern Ireland? In most of the commemorations of the 40th anniversary of the heady, radical year of 1968, Northern Ireland tends to get passed over. Even here in Britain, where events in Northern Ireland had a long-lasting impact on political life, liberals and leftists celebrating the history of 1968 cannot bring themselves to mention Derry (or Londonderry, if they prefer) alongside Paris, Prague, LA and New York. The conspicuous absence of Ireland from the 68 debate shows how selective radical nostalgia can be - and it confirms the British left's historical ignorance and betrayal of the struggle against repression in Northern Ireland.
Commemorations of events in Northern Ireland tend to focus on 1969, when British troops first landed and set about trying to quell the uprisings in Catholic/nationalist communities, or on 1972, when internment without trial was introduced, 14 civil rights protesters were shot dead by the British Army on Bloody Sunday, and there was open warfare between the IRA and the British in parts of Derry and Belfast. The reason why British observers focus on 1969 or 1972 is because they see the conflict in Northern Ireland as something unusual, an aberration, an embarrassing and old-fashioned nationalist (eeurgh!) struggle against the presence of the British army which had nothing to do with the progressive vision of the 68 generation. In truth, the Troubles were triggered directly by the international, youthful radicalism of 1968.
The protests for equality in Northern Ireland, which would later be brutally suppressed by the British military and its loyalist allies, kicked off proper in May 1968. Initially, Catholics and nationalists protested around the issues of housing and employment. From partition in 1921 to the first Catholic uprisings in 1968, the sectarian statelet of Northern Ireland was a terrible and unforgiving place for a Catholic to live. Catholics suffered systematic discrimination. They were two-and-a-half times more likely to be unemployed than Protestants, and they tended to live in dilapidated homes and flats owned by ruthless "Rachmanite" landlords.
The forcing of Catholic communities into slum housing contributed directly to their disenfranchisement from political and public life. In Britain in the 1960s, all adults aged 21 and over could vote in local elections. Not so in Northern Ireland; there you had to be a homeowner to vote, and Protestants were far more likely to own their home than Catholics were. As a report published by the Campaign for Social Justice in Northern Ireland (pdf) in February 1965 pointed out: "In Northern Ireland, only a householder and his wife can vote. In addition limited companies are allotted six votes each. Catholics are denied houses and therefore lose voting strength. This is Conservative/Unionist policy." In taking to the streets in 1968 to demand better housing, Catholics were not only seeking nicer and roomier places to live - they were also implicitly challenging their political oppression under the yoke of Unionism.
Throughout the 1960s, Catholics set up groups such as the Derry Housing Action Committee (DHAC) to challenge their second-class status in Northern Ireland. They started to become more radical and militant in 1968. In May 1968, as students and workers rampaged through the streets of Paris, the DHAC organised a loud and rowdy protest at a meeting of Unionist officials at the Guildhall in Derry. In June, the DHAC organised a road-blocking protest in the poor, run-down Bogside area of Derry. In the summer of 1968, the DHAC joined forces with the formidable Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, which had been formed in January 1967, to organise more militant protests against official sectarianism, discrimination and disenfranchisement in Northern Ireland. Their biggest demo, to take place on October 5 1968 in Derry city, was banned by the authorities. When protesters defied the ban and marched anyway, they were baton-charged by the Royal Ulster Constabulary. The Troubles started that day.
These events did not happen in isolation from the radical changes that swept the western world in the late 1960s. On the contrary, the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) was modelled on black civil rights protests in the US and even adopted some of their slogans. Bernadette Devlin, a leading member of NICRA and later a founder of the more radical People's Democracy, met with radical Black Panthers in the US.
However, the protests in Northern Ireland were a student/youth uprising with a difference, because they connected with a very real and historically unresolved political power struggle between Ireland and the British state. The housing, employment and youth protesters soon discovered that in challenging the sectarian make-up of Northern Ireland, they were challenging Irish partition itself and raising the question of who should rule Ireland: the British authorities or the Irish people? Through late 1968 and into 1969, as their protests were batoned and shot off the streets, their demand for civil rights became a struggle for national liberation. Unlike Paris and Prague, May 1968 in Northern Ireland led to a 30-year war rather than a single-summer riot, the reverberations of which are still being felt today. Against all the odds, the Catholic people of Northern Ireland, shaken and stirred by the spirit of 68, really did make history.
Yet British liberals and leftists have long treated the uprisings in Northern Ireland as an embarrassment. They have seemed far more comfortable singing the praises of faraway, chic Parisian protesters and the brave demonstrators of the Prague Spring than in taking up the cause of the messy, overly violent Irish protesters closer to home. Many liberal commentators sought to dissociate the stirrings in Northern Ireland from the 1968 phenomenon more broadly. And by 1972, when the British army was beating and shooting Catholic protesters, British left commentators excused and even commended the brutal state repression of Ireland's 68 generation.
In January 1972, when British paratroopers opened fire on a civil rights demo in Derry and killed 14 people, British newspapers from the right to the left pinned the blame firmly on the protesters themselves. The Guardian itself, on the day after Bloody Sunday, argued: "The organisers of the demonstration, Miss Bernadette Devlin among them, deliberately challenged the ban on marches. They knew that stone throwing and sniping could not be prevented, and that the IRA might use the crowd as a shield." Eamonn McCann, a radical writer and activist in Northern Ireland, lamented the fact that even a newspaper which was the "self-appointed keeper of the British liberal conscience" excused the army's actions on Bloody Sunday and supported the introduction of internment.
Even worse, the New Left Review simply decided never to publish an article about Northern Ireland. As Duncan Thompson points out in his recent history of the New Left Review, despite the fact that the editorial board recognised there was a "full-scale civil war" in Ireland, because of a "tacit impasse" on the editorial board it agreed, "by common consent", to avoid ever writing about the Irish question. Remarkably, between 1969 and 1994, the New Left Review published not a single article about Northern Ireland - though it published thousands of words on the legacy of the Paris protests and the Prague Spring. To grasp the scale of this historical betrayal of the Catholic/nationalist protesters by a key section of the British left, imagine if a radical American magazine today did not publish any articles about the war in Iraq.
This is the shameful, untold story of 1968: some of those liberal observers who celebrate the spirit of the Parisian, Prague and black American protesters were complicit in the smashing of the 68 spirit in Northern Ireland, either through their silence or their excuse-making for the actions of the British army. It is time, surely, to put those brave protesters back where they belong: in the official history of 1968, as individuals who longed to, and even managed, to change the world.
commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/brendan_oneill/2008/04/the_other_1968.html
The other 1968
May 1968: Why the inspiring uprisings in Northern Ireland have been airbrushed out of the official leftist history of 1968
When you hear someone mention the year 1968, what images come to mind? Paris, perhaps, where students and workers swept through the streets, occupied universities and factories, and eventually caused the collapse of the De Gaulle government? Maybe you think of Prague, where, from January to August 1968, there was an eight-month period of liberalisation, a new and freer idea of what it means to be a citizen, until the Soviet military invaded and ruthlessly crushed the reforms. You might also think of America, where in 1968 the radical Black Panther party was facing down racist officials across the US, while students protesting against the Vietnam war clashed with the cops.
What about Northern Ireland? In most of the commemorations of the 40th anniversary of the heady, radical year of 1968, Northern Ireland tends to get passed over. Even here in Britain, where events in Northern Ireland had a long-lasting impact on political life, liberals and leftists celebrating the history of 1968 cannot bring themselves to mention Derry (or Londonderry, if they prefer) alongside Paris, Prague, LA and New York. The conspicuous absence of Ireland from the 68 debate shows how selective radical nostalgia can be - and it confirms the British left's historical ignorance and betrayal of the struggle against repression in Northern Ireland.
Commemorations of events in Northern Ireland tend to focus on 1969, when British troops first landed and set about trying to quell the uprisings in Catholic/nationalist communities, or on 1972, when internment without trial was introduced, 14 civil rights protesters were shot dead by the British Army on Bloody Sunday, and there was open warfare between the IRA and the British in parts of Derry and Belfast. The reason why British observers focus on 1969 or 1972 is because they see the conflict in Northern Ireland as something unusual, an aberration, an embarrassing and old-fashioned nationalist (eeurgh!) struggle against the presence of the British army which had nothing to do with the progressive vision of the 68 generation. In truth, the Troubles were triggered directly by the international, youthful radicalism of 1968.
The protests for equality in Northern Ireland, which would later be brutally suppressed by the British military and its loyalist allies, kicked off proper in May 1968. Initially, Catholics and nationalists protested around the issues of housing and employment. From partition in 1921 to the first Catholic uprisings in 1968, the sectarian statelet of Northern Ireland was a terrible and unforgiving place for a Catholic to live. Catholics suffered systematic discrimination. They were two-and-a-half times more likely to be unemployed than Protestants, and they tended to live in dilapidated homes and flats owned by ruthless "Rachmanite" landlords.
The forcing of Catholic communities into slum housing contributed directly to their disenfranchisement from political and public life. In Britain in the 1960s, all adults aged 21 and over could vote in local elections. Not so in Northern Ireland; there you had to be a homeowner to vote, and Protestants were far more likely to own their home than Catholics were. As a report published by the Campaign for Social Justice in Northern Ireland (pdf) in February 1965 pointed out: "In Northern Ireland, only a householder and his wife can vote. In addition limited companies are allotted six votes each. Catholics are denied houses and therefore lose voting strength. This is Conservative/Unionist policy." In taking to the streets in 1968 to demand better housing, Catholics were not only seeking nicer and roomier places to live - they were also implicitly challenging their political oppression under the yoke of Unionism.
Throughout the 1960s, Catholics set up groups such as the Derry Housing Action Committee (DHAC) to challenge their second-class status in Northern Ireland. They started to become more radical and militant in 1968. In May 1968, as students and workers rampaged through the streets of Paris, the DHAC organised a loud and rowdy protest at a meeting of Unionist officials at the Guildhall in Derry. In June, the DHAC organised a road-blocking protest in the poor, run-down Bogside area of Derry. In the summer of 1968, the DHAC joined forces with the formidable Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, which had been formed in January 1967, to organise more militant protests against official sectarianism, discrimination and disenfranchisement in Northern Ireland. Their biggest demo, to take place on October 5 1968 in Derry city, was banned by the authorities. When protesters defied the ban and marched anyway, they were baton-charged by the Royal Ulster Constabulary. The Troubles started that day.
These events did not happen in isolation from the radical changes that swept the western world in the late 1960s. On the contrary, the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) was modelled on black civil rights protests in the US and even adopted some of their slogans. Bernadette Devlin, a leading member of NICRA and later a founder of the more radical People's Democracy, met with radical Black Panthers in the US.
However, the protests in Northern Ireland were a student/youth uprising with a difference, because they connected with a very real and historically unresolved political power struggle between Ireland and the British state. The housing, employment and youth protesters soon discovered that in challenging the sectarian make-up of Northern Ireland, they were challenging Irish partition itself and raising the question of who should rule Ireland: the British authorities or the Irish people? Through late 1968 and into 1969, as their protests were batoned and shot off the streets, their demand for civil rights became a struggle for national liberation. Unlike Paris and Prague, May 1968 in Northern Ireland led to a 30-year war rather than a single-summer riot, the reverberations of which are still being felt today. Against all the odds, the Catholic people of Northern Ireland, shaken and stirred by the spirit of 68, really did make history.
Yet British liberals and leftists have long treated the uprisings in Northern Ireland as an embarrassment. They have seemed far more comfortable singing the praises of faraway, chic Parisian protesters and the brave demonstrators of the Prague Spring than in taking up the cause of the messy, overly violent Irish protesters closer to home. Many liberal commentators sought to dissociate the stirrings in Northern Ireland from the 1968 phenomenon more broadly. And by 1972, when the British army was beating and shooting Catholic protesters, British left commentators excused and even commended the brutal state repression of Ireland's 68 generation.
In January 1972, when British paratroopers opened fire on a civil rights demo in Derry and killed 14 people, British newspapers from the right to the left pinned the blame firmly on the protesters themselves. The Guardian itself, on the day after Bloody Sunday, argued: "The organisers of the demonstration, Miss Bernadette Devlin among them, deliberately challenged the ban on marches. They knew that stone throwing and sniping could not be prevented, and that the IRA might use the crowd as a shield." Eamonn McCann, a radical writer and activist in Northern Ireland, lamented the fact that even a newspaper which was the "self-appointed keeper of the British liberal conscience" excused the army's actions on Bloody Sunday and supported the introduction of internment.
Even worse, the New Left Review simply decided never to publish an article about Northern Ireland. As Duncan Thompson points out in his recent history of the New Left Review, despite the fact that the editorial board recognised there was a "full-scale civil war" in Ireland, because of a "tacit impasse" on the editorial board it agreed, "by common consent", to avoid ever writing about the Irish question. Remarkably, between 1969 and 1994, the New Left Review published not a single article about Northern Ireland - though it published thousands of words on the legacy of the Paris protests and the Prague Spring. To grasp the scale of this historical betrayal of the Catholic/nationalist protesters by a key section of the British left, imagine if a radical American magazine today did not publish any articles about the war in Iraq.
This is the shameful, untold story of 1968: some of those liberal observers who celebrate the spirit of the Parisian, Prague and black American protesters were complicit in the smashing of the 68 spirit in Northern Ireland, either through their silence or their excuse-making for the actions of the British army. It is time, surely, to put those brave protesters back where they belong: in the official history of 1968, as individuals who longed to, and even managed, to change the world.
commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/brendan_oneill/2008/04/the_other_1968.html