But the ethnic antagonisms created by European imperialism do not simply disappear once they stop being promoted by the imperial power whose interests they no longer serve. They have a life of their own: once Pandora's box is opened, the evil spirits can not so easily be put back to rest. Whatever British imperial interests in Ireland might be today, they have long since stopped being served by maintaining the northern six counties as part of the UK [indeed, the northern six counties have become the economic backwater of the island, in no small part because of the sectarian conflict], much less by having Protestants and Catholics in those counties at each other's throats. Nothing would make the successive Tory and Labor governments of the last thirty years happier than to no longer have a Northern Ireland problem. Yet the sectarian feuding and bloodletting continues, and even grows in its ferocity and irrationality. Throwing bombs at little children going to school is a new low, even in Northern Ireland.
I disagree with James that the mistake of the peace process is that it "grant[s] political recognition to the populations only as representatives of their competing ethnicities. Consequently they tend to exacerbate ethnic conflict rather than healing it." Whatever their origin, those competing religious and ethnic identities are now deeply rooted in the culture and society, and can not be simply transcended. Just as an end to racism requires, if you will, a recognition that the oppressed race has been called into being by its oppression, and programs that undo the lasting legacy and damage of that oppression, it will not be possible to bring peace to Northern Ireland without a solution that specifically accords to the Catholic population the full array of rights and powers that have historically been denied to them. You can not heal a wound if you do not acknowledge its existence.
James Heartfield:
> Leo's confusion arises because he assumes that ethnic antagonisms come first
> and the political process responds to them afterwards. That's why he can
> assume that the political process is simply trying to solve the already
> extant ethnic conflict.
>
> But as a rule ethnic conflicts only persist where there is something to
> fight for. In both Israel and Ulster, sponsor nations (the US and the UK
> respectively) fostered the supremacist groups, through financial, military,
> political and diplomatic support.
>
> If Israel had not been economically subsidised and diplomatically supported
> Zionism would have petered out after the war, like all the other attempts
> to create a Jewish state in Argentina or Uganda.
>
> Similarly, the Protestants of Ulster were not necessarily driven by
> sectarian hatred. On the contrary, the British government spent vast
> amounts of money subsidising the employment of nearly a quarter of them in
> the sectarian security forces. The Loyalists' meek acceptance of
> power-sharing with Sinn Fein indicates that it is the UK that is pulling
> the strings.
>
> The problem with the so-called peace-processes is that both grant political
> recognition to the populations only as representatives of their competing
> ethnicities. Consequently they tend to exacerbate ethnic conflict rather
> than healing it.
>
> In Palestine, this has become explicit, as the Israeli's have assumed that
> it is all-or-nothing and adopted a strategy of not another inch.
>
> In northern Ireland it is less obvious, but in fact the ethnic division of
> the province is more explicit now than it was ten years ago. Nobody has
> driven the protestants into the sea, but they have all moved out the towns
> into the suburbs to put more distance between them and the nationalists.
> While paramilitary operations on the Republican side have been reduced to
> 'police operations' against dissidents, spontaneous sectarian attacks on
> Catholics and Protestants have carried on.
>
Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass --
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