Andersontown News, February 25, 2005
An onslaught like no other
by Des Wilson
About the author:
Fr Des Wilson lives in West Belfast since 1966 and is known for his community work to
empower people and for challenging those in the religious and political establishment
over their hypocrisy and double standards. For decades he writes a weekly
column in the Andersonstown News on the endangered species called civil liberties.
The most important thing in the present political situation is for decent
people to keep self-confident and steady.
The real crisis is not about what will happen to Sinn Féin – Sinn Féin will
survive this crisis and will come out of it with an even clearer vision of
its own policies and meaning. So that is that.
No, the real crisis is the steady and deliberate destruction of democratic
rights which people have struggled to create and protect for 100 years and
more.
Gay Mitchell, speaking on behalf of Fine Gael, said his party and others had
brought Sinn Féin into the democratic political process. They did not. It
was the votes of we the voters that did that. And it is our votes, the votes
of the people, the voters, that will keep them there.
The Mitchell statement means that his party has rejected the democratic
principle that the mandate of politicians comes from the people. According
to Mr Mitchell, the mandate of hundreds of thousands of voters can be
neutralised by other parties if they choose to do it. That is wrong and a
reversal of democratic principles.
It has already been pointed out here many times that an appalling onslaught
is being made on what freedoms and liberties we have. As usual this is being
done on the backs of people who have been made to appear undesirable. It has
happened before. Governments find their black sheep and, on the pretence of
curbing the black sheep’s activities, take away everybody's liberties.
Some years ago in the United States I talked often with a man called Jim
Hoffman who worked very hard for democracy in Ireland. He said to me:
“When talking to the Irish American community, talk to them about Ireland,
certainly, but also, please, talk to them about how their own Bill of Rights
and their own Constitution are being dismantled day by day.” Jim Hoffman was
right. That taking apart of the United States Constitution and Bill of
Rights has been happening ever since and will happen even more in the coming
years of the Bush administration. The people over there will be lucky also
if there is not a move afoot to change their laws so that Bush can get yet
another term of office. The opposition is so weak that it could just happen.
Riding on the back of an IRA which was not a serious threat to them at the
time, the old Stormont government created a series of unjust laws of which
any dictatorship would be proud. And kept them. On the back of social but
not military agitation by republicans, London and Dublin created yet more
laws of the same kind. And kept them too.
Riding on the back of a military campaign by republicans, the two
governments created further laws including censorship of all opinion
contrary to that of governments. And there was not, and there is not, any
sign that those laws will be removed once a political crisis is over. Those
laws to control the population, from Connemara to East Anglia, are there to
stay. If you let them.
The struggle for political power in Ireland is reaching an intensity now
which rivals that of the Irish power struggles of the 1920s and the European
power struggles of the 1930s. That is the real crisis and standing almost
alone in this tornado of hysterical propaganda is Sinn Féin which is under
attack not just for its own sake but for the sake of those inconvenient
liberties which can be destroyed also if the present mass attack succeeds.
How much of our right to due process remains, for instance? Or the rights of
property as guaranteed by the 1937 Irish Constitution? Or the duty of police
to guard the lives and freedoms of citizens?
Mr Mitchell's statement was not the only disturbing one of the last few
days. Seamus Mallon was quoted in the media as saying that people in West
Belfast, Tyrone and South Armagh did not want policing because policing
would mean an end to criminality. He seems to have issued a ‘clarification’
later but by then the propaganda had been made and the effect probably
produced. The labelling of a whole community as lawless has echoes of the
1920s and ’30s. Of the kind of politics we vowed would never happen again.
Now it is happening again.
Public representatives being howled down in television and radio programmes
by packed panels of antagonists, all the resources of the government and
media united in an onslaught which is against Sinn Féin today and will be
against SDLP in the North and the Irish Labour Party in the south tomorrow.
“They came for the Jews but because I wasn't a Jew I said nothing...”
However, out of evil cometh good. The present whipped-up campaign to destroy
Irish republicanism, and after that Irish nationalism, and after that to
install what extreme conservatives will call “strong government” will give
republicans an opportunity to re-state – and where necessary to
re-invigorate – the old and honourable republican traditions of upright
behaviour among all its friends and adherents. We all remember with
gratitude the republicans who were so insistent on high standards. We even
at times felt slightly uncomfortable in their presence, as if we were trying
hard but were afraid we might find some guilty secret on our own
consciences. Those people are upright and bearers of the best tradition of
republicans.
Their day has come, now more than ever.