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Sunday, 2. November 2008: the British Ministry of Defence and Unionists force a 'Welcome home parade' for soldiers of the British Army's Royal Irish Regiment through Belfast against massive protests of Irish republicans and the families of the many victims of the British Army in Ireland. The soldiers served in Afghanistan and Iraq.

North Belfast woman Jean McBride, mother of the teenager Peter McBride, whose murderers still serve in this regiment, says:
“There have been many dark days since my son Peter was murdered in September 1992. When the two soldiers convicted of his murder, Mark Wright and James Fisher, were granted early release in 1995 it was a blow. When they were reinstated in the army, despite their murder convictions it was a blow. ... I now learn that soldiers of the Irish Guards, the regiment which includes the murderer of my son, are to march a couple of miles from my home. When Peter’s killers were sent to Iraq I said that my sympathies were with the Iraqi mothers whose sons might fall foul of the convicted murderers that were sent there. But I want to know which officials in the MoD thought it right to parade the Irish Guards through Peter’s home town. James Fisher was convicted of the murder of my son and he remains in the Irish Guards Regiment. Will James Fisher be marching through Belfast? Will his company or platoon be marching through Belfast or will his Commanding Officer be taking the salute?"

Mary Nelis, Sinn Féin's long term spokesperson for human rights, writes an open letter to the British secretary of State for Northern Ireland:

Sunday Journal, 2. November 2008

Open Letter to Shaun Woodward,

British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland


Foto: Mary Nelis, Sinn Féin
"There is nothing decent yet alone liberating about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan anymore than your wars in Ireland. Nor is there anything decent about an Army, who in the first six months of this year, presided over the deaths of 3000 people, half of whom were civilians. ...

Afghanistan is in crisis, made all the worse by the presence of the RIR. It doesn't matter how you and various Protestant Church leaders try to present it, even if its title includes the word Irish, the RIR is a regiment of the British Army that has singularly failed to shake off its dubious association with that other home grown Dads Army, the UDR.

Of course you would be aware of the activities of many of that dishonourable bunch and their dual membership of Unionist paramilitary organisations involved in shoot to kill and sectarian associations, which caused so much suffering in the Catholic community."

Dear Secretary of State,

More than anyone else you must share the responsibility for the tension and the apprehension on this All Souls Sunday, in Belfast. The welcome home fiasco for the Royal Irish Regiment of the British Army, under the guise of a parade, is in reality no thing more than a jingoistic sectarian romp for ultra Unionism and British imperialism.

I know that the British Army hasn't much going for it these days. In fact as I write this another Senior Officer, no less a Reserve SAS Commander has resigned, in protest at the failure of the British Ministry of Defence, and your Government, to protect his men fighting in Afghanistan, by providing them with proper equipment.

He has accused the MOD, the organisers of the Belfast 'welcome home parade' of gross negligence leading to the loss of soldiers lives. It seems that while new Labour is prepared to spend money parading around Belfast, it will not spend money on the vehicles necessary to protect its own soldiers who are in Afghanistan fighting a war that most of the people in the UK now view as immoral and illegal. Indeed such is the hostility in many parts of England, to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, your Army cannot even have a welcome home parade in their own capital, London and soldiers returning home have been advised by their commanding officers not to wear their British Army uniforms openly in the major cities in England for fear of attack.

A sorry state of affairs for the once great empire, but I'm sure the thought occurred to you that when all else fails in the Home Counties, you can always rely on the ultra sectarianism of that part of Ireland you partitioned, to bail you out. What did Churchill call it? Playing the orange card and the Royal Irish Rangers hold a stacked deck, the result of their transformation or should that be evolution from the Ulster Defence Regiment and the B Specials.

The North has always been a peculiar situation for the British Army, in that your Government was obliged to seek recruits of the home grown variety, necessary to repress the natives. But what Government with any sense of political decency or moral responsibility, would want to parade an Army, irrespective of the nationality of the individual soldier that has returned from a war, whose by product is torture, murder, rape and plunder.

There is nothing decent yet alone liberating about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan anymore than your wars in Ireland. Nor is there anything decent about an Army, who in the first six months of this year, presided over the deaths of 3000 people, half of whom were civilians. Who would want to parade such incompetent soldiering?

But you do and so does your Government, whose response to the escalating conflict is to send more soldiers to that God forsaken country, assuming of course that more cannon fodder can be found in the UK. If all else fails I expect your Government can always rely on the Irish, who sadly have always been available, to fight Britain's imperial adventures and colonial wars.

Indeed, Mr Woodward, a cynical person might ponder that Sunday's romp is just that; a recruiting call for an Army that is encountering serious problems replenishing its forces to fight the so called 'war on terror. As people are beginning to realise, the situation in Afghanistan is now worse than at any time since the US led invasion in 2001, euphemistically code named, 'Enduring Freedom'. Afghanistan is in crisis, made all the worse by the presence of the RIR. It doesn't matter how you and various Protestant Church leaders try to present it, even if its title includes the word Irish, the RIR is a regiment of the British Army that has singularly failed to shake off its dubious association with that other home grown Dads Army, the UDR.

Of course you would be aware of the activities of many of that dishonourable bunch and their dual membership of Unionist paramilitary organisations involved in shoot to kill and sectarian associations, which caused so much suffering in the Catholic community.

Aside from that I am surprised that you are permitting RIR soldiers to parade openly through Belfast, since those RIR soldiers on patrol in Lurgan when Rosemary Nelson was murdered, have requested anonymity from giving evidence to the enquiry, claiming that their lives would be at risk. But then I expect that the security of individual soldiers whether in Belfast or Helmand province in Afghanistan is of little consideration in the overall political ambitions of British and US global interests. This parade is not about welcomes or thanksgiving.

Belfast, August 2007: Truth costs Nothing! For years the families of those victims, who were killed by police, British Army or Loyalist death squads, demand the truth about the murder of their loved ones. In almost all of the killings, there was no state inquiry, no prosecution, no sentence. As if the victims never existed. Marchers from North Belfast, from Ardoyne, Ligoniel, Bone, New Lodge, Carrickhill and Greencastle carry posters of those neighbors from their communities, who were murdered. An Fhirinne - the Irish word for truth - is what the marchers demand. (fotos and caption: Uschi Grandel)

If it was, one imagine you would at least have taken account the sensible and Christian advise of the Reverend David Latimer, Chaplain to the RIR, who has just returned from the horror that is Afghanistan. He more than most understands that jingoistic parades to honour soldiers are not the answer to the needs of a country that is clearly on the brink of devastation.

The evidence is all there. Insurgent attacks have increased by 50% in comparison to last year. The presence of the British Army has failed to protect the lives of the 700 members of the Afghan police killed this year nor prevented the murders of aid workers. In the Helmand Province area, the home base of the RIR during their tours, four out of five Afghans are involved in the opium trade. Afghanistan is now the world's largest narco- economy producing 93% of the world's opium trade and bringing in $ 3 billion dollars of illicit funds, fuelling allegations that the drugs trade is funding the Taliban.

The New Internationalists Magazine stated that such is the unpopularity of the British Irish regiments that the hated and despised Taliban are now gaining a measure of support among the long suffering people. In this City nor in the Nationalists areas of the North, we do not have to look to Afghanistan or Iraq to understand why people oppose the occupation of their country to service the strategic and selfish interests of imperialism. Ireland has been through these doors many times over. Generations of Irish men and women have endured the prison camps and the torture and the beatings and the house searches and the humiliations and the lies and the gangs and counter gangs, and the carefully fostered divisions of human beings on the basis of their religious beliefs.

Everything that is now Afghanistan. No doubt you have told the people there, as you tried to tell us, that your Army is there to protect them from 'terrorists'.

Apart from recruiting more cannon fodder for your diminishing British forces, and attempting to confer a degree of respectability on the RIR, under the guise of welcoming home soldiers, you have once again exposed the sectarian nature of the 6 County state you created. Those individual soldiers who have returned from Afghanistan, a place dubbed 'the grave yard of empires', are alive, despite the faulty equipment and the lack of supplies. If they had any principle they would tell you what to do with your 'welcome home parade'.

You should resign.

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