But you see, I already speak Irish. And if any of you have been to Belfast, there were tricolours flying long before the accord. There's Gaelic street names up in Belfast. And the RUC do harass And the UDR do harass you. So nothing has changed for who walk the streets of Belfast unless. of course, you're an ROC man.
I don't need Margaret Thatcher or Garret Fitzgerald to tell me that I can speak Irish. I don't need them to tell me that I can fly a flag. And that's why we don't accept the Anglo-Irish accord.
The Anglo-Irish accord is wider than Ireland or Britain. It's aimed at the NATO bloc of countries. more intelligent than anything Paisley could have thought up. But Britain can't allow things to go on as they are. They let the loyalists govern the six counties for sixty years and they've made a mess or it The accord is there, let no-one make any mistake about, to put down the rise of Sinn Fein within the six and the 26 counties of Ireland, and that is the stated policy of the Free State government. They could not afford to let a group like Sinn Fein make any ground within the 26 counties, which they are doing.
All you're seeing today is in that context. In six months' time there will be anolner • wave of repression against the republicans. And when the RUC Venue Saturday 26 April Venue Sunday 27 April It doesn't count for anything. It's just a balähcing act. break the spirit and the unionists. And when they've done that, they're going to come republicans. Which, as I said, is the reason for the accord people As long as you have that sight of loyalists attacking the RUC, you can do what you want with all the mad IRA men and all the mad Sinn Feiners that running about balanced. You can then say "The RUC is a total impartial force. It has no compunction about sticking a plastic bullet in the head of a republican.' But that doesn't make it right, comIt's far rades. It makes it very wrong.
people who say 'maybe we should give lan it a chance. Maybe it will be the first step along the road to a united Ireland' let me read this. This is the speech made to a secretly held British court martial of Padraig Pearce in Dublin 1916.
I assume that I am speaking to Englishmen who value freedom, and profess to be fighting for the freedom of Belgium. we too love freedom and desire it. To us it is more desirable than anything in the If you strike us down now we shall rise again and renew the fight. You cannot conquer not extinguish the Irish freedom. If our deed has not been sufficient to win freedom, then our children will win it by a better deed.
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Easter Rising. because it's believe is right.
you have to go out and do it.
That is what to express their view.
their oWnl Believe that backed Ireland. You can- however much passion for as the responded, move to democracy, in this and they divide Ireland terests there.
cupation of Ireland.
the law for political purposes. It is appropriate that we as British socialists should commemorate the Sometimes as socialists you have to fight for what You might the Easter Rising represented. They didn't know that they had the support of the majority of the Irish people. They only found that out some years later, when in 1919 there was Martin Collins an election - the last chance the Irish people as a whole had the opportunity We as socialists also have to understand that we live with the consequences represent? of British actions in Ireland. In that election 70 per cent of the Irish people Anglo-Irish and voted for an Ireland free from Britain. The British, they talked duuu Teddy Kennedy and democracy, weren't interested in it at all Irish people USA. demonstrated their intentions through the ballot box. The British government aways. whoever they thought could oppose this Ulster loyalists. They armed, they built encouraged the loyalists to to defend British inThey created the loyalist We are living with that decision, as movement with all the consequences of our ocwe are gollg lu live with the consequences of plastic bullets, with the use of strip-searching, with the use of the electoral law to make it illegal for people like Bobby Sands to stand for parliament, with the use of Basically We will also have to live with the consequences of the Anglo-Irish accord, and the Labour Party leadership's acceptance of that accord. What does it As much as we talk about the accords being for American consumption, apart from a very small coterie of politicians around Tip O'Neill there are in fact very little illusions in it in the The organisations of the Irish community, from the Ancient Order of Hibernians to the left, are unanimous in their opposition to the accords and all understand what they mean.
Of course, it is important that people in America do understand what the accords mean, because it isn't so much an Anglo-Irish accord as, in a very real sense, an Anglo-American accord. Sinn Fein did a very great service to the publicising the ing: documents produced by the European Institute of Strategic Studies, a body which reflects the interests of the American government. It was very interesting to see the motivation from the USA that went into that document.
they saying to Margaret Thatcher: 'Grasp what is happening in Northern Ireland. Realise
perialism so difficult. lectured about it. heard Enoch Socialist Action CERTAIN debates go to the heart of what is wrong with the British Labour Party, and Ireland is one of them. It lays bare something which the leadership finds deeply embarrassing: the classic relationship of the British labour movement to imand colonialism. That relationship is one of collusion. And that is why they find Ireland Ireland also shows how lightly the British ruling class take the rule of law. Now I've been interested in this because in the Labour Party we are constantly It's because of the rule of law that we are not supposed to be able to reinstate and reimburse the miners. It's because of the rule of law that we are not supporting Liverpool.
But in Northern Ireland, all of a sudden, this rule of law iș as nothing. I Powell on the radio radio yesterday, humming and hawing about the attacks on police by unionists. He was asked over and over again to condemn the attacks. And he said "Oh no, I can't do that. I warned you what would at all. Diane Abbott happen.' Now if, because of some action by the British government, black people were attacking police in their homes, on the British maindand, , and I went on the said can't condemn them", I would not be able to walk the streets! Somehow the rule of law, which is so inviolable on the English mainland, is not so inviolable in Ireland
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LABOUR COMMITTEE ON IRELAND ANNUAL CONFERENCE
suspect that you are in a minority, but if you believe something is right
Diane Abbott: 'Ireland shows the contempt in which the ruling class holds the rule of law'