Re: Budding Marxists and Imperialists

["D OC" <donaloc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

John O'Neill posted:

The Irish Times, Tuesday, June 25, 2002
Six-year-olds with sectarian ways
By Carol Coulter

By the age of six a third of children in Northern Ireland are identifying
with one community, and 15 per cent are making sectarian comments, according
to a study from the University of Ulster.
The study found that by the age of three Catholic children are twice as
likely as Protestant children to say they do not like the police.
At that age they were also twice as likely to say they did not like Orange
marches, while Protestant children of the same age were expressing a strong
preference for the Union Jack over the Tricolour.  Over one in five showed
some awareness of violence related to the conflict.

I read a similar article from the ever so self-righteous Irish News the same
day - what struck me was the way in which children under 6 not liking the
RUC/PSNI or Orange marches is somehow categorised as being sectarian. I
teach all my children to never speak or stand on the same stretch of
pavement as the British army or RUC/PSNI and that's just plain sense. I was
raised to think of them like lamp posts - you take no more notice than you
would a lamp post. That's not being sectarian in my mind, that's being
careful - the Stevens report when it finally comes out may detail how over
210 people were set up by these forces of 'law and order' since the late
1980s. Before that they could get away with it through 'Shoot to kill'
policies. Do we really think that a new cap (it now looks more like a
Wehrmacht peaked cap) and badge will really sort out the whole ethos of this
spent force? Where are all those people who coordinated assassinations in
the past now and what are they doing?

The RUC/PSNI are not allowed anywhere near our local school - virtually all
parents would take their children out if they knew they were going anywhere
near it. Trust the good old Liberal media establishment to confuse standing
up against the corrupt and fascist RUC/PSNI or disliking triumphalist Orange
marches with being a sectarian.

Perhaps, there are more hopeful signs to be read between the lines here -
surely they must have checked children for notions of 'taigue (catholic)
b*stards' or 'proddy (protestant) f*ckers' - if they had found anything I'm
sure they wouldn't have been clutching at straws like this. IMO, outside the
Loyalist strongholds like North Belfast, sectarianism (as in dislike of
people because of their religion) is dying out, along with the strong
identification with the religious heirarchies. It is being replaced by more
pure political division lines such as identification/dislike of Orange
marches, support/hatred of the RUC/PSNI and national aspirations - all the
local kids down my way were suited out like the Republic of Ireland team -
even some Unionists locally supported them.

I personally see nothing wrong with people having strong opinions on these
political/ national matters not discoloured by religious affiliations;
indeed, I relish the new opportunities being opened by the increased
politicisation of the struggle on the ground. It is only when
Unionism/Loyalism and Protestantism are not comprehended as identical in the
popular mind that the real nation building will once again be possible on a
mass-scale. That period is not beyond us now and we are starting to see the
signs of it appearing and we will have to be able to take steps which we
would traditionally find difficult to meet the Unionist population midway.
An example is how Alex Maskey will likely lay a wreath at a memorial to the
dead of the battle of the Somme (mostly UVF men) - we don't lay it for the
reason they died (imperialism) but in memory for those who died (mostly
working-class people). Many more such statemanslike gestures are going to be
required to build the new Ireland, and to build an alliance capable of
delivering our radical vision for the future.

The chinks in the Unionist armour are appearing, their hegemony has been
tumbled, their organs of domination are under siege - as that old rock of
Ulster Unionism, Jim Molyneaux noted at the time of the first IRA ceasefire
that it was the most destabilising event in Ulster's [sic] history. Let's
make it the nail in the coffin of the six counties.

D.



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