"British Army Never Shot Irish Civilians" - An Insight Into A Partitionist Political Establishment
Cathal Crowe isn’t usually a high-profile politician, but he made plenty of media headlines for himself earlier this week with a bizarre claim about the British Army.
While contributing to a Gaza debate in Leinster House on Wednesday evening the Fianna Fail TD said, “The British army was a bad actor on this island for many centuries but even in the worst of days, when its cities were being bombed by the terror organisations of the IRA, it never retaliated by bombing and shooting the civilian population of Ireland.”
Cathal Crowe ‘clarifying’ that he had accidently said the direct opposite of what he intended to say
Crowe was quickly challenged for making such a blatantly ridiculous claim. Less than twenty-four hours later the Fianna Fail TD was back on his feet in Leinster House to ‘clarify’ his speech of the previous day.
In doing so he confirmed that the word ‘clarify’ is gombeen code for U-turn. In this case, the Clare TD clarified that he knew all along that “the British armed forces have been involved in many heinous attacks on Irish people”.
Crowe illustrated his knowledge of these heinous crimes by referring to Bloody Sunday in Dublin, Bloody Sunday in Derry and “countless other actions in recent history and further back in history.”
Father Edward Daly and others carrying Jackie Duddy (17) after he was shot by a British soldier on Bloody Sunday in Derry
So, it was all a storm in a teacup. The poor deputy for Clare had somehow accidently said the direct opposite of what he intended to say. Micheál Martin was on the case – in full damage limitation mode. There was an “over-reaction” to Crowe’s comments he said. Nothing to see here. Please move along.
In fairness to Crowe, the bulk of his original speech on Wednesday was focused on Gaza and highly critical of Israel. He clearly didn’t compose his speech with the deliberate intent of whitewashing British state violence or to cause deliberate hurt to the many victims of British state violence.
And that makes it almost worse.
Crowe’s rewriting of history and the hurt that he caused was entirely unintentional. It was careless – in the true sense of the word. He simply did not give sufficient attention or thought to what he was saying.
Crowe should have stuck to talking about Gaza and the Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people
Crowe was making a speech about Gaza. His line about the IRA and the British army was not meant to be the focal point of that speech, so he didn’t put much thought into it. Instead, he ran with the default position of the southern political establishment. The Brits were the good guys and the IRA were the bad guys.
The good guys in the British army had “not retaliated by bombing and shooting the civilian population of Ireland” even though British cities were being inexplicably bombed by the bad guys – by the “terror organisations of the IRA”.
His choice of words may have been spectacularly clumsy, but they were firmly anchored in the southern political establishment’s view of the conflict that raged from the late 1960s to the mid-1990s.
Crowe unintentionally exposed the deeply partitionist and anti-republican mindset that still dominates Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and the wider southern political establishment. No serious Irish republican would ever make the “mistake” of forgetting about Britain’s most recent dirty war in Ireland – never mind the centuries of British oppression and violence that preceded it.
Seamus Duffy (15) was killed by an RUC plastic bullet in 1989, when Cathal Crowe was seven years of age. Despite decades of campaigning by his family, nobody has ever been held to account for his murder.
Even in his clarification, Crowe continued to push the establishment narrative. Every reference to British violence was framed as historical – as being “in the past.” Thus murders carried out by Britain’s official forces and unofficial unionist death squads in Crowe’s own lifetime were thus relegated to historical events akin to 1916 or An Gorta Mór.
This has become the modus operandi of the southern political establishment when faced with overwhelming evidence of British state murder in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. With one breath they will belatedly and begrudgingly acknowledge that the British state did engage in wrongdoing, but with the next breath they will downplay the extent of that wrongdoing and package it up as an historical aberration.
Irish republicans know that Britain’s most recent dirty war in Ireland was not an aberration but part of a century’s old continuum. We also know that the British establishment didn’t experience some form of Damascene conversion to democracy and justice because of the Good Friday Agreement.
Thatcher oversaw Britain’s dirty war in Ireland from 1979 to 1990. Haughey and the rest of southern political establishment stood idly by
If he needed to, Keir Starmer would wage a dirty war in Ireland tomorrow just as quickly as Margaret Thatcher waged one yesterday. And the southern political establishment would stand shoulder to shoulder with Starmer as he did so.
Cathal Crowe didn’t say what he said because he’s relatively young or because he grew up a long way from occupied Ireland. He said what he said because he’s part of a political establishment that is fundamentally partitionist and anti-republican in outlook. His only ‘mistake’ was in the formula of words that he used.