The organised rage of Martin McGuinness

Mick Hall who describes himself as being from "the European Union" has a blog called Organized Rage. It appears to be a socialist blog, which is fair enough. His modus operandi is stated thus: "Organized Rage looks at life from the perspective of the working classes and the dispossessed. It covers politics and life throughout the European Union and the wider world; and rages against injustice wherever it may be found. Organized Rage attempt's [sic] to play a small role in encouraging people to fight back against oppressive, intolerant and unaccountable governments and their agencies."

Again, that's all very well. I wonder though, how much attention people like Mick Hall give to those working class people whose lives are affected by 'organised rage' and the injustices they suffer as a result.

Trawling (or "trolling" if you prefer a negative viewpoint) through the Internet, Hall's post about Martin McGuinness a few months back caught my eye, and I was encouraged to add a comment in response to his article and the other comments. Here is my comment in full (with annotated links):

Well this is all very nice that a discussion about where on the political graph the various terrorist groups (specifically in this case, the Republican ones) lie, giving labels to them and wondering which ones may or may not fit into line with your own personal brands of politics, has taken place.

Meanwhile, policemen, soldiers and civilians - our fellow countrymen - are being threatened, endangered, injured, maimed and killed.

But sure that's nothing compared to the Evil Brits and their Evil campaign of propaganda of some two hundred or more years ago mentioned by some here.

After all, if someone insulted me, on an individual basis, by describing me as ape-like and uncivilised, why it would be perfectly understandable if I then planted a bomb underneath the person's car. Wouldn't it? Or, to continue the analogy, underneath the cars of his employees or colleagues.

It's good fun to poke fun at a country you don't like, such as Northern Ireland, using derogatory phrases popular with extreme Republicans, such as "statelet".

While you do that of course, you ignore the fact that the people (and by that, I mean a majority) support that state and desired this new administration - as ratified by a referendum in that country.

It's a fair point to note McGuinness and Sinn Féin's apparent hypocrisy.

But when it comes down to it, no matter what label you place on these organisations who terrorise the people (shall we go for 'terrorists' here, or the more dreamy and romantic 'freedom-fighters'?), no matter what the label - Marxist, Trotskyist or my own personal favourite, fascist - they are still guilty of murder and plotting to murder our neighbours, friends, colleagues and relatives.

What were their crimes, these victims? In the case of the soldiers and policeman murdered not so far back this year, it was a career choice. The policeman, particularly, chose to join the police because he had an interest in defeating crime and, to paraphrase, to 'protect the innocent'.

He undoubtedly didn't care that he was "one of Betty's" civil servants and probably didn't even consider it as being relevant.

Whatever one may think of McGuinness, or Adams, they are at least on the surface, currently doing the right thing.

Murder, whether it has popular support or not, is still murder. Popular support doesn't make it any more right. Lack of popular support doesn't make it any less right. Political slants do not make it any more right.

The right thing to do, if your goal is a united Ireland, socialist or otherwise, is to attempt to persuade the people to consider it by argument and discussion - not by holding a gun to their temples (pun fully intended).

Likewise, for the Unionists, the right thing to do is also to persuade the people that a united Kingdom (or a united British republic, if you like) is the best option. Again, by argument and discussion.

The only thing 'physical force Republicanism' (such a namby-pamby, newspeak phrase) is ever going to foster or achieve is alienation, hatred and distrust.

It's a simple equation. So simple that I would tend to consider cartoons depicting not we Irish in general, but specifically Irish terrorists (Republican or Loyalist) as low-brow ape-like creatures as being accurate.

Just today, a woman was injured in yet another attempt to murder a policeman. Thankfully, her injuries do not seem to be of a serious nature, but it could just as easily have ended a life.

What has been achieved? Quite simply, more publicity for the murderers, more alienation, more fear (or terror) and more distrust.

McGuinness continued to Do The Right Thing by suggesting the perpetrators are "living in cloud cuckoo land."

While it's a travesty that McGuinness hadn't come to that realisation decades ago himself, he must be supported by anyone who supports sustained political discourse as opposed to the terrorism and murder of the people of the "statelet" and beyond.

Nationalist myths: education

There are many myths put about by Republicans and nationalists, whether on purpose or simply as the result of having heard rumours. Some myths are, through a process of Chinese Whispers, blown out of all proportion. This is particularly true of Irish-America, and even affects people in England.

One such myth concerns education in Northern Ireland. Let's start with a fact. Education was effectively denied to many children in Ireland as a result of the Penal Laws. This affected people through the 18th and 19th centuries, before Northern Ireland came into being well into the 20th century.

The myth may have its origin in that history and may well have played a part in affecting a lot of people leading up to civil rights demonstrations in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s. To suggest that we have long memories in Ireland is to perhaps stretch the truth. More likely is the fact that conflicts had occurred more frequently and kept on a back boiler. A parent or grandparent was always available who remembered and lived through some injustice or other, and who passed this down to children. I believe this has particularly been the case for nationalist and Republican families - forever creating martyrs of themselves and attempting to out-suffer all comers.

So because education was a target of the Penal Laws up to a century prior, armed with this knowledge passed down, it might be natural to become paranoid and assume that there was still some deficit or discrimination involved. So much so that even in recent years that wild suggestions have been made by some otherwise intelligent people. Such as, for example, that, "As part of the attempt to suppress nationalists, schools in Northern Ireland were denied funding" or that they were denied funding specifically for the Gaelic language.

The fact is though that when Northern Ireland came into being as a result of the Free State separating from the rest of Ireland, the government's Permanent Secretary for Education was a Roman Catholic: Andrew Nicholas Bonaparte-Wyse (the great-grandson of Napoleon's brother Lucien) was charged with the task of updating and reforming the education system for Northern Ireland. Ireland had long lagged behind the rest of the UK with regard to education, but this became one of Northern Ireland's successes. Unfortunately, the Roman Catholic body responsible for education in specifically Roman Catholic schools elected not to represent themselves on a governmental commission on education. Perhaps part of the reason was because many people believe that the 'partition of Ireland' was going to be a temporary thing. However, the Roman Catholic Church did not want its children "corrupted" by non-Roman Catholic influences. They refused to cooperate with the government in terms of auditing and budget requirements and instead looked to Dublin for their funding.

State schools in Northern Ireland were created with the intention of being secular and non-denominational. That remains the case to this day, despite catchment areas in which people of one religious background dominate numerically over another and despite Roman Catholics sending their children almost exclusively to Roman Catholic schools wherever possible.

The government of Northern Ireland had no idea what the requirements and needs of the Roman Catholic schools were, either in terms of finance or policy. They could only guess.

At some point though, funding from Dublin dried up and so the Roman Catholic Maintained Schools of Northern Ireland turned to the Northern Irish government at last. The government subsidised the RC system in a similar way as they were funded in England and Wales. The Roman Catholic schools adopted the Northern Irish curriculum, with a few exceptions or differences.

Universities of course accept all comers, locally, nationally and internationally. Despite this, Queen's University of Belfast is often seen as being largely a Roman Catholic mainstay while, ironically, Trinity College in Dublin has been seen as a Protestant mainstay.

Roman Catholics had been held back with regard to education - particularly at the higher levels - through no fault of the government. Working class Roman Catholic kids came from larger families. Larger families had different demographics and different problems than those with smaller families. Basically, with more mouths to feed, the onus was on the eldest children to immediately seek work upon leaving school. The earliest a child could leave school used to be at 14 years. Today it's compulsory that children remain in full-time education until the age of 16.

Fewer Roman Catholics therefore went on to gain higher levels of education. This, in turn, affected employment-related demographics drastically and there were more knock-on effects besides. Already numerically inferior to non-Roman Catholics, they were also less likely to be qualified for certain positions in employment or even community representation.

People who lose their jobs then, and who are considered unemployable due to competition from people with similar experience but perhaps higher levels of education, are likely to become disaffected. History shows that this is indeed what happened in the last few years of the 1960s. This is just one of a series of factors which caused some people to become resentful.

Today however, Roman Catholic schools are performing well and, in fact, recently out-performed state schools in terms of results attained. A couple of years ago the number of Roman Catholic entrants to local universities was higher than the number of entrants of non-Roman Catholics for the first time.