It’s hard to know where to begin sometimes,
isn’t it [as your column so often fully illustrates
–Ed]. So much needs to be done in so many different
directions, you can become overpowered by the futility of
kicking your head (sic) against a brick fortress. And then
(hopefully) you reflect, and realise, well, I can do my little
bit, somebody else can do their little bit, and maybe all
those little bits amount to one enormous heap of positive
action for change. Celebrating success in the face of seeming
failure is also difficult; once more over the Iraq war, to
take the most pertinent current example, we failed. But did
we? Yes, in stopping the war, no in at least raising questions,
putting down markers, exposing lies. And what lies they were,
too! We as a genus seem such slow learners but maybe, just
maybe, the next time someone is promoting their favourite
war project there’ll be more questions, more marchers,
more scrutiny, more action, and more reluctance to jump in
at the deep end by those who do really have the power to make
the decisions of life and death.
The same goes for Northern Ireland but lots
of lessons have been learnt here. No, not necessarily how
to cooperate and work together, that’s an ongoing project
and dilemma, but on the futility of violence as a tool of
political change in general, although even that took thirty
years to reach. Northern Ireland has moved on, maybe not to
the Promised Land, but at least it is wandering around a bit
rather than in captivity (to violence and the cultivation
of enemies which violence so well endows – even if the
‘enemy culture’ is still alive and kicking its
neighbour).
I’m pleased to note the evaluation of
Iraq war actions which took place in Belfast (see main news
section – Ed) because there was really a huge amount
done, some of which had already been forgotten about –
even by those who were involved in an action! Each little
action was a step. And each step was a fulfilment of that
old Chinese proverb that “The longest journey begins
with a single step” . Remembering and celebrating all
those steps that all those people have taken to build a better
life for the whole of humanity, locally or globally, is not
something we are accomplished at but it’s still vitally
important in many ways – to realise what we have achieved,
to keep our spirits high, and to reflect and learn for the
next time. And maybe, because of all that has been done, the
next time will be that bit further away.
Meiriceá abu
I think most of us have tremendous admiration
for those in the United States of America who have lifted
their heads above the parapets of Fortress America since ‘9/11’
to proclaim a different vision of what the US should and could
be about (and what they themselves so often embody). We know
that it is very difficult. So it was a particular privilege
and pleasure to have Joanne Sheehan, current chair of the
War Resisters International and a worker for the War Resisters
League in New England, visit and speak in Belfast. It was
a good, lively meeting which gave a flavour of what people
have had to deal with in the US. There was particular interest,
I think, because of the recent war but also because of an
awareness of the extent of censorship of peace actions in
the States.
One of the things Joanne spoke of was the way
interviews (with peace activists like herself) stopped when
the war started. However she never saw so much political mobilising
going on (going back to the time of the Vietnam war) but the
‘unpatriotic’ label was wheeled out. And the ‘Patriot’
Act had been passed within 3 weeks of September 11th, with
Congress not even seeing it before it was passed.
The media in general didn’t cover demos
and sometimes grossly underestimated crowd numbers. Lies to
get the US into war are nothing new (Gulf of Tonkin ‘incident’
re Vietnam War, babies being taken out of incubators in Kuwait
for first Gulf War). Despite all the lies, by the start of
2003 polls indicated a 50/50 split on war on Iraq –
but by the start of the war support had gone up to 70%.
Joanne also mentioned the Project for a New
American Century which became a focus of right-wing US Republican
dissatisfaction in 1997. The original statement then was signed
by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld (and Jeb Bush who later
played such a key role in the undemocratic assumption of the
presidency by his brother). The website for this right-wing
group is at www.newamericancentury.org and I would say that
the 1997 statement includes a classic neo-imperialist statement
in “We need to accept responsibility for America’s
unique role in preserving and extending an international order
friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles”
. That’s a remarkable statement.
Joanne said she didn’t believe that the
US Government ever tried or wanted diplomacy to work on Iraq.
What we need is a sense of strategy, she said, and an evaluation
of what was done. What level of non-cooperation do we promote?
Income tax resistance may be more difficult but not paying
federal phone tax easier. The Achilles heel of the USA is
its economy, which is going downhill, and the corporate scandals
happening.
Subsequent discussion looked at different issues
including military access to schools, e.g. recruiting (and
the right of others to also go in to schools, e.g. peace activists,
who don’t have the $2.3 billion recruiting budget).
Another theme was listening projects to really hear, understand,
and build bridges to people where it might be thought impossible
to work (e.g. in military-dominant areas). Cooperation was
possible in actions between different kinds of people if certain
parameters are drawn. All in all it was an illuminating meeting.
Maybe I can be presumptuous for a minute [you
always are, you don’t need to state it – Ed] and
speak on behalf of the ‘peace movement’ in Europe
to say to the ‘peace movement’ in the USA, and
all who are struggling there for justice and humanity –
‘Thank you guys [this is I presume the non-gender US
English use of ‘guys’ – Ed] [I don’t
want to be a fall guy for your anti-sexist remarks, of course
it is – Billy] [A fall guy? It’s only summer!
–Ed] for all you do, we know you’ll win through
in the end and that what you are doing already makes a big
difference.’
I can’t resist ending off this piece,
however, without a quote or two from that remarkable analyst,
Arundhati Roy, and specifically the talk she gave at Riverside
Church, New York on 17th May. She forcefully pointed out many
things but one was that it was America’s poor who were
both fighting and paying for the war: “According to
a survey by the National Council of State Legislatures, U.S.
states cut 49 billion dollars in public services, health,
welfare benefits, and education in 2002. They plan to make
another 25.7 billion dollars this year. That makes a total
of 75 billion dollars. Bush’s initial budget request
to Congress to finance the war in Iraq was 80 billion dollars.
So who’s paying for the war? America’s poor. Its
students, its unemployed, its single mothers, its hospital
and home-care patients, its teachers, and health workers.”
Roy ended off her piece with a call on the rich
tradition of resistance in the States. “Hundreds of
thousands of you have survived the relentless propaganda you
have been subjected to, and are actively fighting your own
government. In the ultra-patriotic climate that prevails in
the United States, that’s as brave as any Iraqi or Afghan
or Palestinian fighting for his or her homeland. If you join
the battle, not in your hundreds of thousands, but in your
millions, you will be greeted joyously by the rest of the
world. And you will see how beautiful it is to be gentle instead
of brutal, safe instead of scared. Befriended instead of isolated.
Loved instead of hated. I hate to disagree with your president.
Yours is by no means a great nation. But you could be a great
people. History is giving you the chance. Seize the time.”
A soldier of destiny
Lieutenant Colonel Tim Collins, originally from
Norn Iron and now settled in England, was an instant British
hero of the Iraqi war before it started, before a shot was
fired or a bomb dropped [Ed – Except the British and
US had been continually dropping bombs on parts of Iraq in
line with their ‘no fly zones’], with a stirring,
and totally OTT, speech to his men (and possibly women) troops,
widely reported in the British media [‘Over The Top’
seems an excellent description of any military leader’s
exhortation before battle, reminiscent of the trenches in
the First World War – Ed]. Now various allegations have
been made about his shooting at civilians’ feet, pistol
whipping an Iraqi, kicking and punching POWs, and also, back
in Northern Ireland, not investigating, as he faithfully promised
to do, the suicide of a young soldier under his command in
the Royal Irish Regiment.
Soldiers do as soldiers do, and the British
Army investigation is ongoing and no judgements yet available.
I suppose at least there is an investigation. And within the
boundaries of soldierly behaviour, well, from my direct knowledge
of the British army what he may have done or not done doesn’t
seem that extraordinary (which is not to say that it isn’t
reprehensible and inhumane).
But there is something which really worried
me, which I feel I can write about. And that is something
that emerged from what his Northern Irish mother had to say
about him, as quoted in the ‘Sun’ (yes) of 21st
May; “The colonel’s ambition as a boy was always
to join the Army. He would come home from school and swap
his uniform for a camouflage suit. His Mum recalled: “One
day I was making a uniform for his Action Man toys when he
looked at me and said, “I’m going to be a great
soldier.” ‘
A culture that can inculcate in a young boy
such an ambition is a militaristic culture which has no place
in the future of this world. Whether it is locally in Ireland
– including both sides in Northern Ireland, USA, Iraq,
Russia, China, Africa, wherever, this automatic attachment
to militarism is a blot on the landscape and one reason why
violence is so endemic. Building a culture of cooperation
and nonviolence is not easy but without it we are doomed to
threatened wars, endless wars, wars about wars, and subsequent
tales about wars. Humanity has some growing up to do. Without
the brainwashing in militarism, please.
Sell a field and get the Wind up on a grand
scale
It’s amazing how some issues just don’t
go away because they can’t. Take safety and emission
issues to do with Sellafield, previously and many moons ago
known as Windscale (its name was changed for similar reasons
to why Long Kesh prison became the Maze prison – the
name was so bad the authorities were keen to rebrand it).
Some of us are long enough in the tooth to remember something
of all those planning and environmental battles since the
‘Seventies over Sellafield. Not for nothing did a protester
(I think from Friends of the Earth in England) plant a sign
saying ‘Sellafield – Twinned with Chernobyl’
because its safety record has been abysmal.
But you do forget sometimes that it is there,
even for a brief while when other things come to the fore.
And then bang. Latest headline from late May is that £100
million is needed to fix a leaky roof at Sellafield (or £300
million to replace that installation)! Specifically it is
required to prevent a radioactive leak from a fifty year old
facility which stores waste before it is released into the
Irish sea (sick!). British Nuclear Fuels has been wanting
to increase Technetium-99 discharges into the sea (how touching
or is that touched) to avoid having to fork out the money
and to get rid of it before new regulations come into force
in 2007! The Irish and Norwegian governments have been active
in lobbying the British government on the issue.
There’s only one certainty in the matter.
Sellafield will continue to feature in news reports about
radioactive dangers for decades and even centuries to come.
Ah, the wonders of nuclear power. The initial spin fifty years
ago was that nuclear power-produced electricity would be so
cheap it wouldn’t even be metered. Now you can safely
say that it is so expensive that no one would pay the true
cost, when developmental, environmental and other issues are
taken into account. The sooner we can bury nuclear power for
good on a global scale the better. Whether that will happen
or not, advances in renewable energy will make that a goal
that could be achieved this century – if the will is
there.
Let sleeping lignite lie
You may have noted the lignite (so-called ‘brown
coal’) mining proposals and campaign in the area north
of Ballymoney, Co Antrim (as featured in NN107) - Northern
television and the media have been giving it some attention,
thankfully. The local community have a struggle on their hands
to stop the company involved, Ballymoney Power, from literally
tearing their community apart with strip mining. In the words
of the Saw Doctors, talking about gold and the possibility
of gold mining in the west:
“Do you think our greatest asset
Can be mined, dug up, and sold”.
I hope the pictures of lignite strip mining
on the television will have influenced many people that it
is a disaster – apart from local or atmospheric pollution
(even with modern controls). So good luck to the local campaign.
Fifteen years ago there was another development
proposal in Norn Iron for lignite mining, in Ardboe and Ballinderry
areas of Co Tyrone beside Lough Neagh. Like in Ballymoney,
the company involved refused to talk to local people (the
company was BP Coal) and indeed stood a chance of ‘dividing
and ruling’ by offering farmers a £1,000 fee to
prospect on their land, which some people took. The situation
was looking dangerous from the local community point of view.
And what marked the turning point? Why good old nonviolent
action. A local man involved in the lignite campaign was aware
prospecting rigs were coming and stood in the road (a one
man blockade) preventing the drilling equipment getting through
– the whole convoy was halted (it helped that the first
driver was a union man). Then discussions, previously avoided
by the company, began. This involved the local Lignite Action
group in a process as well as BP Coal, but Lignite Action
were adamant that the whole community was the decision maker,
not them. And then the whole lignite project ran out of steam
[very funny – Ed] [You don’t know what it’s
like to work at the coal face – Billy] [More lip like
that and I’ll ignite –Ed]. Though even if the
Ballymoney Power proposals fall that may not be the last Norn
Iron hears of lignite.
Part of the above story is told in that ancient
publication “Dawn Train”, No. 7 (1988) –
if you want a photocopy of the 2-page article contact us at
ignite@innatenonviolence.org or the usual other contacts.
- Anyhow, that’s about me talked out for
another month. One more issue then we get our summer break
too. What will I do? Who will I talk to? Don’t you know
this Colm is the only thing keeping me from endless visits
to a shrink. Sob [I presume that’s not an abbreviation
– Ed]. Anyhow, see you early July, aye -
Billy.
Who
is Billy King? A long, long time ago, in a more
innocent age (just talking about myself you understand),
there were magazines called 'Dawn' and 'Dawn Train'
and I had a back page column in these. Now the Headitor
has asked me to come out from under the carpet to write
a Cyberspace Column 'something people won't be able
to put down' (I hope you're not carrying your monitor
around with you).
Watch this. Cast a cold eye on life, on death, horseman
pass by (because there'll almost certainly be very little
about horses even if someone with a similar name is
found astride them on gable ends around certain parts
of Norn Iron).
