00:00 John McAnulty: What I'm *not* saying is that the republican leadership should go. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that the republican movement collapsed and had run out of things to do. It was no longer able to function effectively in the way it had, [and had] nowhere else to go.
00:33 And at the end of the day it was a militarist organisation. The active volunteers were loyal to the Army Council, and the core supporters were families, friends, neighbours who were loyal to the IRA essentially. But for most [of them] it was just their sort of group for mounting actions for the IRA [?].
01:03 The Catholic population in the North had a very weak trade union consciousness. They were on the periphery of the economy [inaudible]. They were a discriminated minority, harried by the state all the time [?], so they didn't have a very strong class structure [inaudible]. It tended to be community structures.
01:35 Very recently [?] it's been said that they didn't [see themselves as] beaten — right — but that's not really true. As I said, the thing ended, and people [inaudible], and then obviously everybody [realised] that they couldn't possibly win the struggle.
02:06 Why did they turn round to the opposite? Well, that's quite standard. That's what republicans do. That's what they did the last time — that's where Fianna Fáil came from. Your struggle, it's plainly underdeveloped, it's [inaudible] in nature, it doesn't have any class consciousness; it's attacked from the right, it falls to the right, and it becomes a right-wing movement.
02:37 What I'm saying is that [inaudible]. So people no longer remember what it felt like to think the way they did ten years ago. They no longer remember. There is obviously a dissident minority that doesn't make [much] noise.
03:07 So in the early period of the peace process it was able, at certain points in negotiations, to call for demonstrations, mobilisations, and it would get maybe ten thousand people out. A call for mobilisation today will get nobody, because very gradually people realised they weren't in charge.
03:39 Let me make one more point about that, which is Ed Moloney's book. Ed Moloney says people outside Ireland would be absolutely amazed if they were to understand [that there was no] discussion [of] the Good Friday Agreement. There was no discussion of the Good Friday Agreement. Nobody in the [republican movement] knew what it said [?]. All right — [they] signed up to it. They couldn't [affect] any more what was going on; they were going to go along with whatever it was.
04:10 Now, why does Britain hold on to Ireland? Well, that's a [colossal] question [?], and in different forms it's been around since the start of it. [Inaudible.] You have to start from what is. They fought a thirty-year war to stay in Ireland. Then we had an agreement, and the agreement is based on them staying in Ireland, and they've now got a settlement which keeps them in Ireland indefinitely, and [they are willing to] pay five billion a year to stay there.
04:42 So to answer the question: the British are determined [to stay in] Ireland — why is that? Well, there are two sorts of answer to that. One is, you can't imagine Britain being indifferent to Ireland. You can't imagine the British state [saying, we don't care] what happens over there. [That is] pretty stupid. [Inaudible.] Reflexively, Britain would control Ireland. It does control [the North], and controls the South to a very large extent in a certain way.
05:49 Now, the mechanism of that control is to a large extent historical. It turns out that the way in which it controls Ireland is by having a military base there — [though] it's not the only way. And that military base depends on a sectarian state itself. And it's just not historically easy to kick away the stone you're standing on and stand on some other stone, because for a while you would be standing on no stone at all [?].
06:20 Now, it's not fixed in concrete. If the IRA had come close to pushing the British out, then maybe [they] would have tried some [other] mechanism. But the IRA never came anywhere remotely close [to that]. And if you look at the thirty-year documents, the British cabinet never ever discussed withdrawal from Ireland. They discussed independence, they discussed all sorts of strange things, but they never ever discussed withdrawal. Ever.
06:50 Last thing [inaudible — the questioner's name]. I'll do that fairly quickly. [Someone] was on a programme way back and he made a very, very funny comment. He said, you've got to remember how much energy it takes to be a bigot.
07:21 If you're a racist, it's easy: you just look around, and if you feel like being racist, there you go, you are. But if you're a bigot you have to go through the preliminary thing of finding out who the other person is before you can start discriminating against them. So sectarian bigotry involves that level of energy — and because it involves that level of energy, it tends to decay.
07:51 There are examples all the way through the history of the north of Ireland where, [with] industrial struggles and other forms of struggle, the sectarianism tends to fade away, and [so] it is continuously reinforced.
07:51 I'll give you a very quick example — the very first demonstration I was [on]. [Inaudible.] I think it was back in 1966, and in 1967 my organisation organised a protest about an increase in bus fares. And the increase in bus fares was incredibly unpopular, so we called a rally at the City Hall, and we got a crowd of over ten thousand people, all protesting this increase in bus fares. Ten thousand!
08:52 Five minutes into the rally the RUC formed up, drew their batons and attacked the crowd at the bottom of Royal Avenue. And when they got to the top of the [street] they batoned them up the Falls Road — all of them, the Catholics and the Protestants — and beat [them] ahead [of them].
09:23 And what happened was that the Protestant people on the demonstration who'd had their heads cracked in went home and stayed in their houses for two weeks, till all signs of their injuries had died away, because they couldn't possibly go into the neighbourhood and say, I was on a demonstration and I was attacked by the RUC. Their life wouldn't be worth living.
09:53 So by that simple experience — which was routine, because it happened [again and again] [inaudible] — that sectarianism would fade away, but the structure of the state is designed to make sure it never fades away. Okay.
09:53 Chair: Any contributions?
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