The Empire Strikes

THEY GOT THE NEWS from the radio and the t.v. It'd been pretty obvious for 18 hours or so, ever since he went into a coma, that he would die. And when word finally came, they went into the streets and began to beat the lids of trash cans against the pavement and whistle, a high, piercing shriek. God, it sounded eerie, even on tape, even broadcast halfway around the world. But it didn't sound odd, for the Irish women of Belfast have been making the sound most every day since the troubles began in 1969. Usually it's a warning to the men that the British are moving in; sometimes, like last week, it's a wail of grief that the British have taken another life.

Think about killing yourself--think, if you were depressed horribly, if you were so full of pain you didn't want to live, could you do it? Pull the razor across your wrists? Swallow the fistful of pills? Maybe, some do. But there's that one last moment, and all of a sudden it's very tough, because you remember that there've been a lot of nice things, too. Even for Bobby Sands there'd been some nice things--a son, parents who loved him, a pint of Guinness now and again, a cause. But he killed himself the hardest way there is. He had to make his decision every second of the 66 days: around him men ate three times a day, and before long the food at Long Kesh prison must have looked like the sturdiest pub fare. Bobby Sands said no, said it every day, while his body ate itself, till he went from 155 pounds to less than 80. Those who saw his body, and there were thousands who filed through the parlor of his project home, said two Bobby Sands could have fit in the coffin, that his face, what face was left, was yellow wax, stretched tight over sharp bone. Bobby Sands is a hero.

So how come nobody seems to care much? This campus, for instance, has seen huge protests against oppression in South Africa and Central America. Hundreds wore green ribbons in the wake of the slayings in Atlanta, and hundreds more will wear green and white sashes to Commencement. But almost no one wore a black armband the day Bobby Sands died.

Consider what life is like for the Irish who live in the occupied North. Bobby Sands is a case in point--early in his life, Protestant extremists drove his family from its home. Bobby Sands was going to be a garage mechanic, but the Protestants in his shop forced him out at gunpoint. And then he was arrested and charged with possessing an unloaded revolver. No habeas corpus for Bobby Sands, only 14 years in prison. And don't you know that the Irish had their civil rights movement? People like Bernadette Devlin protested--peacefully--the political, social and especially economic discrimination they were subject to in the six northernmost counties of Ireland. And it didn't do a thing, except that the Protestants, and pretty soon the British troops, began to shoot at them. Don't you know that unemployment is higher, that wages are lower, that life is mean, for the Irish who live in Northern Ireland? Can't you imagine what it would feel like to wake up in the morning and see armored troop carriers, with little slits for the guns, rolling up your streets? What it would feel like to have British soldiers everywhere, even in your barrooms?

Probably you think the conflict in Ireland is some sort of religious war that has gone on forever. 'They've fought so long they don't remember what they're fighting about.' 'Killing each other in the name of God.' Well, not exactly. It happens that Ireland was the first victim of British imperialism, and, as it turns out, among the last. The English finally subdued the Celts at the Battle of the Boyne close to 400 years ago; quickly they peopled the nation with subjects loyal to the crown. And the Irish have been fighting since. They've had their victories, of course. The biggest came in 1920 when they won the 26 counties of the south of Ireland. But the loyalist Protestant-dominated North (they still call themselves "Orangemen" in tribute to William of Orange, victor at the Battle of the Boyne) voted to ally with the U.K. It should be remembered that the white majority in the American South voted to have nothing to do with the rest of the country, in order that they might be allowed to continue with their various oppressions. The Irish--predominantly Catholics--kept fighting, to unite under a single rule a small island with a cultural and social history that stretches back thousands of years.

It could be argued that 400 years is too long a period, that somehow the buzzer has sounded on the Irish, that they've exceeded the time limit for being oppressed without winning, and hence forfeited the right to complain. But if you're going to argue that, you'd better not say that Israel should exist as an independent Jewish state because of its historical ties to the piece of property it now inhabits. The threshold is hard to define. The Afrikaners have controlled South Africa for quite a while. Does that legitimize the pass system and the denial of suffrage to Blacks? The British ran America for close to 200 years, and yet we felt all right about kicking them out.

The most common objection is to the tactics of the Irish, particularly the Irish Republican Army. They blow things up, and sometimes innocent people are wasted. But that's the way with wars; almost never are they pleasant. To argue that the accidental killing of civilians makes an army or a cause unworthy of support is an objection to all modern war. The IRA bombs primarily the economic interests of the British, attempting to make further occupation unprofitable. Certainly they are no more violent than Mugabe's legions, or the guerrillas that fight for the rights of El Salvadorans. At any rate, don't dismiss them as cowards; Bobby Sands proved, as if McSwiney, Connolly. Pearse, de Valera and a hundred others hadn't, that the IRA men are willing to lay down their own lives for a free Ireland. Sands proved something else about the IRA, too-their struggle will not ever stop while their country remains divided and under alien rule. He died knowing he would not see Ulster ruled from Dublin, but sure that his comrades would carry on the fight. And he was buried in an IRA graveyard next to hundreds of others who knew the same thing, and were right. There are more starving themselves right now, though they know by Sands' example that the British will never give in. Frankie Hughes, Patsy O'Hara, Raymond McCreesh, they'll sing songs about these men, too, and the death of each will bring 100 more recruits to the IRA.

FINALLY, SOME OBJECT that attention from America will do no good for people in Ireland. Our president has referred to the country's grief as an internal British affair; he and every other politician in the country should be made to recognize the British presence in Ireland for the basic violation of human rights that it is. Americans can boycott British goods, following the lead of the American longshoreman, who refused for 24 hours to load or unload ships flying the Union Jack. They can make Ireland an issue in American politics, demanding that congressmen--especially Irish pols like our own Tip O'Neill--demand the quick departure of the British. They can begin writing letters a la Amnesty International to the British, demanding that they grant Irish prisoners normal legal freedoms accorded to prisoners of war. And they can insist that no American leaders ever bow and scrape again to Prince Charles or any other product of regal inbreeding. The ultimate solution to the crisis is a unification of Ireland under Irish rule, but in the meantime, there are plenty of ways to better the lives of Northern Ireland's Catholics, and they should be urged upon Westminster by Americans. Surely these efforts can be as effective as our expressions of sadness over the slayings in Atlanta. Surely they can be tried.

The left has always bemoaned its inability to make contacts with "the working class." If any good liberals had been on Beacon Hill Tuesday, marching outside the British consul's home, they could have observed up close the species that inhabits South Boston, Dorchester, and other non-suburban climes. At best, it could have been a time for building good feelings; at least it would have been fodder for a sociology paper. But the intelligentsia seems determined to alienate this source of support. The Real Paper, for example, which is very big on women taking back the night and happy to see people marching for justice in El Salvador, decided to interview State Rep. Marie Howe, an Irish patriot recently returned from a trip to Ulster. The paper asked her, among other things. "Wasn't the trip itself mainly a publicity stunt?" "Did you present yourself primarily as a Massachusetts legislator?" "It's clear you support the IRA, but do you think their terrorist activities are justified?"

Bobby Sands died a hero, but no one paid any real heed. Oh, they watched it on t.v., and thought for a minute how sad it was that these fanatics insisted on continuing to kill each other, or, like good Harvard students, considered how complex the whole problem must be. But complexity is an excuse that means nothing to the 20,000 people, maybe more, who watched them bury Bobby Sands, watched his coffin go by draped with the proud tricolor of Ireland and the black gloves and beret of the army that fights to free it. Hundreds took to the streets later, to throw rocks. They don't understand why they must live their lives with British troops standing on the corner. They don't understand why Bobby Sands had to die. They don't understand why nobody cares about Ireland.