50 YEARS SINCE TROOPS SENT INTO IRELAND

It's hard to believe it was 50 years ago today, on 14 August 1969, that the Harold Wilson Labour government sent troops into N Ireland, declaring it a stop-gap, emergency, temporary measure. 

They first arrived in Derry, the next day were also deployed in Belfast, and were to remain for 30 years, during the bleak, dark days of sectarian division, 3,720 violent deaths, and ruthless state repression; the 'Troubles'.

The vast majority of people today - whether Protestant, Catholic or neither - are absolutely determined there will be no going back to those days. 


During election times, the Orange and Green sectarian politicians still today rely on headcounts of 'their own' communities to hold onto their overpaid positions, trading on the Good Friday Agreement to climb to office - where they are quite relaxed about cosying up to politicians of 'the other side' to carry out Tory austerity cuts; privatise services; impose the miseries of Universal Credit; slash budgets by cutting Corporation Tax on big business; and make a fortune for friends and family through the corrupt Renewable Heating Initiative scam. 


The same politicians would prefer us not to know that it was repeated waves of strikes and rallies by workers, united in opposition to the sectarian killings, that were instrumental in bringing about the ceasefires 20 years ago. 

What is equally unknown and unspoken of - including outside of Ireland - is that during the period immediately prior to the British army's arrival, multiple opportunities for working class unity and indeed socialist change were thrown up. 
Opportunities created by the courageous struggles of ordinary people, including trade unionists at shopfloor level, but unforgivably squandered by the leadership of the trade union and wider labour movement. 

Background reading on why troops sent in & results

In this short pamphlet - Class not Creed, 1968 - I sketch out the bloody and pernicious history of Britain's ruling rich in their exploitation of Irish land and labour, in particular their coldly calculated incitement of sectarian divisions; their divide-and-rule tactics, culminating in the 1921 partition of Ireland. 

That side of history is relatively well known; the pamphlet also unearths some of the many, many examples of working class Catholics and Protestants uniting in struggle, in defiance of their political 'masters', who sought to keep them divided and thereby easier to exploit.  


That happened right throughout the 20th century - including on the eve of the violent eruptions of August 1969, when the Labour government deployed troops rather than a united workers' movement to confront the Paisleyite mobs and RUC/B Special police who went on the rampage in Derry's Bogside and parts of Belfast, burning Catholic families out of their homes. 

Even less known, are the heroic efforts of shop stewards in the Belfast shipyard - who set the tone and set the pace for others in workplaces where the bigots threatened assaults on workers, by calling a mass meeting of all 8,000 workers, passing a declaration of opposition to sectarian division and intimidation, leading them out in a token strike against sectarian violence; actions unanimously agreed by the 8,000 and acted upon that day, 15 August 1969. 


Or the Peace Patrols and Vigilante groups - many of them joint Protestant/Catholic in composition - who patrolled several Belfast estates in August 1969, quelling the bigots from attacking people's homes, preventing a slide into outright civil war, in a way that the British army was simply incapable of doing. 

With very rare exceptions, these defence groups were not only non-sectarian but anti-sectarian. 

In the Ardoyne and Unity Walk, they stopped attacks on Protestant families. In East Belfast they prevented attacks on the homes of the Catholic minority. Joint Catholic/Protestant peace patrols operated in several areas, including Ballymurphy, Turf Lodge, New Barnsley, Springmartin and Springhill. Far more homes would have been burnt out, far more murderous attacks would have happened, had it not been for these courageous efforts. 

Troops take aim on Bloody Sunday, Derry 1972

The tragedy is that the leaderships of the trade unions and labour movement in 1969 did nothing to coordinate and build on these ground-level and workplace efforts to stem the sectarian tide, relying instead on pious pleas for 'calm', and support for use of the British army.  


The latter went on to prove in action that working class people have to rely on our own forces, our own unified communities and organisations, not the forces of a capitalist state. 
Far from being defenders of the Catholic community, the army was soon deployed in an array of repressive measures, including house raids; curfews; internment without trial; shoot-to-kill policies; torture - and as some socialists warned at the time, practiced methods later used by the British government and its state against workers in struggle, most spectacularly against the 1984-5 striking miners. 

Workers' unity in action, 2019 

The failures of the leaderships of the Civil Rights, Labour and trade union movements turned a golden opportunity for unity and socialist change into decades of bitter sectarian reaction, starting in August 1969, as the bigots drove the peace patrols out of existence and put the workplace shop stewards on the defensive. 


To their eternal credit, however, these same rank and file union leaders led several waves of strike action against the killings - from both sides - during the 1970s and 1980s, preventing outright civil war. 
Meantime, the best the army could offer was - in the cold, cynical phrase of Tory Minister, Reginald Maudling - to reduce the North "to an acceptable level of violence"! 


I encourage you to have a read of Class not Creed, 1968. It gives background context to the deployment of the British army 50 years ago, why the ruling class through the Wilson government decided to send them in. It recounts some of the main events afterwards. And it describes what might have been if there had been a large, cross-community socialist party that could have built on the real events and heroic efforts of thousands of working class activists, 50 years ago. 


We need to study and learn from the past to ensure there is no going back. We need to base our efforts on class, not creed. 

Order copies here (£3 including postage): 
https://scottishsocialistparty.org/product/class-not-creed-1968/