Michael Farrell, Arming the Protestants, Pluto, £7.95
So there was David Lloyd George, former leader of the Liberal Party and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, discussing with his Cabinet the possibility of supplying arms to the Protestant proletariat of the North of Ireland, in the month of May 1922. He told his government colleagues that these 'loyalists' had been compared to the lower orders in the East End of London, but to Prime Minister Lloyd George that was a slur on the East Enders. 'The Fascisti in Italy would be a more exact analogy', he remarked. And then he proceeded to arm and finance the loyalists.
This is just one of many, many incidents reported in Michael Farrell's latest book which will make even the most suspicious observer of Britain's dealing with the people of Ireland shake the head and go back over sentences just to make sure that it was read correctly. It is a book of horror stories, only Michael Farrell's cool, matter-of-fact dispassionate style stops the hairs rising on the back of the neck as page after page is turned over. Example: Winston Churchill, the great statesman of British bourgeois folklore, on a number of occasions in the years reviewed suggested the British government should prepare an invasion of the South of Ireland. Example: members of the 'security forces' in the North of Ireland who were known to be guilty of assassinations of individual Catholics, were, for their contributions to law and order promoted within those security forces. Example: a boundary commission which political representatives of the South of Ireland had been told would transfer large portions of North to the South, was fixed beforehand so as to ensure that could not happen. And those who sanctioned the rigging were the members of the minority Labour government who came to power in 1923.
There are other, less shocking, even humorous incidents recounted. Like how the super loyalist, in the Royal Ulster Constabulary and Ulster Special Constabulary, those who pledged their fidelity to everything British with the most enthusiasm, would protest loudly any time an English policeman or soldier was sent over to command them — because such foreigners could not be trusted in Ulster'. And yet, although the discovery by Michael Farrell of such occurrences is a fine testimony to his work as a historian, the sum total of the book is even more important because of the political conclusion which can be drawn from it, and because of its relevance to current theoretical debates on the issue of Ireland.
There is the question of the Protestant working class in the North of Ireland. There are some who insist that the members of that class are and always have been 'ordinary workers' and who, for instance, would jump at the chance of voting for the Labour Party if only Neil Kinnock would send an expeditionary force to the North. There are also those who agree that yes, the prods might be sectarian now and again but really, is all the fault of the nasty Catholics who keep raising political issues, like the partition of Ireland. And there are those who say the Protestant workers are simply dupes of the nasty Unionist bosses. Arming the Protestants provides an overwhelming refutation of such vulgar socialism. Farrell displays, beyond any doubt that the Protestant working class in the years 1920 to 1927 could be and was an independent political force whose main unifying factor was an anti-Catholic bigotry which needed no supposed Republican threat before emerging with all the flourish and all the malevolence of the burning crosses and white cloaks of the Ku Klux Klan. Of course, at times the upper class leaders of Unionism tripped their followers up, but on other occasions they had to run to keep up with the sectarianism of their supporters and the old [illegible].
A second general conclusion that can be drawn from this book concerns the nature of the British role in the North of Ireland. It is common coinage among modern British politicians to accept that in the past they did nasty things in Ireland, but that really, can hardly be directly responsible for what is happening today. This is another myth demolished by Farrell. He shows that not only did the leaders of all the political parties in Britain permit the sectarian character of modern 'Ulster' to be built in the 1920s, but they went further and encouraged and paid for its construction. Indeed, the only 'liberal' figures to surface in this book is the occasional British civil servant who protested at the overtly sectarian actions of the political masters at Westminster.
And there is a third lesson on offer, almost incidental to the Irish issue. This involves Farrell's account of how the leadership of Unionism and the British establishment both openly encouraged and financed the real army of loyalist volunteers in the early 1920s. In doing so, every constitutional nicety was trampled under foot, every semblance of adherence to a non-partisan 'law and order' was dispensed with. This was 'parliamentary democracy' in its naked and vicious mood. There is a warning there for all those who believe in the [fairness] and humanity of the British system of politics.
Some may say that Farrell's version of history is a history of villainy and little more. That such [a sequence] of events couldn't possibly happen today. The 'B' Specials have, after all, vanished from the scene. No they haven't. Only the name is changed. Today they are called the Ulster Defence Regiment, set up by the Labour Government in 1970. Between them and the 'B' Specials there is only a 2 per cent difference. In the 'B' Specials everyone was Protestant. The last, and out of date figures available for the UDR were that 98 per cent were Protestant. But its countless members who have been involved in sectarian murders in the last ten years shows that the UDR is as Orange and bloody as Farrell shows the 'B' Specials to have been.
It can be admitted that at times Arming the Protestants is a heavy read. But that is because Farrell has chosen to detail the story he tells so meticulously. And that, in turn, is to his credit. He avoids emotion, he avoids rhetoric. He just places mass after mass of evidence before his reader. But in that way he ends up with as damning an indictment of the North of Ireland 'loyalist' and their British sponsors as [illegible].
GEOFF BELL's latest book The British in Ireland was published by Pluto Press last month.