IF all your readers had to go on, instead of facts, was the London-based media's view on Scotland, Ireland, and elsewhere, then perhaps they could be forgiven for wondering why Nationalist areas in Ireland demand, at the moment, to police their own areas instead of relying upon a Unionist Orange judiciary. Certainly if one was only capable of reading the English-owned Unionist Daily Retard they would never ken what was going on round about them.
The RUC are certainly no village bobbies on bikes. They wear flak jaikits, carry machine-guns, ride in armoured cars on duty, and parade in sashes and bowler-hats off duty. Why act surprised when they are not trusted in Catholic or Nationalist areas? You can change the name to anything you like, but they will still be the same ''B'' Specials who drove into Catholic areas firing machine-guns from their cars, protecting Loyalist mobs engaged in burning families out of homes.
To most people in Scotland the Orange parades are, at best, a public nuisance, and at worst an object of disgust to the main part of the non-Catholic, sane population. In the North of Ireland they do not just stagger through Catholic areas banging the drums of hate. For years they marched up to Catholic doors ''collecting funds'', smashing windows, doors, houses, intimidating the elderly, infirm, and women and children, and woe betide any young Catholic males who hadn't the sense to get out of the way.
The ''Royal'' Ulster Constabulary are not the people to police the North of Ireland any more than the British Army. And let's not flatter ourselves talking about ''Scottish'' regiments. They are British, native auxiliaries until we declare independence. It would have to be a non-British force policing Ireland until such times of acceptable democracy; whether that be the, now, discredited, Nato, or the useless UN, is a more fitting matter for discussion, as there will be no real peace in the meantime. Ulster consists of nIne counties, six of them under British rule.
Does anyone believe that the victims of drug dealers, and other anti-social elements, in say Possilpark and Glasgow peripheral housing ''schemes'' would be glad of a People's Militia, kneecapping criminals who refused warnings to move out to England? At the moment we have a Westminster MP in a silly PR exercise patrolling the streets of (what's left of) Maryhill. Cynics might wonder if he will be allowed to beat people up and also be the only one, besides police and prison warders, on the beat who does not know who the drug dealers are, or where deals can be obtained. Glasgow's inner city had been ripped apart, and whole communities destroyed by George Skwerr vandals and now further destroyed by drug traffickers and lumpen criminals.
It is said that the CIA deliberately washed black American ghettos with drugs and used Colombian drug money to finance their banditry in Indochina, causing the collapse of the natural order in Cambodia as well as Vietnam. Irish Republicans have long since claimed that British agents tried to pump drugs into republican communities, North and South, and took physical force action against them. The aim being to divert the Nationalist struggle with the up-and-coming youth incapable of anything beyond their next fix. Certainly some British agents have been exposed, and even arrested, trying to commit crimes in the name of the IRA to demonise their reputation even further.
Looking back at the lively communities and spirit of my native Glasgow, Maryhill, Cowcaddens, Springburn, Calton, Bridgeton, Gorbals, etc, I cannot help but be suspicious that the real motive for destroying these communities and moving all the industries south stems from the fear of the rise of the SNP in the sixties. Why not name the ''Merchant City'' the ''Garden City'' in view of the trees and shrubs growing out of the dilapidated buildings and compost heaps at ground level? Certainly I truly believe the real motive for destroying the Scottish trade unions and making them all English - sorry, British - was the same as destroying much else of Scottish breathing life.
While physical force may sometimes be necessary, if not desirable, it is not always the luxury or the prerogative of the State. At least we in Scotland should have a better understanding of Ireland's problems, being related to our own, with the same root cause of being a subject region of an Imperial backwater.
Donald Anderson,
22 Southampton Drive, Glasgow.
September 2.
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