Turgon

Turgon
I whole-heartedly endorse the tenor of your article that the Provisional I R A campaign wasn’t left wing inspired but was a sectarian struggle between protestant loyalist British Ireland and Republican catholic Irish Ireland. However the story of this historic sectarian conflict doesn’t begin with the Provisionals who claimed they were acting in the tradition of Tone and Pearse but goes back to the 1790ties and continues thereafter in the 19th and 20th centuries. The best definition of the nature of this sectarian conflict can be found in the Dungannon Resolution of July 12th 1796. The caption of the resolution was as follows: -
“Association of the inhabitants of the town of Dungannon to support and defend the King and Constitution to preserve the peace of their town and its neighbourhood and to discourage and resist all endeavours to excite sedition and rebellion.”
The content of the resolution can be paraphrased as the intention of the association to defend the country against the French and put down Republican insurrection. This resolution was signed by 12 protestant Justices of the peace in Tyrone. Out of this association thus defined there emerged the Protestant/orange yeomanry organised by the Dungannon man and MP John Knox. John Knox set up the yeomanry brigade system and this brigade system proved crucial in the defeat of the United Irishmen. At this time the leadership of the mainly catholic United Irishmen fatally underestimated the organisational skill and ingenuity of protestant loyalist Ireland. The yeomen were victorious because they were better organised (due to the organisational genius of John Knox) than the United Irishmen. The strong Dungannon resolution is historically more important than Pearse’s weak Proclamation but the resolution and with it John Knox has been airbrushed out of history by Republicans.
The sectarian saga continues in 1916. This was a catholic Republican rebellion to overthrow the constitution and depose the Crown and set up a Republic of Ireland. The response to this rebellion is defined in the Dungannon resolution. The British protestant establishment put down the rebellion and maintained the Crown and Constitution and 1916 was as futile and sectarian as 1798.
There followed the so called war of independence. This was a conflict between IRA rebels who tried to overthrow the constitution and the Crown by armed force and were opposed by the Black and Tans, deployed and supported by the British Protestant establishment to defend and maintain the Crown and Constitution. So again the Dungannon Resolution defines the nature of this sectarian conflict which partitioned the country into two sectarian statelets, a protestant north and a catholic south.
IN our own time there was the brute force attempt by the Provisional IRA to overthrow the constitution depose the Queen and set up an all Ireland Republic in the tradition of Tone and Pearse. This conflict was localised with the setting up of the UDR, a protestant loyalist British force deployed an d supported by the Protestant British establishment in their role of defending the Crown and Constitution. All of this is defined in the Dungannon Resolution 1796. This conflict ended with the defeat of the Provisional’s campaign of violence and with the GFA, Sinn Fein have recognised UK constitution and sit at Stormont as crypto-unionists propping up a right wing Union Jack Unionist statelet in the pay of the British Exchequer.
The root cause of this historic sectarian conflict is constitutional. This is evident in the sectarian head count at elections, in the peace walls that divide cities into sectarian ghettoes and in the protestant orange/ catholic republican riots that follow the twelfth of July demonstrations. Since the UK constitution is the rotten apple the intelligent thing to do is replace it with a sound ---Federal Kingdom apple-- which can be made as palatable to the Catholics of Kerry as to the Protestants of Derry. It is not beyond the wit of man to do this—c.f. www.authorhouse.co.uk

Michael Gillespie Federal Unionist-Early Sinn Fein