Playing games with history?

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shown when some of the noses. evolved. I MUST say I love these SO "discussions" that begin with a torrent of words from John themselves as succinctly as possible". What a pity that never seems to apply to O'Mahony himself! Still, I suppose there is a good side to that in terms of political clarity since the more he writes the worse he gets.

To begin with comrade O'Mahony should be informed that you can only accuse people of libel if what they say is untrue. Unfortunately for O'Mahony the points made (SO115) are admirably proved by his own articie on 'The Problem of the Protestants" Maybe O'Mahony should consider applying his views on terrorism (see the articles on the Chelsea and Ballykelly bombings) to his own bombastic verbal terrorism.

But these are secondary matters. There are, politically, a number of significant points to be drawn from his latest outpourings.

Firstly, we have the curiously myopic view of the Irish people which O'Mahony seeks to foist on Socialist Organiser. I can hardly believe that it is a coincidence that all the blood and thunder is directed against the republicans and the regime in the South while imperialism and the Protestant reactionaries get a soft ride.

For example, according to O'Mahony, the INLA are "sectarian assassins". and are "engaged in a sectarian binge" The IRA were denounced in equally "yellow press" language after the Chelsea bombing, for "indiscriminately "cutting a swathe" through civilians. Similarly, in the South we have "backward, Catholic, bourgeois partitionist bigots", But in the North? Well, for O'Mahony the virulently pro-imperialist Protestant population who have organised endless pogroms against the minority Catholic population — not least 1968-9 against their demands for civil rights -are certainly deserving of a slap on the wrist. "It is nent higher unemployment" , O Mahony informs uS. Obviously the point about unemployment is to show, as he attempts again later, that these were no real privileges. All nice mild stuff, isn't it?

Not a patch on the vitriolie hatred which pours from -O'Mahony's pen when he is dealing with the petty bourgeois nationalist movement. Obviously, the Shankhill butchers, like the rest of the Unionists "played a bad role" '. So what we have is, in practice, apologetics when we talk about the Protestant community and denunciations for the 'priestridden" Catholic community - O'Mahony's phrase, not mine!

But O'Mahony is even more outrageous in his attempts to rationalise a defence of the Protestant community when he is playing games with history. According to O'Mahony •They are a community put down in Ireland mainly by free immigration from England and Scotland and, much less importantly, by official British colonisation"

This, comrades, is lying, pro-English rubbish!

How, with this "overview" does O'Mahony explain the rebellion of 1641 against the forcible plantation of Ulster by Scots and English Protestants? How does he explain Cromwell's invasion and the burning of Drogheda? The driving of the resident population south and westwards to Connacht? The almost total redistribution of lands in the North and Midlands of Ireland in that period? The imposition reactionary English laws designed to exclude all Catholics from holding public office? The years of military rule? Did you, by any chance, forget these comrade O'Mahony?

Of course, as always, comrade O'Mahony is diplomatically coy on such issues. "Lands were taken in a series of confiscations' he tells us, conveniently removing the context. But in order to hide the real 4229 "The virulently pro-imperialis: course of events he also has to fiddle with his dates.

The English "conquest" of Ireland is carefully placed in the 1590s. In reality, as he well knows, this marked the emergence of a conscious policy of colonisation only - unless O'Mahony thinks that it was James I and Charles I who violently imposed the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity in Ireland. The conquest took place in the 1640s as part of a Protestant crusade against Catholic Ireland and only at that stage took the form of the military suppression of the Irish people (or maybe O'Mahony also has a new definition of conquest).

With such a record of historical accuracy at hand it is hardly surprising, then, that O'Mahony should also "forget" to point out that the opposition to Cromwell came not only from the native population but also from the Anglo-Irish free settler population, many of them protestants, who were also t Protestant population driven from the land!

Still, what is a little truth among friends? Having rewritten the actual history of Ireland, O'Mahony arrogantly boasts 'That is the outline of the dominant element in the historical picture" • if O'Mahony were a painter he would produce fakes!

So, let us look at his glib panorama of recent events, and the more modern parts of his catalogue of historical sleight of hand. We are told, with reference to the Protestant community, "what bound them to England and the ruling class arose in the first place from the fact and the awareness that they were different, that their part of Ireland was more advanced and from their feeling of being threatened"

You can almost see lan Smith reading this sort of rubbish and feeling better. But the situation is worse; because O'Mahony's rationale for Protestant reaction goes further. For we have an almost sympathetic presentation of their "opposition to being incorporated as a minority in a largely agrarian, backward and priest-ridden Catholic bourgeois state. Clearly, for O'Mahony, Protestant imperialist enclaves are eminently superior to Catholic bourgeois states!

In any case, what we get shown when some of the teas 5.0, have organised endless pogroms...

is certainly a novel view of Ulster Unionism. Unfortunately for : O'Mahony, Bonar Law, the then Conservative leader was somewhat more honest when he addressed the massed unionists on April 9, 1912 at Belfastal, Once suburb of Belfast. again you hold the pass," he informed them. "The pass for the Empire"

Tell me, • comrade O'Mahony, when the audience clapped and cheered this reactionary bilge were they expressing their noble hostility to Catholic "backwardness'" or their prostrate, reactionary pro-imperialism? Were the Ulster Volunteers a militant expression of advanced social relations or a reactionary expression of the distorted, combined and uneven development imposed on Ireland by imperialism?

Inevitably, the endgame of this ludicrous series of political charades sinks to the absolute depths. 'The way forward for the Protestant working class is within the framework of a united Ireland -and possibly within a wider British/Irish or European framework". What the hell is he talking about? What is a 'wider British/Irish or European framework"? A new expanded United Kingdom? A bourgeois regroupment through the EEC? by Les Hearn We invite readers to send us their letters, up to a usual maximum length of 400 words. Send to Socialist Organiser, c/o 28, Middle Lane. London N8.

The only such framework that I know of in the lexicon of revolutionary Marxism is the Socialist United States of Europe. But then such concepts would never enter into the thoughts of one so elevated as comrade O'Mahony. He is after all "a working class democrat" and a "consistent democrat"

So, inevitably all that we get are demands for a democratic programme which begins from the 'maximum democratic rights for the Protestant community" in the form of federal autonomy.

Comrade O'Mahony, you should try thinking about the revolutionary tasks in Ireland in terms of the theory of permanent revolution. Then perhaps you could avoid falling into what Tony Gard correctly described in SO 118 as "a reactionary divisive notion which has no part in the gramme', Marxist proPETER FLACK Leicester evolved.

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O'Mahony and then urge readers to "express