British withdrawal!

After more than 38 years, the British Army is withdrawing! It should be perceived as a victory for republicans. And it is. But some argue that it's not a real withdrawal since some will stay (5, 000 military personnel I think?). It's true that it doesn't mean total withdrawal and Northern Ireland is still British but this partial withdrawal is a big step, at least for me !


Arklet

To present this as some kind of "victory" is nonesense.

"The moves are part of the government's security normalisation plans."
(Troop withdrawal plan published, BBC 28 March 2006, <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/4853472.stm> )

Normalisation has been a British state strategy since the mid-1970s. Today is less a post-conflict situation than a successful normalisation. From a Republican perspective, this is hardly a gain. As an IRA leader concluded as early as 1975: "Suppose we get the release of all detainees, an amnesty and withdrawal of troops to barracks, we are still back where we started in 1969." Paul Bew and Henry Patterson, The British State and the Ulster Crisis, London: Verso, 1985, p.84

check this recent article I wrote for a British cultural journal on the "New Northern Ireland"

http://www.variant.randomstate.org/29texts/liam29.html

Interesting leaflet from Eirigi

http://www.eirigi.org/pdfs/campaigns/they_havent_gone_away_you_know.pdf


Summer 2007:
OCCUPIED IRAK: 1 British soldier for 4900 people
OCCUPIED AFGHANISTAN: 1 British soldier for 4600 people
OCCUPIED IRELAND: 1 British soldier for 370 people

They haven't gone away you know!

Thank you for your article and the link for the leaflet. I think I got carried away by the news! But I soon realized that it was not a such incredible event, that total withdrawal is not planned for the time being!

In fact I don't really know how to interpret loyalists' refusal to decommission. Don't they see the beginning of withdrawal as a step toward reunification? That's why I was, at first, so carried away by the news, I thought this move, added to the loyalists'refusal to move away from arms, was a sign... But they maybe hang on to their arms to assure their safety and control over the loyalist population. (moreover they can argue that the IRA kept some arms for "self-protection", so they need their arms for defence).

Slan,

Lili