Basic HTML Version
The TRUTH
About lreland
Blood first flowed
on
the pages of Anglo-lrish
history 800 years
ago .
The contestants in
Northern lreland today could be writing the
last chapter of the violent volume .
by
Gene H. Hogberg
"IRELAND
is a fatal disease -
fatal to Englishmen and doubly
fatal to Irishmen."
The strange political malady af–
Ricting the two peoples is as virulent
today as when Irish author George
Moore uttered these fateful words 84
years ago. Worse yet, the protracted
violence in Northern Ireland indicates
that the disease may be reaching its
terminal stage, unless drastic measures
are taken.
Stop-gap Measure
When the British government as–
sumed direct rule over its strife-torn
province in March of this year, most
observers believed that, at best, Loo–
don had only bought sorne precious
time in order to cool the blistering
passions of Ulster's battling Protestaot
and Roman Catbolic factions.
But time has never really been on
the side of peace in the Emerald Isle.
Michael Charity, Camera Prtss
Lul.
Hece, time, history and the present are
rolled into a curious whole.
In lreland, writes Richard Rose
in
Govemment lJ'/ithout Consenstts,
"the
troubles of the past are relived as
contemporary affairs."
The Battle of the Boyne, that epic
battle which sealed Protestant con–
trol in Ulster in 1690, is as seemingly
real to Protestants in Northern lreland
as the latest bomb blast in Belfast.
Wall slogans in Protestant sections of
Belfast intone: "Remember 1690." It's
as if Boyne's victor, William of
Orange - lovingly revered as "King
Billy" - were alive and ruling from
Stormont Castle today.
For many native Catholic Irish on
both sides of the bocder, the "Easter
Uprising" in 1916, which led to ulti–
mate independeoce for at least part
of Ireland, is as dynamic an event–
relived constantly in folk ballads -
as the latest troubles in Londonderry's
3