Blood on Trimble's hands

national | miscellaneous | news report Saturday August 17, 2002 08:55 by McMean

Imperialists have always manipulated, equipped and unleashed the most barbaric and degenerate of pseudo-political force to counter what they have seen as threats to their hegemony.

We often think of ourselves in Ireland as far removed from these
regimes, but the Six Counties is no different. The use of UDA
terror as a counter-insurgency tactic to do Britain's dirty work
has been the subject in recent times of well-publicised
investigations into individual killings, but the effects of all
this on wider society have not been adequately scrutinised.

The culture of fascism, drug dealing, steroid-pumped strongmen
and sectarian hate that British Intelligence has encouraged,
could be seen in the motivation of the North Belfast Commander of
the UDA, as expressed in his interview with the Guardian this
week. The 25-year-old, of Egyptian and Irish parentage, said "it
was a macho thing when I was hanging about with friends who were
also getting involved".

'Machismo', for the thugs of the UDA, means terrorising families
from their homes with pipe bombs, shootings and orchestrated
riots. Their version of manliness means attacking the vulnerable
in other communities, and profiting from the drug addiction of
the vulnerable in their own.

What makes all this far worse is that the UDA is not some
marginalised, micro-organisation, as their lack of electoral
success might suggest, but a ballooning gang of thousands of
members, directed by the Crown forces and allowed to do what they
like by an impervious British Secretary of State.

Worse again is the fact that David Trimble is, consciously or
unconsciously, surrendering the leadership of unionism to its
thuggish political dregs. Despite the unsettling growth of
sectarianism in unionist communities since the signing of the
Agreement, and seemingly oblivious to the daily and nightly
outrages conducted by the UDA, David Trimble has marked out a
different agenda.

Ignoring the reality of what is actually happening, he prefers,
without rhyme or reason, to threaten to sink the institutions
because of alleged and elusive IRA activity.

When David Trimble jeopardises the peace process to play
inter-unionist power games, he opens the door for the UDA to
embrace further violence. This means that Catholic Chris Whitson,
who died on Monday night, ten days after being attacked for his
religion outside a nightclub in Portrush, will not be the last
victim of Britain's dirty war in Ireland.