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Falling off history’s page

February 17, 2011

By Staff Reporter

The banner question was posed in a recent issue of Newsweek magazine.
And under the headline the full page “Back Story” stated in part: “Most of today’s festering conflicts can be traced to (British) colonial-era meddling, either through partition – slicing and dicing the planet as they see fit – or worse, indiscriminately corralling unrelated ethnic groups into a single, quarrelsome country.”
The story listed seven countries and/or regional conflicts: Sri Lanka, India/Pakistan, Iraq, Sudan, Israel/Palestine, Somalia and Nigeria. Under each heading was a brief account of what the British did in the past that has led to present day difficulties.
Missing from the list, and much to the astonishment of Fr. Sean McManus of the Irish National Caucus, was Ireland.
That astonishment led to a letter to Newsweek’s editor that opened: “Are you kidding me?”
And continued: “You enumerate seven countries that Britain destroyed by its racist/sectarian violence. Yet you incredibly fail to include Britain’s first and last colony, where Britain tested, refined and perfected its repressive techniques: the island of Ireland.”
The letter added: “You rightly lament how the British government created modern-day Iraq in 1920. Well, in that very same year, Britain through its Government of Ireland Act, undemocratically created the modern-day State of Northern Ireland: six tiny counties torn from the rest of Ireland, so as to create and artificial Orange/Protestant majority thereby guaranteeing British rule in that corner of Ireland – and, of course, ensuring that the Catholics would never have justice.
That, argued McManus, was how Britain “wrecked” Ireland until Tony Blair, “free from a racist mindset and anti-Catholic bigotry, did the right thing.”
Even this, according to McManus, was not the end to the wrecking process.
“However,” Fr. McManus asserted, “the deep sectarianism Britain planted and nurtured still survives in Northern Ireland.
“And why wouldn’t it, as anti-Catholic bigotry is enshrined, justified and practiced in the British constitution. The Act of Settlement, 1701, an integral, fundamental part of that unwritten, un-codified constitution, prohibits a Catholic from succeeding to the British throne and decrees that if the monarch becomes a Catholic, or marries a Catholic, he/she forfeits the throne and ‘the people are absolved from their allegiance.'”
And this, McManus concluded, was how Britain “is still wrecking Ireland today.”

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