British troops are in Northern Ireland to defend the property of British imperialism and to prevent any course of events which will harm its long-term interests. This means that, at various times, they may be ranged against the Orange Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), the IRA, revolutionary socialists or even Prime Minister ChichesterClark if his strategy fails to coincide with that of Westminster. The British troops are no more and no less than British troops, moved in to defuse an explosive situation in an imperial outpost where, incidentally, the people also happen to be citizens of the United Kingdom. This last factor has caused a number of complicatons not usually associated with such operations. We shall examine them in due course. For the moment, however, it must be stressed that the main contradiction that the intervention of the troops has produced is a class one. The troops represent a solution which strikes directis at the interests of the Orange petty-bourgeolue and the working class as a whole.
The initial aim of the troops was to stop the fighting (to stop the people arming themselves, and in this sense only, killing each other), in order to make the barricades unnecessary. After an insurrection, however, there is no such thing as a return to normal. In West Belfast the presence of the troops has created a new situation.
The Catholics There is absolutely no doubt that the great majonty or te carones m une raus and tne Ardoyne welcomed the presence of the troops in August, and continue to welcome them today, though more reservedly. They did so because they doubted their ability to defend themselve: indefinitely against armed attack. The troops saved lives and-tor what thev are worthhomes. This is universally understood. What is not so well understood, especially in England, is how the actions of the troops are interpreted by the people of the area.
ror one group or calmoles the intervention meant the end of the struggle. In a conflict that was perceived as suncuy a barnie between carn olics and Protestants, the intervention of the troops was quite simply the British Government taking ine side or tne carnones against the rot estants, and assuring them of victory. A relatively small number of Catholics welcomed the troops as having finally assured the Falls of civil rights, the modern surrogate for a Republic.
There is a far larger group-a majority in fact -for whom the troops are neither liberators nor cacmics, ley are sumov mere occasionally they drive off a hostile crowd, or break up a fight, or shoot someone on the Shankill road. While not greeting any of these actions with indifference, equally the majority does not greet them with any sign of approval. They do not engage in the "get-togethers" with the troops, or only do so guardedly, yet they would make no effort to prevent their children attending them. Nor would they feel any sanction was necessary against a neighbour who took part. If anca to, tney would give tea to une mutary, they would raise only a half-joking objection to the military going out with their daughters. But they are far more likely to leave the area and move in with their relatives than to entrust their lives with the troops should it come once more under attack.
It is this large "centre" of Catholic opinion who at the moment are the propaganda targets of both the PD and the Republicans, but they respond far more readily to rumour than they do to pollicai work In December a family was driven out of their house in Old Park Road. Precisely the role played by the troops in this eviction is unknown, but they certainly offered no real proconon at an trom the unugs wno arove une family out. Incidents like this teach the people tar more about the role of the troops than anv amount of lecturing. Al inat weekend it became clear to many of them that the main aim or tae troops was to prevent nois ratner than defend a family from a mob which might otherwise riot.
For the section of the Catholics-the Republicans-who from the start have been more or less openiv hostile to the troops. the situation is mproving. At the start, when they forbade the actions on the image of easy-going fraternity that the troops on the Falls were managing to communicate to the people. Similarly, by refusing the people's ambiguous indulgence in the "glamour" of the presence of the troops, they equally made themselves appear churlish. It has been the aim of the British, from the start, to appear to recognise the Republicans as the effective leadership while at the same time attempting to discredit them as a threat to the , stability. There are periods when the military o0 Me Distribution of British Troops in Ireland Jan 1970 (as the Republicans call the British troops to distinguish them from their own Army) ease up on "community projects because they teel they are attracting hostility by too blatant a penetration into the street-culture. There are other times when "community-project work appears to be speeded up in order to identify, expose and rout opposition to the penetration orinat culture The Protestants On the Protestant Shankill the situation is very different: if we were to divide the responses of the people, we would find three main groups-1. those advocating armed struggle against the troops; 2. those displaying open hostility to them, but who are not prepared at this stage to engage in armed struggle; and 3. those who passively accept the present situation. There is nobody on the Shankill in favour of the troops.
Those who advocated armed struggle against the troops, and who have on a number of occasions practised it, are hostile to the troops for the declared reason that the troops stopped their reign of terror. This hostility is expressed openly as an attack on the troops' role of guarding the Fenians. Armed struggle is intended to create the conditions of the troops' withdrawal —at least to the tasks of protecting "vital installations". The number of those who advocate this policy is, of course, somewhat larger than those who would actually practise it, but it is still surprisingly big when the transparency of its self-declared aims is understood. For it make makes a radical break with the majority attitude on the Shankill and departs in a number of important respects from the Shankill's self-image.
The majority attitude on the Shankill is. open hostility, tempered by a certain restraint in exercising it. The basis of the hostility is not the presence of the troops at all but the attacks by the troops on civilians in the Shankill during the second and third weeks of October last. This majority is in the mainstream of the Protestant working class in regarding itself as utterly innocent of all the various charges made against them. Instead, they regard themselves as the victims of an intolerable series of unprovoked attacks which the Unionist government has made no attempt to repulse. Hence their passive support of armed struggle. The first group of Protestant militants we discussed represent an important new factor because they are prepared to abandon all the old various ideological restraints which the majority still retains about the relative lack of aggressiveness of the Protestant people, and about their own open-heartedness beneath a bluff exterior, etc.
There is still a certain hesitation amongst the majority of Protestants in regarding the troops as British at all, for Britishness is felt to be somehow inseparable from their own domination-political and territorial. In short, for some hostility is tempered by a confusion which has suspended their understanding of the situation, and which means that they play a more or less passive role.
The third group of people on the Shankill are those who, while not accepting the presence of the troops as a permanent possibility, are able to live with them now. This group includes what non-Unionist Party supporters there are, a section of those who have emigrated to England and returned, and probably some of the skilled employees who live in West Belfast. Like the supporters and members of the UVF they are prepared to grant the aggressiveness of the Protestant working class and they can see that the troops intervened to prevent the massacre of the Falls, yet they would rationalise this and reflect a certain brittle glamour on themselves by saying they were there to "keep us apart", to "keep us from each others' throats" because "we're a rough and ready people" with "fierce instincts". Like the majority of the Catholics, they do not participate, or participate only peripherally in the army's attempts at "gettogethers", etc., but would not prevent their children from attending such functions. They are the group whom the British Army's propaganda is most consistently aimed at, and they may be the bridgehead in the battle for the "hearts and minds" of the Protestants.
The troops' understanding of the situation The ideology of the ordinary British soldier is fairly traditional, and a certain pride is taken in the ability to articulate it. Its boundaries are roughly as follows: the army is "all right once you are stuck into it", i.e, it is a career requiring the simultaneous qualities of dedication and resignation. It is "not so much a job, but a way of life" —a total institution which is also a profession, in which much pride is taken both in technical proficiency and also retaining humanity whilst being technically proficient. It is tough, but offers certain compensations. It is simultaneously necessary and "a mug's game" where the soldier is both aggressively reliable and an individual sharing with society at large certain inhibitions about aggression. One of its main features is that what the army does is sup posed to be the incarnation of the living principles upon which British society is based. When the army finds itself in conflict with large sections of British society itself, the basis of this self-image is threatened. This is what has happened in Northern Ireland.
The troops are used to killing "wogs", or to keeping "wogs" from killing each other. They are not used to killing people waving Union Jacks and singing the National Anthem, and although none have shown the least hesitation in doing so, some have found the combination of it with the appalling conditions of Belfast more than slightly unnerving.
Most of the troops have resolved their utter incomprehension of the situation through expressing personal revulsion. A few, in fact surprisingly few, have expressed it in desertion and mutiny. All of them express it in their extraordinary nervous relations win the local populace. Although some have found girl-friends, most nave snown great nestation I mIxie with the locals and have had to fall back on the increasingly tense bonhomie of their comrades. There are more pub-fights in Northern Ireland between the troops than there are between troops and civians. nen ownlack or under standing of the situation is complemented by their commonly expressed belief that they are only a temporary solution.
The effect of the presence of the troops The troops have dramatised the rather drab everyday lives of the people, and for the most part the populace has connived in this. This dramatisation sharpens the dull contours of face-to-face exchanges, but it also sharpens the conflict between the people, which has now been institutionalised. The presence of the troops has confirmed and completed, intensified and made permanent the division of the city by such devices as the "peace-line" which will literally "for ever" physically divide West Belfast. The "peace-line" is living proof of the antagonisms between the people preserved as a means ono cine un to maicule me muture Dos
GLC Tenants.
The establishment are masters at injecting doses of apathy and low morale into working-class militancy. One method they use is the Last month, the Court of Appeal announced its decision. The Tenants lost the case. Having come to depend on victory, for many this reThe Black Dwarf 20th February 1970 evitably, this second rent increase has now been announced by the GLC as being effective from March 2nd, 1970-and the Government