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Salient. Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 42 No. 7. April 9 1979

Ireland

[unclear: Ireland]

The ugly spectre of "terrorism" has hit [unclear: ess] headlines lately over the assassination [unclear: Airey] Neave, British Conservative spokes [unclear: n] on Northern Ireland by a breakaway [unclear: tion] of the Irish Republican Army.

In the best traditions of bourgeois [unclear: jour-ism], the issues at stake have been left [unclear: be-id] completely and all attention has [unclear: focu-I] on the threat which terrorism presents "British" and I suppose, western a vision's way of life. Anyone who saw [unclear: Mar-er] Thatcher on the television news last [unclear: ek] will be aware of the old world [unclear: quaint-s] of this view (she spoke of "being moved [unclear: with] the way the British people closed rands [unclear: inst] the threat" on this occasion).

So let's look a little closer at the issue [unclear: ing] not to fall into the trap which I [unclear: con-id] the press has fallen into, if not set in [unclear: as] first place.

The greatest act or terrorism to have [unclear: r] taken place in "Britain" has been the [unclear: tory] of the systematic rape of the Irish [unclear: ple] and the vicious reprisals taken against [unclear: vements] for self determination and a [unclear: uni-d] nation of Ireland. To read books [unclear: writ-by] Irish patriots gives you an [unclear: understan-g] of how much the Irish people, in the [unclear: th] and in the south, resent the English [unclear: upation], past and present, of their [unclear: coun-] and the imposition of a "divided Ireland" [unclear: icy] on them. It is only when you realise depth of feeling that you begin to [unclear: under-d] the bitterness and hatred that drives people to bomb and assassinate.

Of course this does not in itself justify the tactics of one or two Republican groups of attacks on innocent working people in England and Ireland, and their refusal to engage In building up the Irish people's movement at home, but does this in anyway detract from the just cause of the Irish.

This piece is simply putting, perhaps, the other side of the question, which is not to deny that the situation is a complex one full of hooks and barbs, most of which were planted there by sucessive English regimes, over the last few hundred years. I urge readers to follow this up by informing themselves further with [unclear: th] history of the struggle for Ireland.