‘100 Years of Partition’ is intended to highlight the real story of that rotten little statelet they call ‘Northern Ireland’.
Almost 100 years ago, as guerrilla forces waged a war for national liberation, the british state moved to secure its own interests. Supported by a counter-revolution and forces loyal to the crown, they cut our nation in two. What followed was 100 years of oppression and discrimination; 100 years of imprisonment and internment.
This is the real story; a story of housing discrimination, of language rights denied; a story of joblessness and homelessness; a story where torture takes centre-stage and where collusion and state-sponsored death squads play leading roles.
This is a tale of corruption at the highest levels of the state, where women’s healthcare rights are denied and marriage is reserved for those they deem privileged enough. This is a story of ‘peace’, a peace that most of us never got to see; we lived with the horrors of suicide and poverty instead.
And this story isn’t just 100 years old, it began a long time before that. It began in Easter of 1916, when thousands of women and men, armed and ready, marched for liberation. It began with An Gorta Mór in 1845, when our people on their knees, ate grass to stay alive as boats exported food and families. It had its beginnings in the cultural genocide of the 1600’s and the long march of Cromwell’s mercenaries; and it started in 1171 when foreign King Henry set foot on Irish shores.
The purveyors of state propaganda will attempt to white wash that history, and celebrate the founding of this bigoted backwater which scorched the earth upon which it was built.
We, the dis-loyal subjects forcefully tethered to this state, say that supremacy is nothing to celebrate, neither is the denial of rights; nor poverty, or injustice and inequality. Instead, let us mark its inception in a fitting manner, highlighting the inherent injustice at its foundation.
Republicans will remember those that died at its hands, and those forced to live within the abject poverty of its borders.
