Many residents of Strabane will remember the looming eyesore that was once the British army checkpoint at what’s locally known as the ‘camel’s hump’.
Located on the Lifford road between Strabane, Co. Tyrone and Lifford, Co. Donegal, the once very visible presence of the British army housed up to as many as 90 personnel at any one time. Yes, the checkpoint is gone, but the heavily armed mercenaries that manned it have not.
The British Army retains a ‘permanent garrison’ of thousands of combat troops and support staff in the occupied Six Counties. These troops, who are based in multiple permanent British Army bases, are primarily tasked with maintaining ‘internal security’. This means that they can, and will, be rapidly mobilised onto Irish streets and into Irish fields should the need arise. In the meantime, they will be busy training and preparing for tours of duty across the globe to further the interests of the British state. Political control of these soldiers will, as ever, rest firmly in Number 10 Downing Street.
Lasair Dhearg members in Strabane took the time to highlight this with a small but effective banner stating, ‘the checkpoint is gone but the occupation remains – 20,000 security personnel maintain Britain’s occupation of Ireland’, noting the significant number still involved in the security apparatus imposed across the Six Counties.
The banner was placed near where the checkpoint once imposed itself upon the community, a site also synonymous with the murder of 18-year-old Fianna Éireann member Tobias Molloy, who was fatally wounded when a British army rubber bullet struck him just above his heart as he was returning from the inter county hotel in Lifford.
The British Army barracks, alongside a similar checkpoint a few miles away in Clady, were some of the first checkpoints to be dismantled in 1998 after the so-called peace agreement. Many residents of the area believe that the removal of the base was just a public relations stunt as the heavily fortified and militarised PSNI barracks still casts a dark shadow over the town.
End Imperialism! End the Occupation!
