The British Crown Forces shot and critically wounded a nationalist man in the centre of Belfast on November 24. Alec Maskey stated on television that he could not condemn the shooting as the injured man may have been armed. He was not armed but Maskey's comments reveal the attitude that if the man was armed and engaged in military action against British power in Ireland he could justifiably be shot.

Maskey, it will be remembered, has already (on behalf of his party) laid wreaths on British war memorials which honour, among others, those who killed Irish freedom fighters.

The stage is set over the coming months for the final capitulation by the Provo leadership to British rule in Ireland: acceptance of the British police force in the Six Counties. Since Partition the nationalist community's rejection of the Six-County State was clearly revealed in their antipathy to the British police.

The demand for Provo military disbandment has been circumvented by Tony Blair's seeking “acts of completion”. Of course it amounts to the same thing and the Provisionals' military wing will fade away just as the ‘Official IRA’ did before then.

All that will then remain for them to do to complete the counter-revolution will be to turn on their former comrades in the Republican Movement, and to harass them, hunt them down and even worse . . .

History teaches us that such is always the role of ‘poachers turned gamekeepers’, as was seen in the 26 Counties when the Broy Harriers were formed by Fianna Fáil in 1933.

The RUC Special Branch may well be renamed the "Intelligence Branch" but the "force within a force" will continue to spearhead the maintenance and enforcement of British rule in Ireland.

Who were the Broy Harriers? A group of several hundred former Republicans who were recruited by the 26-County State as plainclothes policemen, given 24 hours training and the task [initially] of protecting Free State ministers.

They were then used to combat the Blueshirts on the streets of the 26 Counties. It soon became obvious that the real threat to the Leinster House administration was not from the Blueshirts on the right but from the Republicans on the left. The Broy Harriers real role was to harass and combat Republicans.

After all, they knew their former comrades' haunts and habits, their sympathisers, their houses and their methods and procedures. The Broy Harriers were eventually amalgamated into the Special Branch along with Cosgrave's old CID.

Today, the excuse will be that ex-Republicans will be needed to "protect nationalists from the loyalists" but the real reason will be the same as in the 1930s -- to suppress Republicans.

The new British supremo Paul Murphy held out the carrot to the Provisionals on November 26 when he reminded them that control of policing and justice could be quickly handed over to the New Stormont.

This will be after the upcoming Stormont elections -- Republican Sinn Féin has been proved right about the Provisionals' surrender before and will be again. After all, there is no going back for them once they stepped on the constitutional road.

Republican Sinn Féin -- in spite of Provisional acceptance of the RUC/PSNI -- calls on young Irish people of whatever persuasion not to join the renamed British police to do England's work here. A change of name and badge makes no fundamental difference to their role in Ireland.

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Web layout by SAOIRSE -- Irish Freedom December 7, 2002  Send links, events notifications, articles, comments etc, to the editor at: saoirse@iol.ie.