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The Troops Out Movement is very much concerned with the demand for self-determination as a whole. It is the essence of what we do. Britain shouldn't be in Ireland.
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MARY PEARSON, National Chairperson of the British-based Troops Out Movement (TOM), recently spoke to An Phoblacht's Ned Kelly about her 23 years visiting Ireland and her commitment to removing the British problem from Irish politics.
THE MASSACRE of civilians in Derry by British paratroopers in 1972 focused Mary's commitment on Ireland. Mary can remember how the early news flashes, filled with the raw reality of the atrocity, first became sanitised and then distorted until the victims had become guilty. She vividly recalls her tears of frustration.
The Troops Out Movement delegation to West Belfast this August, its 21st, is 35 strong and includes people aged from 19 to 80. With 15 branches across Britain, the group is still going strong. ``It's now easier to talk to people about the issues and people are more open,'' Mary says, ``but in terms of activism it is much harder because people have started to think that things are settled.
The call for British withdrawal is about more than the withdrawal of troops. It is for the total withdrawal of the British political machinery.
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``People see the Troops Out Movement as solely about troops, and although there are still over 16,000 British soldiers here, we are very much concerned with the demand for self-determination as a whole. It is the essence of what we do. Britain shouldn't be here.
``The call for British withdrawal is about more than the withdrawal of troops. It is for the total withdrawal of the British political machinery. In our view all British policy in Ireland has failed.
``Our current priorities are working for the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement. It is also about making people understand that the Agreement is about more than decommissioning. The failure of the British government to implement the Agreement is just another example of British duplicity. For years they said they would do nothing without majority support. Yet with 72 per cent support they still refuse to implement it. The Agreement actually contains all the issues we have campaigned on for years.''
``One of major problems,'' says Mary, ``is the British media.''
``There is the focus on decommissioning but very little focus on the violence of loyalists, the Orange Order or state violence.
``In terms of the Orange Order, there is little explanation of what the Orange Order represents. No one asks David Trimble what the Orange sash stands for. No one points out that the Orange Order are akin to the National Front or the Ku Klux Klan in that they are supremacists. They represent apartheid.
``Although the Orange Order claims no involvement in sectarian violence, their triumphalism creates the backdrop to atrocities - Rosemary Nelson, the young Quinn brothers and Robert Hamill.
``It is portrayed at one level as the cultural heritage of Protestants and on another as a dinosaur that should be pitied rather than despised as a fascist organisation.
``The media sets that agenda.''
``Meeting with the Relatives for Justice and hearing their stories is harrowing but their pain and suffering is not recognised by the state - yet if you see an RUC funeral you see the weeping victims. The victims of state murder are projected as protagonists or rioters and certainly their sorrow is not recognised. There are no apologies.''
``When we go back we hope to tell those stories and also that of the Ormeau Road - with the help of their new video, The Law and The Order, which looks at the role of the RUC in brutalising residents and that force's championing of the Orange Order in allowing them to insult the residents.
Beyond the work on getting the facts about the British occupation into the national and, more successfully, the local media in Britain, Troops Out also organises two or three yearly speaking tours, bringing over to Britain not only Sinn Féin but also anti-plastic bullets campaigners, Bloody Sunday relatives, campaigners like Diane Hamill and people from the Garvaghy Road and Ormeau Road.
In November, TOM is organising a conference, In the North of Ireland: What Next? Then there is also the street activism, the vigils, petitions and street stalls.
All in all, still a very healthy movement after over 26 years of struggle and commitment.
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