Where racism and sectarianism meet
Le Fern Lane
Jonathan McIvor, formally of the Metropolitan police, presently of
the RUC and undergoing a public relations makeover, provides a
perfect illustration of the seamless connection between racism and
sectarianism. McIvor, who was singled out for particularly scathing
criticism by the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, has moved effortlessly
from the racist canteen culture of the Met to the sectarian canteen
culture of the RUC.
In the aftermath of the Inquiry, however, two further aspects of this
racism/sectarianism nexus have emerged which also have significant
ramifications for nationalists in the Six Counties.
Firstly, language. The use and misuse of language for political
purposes is an old trick of the British and one which was employed to
good effect by Sir Paul Condon in the days immediately after the
publication of the Inquiry's findings. In response to, now famously,
being accused of running a force guilty of `pernicious and
institutionalised racism' Condon simply redefined the term. Now,
rather than meaning conscious racism which informs and affects the
policies and practices of an organisation - which can be held
accountable and punished accordingly - it simply means `unconscious
or unwitting' racism which is identified as a psychological failing
of the individual concerned. This adroit redefinition neatly
exonerates the organisation - in this case the Met - whilst
simultaneously making it difficult to hold individuals to account
since they can claim their actions were `unconscious' and thus beyond
their control.
This is precisely the process by which the term `sectarianism' was
redefined by those in power in order to fulfil a political agenda; to
make it a matter of personal psychology not a governmental policy and
thus to get the real culprits off the hook. To you, me and most
especially to Catholics living on the so-called `sectarian
interfaces' around the Six Counties or to those unfortunate enough to
come into contact with the RUC, sectarianism has almost invariably
meant Catholics being on the receiving end of institutionalised
fundamentalist religious hatred, violence, harassment, crude
discrimination, and in being Irish, treated as racially inferior to
those who consider themselves to be British. In short, racism by
another name.
But as redefined by the British, sectarianism means the two cursed
tribes laying into one another in equal measure and generally
behaving like ill-disciplined children. Mo Mowlem's claim to have
``knocked heads together'' to get the Good Friday Agreement has been
uncontested in respect of it's underlying ideological implications.
As is the case with the Metropolitan police, the unsavoury term has
been redefined in order to diminish the state's culpability and to
mask its deep-seated racist approach to Irish people (it was the
British state which, after all, fostered and then indulged the ugly
feeling of racial and religious superiority still manifest in
Unionists) and to its handling of the conflict.
Secondly, there is still within the British establishment a version
of the Victorian notion of the deserving poor (obedient, deferential,
willing to work for poverty-line wages) and undeserving poor
(disobedient, anarchic, unemployed), an ideology which has been
adapted for use as an instrument of judgement against both ethnic
minorities in the UK and to Catholics living in the North. The
current version relates to the politicised and non-politicised.
Doreen and Neville Lawrence, for example, once they were adjudged as
having conventional middle-class values, and not, initially at least,
being politically radical, they were championed by the establishment
and media as deserving victims. Had they been more subversive,
unemployed or non-Christian then one suspects that the reaction would
have been rather different.
In the same way, the notion of deserving and undeserving Catholics
appertains in the Six Counties. Catholics are generally acceptable to
Unionists only when they remember their place in the God-given order
and do not harbour dangerous ideas about equality or Irish unity.
Equally notoriously, the term `innocent Catholic' has been
appropriated to mean murdered Catholics who were not involved in
politics, or - better still - did not have a political opinion.
Equally depressing is that this ideology has filtered through to
wider British public opinion, reaching its apotheosis in the reaction
to the execution of Diarmuid O'Neill. It was telling that the police
did not feel compelled to `lose' the tape recordings on which an
order to ``shoot the fucker'' could be clearly heard. The recording was
played in open court without any fear of backlash from either the
press or the public. O'Neill was, after all, an IRA man fighting a
`sectarian' war and therefore self-evidently undeserving and without
any entitlement to due process. In cases where victims of police
shootings have not been politically motivated (for example, such as
the case of the convicted murderer James Ashley, a notoriously
violent gangster recently killed by police as he lay in his bed) then
there are virtually always suspensions and criminal charges. It is
being a political or politicised victim which ultimately makes one
ineligible for redress.
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