www.newsandletters.org
|
|
NEWS & LETTERS,
January-February 2003
Our Life and Times
Secret plan for Ulster
Recently-released British government documents from the
time of Tory Prime Minister Edward Heath reveal, as a Jan. 1 banner headline in
the LONDON TIMES put it: "Heath made plans for 'ethnic cleansing' in
Ulster." This was in 1972, during the mass unrest against anti-Catholic
discrimination in Northern Ireland. As he grew desperate, Heath instructed civil
servants to come up with a secret plan for a "worst-case scenario." According to its own documents, complete with maps,
Heath's government "specifically discussed... compulsory transfer of
population within Northern Ireland, or between [its] six counties and the
Republic" of Ireland. As the TIMES wrote, "Under the plan up to
300,000 Catholics would be moved from their homes into regions to be ceded to
the Republic, while about 200,000 Protestants would be shifted from the ceded
areas into a new Northern Ireland state." This would have set up an
"ethnically pure" Protestant Northern Ireland at gunpoint. Reading these accounts, even after 30 years, still sickens the stomach. It also raises a question. If Britain, famed for "limited government," made such plans, what secret "scenarios" has the State of Israel created for the Palestinians, or the U.S. government for our land's minorities and dissenters? |
|
Home l News & Letters Newspaper l Back issues l News and Letters Committees l Dialogues l Raya Dunayevskaya l Contact us l Search Published by News and Letters Committees |
