“Sois Jeune et Tais Toi:” The French Student Revolt of May 1968

        From May 18th to June 7th, 1968, nine million French citizens partook in a general strike.  On May 13th, 1968, 1,200,000 people actively demonstrate in French streets protesting to the regime of Charles de Gaulle on its tenth anniversary of return to power.#  The driving forces of this social upheaval were not unlike those elsewhere on the globe in that same year, young students full of ideology, vitality, and the need to prove their right to replace the previous generation.  What were the driving ideas behind the “jeunes” and where did they pick them up?  How did the uprising affect the past generation of social reformers?  Did this constitute a full revolution or was it a demonstration?  How does this fit in with the general complex of youth movements in the 1960s?
The May Movement, as author and Professor of sociology at the University of Nanterre Alain Touraine has coined it, immediately smacks of Marxist ideology.  This is entirely due to principles of real-estate: location, location, location.  The student movement originated among the students of the university of Nanterre, which was built in 1965 as an extension to the Sorbonne, Paris’s leading university.#  It was here that the university uprising was born and it was here that it became the May Movement.  Touraine puts it simply:
Nanterre is on the wrong side of Paris… [It] is created in the image of the university system.  The lack of reflection and imagination, the lack of real decision are expressed in the subjection of the students, especially those who live in the dormitories, to conditions which have more in common with the area as it used to be (a working class district) than they do with the Latin Quarter or a university campus.#
       The students were crammed into a tight living quarters at night and were hob-knobbing with factory workers and others of “the proletariat” during the day.  Here these bright young students, who might one day come to take over their father’s firms and factories, picked up the discontentment and unrest of the blue-collar and a view of Marxism that is all too commonly held among the college and university educated from a bourgeoisie background.  The students called for an uprising against the status quo, much like their peers around the world did that same year; however, there was one distinct difference.  The students of Nanterre would opt to take violent reaction in the streets rather than a peaceful demonstration.
The newspaper played a vital role in this uprising.  While the philosopher and writer of many anti-Gaullist articles, Jean-Paul Sartre, stuck to his daily intake of Le Monde, the students of the Sorbonne and Nanterre published their own paper for the uprising.# #  The newspaper Action was a student publication that had a great deal of influence on the streets of Paris.  It was created by older and more militant students of the movement and was used as a representation of the struggle; its first page was a poster and its articles were inflammatory editorials or news centered on workers issues.  Four issues of Action filled the streets in the month of May that year, but its publication continued for twenty-four issues.
“The Mad Week from the 3rd of May to the 13th, thousands of rebels lived in the tempo of the refusal. Here the chronology of this fight which only begins,” rang out the student newspaper Action.#  It was on the 2nd of May that the Dean of Nanterre ordered the school shut down “sine die.”  The “fascistic” group Occident, a far-right paramilitary organization in France, made a violent attack on the Sorbonne.  Seven Nanterre students were detained.  Early on, the students felt a misrepresentation in the media and published a manifesto which stated: “The press and the radio said to you that few hundreds reign violence with the Latin Quarter, and thus prohibit the serious students from working in peace.  THE PRESS, THE RADIO LIE TO YOU!#”  Partially fueled by their proletarian associations and by the marginalization of the student body, the student reformers thought that Nanterre could no longer be isolated.  The criticism must cover the university system and serve as a critique of capitalist society.#  The students had found comrades and cause in their factory working neighbors, but what about the past generation of left-wing intellectuals?  Were the students as bound to their ideological parents as they were to the factory workers they shared little in common with?
By far the greatest intellectual figure among the university students at this time was Jean-Paul Sartre.  He has written numerous treatise and chastisements of Gaullism and fathered the philosophical school of existentialism, of which came the existential crisis under which modern students seemed to suffer.  He was the rogue and rebel among rebels in his day but in this fight he had no appeal.  To the leaders of May 1968, Sartre was nothing more than a writer and not the fired up instigator they needed.  At the time Sartre was heavily involved with his largest undertaking yet, Flaubert.  This epic tome would be published in the mid-1970s in three volumes whose combined mass made up more than four thousand published pages and thirty years of Sartre’s intellectual endeavors.#  Sartre rarely left his own home, and this only occurred when he went to eat pot roast and mashed potatoes with his mother on Sunday.#
A decade before during the Algerian crisis Sartre found himself at the center of everyone’s focus.  People either wanted him shot in the streets or on a pedestal and defending their ideals.  He was untouchable in every sense to the point that de Gaulle shirked the idea of treating him like a normal citizen saying, famously, “you do not imprison Voltaire!”#  Now he was, just ten years later, so out of touch with the current movement and wrapped up in his own work he was barely finding the time to involve himself with these young students overturning cars in the street.  In many ways Jean-Paul Sartre suffered from the same thing every man encounters at some point in his life--Sartre was old.  Like most men who have pushed passed their sixties, it was easier to remember his youth than to identify with the youth.  Indeed, it is likely he faced his own midlife crisis.
The “mad week” had ended.  The student barricades and protests erupted into full violence after May 13th and by May 20th more than ten million workers were on strike.  The economy of France was paralyzed.  Charles de Gaulle was not giving in to the demands of the protestors but was increasingly worried about the safety of those serving to protect him and his family.  For this reason de Gaulle left Paris without saying a word to anyone, even Prime Minister Georges Pompidou.  De Gaulle retreated to Germany to see if he still had support from the army, which had taken up post in West Germany like the rest of the Allies of World War II had done.  Upon arriving he said to General Massu, “Everything is lost.  I am no longer in control of anything.  I am withdrawing.”  A few hours alone with the General and de Gaulle emerged ready to fight again.  There is no record of what was said between the two.#  The General de Gaulle who led a parade through the streets of Paris when it was retaken by the Allies had aged as well and could no longer face the responsibilities of his office alone.  De Gaulle would not return to France until he was assured that the military would become involved in this social upheaval which sought to usurp the politics of Gaullism in France.
The leaders of the student revolt had chosen their fate by isolating themselves from the benevolent grandfather figures they could have allied with in Sartre’s generation of men.  So what was to be done?  The public was growing weary of the confusion between opposing factions within the students and could not honestly differentiate between the ideologies of them and de Gaulle.  The public was distasteful of de Gaulle’s heavy-handed politics, but would as soon rather be rid of the open violence from the students than the stern policies and prolonged tenure of an aging man.  De Gaulle eventually returned to France with much praise because of threats from Prime Minister Pompidou, who threatened to resign if he did not return.#  An announcement was made by radio on May 30th that if the workers did not end their strike then de Gaulle would declare a state of emergency.  He promised new elections on the 23rd of June, which he and his party aptly won.#  The events of May ended in a hush compared to the loud uproar with which they had started.  It was all too anti-climatic.
In terms of political gains, May 1968 was nothing short of a step backwards from the aims of the students who participated and the left-leaning citizens who supported them.  Charles de Gaulle and his party gained more political authority as a result of revolt and the disparate ideals of the youthful revolutionaries.  They received no support from the intellectual class of prior generations, the likes of Sartre, de Beauvoir, and their contemporaries because they rejected the prospect of such support.  Further, there was no united political aspiration of The May Movement.  Most of France was discontent with Gaullism but no one could offer a viable replacement in government.  The political spectrum of the students varied from a social-democratic movement to a weird hybrid of anarchism and Marxist philosophy.  The May Movement was a social struggle and a revolution of social ideals such as modern sexuality and university life.  As it were, it served a social revolution but did not provide a political revolution.  De Gaulle maintaining power in France after 1968 was like the election of Richard Nixon after the transcendentalist movement in America.
The memory of May 68 is still present in the minds of modern Parisians.  Most recently, it has been denounced by current French president Nicolas Sarkozy in a speech made during a rally for his election campaign in 2007. “The inheritants of May 68,” claimed Sarkozy, “have damaged political morale.  The inheritants have weakened the idea of citizenship by denigrating the law, the state, and the nation.”#  The views taken of the movement are as varied as the current views of Sarkozy and his presidency.  Despite the controversy of interpretation, it is still widely regarded as one of the movements that shaped modern France.

# Annie Cohen-Solal, Sartre: A Life, ed. Norman Macafee trans. Anna Cancogni (New York: Pantheon Books, 1987), 457.

# Alain Touraine, The May Movement: revolt and reform: May 1968--The Student Rebellion and Workers' Strikes--the Birth of a Social Movement, (New York, Random House, 1971), 125.

# Ibid

# Annie Cohen-Solal, Sartre: A Life, ed. Norman Macafee trans. Anna Cancogni (New York: Pantheon Books, 1987), 458.

# Alain Touraine, The May Movement: revolt and reform: May 1968--The Student Rebellion and Workers' Strikes--the Birth of a Social Movement, (New York, Random House, 1971), 249.

# Action, “La Semaine Enragée,” May 13, 1968.

# Action, “Pourquoi Nous Nous Battons,“ May 7, 1968.

# Action, “Ce N’est Qu’n Début,” May 7, 1968.

# Annie Cohen-Solal, Sartre: A Life, ed. Norman Macafee trans. Anna Cancogni (New York: Pantheon Books, 1987), 459.

# Ibid, 458.

# Ibid, 415.

# Mattei Dogan, “How Civil War Was Avoided in France,” International Political Science Review 5, no. 3 (1984): 252.

# Ibid.

# Le discours du général de Gaulle du 30 mai 1968, “Allocution Radio Diffusée du 30 Mai 1968,” http://membres.multimania.fr/mai68/degaulle/degaulle30mai1968.htm (accessed April 29, 2011).

# Youtube, “Sarkozy Criticizes May 68 Generation,”  from France 24, Windows Media Player File, 1:21, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ihfgbt9NSzk (accessed April 29, 2011).

Return to Tomorrow: How the images from the Hubble Space Telescope inspire us to be better people

           Art fills us with a sense of wonder that few other fields are able to accomplish.  It represents our hopes, fears, and accomplishments—as well as speaking to the transient nature of man; however, this all hangs on the cusp of subject matter.  As I sit and think about this, I glance at the photograph of Simone de Beauvoir by Robert Doisneau that sits on my desk: it is a most stunning and accurate depiction of one of my favorite philosophers.  This photograph inspires me to rise to the occasion, and to think courageously about the world around me.  In a cosmic photograph, we see our planet, our condition for what it truly is, small and banal—of course, this is when we isolate the image of the earth.  By cutting ourselves off from the grandeur and majesty of our surroundings, much is lost in the way of understanding.  Cosmic portraiture is then the sum total of all that art seeks to be—that is, it provides us with a solid view of ourselves that includes flaws and seeks to push us to new heights.

            The Hubble Space Telescope captures images of the cosmos, images of things that were, until now, unseen as we know.  More important the creating aesthetic images of celestial objects, the Hubble creates images that we are able to study.  In this study, we have discovered and revolutionized our understanding of the deep fields of space, as well as our own solar system.  As we uncover answers, we find that we are just now beginning to approach the most important queries and it is in this way that science and art have come to be on the same level.  Art pushes boundaries of perception, while science pushes our limits of understanding.  To reach a full circle of knowledge, we must approach a level of comprehension of our origins.  When we translate this into art, it fuels harmony between our existence and our relationship with science and nature.  After all, the French absurdist Albert Camus said it best when he wrote that happiness is nothing more than harmony between a man and the life he leads.

            What happens when a telescope takes these pictures?  Does it qualify as art? Does this mean that art becomes more mechanical, or that science loses its logical tone?  Neither could be true.  The world of science is important to us only in that it relates to us.  Outside of that, we have no use for it.  The same applies for art.  Only by through the use of expression and perception is art useful.  When it fails to be relevant, it falls in to disuse.  Some would say this is why the layman no longer participates in the world of art, as paintings are not images, but things in-themselves.  The Hubble makes everything relevant once again.  These are images made possible through the engineering of many people.  What we see are things that have always been unknown and unseen, but as we see them we begin to understand them.  Unlike art, however, it is not man-made projection.  It exists without our consent.  It lives and breathes outside of will and it asks only for our eyes, not for our faith.  It is an emotional-less art.

            Astronomer Carl Sagan once said, “We embarked on our journey to the stars with a question first framed in the childhood of our species and in each generation asked anew with undiminished wonder: What are the stars? Exploration is in our nature. We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still. We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean. We are ready at last to set sail for the stars.”  Art has historically led us to great discoveries about the human condition, but as we enter a new age of diminished empires and intertwined global concerns, why should the arts too not follow this format?  Seeing the Earth suspended like a mote of dust in a cosmic ocean is enough to belittle the major concerns of economy and politics that rule our day.  Hubble continues a tradition that artists have always set out to accomplish: to question, create, and explore.  Just as medieval artists sought to depict God, or the Dadaists questioned the premise of art, Hubble seeks to uncover the mysteries of our origins and to question the basis for our condition on this planet.  Do we, as earth’s citizens, have the courage to shed our self-imposed limitations for boundless discovery?

Atheism and the First World War

“God is dead,” proclaimed Friedrich Nietzsche in 1882.[i] While this is not meant to be taken in a literal sense, it is certainly a provocative observation to come from the reclusive philosopher.  Nietzsche’s generation, one that would embrace ideas like Darwinism, Marxism, and Positivism, had revolutionized the intellectual landscape to a point that could not be reversed. Nietzsche was right to create this bold line since, as a result of these ideas, the intellectual community could now stop relying on “The God of the Gaps;” that is, the use of God to fill in the gaps of scientific knowledge.  In this order, the foundations of the academic world of the twentieth century were put in place during the nineteenth century: Darwin said we came to exist without divine intervention, Marx claimed that religion prevented the progress of society, and Nietzsche murdered our deities.

            It is often thought that Europe became a continent of atheists and agnostics after World War I, and that the spiritual fabric of Europeans resembled, in many ways, the French farmland that had been destroyed by four years of conflict.  While this may not be a completely false statement for some, it certainly lacks the ring of absolute truth.  Just as the problems of the First World War were not spontaneous but the result of long building tensions between the nations of continental Europe, so was the spread of unbelief in Europe.[ii]  It was only coinciding with this period of warfare that the birth of open resistance to traditional religion and spirituality occurred, but not because of it.

            The English poet Robert Graves contends that, “hardly one soldier in a hundred was inspired by religious feeling of even the crudest kind.”[iii]  Was this a result of the war, or did the question about the existence of god arise before the trenches? For Graves, the irreligion of the home front and training camp was worse than in the trenches.  He first encountered irreligion at Charterhouse, his public school, as many of his peers had, encountering the idea of unbelief before the war, but only facing the reality of God’s nonexistence in the trenches.[iv] What was so influential that it changed the faith of many who served? 

            Bertrand Russell, 3^rd Earl Russell, examined the issue.  In 1954, Russell argued that all the troubles of his day originated from the First World War, those troubles being mainly the Nazism and Communism.  Russell elaborates on this idea by writing, “The First World War was wholly Christian in origin.[v]”  We can be certain that the leaders of each belligerent nation were, in their personal lives, devout Christians.  In England, the reigning monarch was not only the leader of the country but also head of the Church.  Germany and France were as devout in their faith as they were in their hatred for one another.  Russians hailed from a long tradition of Russian Orthodoxy, one of the oldest forms of Christian faith in Europe.  Is Russell’s assertion correct?  Were those who caused the war Christians?  Since this is true, did the Christian position incline world leaders to make war, or was war just as likely if those leaders were more secular?

            Joseph McCabe, former Franciscan monk and professed atheist, acknowledges the accusations that if all the warring nations of Europe are Christian it is easy to, collectively, accuse them of collective moral failure.[vi]  On the larger scale, Christianity is a multinational faith.  There is no difference between the God of Britain and the God of Germany.  Why would God allow his children to kill each other?  Incidentally, why was this question being raised now, and not during the Franco-Prussian War or the American Civil War?  As McCabe put it, “Does God move the insensate stars only, and leave to the less skillful guidance of man those momentous little atoms which make up the brain of statesmen?”[vii]

            Robert Graves provides evidence that casts doubt on McCabe’s argument.  While troops thought the very worst of Kaiser William, the British thought that the Germans were much more devout than they.  “We spoke freely,” Graves recalled, “of God and Gott as opposing tribal deities.”[viii]  Most of the British Expeditionary Force, who were an irreligious group according to Graves, reduced the idea of morality to the single concept of loyalty to one’s nation.  In later years, Graves would write, “God as an all-wise Providence was dead; blind Chance succeeded to the Throne.[ix]” The common soldier of the Other Ranks held little respect for the cloth, but the degree of “blasphemy” committed varied.  Graves was guilty of blasphemy according to his superiors when he quoted the verse of scripture, “The bed is too narrow to lie therein and the coverlet too small to wrap myself therewith,” and remarking it was appropriate for the trench.[x]  Though he was later in the position to punish a subordinate rather severely, Graves overlooked blasphemy charges since the man defended himself by saying he didn’t take to religion in times of war.[xi]

            In fact, the Germans were no more devout than the Englishmen.  The two most popular books among Germans serving in the trenches were Faust by Goethe and Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche.  The German government printed 150,000 copies of Zarathustra, along with the Bible, to be read as inspirational and patriotic literature.[xii]  McCabe points out that the English assumption that Germans were being guided by “a known Anti-Christ”—the notation in Nietzsche’s death certificate—was false.  Most Germans preferred Faust to Zarathustra, but it would not be fair to deny that Nietzsche had considerable bearing on the intellectual society of Germany.  Nietzsche was also clear in his anti-German sentiments and could never bring himself to support any position that would make the individual subordinate to the state.  Nietzsche’s Übermensch, the goal of humanity, was not a man let alone a German.  “What is great in man,” he wrote, “is that he is a bridge and not an end: what can be loved in man is that he is an overture and a going under.[xiii]”

            It is in the knowledge of the unbelief of the Other Ranks that McCabe withdraws his theory, but Russell still held on.  Russell claimed that the only dissenters on the commitment to war were the Socialists, who were also anti-Christian.[xiv]  This is the basis for his claim that it was Christian morality that caused the war, making it seem as if Christian morals were flawed and a Christian mind could not be relied on to guide men any longer.  Russell, an agnostic, got himself into trouble for being a pacifist during the war.  He was convicted and fined when it was found that he was in connection with anti-war protests and swiftly fired from his post at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1916 as a result of his conviction.  In 1918, he was convicted again and sentenced to six months in prison.[xv]  When Robert Graves met Russell while on leave, he was astonished by his anti-war fervor, as it was uncommon for those who were too old for military service, which Russell was.  To Russell, the war was all “wicked nonsense.”[xvi]  Does that imply that, in line with his logic, we should dispose of our faith as our religious morals had caused the war in the first place?

            Perhaps Earl Russell’s perspectives were biased.  After all, he was known for his “ivory tower” wisdom, and tended to shut himself off from the masses.  Surely the clergy would redeem themselves in service?  This would depend on which denomination of clergymen we were speaking of.  The Anglican Church barred their clergy from service, but as chaplains on the field, they would sometimes run against these orders and visit the trenches for a moment before retreating behind the trenches.  It is easy to imagine how difficult it would be to respect a priest in such a position, however understandably difficult that position might be.  The Roman Catholic priests were not prevented from participating in the service, where they usually served as stretcher-bearers.  Most Catholic padres preferred to stay up front at all times so that they might provide last rites to dying soldiers.[xvii]  This won the respect of many a member of the British Army, though not their religious conviction.

            Joseph McCabe would not let religion off the hook too easily, however.  Being an Englishmen, he naturally assigns blame to the Germans.  What is surprising about this is that McCabe states because we reject that irreligious morality or the spread of unbelief caused the war, the religious and non-religious are both equally to blame in Germany.[xviii]  While it may not be difficult to assign blame completely to the Germans—it was, after all, the Russians and Austrians who mobilized their armies first—it would not be impossible to claim that it was the imperial mindset, disregarding all religious perceptions, was responsible for the war.  To support his claim that the spread of unbelief in Europe had nothing to do with causing the war, McCabe submits the fact that war was the result of events that occurred in an earlier and more thoroughly Christian period.[xix]

            In the end, the irreligious in Europe still remained an unorganized lot of people from various backgrounds. For example, Robert Graves was an Anglo-Irish poet who was educated in the best public schools of Britain.  Bertrand Russell was the grandson of John Russell who served twice as Prime Minister of England.  Joseph McCabe was a Franciscan monk who came from poor family.  Men who left God at home or in some shell hole on a French battlefield probably came from less than advantageous backgrounds.  To assign an absolute cause would be to ignore the great diversity of experiences during the war.  To say it is impossible to decide at all would be almost to ignore the issue.  A change of faith did occur at this time, but can it be said the war caused this any more than it being a side effect of an end to an era?  Just as people believe in God for reasons that vary from personal experience to intellectual revelation, it is a good enough reason to assign that logic to the loss of faith in God.

---

                [i] Friedrich Nietzsche, Basic Writings of Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York, The Modern Library, 2000), 171.

            [ii] Joseph McCabe, The War and the Churches (LaVergne, Bibliobazaar, 2010), 7.

            [iii]Robert Graves, Good-Bye to All That  (London, Penguin Books, 2000), 157.

                [iv] Ibid., 45.  Graves’ had a friend name Raymond who, to the shock of Graves, boasted about being an atheist.  At the time, Graves was a devout Anglican who was approaching confirmation and felt it necessary to argue with his friend.  Raymond posed two ideas to Graves which the poet credited to end of his faith.  The first was that if one must agree with the Anathasian Creed to be confirmed, which is that whoever will be saved must confess that there is not Three Incomprehensible but One Incomprehensible.  Raymond said that was asserting that one must believe something that could not be understood or go to Hell, which he could not bring himself to do since he considered himself a reasonable person.  The second statement was the question Graves fought to answer, but utterly failed to, was, “What’s the good of having a soul if you have a mind?  What’s the function of a soul?  It seems to be a pawn in a mere game.”  Graves comments that he was never able to salvage their friendship until 1917, when he had come to be a complete agnostic.  After he talking with Raymond while serving with the Irish Guard, Graves learned that Raymond died in Cambria soon after their meeting.

            [v] Bertrand Russell, Why I am Not a Christian (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1966), 79.

                [vi] Joseph McCabe, The War and the Churches (LaVergne, Bibliobazaar, 2010), 15.

                [vii] Ibid., 11.  McCabe has a way with words.  The full passage reads as follows.  “When we survey those horrid stretches of desolation in Belgium and Poland and Serbia, where the mutilated bodies of the innocent, of women and children, lie amidst the ashes of their homes; when we think of those peaceful sailors of our mercantile marine at the bottom of the deep, those unoffending civilians whose flesh was torn by shells, those hundreds of thousands whom patriotic feelings alone has summoned to the vast tombs of Europe, those millions of homes that have been darkened by suspense and loss—how can we repeat the ancient assurance that God does count the hairs of the head and mark the fall of even the sparrows?  Does God move the insensate stars only, and leave to the less skilful guidance of man those momentous little atoms which make up the brain of statesmen?”

                [viii] Robert Graves, Good-Bye to All That  (London, Penguin Classics, 2000), 158.

                [ix] Robert Graves and Alan Hodge, The Long Week-End: A Social History of Great Britain 1918-1939 (New York: W. W. Norton & Company Inc., 1963), 15.

                [x] Robert Graves, Good-Bye to All That  (London, Penguin Classics, 2000), 198.

                [xi] Ibid., 158.  The case was much more severe than Graves’ scriptural incident.  Graves recorded the exchange: “ ’And all this damn nonsense, sir—excuse me, sir—that we read in the papers, sir, about how miraculous it is that the wayside crucifixes are always getting shot at, but the figure of our Lord Jesus somehow don’t get hurt, it fairly makes me sick, sir.’  This was his explanation why, when giving practice fire-orders from the hilltop, he shouted, unaware that I stood behind him: ‘Seven hundred, half left, bloke on the cross, five rounds, concentrate, FIRE!’ And why, for ‘concentrate’, he had humorously substituted ‘consecrate.’ ”

            [xii] Robert Wicks, “Friedrich Nietzsche,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (March 2010), under “Later-Period Writings: 1883-1887,” http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche/#LatPerWri188188 (accessed March 30, 2010).

            [xiii] Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York, Penguin Books, 1978), 15

            [xiv] Bertrand Russell, Why I am Not a Christian (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1966) 203.

                [xv] A.D. Irvine, “Bertrand Russell,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (March 2010), under “Russell’s Social and Political Philosophy,” http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/russell/#RSPP (accessed March 30, 2010).

            [xvi] Robert Graves, Good-Bye to All That (London, Penguin Classics, 2000), 204.  Graves recalls the conversation he and Russell shared: “ ‘Tell me, if a company of your men were brought along to break up a strike of munitions makers, and the munitions makers refused to go back to work, would you order your men to fire?’ 

            ‘Yes, if everything else failed.  It would be no worse than shooting Germans, really.’

            He asked in surprise, “Would your men obey you?”

            ‘They loathe munitions-workers, and would only be too glad at a chance to shoot a few.  They think they’re all skrim-shankers.’

            ‘But they realize that the war’s all wicked nonsense?’

            ‘Yes, as well as I do.’

            He could not understand my attitude.”

            [xvii] Ibid., 158.

            [xviii] Joseph McCabe, The War and the Churches (LaVergne, Bibliobazaar, 2010), 27.

            [xix] Ibid., 9.

The Modern Plague of the IRA

           Terrorism has become the modern Plague and the interesting thing about plagues is that they are terribly resilient.  The same is true of terrorists.  Declaring an idealistic war on ideas that are feverishly held by a very competent and motivated group of people is quite difficult.  How does one deal with a plague, especially after it has broken out and spread well beyond a contained area?  The French philosopher Albert Camus speaks of the strength of plagues and terrorists when he noted, “that the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good; that it can lie dormant for years and years in furniture and linen-chests; that it bides its times in bedrooms, cellars, trunks, and book-shelves; and that perhaps the day would come when, for the bane and the enlightening of men, it roused up its rats again and sent them forth to die in a happy city[i].”  Suppose that Camus’ city becomes an island, and then the northern portion of this island would be the most plagued.  This is Northern Ireland and, depending on one’s religious or ethnic alignment, it is not a hospitable place.  How can such an infestation of terrorism be dealt with and how has it been dealt with?

            Northern Ireland is made up of the upper six counties of the island.  It borders, naturally, The Republican of Ireland to the south and is separated from the rest of the UK by the Irish Sea.  Nationalists in Ireland, both north and south, are referred to as Republicans because of their desire to establish an Irish Republic governed by Irish.  In 1922 it was decided by the British government to allow the Irish independent rule, with the exception of the northern six counties.  When the Ulster state was founded its slogan was: “A Protestant Parliament for a Protestant People,” and the Scots-Irish population became known as the loyalist sect.  This meant that the portion of Ireland which had been filled with Scots immigrants wanted to segregate and suppress the Irish Catholic population. Christopher Hitchens defines the conflict by its religious roots, however this is a bit reductionist as problem is not just a religious one, although there is much to ponder when Hitchens writes, “Sectarianism is conveniently self-generating and can always be counted upon to evoke a reciprocal sectarianism.”[ii] Northern Ireland epitomizes itself by divisive labels.  It is a world of black against white, catholic against protestant, republican against loyalist, and ultimately neighbor against neighbor. The important task is to first identify the enemy or assailant and then identifying the intentions of that group. 

            In Northern Ireland the immediate enemy is the Irish Republican Army, which is a paramilitary organization comprised of Roman Catholic ethno-nationalists.  From the label one can learn two things; first of which is that the group defines themselves both ethnically and religiously.  The second fact is that the IRA is a nationalist organization.  Both of these have a lot to say about their intentions in Northern Ireland.  One can establish that, as a nationalist organization, the IRA would not resort to mass destruction bombings or want to become a nuclear and biological threat.  The Green Book is a sort of handbook for Irish Terrorists published by the IRA and it contain a wealth of information about training tactics and political aims.  The IRA sums up their goals into two categories; long term and short term.  The long term goal, a very ideological goal, is to establish a Democratic Socialist Republic in Northern Ireland and to bring in the Republic of Ireland to unite the whole island.  Under the segment of short term objective, however, is printed in very bold letters, “Brits out.[iii]”  The immediate goal is to make Northern Ireland ungovernable.  Louise Richardson has made a brilliant inquiry to the matter as both an Irishmen and a scholar on terrorist studies and she argues that one of the ways a terrorist group seeks to undermine the state and prove that it is ungovernable is to show the state that they are incapable of protecting their citizenry.  This same effect is happening in Iraq and Afghanistan for the United States. [iv]  How has the United Kingdom responded?

            The most active period of the IRA was the 1970’s.  There are several events which exemplify the actions of the British in Northern Ireland and the IRA response to those events.  The Falls Road Curfew, June 3-5, 1972, was an incident that began as a British military operation to search Falls Road in Belfast, Northern Ireland.  The situation erupted into a three day riot that ended in the arrest of 300 republicans, the deaths of somewhere between three and five individuals (the exact figure is highly disputed), and sixty civilian causalities.[v]  British forces were tipped off that an arms dump belonging to the Official IRA, a splinter group of the IRA, could be found in a house on Falls Road.  OIRA commander Jim Sullivan ordered his men not to retaliate; he feared that an investigation would follow and more arms dumps would be uncovered.  It was the Provisional IRA, yet another splinter group of the IRA, who initiated attack with makeshift hand grenades and escalated the situation.  The road, a heavily populated area and a cultural center that attracts many tourists each year, was sealed off and a curfew was put into effect which would be enforced by 3000 British soldiers.  The greatest mistake of the Anglo forces was the use of tear gas to flood the area and force IRA members into the open street to be detained.  Tim Pat Coogan points out that, “It’s just not possible to fire CS (tear gas) canisters down narrow teeming streets and affect only IRA lungs.”[vi] The event caused many of the anti-IRA Catholics in the area to sympathize with the cause of self-governance and independence.  It gave credence the argument made by IRA members who stated that the British army was not a neutral force keeping peace between Protestants and Catholics, but a colonial force meant to pacify and anglicize the Catholic natives.

            One of the more infamous incidents was Bloody Sunday (January 30, 1972). The British Army fired upon a group of unarmed protestors who were illegally demonstrating in Derry, Northern Ireland. What is troubling about this event was the unusual amount of top military figures in Derry during the incident as well as the British Army’s intense anticipation of the protest.  No reason was ever given for the ban. Perhaps it was that the British Army was given misleading information about what the protestors were up to.[vii] It was a grave error on part of the British and is still subject to much controversy, as no formal apology has ever been made.  The reaction to the deaths of thirteen people that day was extremely violent.  In the Republic of Ireland, the Gardaí (Irish Policemen) simply avoided a mob which proceeded to burn down the British embassy in Dublin. The Saville inquiry, a committee appointed to examine the events of the massacre, was expected to return with a ruling in late 2009, but has delayed its report to late 2010.  It is no surprise that this event villainized the British army.  Bloody Sunday was also used as a recruitment tool by the IRA.  So many felt angered by the events that they felt compelled to join.  They fell into what Louise Richardson called a “desire for revenge.”[viii]  Not only did IRA members feel the need to retaliate against the atrocities, but civilians did as well.  These were not the deaths of IRA guerillas wearing balaclavas, but these were students and parents in street clothes.  The message sent by the British Army that day did not resonate well in the Catholic community. 

            The unilateral internment, known as Operation Demetrius, was a decision made by Stormont (the former Northern Ireland seat of government, which was controlled by protestants) to detain, indefinitely, terrorist suspects.  What made this issue terribly controversial and so opposed by republicans in the north was that the legislation, intended to bring in all terrorist suspects, only targeted the IRA.  The Ulster Defense Force, a protestant paramilitary organization, was ignored despite being the instigators of most of the violence.[ix]  350 were detained in an early morning raid on the day the law was enacted by Brain Faulkner, the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland.  Twelve people, including two women, died in the early raids as objects of suspicion, but no concrete evidence was given for the lawful detainment of the 350 original detainees and the 200 that would follow.  The experiment proved to be a last gasp of an organization in its death throes.  Britain had urged Faulkner to detain a few members of the UVF to maintain an air of equality, but the Prime Minister ignored any warnings.  Since Faulkner and Stormont were unable to bring Northern Ireland under control, parliament was prorogued later that year.  Self-governance in Northern Ireland ended in 1973.  The situation had proved to be far too complicated for anything less than direct English intervention. 

            Another disastrous aspect to the internment was the violation of the Human Rights agreements made by the British government with other European powers.  The British Army was accused of depriving detainees of sleep, implementing a starvation diet, making prisoners stand spread eagle against walls for hours at a time, submitting them to continuous and monotonous noise, and hooding detainees except during interrogation. The five techniques were in direct violation of article three of the Convention on Human Rights.[x]  However, the court did not actually visit the barracks where the accused were being held.  The court ruled that the techniques were not used in the context stated in article three and dismissed the case.  The North Irish, however, did not so easily forget.  Recruitment numbers shot up once again and the IRA had become an object of pity. 

            The Falls Road curfew (or Rape of the Falls as it is known by the local inhabitants) of June 1972, the induction of unilateral internment in August 1971, and the Bloody Sunday Massacre of 30 January 1972 have all played into the hand of the IRA by generating support which has not been seen since the Anglo-Irish war of 1916-1921.  These were intended police actions by the British government which hoped to prevent terrorist attacks and civil unrest from occurring, yet all share the common trait of having gone terribly awry.  This is similar to the circumstances of the American military in Iraq, where prolonged policing in the area has caused a breakdown of stability in the region.  It is difficult to decide if the IRA successful in their efforts or the constant ineptitude of the British army alienates the inhabitants.  The Green Book clears this up.  The IRA maintains that, “We exploit these mistakes by propagating the facts.  So it was with their (The British) murderous mistakes of the Falls Road curfew, Bloody Sunday, and internment, which were exploited to our advantage support-wise…”[xi]  The plague’s greatest allies are those that it feeds off of, as Camus tells us in the haunting closing sentence of his story.  The problem of the IRA hides, like Camus’ plague, on book-shelves and in bedrooms.  The British, those who have been charged cure the plague, have only succeeded in spreading it

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[i] Albert Camus, The Plague, The Fall, Exile and the Kingdom, and Selected Essays (Everyman's Library) ( New York: Everyman's Library, 2004), 272

[ii] Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (New York: Twelve, 2009) pg 19

[iii] Tim Pat Coogan, The IRA. Revised ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002) pg 558

[iv] Louise Richardson, What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Enemy, Containing the Threat (New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2007) pg 78

[v] Tim Pat Coogan, The IRA. Revised ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002) pg 345

[vi] Tim Pat Coogan, The IRA. Revised ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002) pg 334

[vii] Tim Pat Coogan, The IRA. Revised ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002) pg 334

[viii] Louise Richardson, What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Enemy, Containing the Threat (New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2007) pg 90

[ix] Tim Pat Coogan, The Troubles: Ireland's Ordeal and the Search for Peace (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002) pg 126

[x] Tim Pat Coogan, The IRA. Revised ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002) pg 438

[xi] Tim Pat Coogan, The IRA. Revised ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002) pg 552