History moves on. A struggle began in the late 1960s where TV came to a small bit of geography to do what TV news does, pay attention to someone's troubles until someone else's problems seem bigger.
A tiny background of history for those not acquainted with what Jim McCann in his book, And The Gates Flew Open: The Burning Of Long Kesh was writing about. The Irish had fought a guerrilla war against the British occupiers in the early part of the 20th Century.
The British military left most of the island, but kept a presence in the 6 counties in the north. They left a government in power that discriminated against the people who identified as a nationalist population.
The northern statelet that had been imposed in the 1920s was oppressive and corrupt and resistance was intermittent and would not boil over into a sustained movement of confrontation with the colonialist catspaw until the late 60s.
The generation that Jim McCann was part of started off just kind of pushing back and became more and more involved until they found themselves as members of the Republican Army and eventually arriving interned in a concentration camp.
It was a more intense coming of age story than that of their contemporaries on the other side of the pond as well as in Europe at the time. Not that those places did not have their stories (draft and Civil Rights in the US). What happened in the occupied north was different in that more of the population was involved as it was harder to not be involved than, say, in the United States.
In the US, after I got out of the army, I wasted time driving a cab during the era of forced busing. There were riots, but there was never a time where the army, or even, (if my ancient memory is not betraying me) the National Guard came on the streets.
Jim joins an organization of resistance that tells him upfront "We have to tell you, you can get killed. You could be caught, arrested and sentenced to a long period in prison. You will be interned. Either one of these can happen at any minute."
After quoting what is not a recruiting slogan out of the Dale Carnegie Playbook, Jim's next sentence is anticlimactic, "I got caught."
A jury of his peers sentenced him to 12 years imprisonment.
Actually, no. There was no jury, just a state apparatchik pretending to be a judge in what pretended to be a court of law. This system was referred to as Diplock Courts.
So, Jim is in Long Kesh with his fellow prisoners and he and the others confront the enemy as best a disarmed band can.
As a protest against their mistreatment they set to burn the cages they were kept in.
True, other than what was at hand, the enemy had all the logistical advantages. There were some ground rules, sort of.
The Brits were not going to shoot all of the prisoners as that would be a bad look on international TV and even the compliant networks would not be able to ignore it.
Other than that, there was little limit to what they would do.
What they would use were "baton rounds" which were also known as rubber bullets. Bit of a misnomer that as they were not just rubber and could be fatal. There were ample bricks for the resisters to toss back at the army, which, if it didn't make it a fair fight, at least gave the individual squaddie something to think about.
There was another fly in the ointment. The Brits would use CS Gas. Now, CS Gas has a history of use in many places in the world, including our United States. It was infamously used at the Waco siege.
That it has enough ill effects to be useful, but not enough to get it banned says something about the state of government the world over. In the moment, it was certainly uncomfortable, but did not stop the engagement between the Republican POWs and the army.
The stage was set for the day of the Battle of Long Kesh.
During the time of engagement the battle was back and forth with many humorous incidents despite the serious and violent aspect of the conflict. McCann relates his own adventures without sentiment, such as when, after being hit by a rubber bullet, he quoted Raymond Chandler, "A black hole opened up in front of me and I jumped in."
The battle raged back and forth with prisoners taken and released on both sides. "Suddenly. The enemy donned strange looking headgear, gas masks."
The Brits were about to unleash a new weapon on Republican prisoners. From a helicopter overhead, canisters of CR gas were released and immediately, prisoners were reduced to a wretched state as McCann describes it:
"When the enemy arrived from above it was invisible. It didn't make any war-like screams to announce its arrival. It just wafted down from above, entered into what I imagine was my central nervous system and reduced me to something that not even my own mother would have recognized. I thought that they were using flamethrowers and that I was on fire. All around me an induced insanity broke out. Grown men were shouting for their mothers."
CR is the codename for Dibenz (b.f.) -1,4-oxazepin.
The effects are listed as:
"Very intense skin pain, especially around moist areas. Involuntary closing of eyes, resulting in temporary blindness, which may induce panic or uncontrollable coughing, gasping for breath.
Eyes close immediately.
Loss of body motor control.
Intense burning on.
Leads to immediate incapacitation."
The source is listed as The Technology of Political Control.
These effects are pretty brutal, and the British did their best to cover up what was their secret operation "Snowdrop." Snowdrop was their use of SAS to deploy CR gas.
How secretly was it done?
From Pages 41 and 42 of the book:
It is not an understatement to call it all nefarious, that is: wicked in the extreme; abominable; iniquitous; atrociously villainous; execrable; detestably vile.
Ah, but the action echoes long after the events of the day. What looms large over the lives of the surviving POWs is the shadow of cancer related to the CR gas.
Jim McCann admits the causal relationship to the disease is impossible to prove. There is evidence, however, and that evidence is the strenuous nature of government working to avoid any full-fledged honest investigation.
The British Government will strive with might and main to avoid admitting anything. If that cannot be denied completely, then obfuscation will be resorted to.
This is the nature of imperialism. It feels it has any right to use what it can, as long as it can get away with it. Britain exploited its colonies until they couldn't, but continued behaving brutally where possible as the state broadcaster article admits, SAS unit repeatedly killed Afghan detainees, BBC finds.
The story is a compelling account of vile murder. What is amazing is the Beeb uncovered it as they have been shy about that previously.
Though Britannia no longer rules the waves, she has not stopped playing colonialist overseas and it has come to light, in a landlocked country. The UK participated in the coup that ousted legally elected Bolivian president Evo Morales. Just shows ya, you can still have gunboat diplomacy even if the gunboats can't sail there.
Now, someone reading this might be tempted to think the reviewer is indulging in Brit baiting, accusing the Anglo-Saxon of inhumanity?
If one wants to look at it that way, so be it. One could also look at it that those who govern the United Kingdom are human, all too human.
They are not the worst and in the two international incidents mentioned here, Her Majesty's government was working hand in glove with a U.S. Government that, I am ashamed to say, was culpable in many more ways.
Both are working together to railroad Julian Assange.
Sadly, power will do what it wants. We have the recent not so humble brag of John Bolton about planning coups. He was rightly considered a clown until he turned on Trump, but was somewhat rehabilitated and there will be no consequences for what should be considered a crime in international law.
The truth is that almost no one cares. It is the way of the world, and we and the English are not the only entities in history now or previously to do this.
Remember Dubya's recent gaffe about Iraq? Probably not. He actually made the case that he was essentially a war criminal. Some had a laugh at the silly man, and then, everybody back to sleep.
And The Gates Flew Open: The Burning Of Long Kesh by Jim McCann is available on Amazon and there is a Facebook page.