In today’s (15/9/23) Irish nationalist newspaper, ‘The Irish News’, the following headline appears.
Stakeknife: British intelligence may have been aware of every IRA operation in Belfast
The secretive world of anti-terrorist undercover operatives and their activities will never be fully known. It would be to the endangering of many and the shaming of high officials who sanctioned what amounted to unlawful actions on many occasions.
If there is an ounce of truth in the above headline then the question must be asked, ‘Why were not more terrorist attacks stopped in Belfast?’
Away back in 1971, 52 years ago, British Tory Home Secretary, Reginald Maudling, a cabinet minister during Edward Heath’s infamous premiership, spoke of an “acceptable level” of violence in the Northern Ireland conflict.
This took place in a December 1971 press conference in which he stated that the British government could not eliminate the Provisional Irish Republican Army’s terrorist attacks but only reduce them to an “acceptable level”. Critics maintained that any violence was unacceptable. Nevertheless, the concept influenced the British government’s strategy in dealing with Northern Irish terrorism, and continues to be used in discussions of ongoing political violence in Northern Ireland.
What Maudling said was an unmitigated lie and the disclosure of a policy of mere containment of the IRA while the terrorist organisation carried out what had become British policy. That policy was gradually to move Northern Ireland out of the UK into a united Ireland by using the terrorism of the IRA to weary the Ulster unionist population of the turmoil and make them ready to sue for a ‘peaceful’ solution!
Edward Heath’s government was a most treacherous, anti-Protestant government. Cabinet papers released in London and Dublin in 2001, have revealed how precarious the position of Northern Ireland became as violence escalated in 1970.The Tory government under Edward Heath “gave active consideration to pulling out of Ulster, leaving the region ‘to sink or swim as best it could’.”
While it was deemed injudicious to act immediately upon that desire, out of it came the policy of an “acceptable level” of IRA terrorism and murder!
I have, on many occasions in the past, illustrated this tactic by likening it unto an unscrupulous landlord who wished to get rid of a tenant who had a binding legal tenancy agreement and who was not in breach of that agreement in any way and therefore the landlord could not force the tenant to quit.
In order to achieve his unlawful ends, the landlord began to neglect his obligations under the agreement. He was slow to repair broken windows, leaking roofs etc and generally made life unbearable for the tenant until, in exasperation, they sought other accommodation!
That is what successive British governments have been doing over the last half century. The mind and will of the Unionists of Northern Ireland have been under severe pressure as successive British government policies have been employed whereby a deliberate, most ineffective campaign was carried out by government agencies against the IRA.
The recent debacle within the PSNI, whereby two constables were unlawfully disciplined by their senior officers, for carrying out their duty against an unlawful Sinn Fein/IRA gathering in Belfast, still rumbles on with the PSNI virtually leaderless at present due to the resignation of the Chief Constable and the ‘sickness’ of his deputy. Both of them were implicated in the unlawful decision to discipline the two constables and that, the court that ruled their discipling as unlawful, said was because Sinn Fein/IRA political leaders implied that they would withdraw their support for the police service if the two constables were not disciplined!
The decision by the Chief Constable and his deputy, was but the latest manifestation of the “acceptable level” of violence policy launched in 1971. Democratic Unionists stupidly ‘bought into’ that policy when they agreed to enter a ‘power-sharing’ deal with Sinn Fein/IRA and accepted former ‘IRA commander’, Martin McGuinness, as one they could embrace and work alongside. The Unionist perception of the organisation that our forefathers deemed a most evil terrorist structure has changed until now its objectives, a united Ireland, have gradually become acceptable to many!
The ‘landlord’s failure to repair broken windows and leaking roofs’ has tragically paid off and continues to do so!
Of course, the treachery of London was aided by the rebellious churches who have the same spirit of opposition to truth as does Sinn Fein/IRA. One is as the rebellious Israelite, ‘Absalom’ and the other as the Gentile enemy, ‘the Philistine’. They are poles apart in some ways, but united in their rebellion against God and His Christ, as was Absalom and the Philistines. The ecumenical churches, with their opposition to that belief in God’s Word which moved our forefathers to reject ‘Irish Home Rule’, on the basis that ‘Home Rule was Rome Rule’, have ever been sympathetic to a villainous ‘union of religion and politics’ in Ireland! Ecumenism is but another name for the latter-day apostasy which the Bible warns of as coming in the final days of this age.
“Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving: For it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer,” 1 Timothy 4:1-5.
The Ecumenical mainline denominations here, the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, the episcopalian Church of Ireland and the Methodist Church, have all been increasingly riddled with heresy and false doctrine for some 80-90 years. This fact was glaringly manifested in the part they played in the formation of the World Council of Churches in 1948. Their continuing descent into apostasy is seen in their willing participation in the unbiblical practice of ordaining women as elders and ministers in their denominations. A more recent indication of their rebellion against God and His Word is their failure to condemn forthrightly the inroads of sodomy within their ranks. Rather than condemnation, there are examples to be found of such wickedness sanctioned amongst the people in the pews and the preaching in the pulpit!
From their ranks and the ranks of Roman Catholicism, has come political groups and organisations, such as the so-called ‘liberal’ ‘Alliance Party’ which, while claiming not to be in support of Sinn Fein/IRA tactics and policies, have repeatedly manifested their kinship with Irish Republicanism and have stood shoulder to shoulder with it in opposition to Unionism.
I read this morning those famous words of Paul. “In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them,” 2 Corinthians 4:4.
That ‘blinding’ process has flourished under the utterances of ecumenical false prophets and the compromising stance of all too many unionists, to the furtherance of the plan Reginald Maudling disclosed all those years ago!
Rev Ivan Foster (Rtd)
15th September 2023