--This is your Ulster Protestant Movement For Justice Mail--
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1. ETA "Batasuna" banned in spain, Sinn Fein/IRA next in the USA, over to
you Tony Blair.
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2. Spain sees no hope of a solution in Blairs terrorist romance.
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3. I blame Patten.
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ETA "Batasuna" banned in spain, Sinn Fein/IRA next in the USA, over to you
Tony Blair.

Whenever he runs into difficulties in Northern Ireland, Tony Blair is quick
to tell us that there is "no alternative" to the peace process.

This phrase has been used to justify all manner of disagreeable concessions:
the release of unrepentant murderers, the elevation of Sinn Fein beyond
their electoral mandate, the repeated climbdowns over decommissioning, the
insistence that republican shootings do not constitute violations of the
ceasefire.

Yet, as Mr Blair's favourite European leader, Jose Maria Aznar, is currently
demonstrating, there is an alternative. Faced with his own terrorist menace,
Mr Aznar has eschewed appeasement and chosen force.

Yesterday, meeting in emergency session, Spain's main parties voted to close
down Eta's political wing, Batasuna. Although the ban was opposed by some
regionalist and Communist deputies, it has had near-unanimous backing in the
Spanish media, and has done nothing to damage Spain's international
standing.

Why should Northern Ireland be any different? After all, the parallels with
the Basque country are striking. In both regions, small terrorist groups
began major campaigns in the 1960s, supposedly aimed at military and police
personnel, but in practice killing many civilians.

>From their earliest days, the IRA and Eta worked closely together. Both
paramilitary organisations were backed by political parties that attracted
some 15 per cent of the regional vote.

In both cases, the apologist parties competed with mainstream nationalist
movements: the SDLP in Northern Ireland, the PNV in the Basque country. And
in both instances, these mainstream parties saw it as their role to bring
the gunmen into the constitutional fold by facilitating ceasefires.

It is at this point that the parallel breaks down. For while the British
government has been prepared to jump through any hoop in order to keep the
terrorists happy, the Spanish government had a clear bottom line. Mr Aznar
was prepared to listen to Basque grievances, but he was not prepared to
concede under threat of violence policies that had been rejected at the
ballot box.

Unwilling to compete on the same terms as other parties, Eta soon went back
to murder. Mr Aznar responded with a renewed crackdown, instructing Baltasar
Garzón, the Left-wing judge who notoriously ordered the arrest of General
Pinochet, to investigate bodies suspected of being paramilitary front
organisations.

Yesterday, Mr Garzón proscribed Batasuna, the latest incarnation of Eta's
political wing, arguing that its spokesmen refused to condemn terrorist
atrocities and had used Eta slogans. The Cortes simultaneously backed this
judicial ban with an explicit legislative ban.

While it is not for us to tell a friendly government what to do, we are
sceptical of the move. Quite apart from the democratic objections, the ban
is likely to give Batasuna a glamour that its shoddy politics do not merit.
That, though, is a matter for the Spanish.

What is striking is how easily Mr Aznar has got away with it. Not even at
the height of the Troubles did a British government seek to proscribe
elected representatives. Indeed, whenever much lesser forms of coercion were
proposed, we were told that they would be unacceptable to the international
community.

How is it, then, that Mr Aznar has succeeded in getting almost the whole
world to see the conflict from Madrid's point of view - despite the fact
that, unlike in Northern Ireland, there has never been a poll to establish
whether the majority of Basques wish to remain Spanish? The answer surely
has to do with self-belief. Most Spaniards, including those on the Left, are
reasonably patriotic.

It is impossible to imagine a British Garzón - a human rights lawyer from
Matrix chambers, for example - being more concerned with prosecuting Sinn
Fein than with the rights of republican prisoners in British jails. The
self-loathing element in Britain is a more valuable weapon to the IRA than
any rocket-launcher.

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Spain sees no hope of a solution in Blairs terrorist romance.
by David Sharrock.

Why Madrid has turned its back on the tactics used in Northern Ireland

THE Spanish Government’s actions seem to prove that it has finally decided
that it has nothing useful to learn from the British Government’s Irish
policy and the Northern Ireland peace process, once assiduously studied by
associates of the Prime Minister, José María Aznar.
Indeed, far from viewing Ulster as an “Irish model” for solving Spain’s
decades-old terrorist conflict through a process of political inclusion,
Señor Aznar appears to have concluded that the Conservatives’ policies
during the 1970s and 1980s are a more appropriate response to Basque
violence — that is to say in applying a security solution.

“Conflict experts” who perceive parallels between Northern Ireland and the
Basque Country will be dismayed by the turn of events in Spain, and fear
that it may only generate more violence.

Yet there can be no doubting the confidence of the Spanish Government that
it has embarked upon the correct path and that, although the next six to 12
months may be difficult, there is hope.

The similarities between Eta and its political wing, Batasuna, and the
Provisional IRA and its political wing, Sinn Fein, are many.

First, both movements are constructed along similar lines, with the
“military” authority taking precedence over “the politicians”. Both
political parties can count important military figures high up in their
ranks – Gerry Adams, for instance, is regarded by Tony Blair’s advisers as
the most influential member of the IRA’s ruling “army council”.

However, within the republican movement the “politicos” have steadily
marginalised the “hawks”, with the encouragement of the British Government.
Perhaps the greatest factor has been Downing Street’s flexibility on the
issue of Northern Ireland remaining part of the United Kingdom.

Unofficially, its position is probably best summed up as an aspiration to
withdraw from the Union, tempered by the reality that this would be
unattainable for the foreseeable future because it runs counter to the
wishes of the majority in Northern Ireland. Nor would that outcome be
favoured by the Republic of Ireland, which prefers the status quo under the
Good Friday Agreement of a southern input into the Province.

Sinn Fein understands this position well and is slowly adapting to new
realities.

In Spain the position is quite different. Madrid sees the Basque demands for
self-determination as a direct attack on its constitution. It fears that
granting a free vote on the issue would lead to the dismantling of the state
in a country that already grants its autonomous regions wide-ranging
executive powers.

In Madrid’s view there is, therefore, little to discuss with Batasuna, which
is perhaps why the 14-month ceasefire, which Eta ended in 1999 after the
peak of expectations engendered by the “Irish model”, was doomed.

The truce was the fruit of a pact with the moderate Basque National Party
(PNV), which to Madrid’s alarm has been “radicalised” by the experience and
for the first time speaks clearly in favour of independence.

Madrid, therefore, hopes that by banning Batasuna it will turn the PNV back
to its former position. A security policy will solve the rest of the puzzle.
Eta is much weaker than the Provisional IRA.

The Spanish security forces now believe that they can finish off the
terrorist group.

That remains to be seen, but the threat of splinter groups in Ulster will
also remind them that it only takes a few fanatics to keep old wounds open.

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I blame Patten.
By Kevin Myers
(Filed: 25/08/2002)

Four and a half years into the Belfast Agreement and all it takes to have
your way in Northern Ireland is a single uncoded phone call. This, without
any of the usual terrorist watermarks to confirm its authenticity, was what
caused Neil Lennon, the captain of the Northern Ireland football team, to
abandon his international career for all time.

Possibly, as a Catholic, he doesn't care too much about not playing for
Northern Ireland again. That's not the issue. The issue is the peace process
logic, which has seen the contemptible Patten report devastate policing in
Northern Ireland without gaining any of the security improvements intended
to be among its numerous by-products.

Not that there haven't been by-products - a greater loathing between the
communities than any time since the early Seventies, mounting threats from
terrorist groups of both sides, increasing violence across that uniquely
Belfast oxymoron, the peaceline, and an unremitting hostility from Sinn Fein
to those very institutions which allow it to govern. Otherwise? Things are
going fine.

Meanwhile, new recruits to the police service are not being trained in
riot-control, because the peace process, according to Patten-speak, means
the province is deemed to be just like Cornwall. But dash it, Carruthers,
Belfast is turning out to be not in the jolly least like Bodmin; the police
have been attacked in the course of 730 riots during the past year alone,
roughly two riots a day. A bit rum, what?

The Special Branch, which with MI5 and Army intelligence had reduced IRA
terrorism to the occasional squalid murder of fringe individuals, was, in
essence, disbanded at its hour of triumph. This was political and moral
insanity. But because the Government has so far declined to execute Special
Branch officers and place their heads on spikes on city walls - though God
knows, that day might yet come - Sinn Fein still refuses to co-operate with
the new police service.

Not that there's much to co-operate with these days. You never see the
police on duty any more, with some 10 per cent of all police officers on
permanent sick leave: sensible creatures. Meanwhile Protestants are being
turned away in order to ensure a Catholic quota, even as Catholics are being
intimidated by the various IRAs into not joining. No wonder the new force
confers a single anonymous phone call about Northern Ireland's most eminent
footballer with all the authority of an Act of Parliament.

Without the presence of the Army, who knows what madness we would now be
facing. Maybe it's time we found out. To step back from the brink, people
must first stare into it: but the Army, faithful to its mandate, prevents
the Northern Ireland people from even getting close to the brink.

So not seeing the brink, and knowing there is yet another generation of
patient, uncomplaining 20-year-old squaddies - perhaps grandsons of the
first soldiers on the streets of Northern Ireland - the people of the
province still feel perfectly free to indulge their neuroses. For they have
become Army-addicts, certain that no matter what they do, hundreds of young
soldiers will once again be dragged from some overcrowded barracks to rescue
them from their pathological delinquencies.

Now if a fire-junkie endlessly sets fire to his own house, knowing that he
won't be burnt to death because the fire brigade always puts the fire out,
you have three approaches. One is to leave things the way they are, so that
the entire fire brigade is on duty round the clock, waiting for the cackling
lunatic to set fire to his curtains again. This is current policy in
Northern Ireland.

The second is to put the lunatic in jail, but you can only do that if you
have a police force, and Northern Ireland no longer has. The third is simply
to let the lunatic know for sure that the next time he reaches for the Swan
Vesta, he'll be allowed to turn into a nice, crisp cinder. It's amazing how
the certainty of consequence can change behaviour.

But of course, no one in London or Dublin has the political courage to opt
for such harsh remedial inaction; so the dependency on the Army intensifies
in inverse proportion to any sense of gratitude for the astounding job that
it does.

How do we escape from this cyclical nightmare? Well, making Sinn Fein behave
like a political party in government would be a start. This means that to
stay in government, it must support the institutions of the state, urge
Catholics to join the police, and help investigations into all terrorist
crime, especially the Omagh bombing of four years ago.

It does none of these things, yet it remains in government, courtesy of the
Belfast Agreement, which has actually institutionalised sectarianism, so
that society is permanently at war with itself. Northern Ireland now cannot
even field a football team without the consent of each and every one of its
huge population of cranks and bigots with 10p for the phone.

Meanwhile, thousands of soldiers sit in their garrets, waiting to deal with
the next riot. And this is called the peace process.