Protestant View

Ulster’s ethnic cleansing

THE IRA’s refusal to decommission its weapons – the cause of the present deadlock in the so-called peace process – demonstrates once again that Sinn Fein/IRA, in their ascent to power, pin their faith on the use of violence and not the ballot box. The Republican leadership cynically moves “from cease-fires to resumptions to further cease-fires, turning on and off at will their mutilation beatings” (to quote a Daily Telegraph editorial), and engages in “forced expulsions, acts of intimidation, and, yes, ethnic cleansing (which has transformed such rural towns as Pomeroy and Coalisland).”

Ethnic cleansing did not begin in Ireland yesterday. In 1641 a rebellion broke out, and swept over the island like a tornado. Historian L. A. Pooler, in his Short History of the Church of Ireland, says that “the authorities of the Roman Church had declared that to kill a heretic was no more sinful than to kill a dog, but that to relieve or protect one would be an unpardonable sin. Accordingly, the Romish party rose, and resolved to sweep the island clear of Protestants. . . The curious can find in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin thirty-two volumes of sworn depositions to attest the horrors of this awful time. . . . Of the number massacred, various calculations have been made. The figures vary from 300,000 to 37,000[sic]It seems most probable that about 40,000 were murdered at the first outbreak, when no hostility was expected.”

In his History of the Irish Presbyterian Church, T. Hamilton states, “The abominable and infamous cruelties of this rebellion lie as a terrible blot on the Romish Church. From the beginning it was a Romish rebellion. Sir Phelim O’Neill declared that ‘he would never leave off the work he had begun till Mass should be sung or said in every church in Ireland, and that a Protestant should not live in Ireland, be he of what nation he would.’ The priests joined in planning it, and were among the foremost in urging it to the utmost extreme.” Hamilton then quotes from Killen’s Ecclesiastical History of Ireland: “At a meeting in the Abbey of Multifarnham, in Westmeath, held about a fortnight before the commencement of hostilities, some of the clergy present recommended a general massacre as the safest and most effectual method of putting down Protestant ascendancy. . . The Roman Catholic clergy of all grades appear ever and anon upon the stage during the worst scenes of this dismal tragedy.”

Hamilton continues, “The priests commonly anointed the rebels before sending them to their murderous work, assuring them that if they chanced to be killed they would escape purgatory and go immediately to heaven. They told their people that ‘the Protestants were worse than dogs, they were devils, and served the devil, and the killing of them was a meritorious act.’ The massacre of 1641 was really an Irish St. Bartholomew, only more terrible and inhuman, and it is no wonder that, though more than 200 years have passed since the scenes we have described, their memory has left behind in Ulster a dread, amounting almost to terror, of being ever again placed in the power of Rome.”

We need not wonder at the fears of the loyal pro-Union and Protestant majority of Ulster at the prospect of being sacrificed to the aspirations of the anti-British republican and Roman Catholic minority of Sinn Fein/IRA activists. “The words of a Republican magazine, An Phoblacht, published in November 1975 give a clear insight into the long term aim of Republicanism,” says Chris Richards, writing in The Reformer. “The magazine viewed the extent of the Protestant population in terms of river boundaries: 1690, The Boyne; 1880, The Black Pigs Dyke; 1920, The Foyle and Blackwater; 1976, The Upper and Lower Bann; 2000, The North Channel. The aim, openly admitted, was the extinction of any sizeable Protestant population and influence in Ireland as a whole by the year 2000. . . For the Protestant population of Eire, ethnic cleansing is not a new phrase but rather just a description of their history since 1921.”

With regard to ethnic cleansing in Ulster, Mr Richards adds, “The aim to destroy Protestantism in Ireland by the year 2000 puts the last twenty five years of violence into perspective. Rather than being ‘mindless violence’, as the media often report a killing or bombing to be, the targets were picked with an aim in mind: a Protestant business bombed deliberately to put it out of business; a farmer’s son shot to leave the farm without an heir. The younger generation of some border Protestant families have been completely wiped out; young men shot, who had never been members of the security forces or political organisations, are murdered for no reason other than they represent the next generation of Protestants. Little by little the border is pushed northwards.”

Mr Richards rightly adds, “Successive U K governments have singularly failed the first duty of government, namely to secure the country’s borders. Many observers think the governments of the UK never intended to defeat Republican terrorism but rather sought to contain violence within Ulster. A demographic change has taken place in Ulster. The Roman Catholic population has grown through high birthrates. The percentage of Protestants in County Antrim and Down has risen as Protestants move east (nearer the North Channel and the year 2000) while the Protestant population west of the River Bann has declined. Some experts speculate that Ulster will have a majority Roman Catholic population within a generation. The pressure on Protestants continues.”

The discerning among them know that they need not look to the Good Friday Agreement as the solution, for they know that it furthers the objective of the Republic of Ireland swallowing up Ulster, and is detrimental to the union between Ulster and the rest of the United Kingdom. The UK government is dismally failing to secure Ulster’s borders and save its Protestant citizens from ethnic cleansing. The English Churchman stated recently that “Tony Blair’s remarks from the steps of Hillsborough Castle, particularly directed at Unionists who oppose the Agreement, were both dismissive and bitter. They were the ‘past’ he said. They had never done anything constructive for Northern Ireland. His words were a terrible hurt and insult to over 50 per cent of the pro-Union population.”

The Daily Telegraph is not far off the mark when it says, “Mr Blair is keen to bomb Serbian terrorists, but eager to free republican ones. He is quick to strut, and threaten a Serbian leader many hundreds of miles away about war crimes, but slow to chide and willing to grovel to Mr Adams, who has at least connived in the ethnic cleansing of part of the United Kingdom.”

A commentator in the English Churchman is quite correct when he says, “The abdication of Government responsibility to protect the innocent and be a ‘terror to the evil doer’ is glaringly apparent in Ulster. But Tony Blair and those around him have an agenda that is bad for Ulster, bad for the UK, bad for democracy, and certainly bad for our Protestant heritage and hard-fought-for liberties. ‘Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and that write grievousness which they have prescribed’ (Isaiah 10:1).”

Whatever may be the political factors in the Ulster’s troubles, the basic factor is the Rome-inspired thirst of republicanism for total dominion, fuelled by an abiding hatred of Protestant Britain. Rome has had vast experience of achieving her aims by hiding her hand, working behind the scenes, and manipulating the media to spread her lies and propaganda. She has been using these tactics so successfully in Ulster that most people are duped as to her intentions. But however much success the Antichrist may have, it will end eventually in catastrophic failure. The glorious King of kings and Lord of lords will most certainly consume it with the spirit of His mouth, and shall destroy it with the brightness of his coming, (2 Thes. 2:8).

Meanwhile, we ought to be much in prayer for that greatly troubled part of our nation, the province of Ulster, seeking that she would not only be delivered from her enemies but also experience a great reviving of true religion which would bring the population, Protestants and Roman Catholics alike, to experience the blessed spiritual freedom which He alone can give.

David Trimble to visit the pope

THE Northern Ireland First Minister and Ulster Unionist leader, David Trimble is to become the first Ulster Unionist leader in history to meet the pope. As we go to press it has been announced that he intends to brief the pope on the political situation in Northern Ireland when he visits the Vatican on or about Wednesday, 21st April. We may ask, Since when did the pope, who already has his agents in Ulster and has been fishing in these troubled waters for a long time, need to be briefed? A loyalist in Portadown, the heart of Mr Trimble’s constituency, said, “People here no longer feel he represents them in any way.”

It does not surprise us that Mr Trimble, although he professes to be a Protestant, is deferring to the pope. Last year he very much compromised with Rome when he attended a Roman Catholic funeral mass in St Mary’s Church in Buncrana, County Donegal, for some victims of the Omagh bombing. Evidently his purpose was to pay respect to the deceased families. But one may easily and properly sympathise with, and “pay respect” to, bereaved Roman Catholic families without attending the blasphemy of a funeral mass. Let us not forget that The Westminster Confession of Faith says that “the Popish sacrifice of the mass, as they call it, is most abominably injurious to Christ’s one only sacrifice, the alone propitiation for all the sins of the elect.”

Mr Trimble’s meeting with the pope will take place when he takes time out from a two-day conference of Nobel Peace Laureates, one of the aims of which is to develop effective international means to protect the rights of persons and peoples. How preposterous, when he should be developing means to protect the Protestant people of Ulster from being deprived of their rights by the increasingly powerful and ruthless Sinn Fein/IRA.