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The recent legislation approved by the British Parliament over objections from the House of Lords will go forward for Royal approval and become law.

The bill allows immunity from prosecution for all those who killed, maimed and committed war crimes during the conflict in the North of Ireland in 30 years of violence where over 3,600 people died and another 46,000 injured.

With a population of less than 2 million, if we transpose those figures onto the British mainland, the figures would be 108,000 dead and 1,360,000 injured.

While the roots of the conflict may seem intractable to many outsiders who believe the British government propaganda and rhetoric, that two warring religious factions, the Catholics and the Protestants, were pursuing a religious war, nothing could be further from the truth.

In reality, Ireland was Britain's first colony held in bondage and servitude for almost 800 years.

From the earliest days of the conquest of Ireland by English troops, the Irish people, Catholic by religion, Gaelic in language and culture, have resisted foreign rule.

In order to pacify the natives, the British brought colonisers from Scotland and England during the Plantation of Ulster, one of the four ancient provinces of Ireland, with the intent to ethnically cleanse the native Irish from their ancestral homes and subjugate all those left behind.

We suffered famine, Cromwell, and the Penal laws.

The Catholic religion was banned, the language discarded, and with a military and colonial occupation, Ireland lived under the yoke of British colonial imperialism.

With a rebellion in Dublin in 1916 followed by a national war of liberation, Britain sued for peace.

The price to be paid was the division and partition of Ireland.

26 counties would gain autonomous freedom, while 6 counties in the North with a large pro-British Protestant majority would remain part of the United Kingdom.

A minority of pro-British Protestants descended from the original colonizers in Ireland would then become a majority in the bastardised state of the newly created Northern Ireland, thus allowing Britain to maintain influence over the whole island.

What followed was 50 years of one-party Unionist domination, which gave pro-British Protestants their own little South Africa, with the indigenous Irish being discriminated against officially by the state in employment opportunities, housing, votes, and much more.

A Civil Rights movement was launched in 1968/1969 in the North, calling for one man one vote, fair allocation of housing, and an end to systemic discrimination against the Nationalist Irish Catholic community.

The call to democratize the failed sectarian state was met with police batons and the murder of 13 innocent unarmed civilians at a civil rights march in Derry, the second largest city in the North of Ireland, on January 30th 1972, by British army paratroopers who had previously murdered 11 unarmed Irish Catholics in the Whiterock Ballymurphy Massacre Belfast in the span of two days during the introduction of Internment, imprisonment with trial, foisted upon the Catholic Irish community on August 9, 1971.

The background to the violence which erupted in the North of Ireland from 1969 to 1998 was fundamentally the outworking of British colonial rule in Ireland, leading to partial colonisation, partition, discrimination, and state endorsed violence.

If we move through the conflict we can look at all the protagonists.

The Irish Republican Movement fought a national war of liberation and reunification.

They fought to end Britain's continued occupation of and interference in the internal affairs of the Irish nation.

An anti-colonial war based on the universal rights of self-determination. 

Their antagonists were the British army, and their locally recruited militias of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, and the Ulster Defense Regiment, both overwhelmingly pro-British and Protestant.

The British, during what is described as the dirty war, also used sectarian protestant pro-British death squads as counter revolutionaries to include the Ulster Defense Association, The Red Hand Commando and The Ulster Volunteer Force.

The two main combatants were comprised of the Irish Republican Movement and Britain's combined forces of regular army, sectarian police, locally recruited militia and counter-insurgency sectarian paramilitaries.

The real reason for Britain's Parliament to bring forward this legislation is not to draw a line under the conflict, as they claim, but to draw a veil over the war crimes committed in their name with their blessing by their armed forces and terrorist affiliates It is really is as simple as that.

The cries of the victims remain unheard.

The crocodile tears and protestations of all the local political parties fool many but not all.

In Lambeth Palace in November 2020, secret talks were held between representatives of the British government, Irish government, the Irish republican movement, loyalist paramilitaries, the police, and army to encompass all of the combatants.

De facto, an agreement was reached whereby all participants would be given immunity. 

They may dress it up whatever they wish, but in reality, the new legislation was agreed behind closed doors by all those involved in the conflict.

Britain's main aim is to protect the reputation of its armed forces and prevent successful prosecution of their personnel for war crimes committed against the Irish Nationalist Catholic population.

In order to prevent further political collateral damage, the Republicans, police, local militias and loyalist counter-insurgency paramilitaries all received a 'get out of jail card'.

While Sinn Fein, the Democratic Unionist Party, and others may publicly denounce the legislation to appease their support base, in reality, it suits them all, as members of Sinn Fein and the DUP have a history in the conflict.

Literally, people are getting away with murder because the 'Brits' want to allow their war criminals to walk the streets in peace.

A peace they never gave the Irish people.

How do you know a politician is lying?

Their lips are moving

And boy, are they moving.