• What significance do you think the recent killings will have for South Armagh and the way people think about the situation here? PADDY SHORT: I don't think it will make any change in the situation. Whoever is doing them is trying to create a sectarian war in South Armagh - and that is just not on. There can be no sec tarian war because the ratio of the population is at least 85 to 15 in favour of nationalists or Republicans.
The British Army could never control South Armagh because the people are solid Republican - anti-british o pro-Irish, however you want to take it The events of the last five years have proved this. here have been more soldiers shot and killed and wounded around this particular other part of the North.
JIM SHORT: Another important point is that even in the event of a civil war, a sectarian war here, the British Army wouldn't step in to 'keep the peace between Protestants and Catholics. The shootings the other day show that there JOHN MAGEE reports from Belfast just nonsense.
come about?
area man any profile. is some collusion going on between the UDR - the biggest British Army regiment in the North of Ireland with 8,000 men in it-and the para-military groups, so the idea that the British Army would stop any sectarian war is • I'm told the soldiers haven't shown their faces here for quite a time. Would you like to tell me PS: first of all how this situation has PS: Well the Provisional ceasefire started at the beginning of the year. There were no incidents around here, the Provisionals have never fired a shot. On the other hand the last regiment of the Army that was here misbehaved themselves on many occasions, with the net result that the Provisionals took what they call a retaliatory action against them tour miles from here, when four soldiers were blown up. This was the lesson the Army had to get - that the only way they can survive round Crossmaglen is with a low • When the Army first came into this area they came in some strength. Why did they come in the first place?
iney came nere tor te simpie reasor that the RUC couldn't control the area. They came in for no other reason than to keep the flag flying, and say: "This is British territory, we re the representative and we re going to keep it under control. The people naturally revolted, and now the Army here are in a dilemma.
One thing that should always be stressed is that Faulkner and Taylor are primarily responsible for all the deaths of all the soldiers around here. In 1970 they were making a great play about the intutration or me civil nients movemen. by IRA men. They would never admit that there was a rising in the worth, you see, it was all blamed on people coming up from the South of Ireland. So they decided they would blow up the border They had to tina an excuse. So or one Saturday nignt in August a car storen in Newry was planted here on the main Crossmaglen- Dundalk border road. ror nearly three days it sat there, then two off-dutv policement went to get it, open ed the doar, and they got blown up.
The people who put that car there wanted to create the situation of the more.
So the Army went and blocked the Dundalk road; the people wouldn't have it, because that's their life-line; it was blocked again, removed again, and again, and again....about twelve or thirteen times in all. And it was through this that there was formed the nucleus of an anti-British campaign. And then the soldiers started getting shot.
I believe that if the Army had just kept out of this area completely, and if the police had vacated the barracks, then there wouldn't have been a single life lost. After all, we had never before hac the British Army here in all our lifetime JS: Even in the period when Catholics were supposed to be welcoming the troops after August 1969, they were only barely tolerated round here. People hated to see them coming into the shops, and your stomach didn't really settle until they were gone There's an interesting little story about that. Four soldiers used to come into the shop - one a Pakistani - and we'd talk to them and ask them why they were here. We'd tell them that obviously they weren't here to keep law and order, they weren't here to keep two tactions trom tignting, and the oniy reason they were here was to keep the This Pakistani agreed with me -anc there was one English chap there who took umbrage at this. The next day, the tour so clers came sown acain ane unt Pakistani put his head round the bar and said: "We're not allowed in here any Of course, if the people feel that they can't be beaten, then they walk with their heads higher and higher. We just ignore the Army, treat them with contempt. But there'll never be peace until they leave JS: I think all these attacks by Rees and others - they're just trying to blacken and tarnish the whole area and thereby trying to break down the ceasefire.
The situation in which all this was being talked about was that the Convention
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Red Weekly talks to PADDY SHORT, a leading spokesman for the people of Crossmaglen in South Armagh since the early days of the civil rights movement, and his son JIM SHORT