NO CELEBRATION OF MILITARISM AND WAR

NO CELEBRATION OF MILITARISM AND WAR

For years, recruitment to the British army has failed to meet its targets, but as a result of the growing economic crisis the number of young people joining is on the increase, particularly unemployed youth from working-class communities. That has always been the case: they want young people to die defending the interests of the rich and powerful.

Armed Forces Day is an attempt by imperialism to glorify death and destruction, to justify occupation and aggression. This Armed Forces Day is an attempt by the Unionist establishment to encourage more unemployed youth to join up. Unionism has nothing to offer young people from the Protestant and loyalist communities. It has no policies for creating jobs or building social services for working people. This Armed Forces Day is a reflection of the bankrupt strategy of unionism, and in particular of the DUP, in continuing to foster sectarianism and division.

Trade unions in Britain have organised very effective opposition to British army recruitment in schools: they have recognised that it is their sons and daughters who will die in the interests of big corporations and a bankrupt political class. The British government has dismantled many of the physical manifestations of the British military presence.

The watchtowers are largely gone, and soldiers are no longer on the streets. Until recently, more soldiers were stationed here than in Afghanistan. The watchtowers have been replaced by more sophisticated methods of surveillance, copperfastened by the construction of the largest MI5 installation outside London, at Hollywood, County Down. Counties Tyrone and Derry are used as training grounds for preparing soldiers for Afghanistan and Iraq. This has left dozens of small rural areas plagued nightly by low-flying helicopters.

Shannon and Aldergrove Airports have been and are being used by the CIA in “extraordinary rendition” flights of “terrorist suspects” and also in directly contributing to murder and illegal wars on other countries. More than 100,000 Iraqi civilian have been murdered as a result of the invasion of 2003, with millions more displaced as refugees.

Unionist politicians, like their counterparts at Westminster, have nothing to offer young people. Their policies, not just in the North of Ireland but throughout Britain, have condemned young people to a life on the dole and to poverty. They oversee a society were tens of thousands of young people feel completely alienated from.

The Connolly Youth Movement, as young communists, reject this glorification of war and aggression. This is about the celebration of imperial adventures. The tens of thousands of young people disabled for life by bombs, missiles and land mines dropped or planted by armies of aggression remain firmly hidden.

CYM