"If the British take their war machine off the top of mountains in south Armagh people would not have to march up and stage these protests," a Sinn Fein spokesperson said.

The weekend protests were held in the light of the response by London to the announcement last week by the Irish Republican Army that it would destroy its weapons. A statement by the IRA said the organization called a complete cessation of military operations in 1994 "in order to create the dynamic for a peace process. 'Decommissioning' was no part of that.... Unfortunately there are those within the British establishment and the leadership of unionism who are fundamentally opposed to change. At every opportunity they have used the issue of arms as an excuse to undermine and frustrate the process." The IRA called their decision an "unprecedented move to save the peace process and to persuade others of our genuine intentions."

Immediately following the IRA's statement on decommissioning their weapons, John Reid, London's secretary of state for Northern Ireland, said, "I believe you will not find the response from this government, from the Irish Government, the American administration and the whole international community to be grudging or ungenerous"

But Declan Fearon, chairman of the South Armagh Farmers and Residents committee, retorted, "As far as we're concerned, the generous response from Dr. Reid didn't materialize.... They are taking away just two lookout posts of 12 in South Armargh; they are taking away just one sangar [small watch tower] of which there are over 30 in South Armargh, and there are five large army bases down here, none of which are being touched at all."

The watchtowers were built in the mid-1980s. They sit on hilltops 1,500 feet high. With high-tech surveillance equipment, soldiers monitor the local population. To this day, London retains 13,500 army troops in the Six Counties in addition to the thousands of armed RUC cops.  
 
'Rights are not conditional'
Commenting on the IRA decommissioning in an October 22 address at the Conway Mill in Belfast, Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams said that "the British connection is the source of all our political ills. The British government has inflicted and continues to sustain historic wrongs upon the people of this island" Adams said that Sinn Fein's strategy "is determined by objective realities. It is guided among other things by the fact that the democratic rights and entitlements of nationalists and republicans cannot be conditional. These rights are universal rights. They affect all citizens."

Adams traveled to London October 23 to address a meeting on the 20th anniversary of the 1981 hunger strikes by republican prisoners. The Sinn Fein leader told the 500-strong audience that there are "those who still think they have an empire and we're it." He paid tribute to the resistance by the nationalist community. "I'm against iconising people," he said of the hunger strikers. "I want to stress the ordinariness of them. Bobby Sands was an ordinary person who did extraordinary things in extraordinary circumstances."

Adams also pointed to the widespread attacks on Catholics this year in northern Ireland by loyalist paramilitary forces, at least 300 in all. Loyalists support the division of the country, union with Britain, and a continuation of the second-class status of the Catholic population. The violent assaults, often with guns and bombs, did not stop with the IRA announcement. For example, on October 28, loyalist gangs, led by the Ulster Defence Association, mounted an attack on nationalists in North Belfast. They also threw six blast bombs at police and army lines.

Having welcomed IRA decommissioning as a breakthrough, Anthony Blair's government has responded to these events by placing extra troops on standby.

The street clashes between rightist loyalist gangs and the security forces are an expression of the deepening crisis of Unionism. Ulster Unionist Party leader, David Trimble withdrew his resignation from the Northern Ireland executive following the IRA decommissioning announcement but faces Unionist opposition in his bid to regain his position of first minister.

In a demonstration of the growth of nationalist sentiment in the south of Ireland, thousands lined the streets of Dublin October 14 for the state burial of 10 IRA volunteers executed by the British government during the Irish war for independence 80 years ago. The city was virtually shut down for the state event attended by top government officials.

The Irish prime minister gave the funeral oration and the event was covered live by RTE, the state television network. It was the culmination of years of struggle by the relatives of the volunteers to have their relatives remains removed from Mountjoy jail, where they were put to death by the British colonial regime and buried.
 
 
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