Been there, done that

Not many people know that I am entitled to join the Suez Veterans' Association. Moreover, there is a campaign medal to be collected, if ever I am in the mood. I was reminded of this recently when someone contacted me seeking information about their grandfather. He turned out to be my old company sergeant major. How could I ever forget him ? 

I once had this vision of going on a peace march with old comrades from the SVA, all of us wearing our campaign medals. So I thought I'd just make an enquiry . " Keep the Flag Flying " declared my respondent from the SVA, at the end of his email. From the contents I didn't get the impression that it was the red flag he had in mind. Marching with a bunch of ex-service British nationalists certainly wasn't what I had had in mind.

I was  once standing outside Woolworths in Derry. Several indigenous, Saturday afternoon, husbands were standing alongside me. My Englishness did not prevent me from feeling at ease amongst them. Although the times were strained, I had made more friends in that city than I had ever made anywhere else I had ever lived. A British army patrol approached, two armed men on either side of the road. One of them began to aggressively interrogate the patient waiter standing beside me. The anger I felt would not, could not, have been helpfully expressed,  I just stared in an embarrassed way, but I was not noticed by the representative of the British Empire.

A man standing outside Woolworths, presumably just waiting for his partner, presumably a local man, doing nothing ostensibly harmful, being questioned by a stranger in uniform, holding a gun. What is your name, where do you live, do you enjoy being humiliated by me, am I making you angry, will you now go and join the provos, if you are not a member already ? They liked to ask people for their first name in particular, imagining that they'd divine their religion and thus their political affiliation from this information.

I don't condone everything the IRA ever did, I never could, but I have some insight into their motivation. Should I condone the occupation of the Suez Canal Zone, or Shock and Awe and the invasion and occupation of Iraq ? Terror is always wrong, whoever commits it, and however it is committed.

What the Romans, and the Normans, did for us, was to kill and terrorise a great many people. Does this justify the the British Empire ? I think not.

Imperialism is never justified. We should surely seek legitimacy in foreign affairs, as in home affairs. The international rule of law requires the development of an international system of democratic control.

Dugsie, L/Cpl retired