PLAYING IT DIRTY
SIR,-1 know very little about Cyprus, but it has often been said that there are parallels between
events there and events in Ireland between 1916 and 1922, even to the sporadic revenge killings that went on in both islands for some time after the end of organised hostilities, and, of course, the reciprocal accusations of brutality and torture.
But I do know something about the war for Irish independence, and being of Unionist stock, and not holding Unionist convictions, I must have heard or read most of the atrocity stories put about by both sides, and I'm sure that the conclusion I reached about them is just as applicable to Cyprus.
The naiveté that allows itself to believe that its own side is incapable of cruelty can never have been
better exemplified than by Sir John Harding when he spoke of the United Kingdom police forces' 'traditions of restraint and humanity,' and the un- likelihood that the heirs of that tradition 'should on arrival in Cyprus . . . turn into typical members of Hitler's Gestapo.' The United Kingdom police may seem restrained and humane when compared with
their European counterparts, but not to many who have been alone in a cell with them. And it is surely
by now a commonplace that, just as some men's personalities seem to change for the worse when they drive a car, countries whose domestic behaviour
is restrained and humane do not manifest these characteristics in the conduct of a war of colonial repression.
So we have the Black and Tans shooting the un- armed Mayor of Limerick, and the IRA throwing a Black and Tan alive into a furnace. Torture and murder are always wrong. So is government without the consent of the governed. Those who govern so rely either on violence—in which case they may reasonably expect to be opposed with equal violence, ruthlessly deployed—or on assertions of a superior degree of civilisation, when they may still expect to be violently opposed, but should, in theory, be restrained by their superior civility from using it themselves, at least in its extreme forms. In practice, however, I don't imagine these considerations am present in the mind of a colonial policeman whose comrades have been tortured and killed and who knows that it may happen to him. I don't think they would be in mine.
Mr. J. W. D. Gray cannot believe that torture was ever official policy in Cyprus. It wasn't official policy in Ireland either, but it happened, and was condone and, when necessary, disowned. The blame in both cases must lie, not with the men who have actually to live in an atmosphere of fear, hate, and dangi but with those in ultimate authority who co command others to violence to shore up their o
obduracy, and had to meet in the end the demands they could have met in the beginning, before the shooting started.
IAN SAINSBURY
20 Edgedale Road, Sheffield, 7, Yorkshire
Previous page
