Britain's War Machine in Ireland Author:Maurice Burke The author, Father Maurice Burke, SMA, is a well-known figure in American Irish Republican support groups. Born in Waterford, Ireland, he was ordained in 1952, did mission work in Nigeria in the late 50s and early 60s, came to the United States in 1968 and since that time has served at a church in Staten Island. A life-long student of Irish hist... more »ory and culture, Father Burke became active in many Irish organizations. An inquiring and perceptive investigator for many years, Father Burke, through frequent visits to Ireland and careful study of available records, portrays Britain's War Machine with accuracy and vividness.
Policy makers as well as all concerned with the Northern Ireland crisis can benefit from his analysis and recommendations to learn more about the causes and effects of the present struggle for independence by the Irish people in this divided country. Although this book is a must for anyone interested in the Irish problem its main treatment of the Six Counties, as caught up in a strict "military answer," is in no way provincial. For readers alert to the "military-control" turn in the latter twentieth century has taken, this book provides a small map of recognition should a rigid-control and even neo-caste-system mentality make an unchallenged grab for the twenty-first century.
Some of the accounts of British rule in Ireland are so horrifying -- torture, false imprisonment, degradation, flogging, exile -- that many people take refuge from them by pretending they cannot be true, that the British government could not do such things and therefore they did not happen. Father Burke's position is that tyranny must cease, and democratic people everywhere must make up their minds -- are they in favor of democracy in our modern world or are they not? If they are in favor, then they must work for it, and they must allow those who suffer under a tyranny to decide for themselves what are the best means for dealing with the tyranny. The removal of tyranny which affects God's people is a moral duty, a duty of conscience. And the first means of fulfilling that duty is to tell the truth.« less