out of concern for human rights everywhere, as well as for our own protection.

The events of recent weeks have shown the wisdom and logic and true prophetic insight of a resolution introduced in the House by Congressman Carey in October of last year and in the Senate by Mr. Ribicoff and Mr. Kennedy. I urge you as leaders of our own nation and of your constituents to give your voice to the cry of warning to the people and government of Great Britain. I wish other nations had spoken in concern and alarm 5 years ago about the inevitable course upon which we were engaged in the jungles of Southeast Asia. I wish the members of the United Nations who share a mutual stake in international and humane order everywhere would have been mobilized to speak both to chasten and warn us of the inevitable disaster of the course we so stubbornly and blindly pursued.

BRITISH INITIATIVE NEEDED

But that is past history. There is still time for the kind of bold initiative by the British which will equitably resolve the tensions and conflicts which today tear apart the six counties of Ulster and threaten to explode beyond those borders in the same way in which such conflicts have spilled over the borders of other nations to threaten international peace in times past.

Together with others who have come here today, I urge your consideration, as men of conscience and as leaders of this nation, to the call for an official statement of concern about the events of Northern Ireland.

Mr. ROSENTHAL. Thank you very much.

Mr. Breslin.

STATEMENT OF JIMMY BRESLIN, WRITER, NEW YORK, N.Y.

Mr. BRESLIN. My name is Jimmy Breslin. I am a writer. I live in New York City. Since 1969, in my work, I have been to Northern Ireland five times, the longest period nearly 6 months.

My first visit was in August of 1969. While I was in Belfast workers in a factory in a section known as Springfield Road were turned out of work early and, armed and with the use of an armored car, they rushed into a section of row houses and attacked the people with guns and firebombs. The attackers were members of a large auxiliary police force whose members and method of operation played the role in Northern Ireland that the Ku Klux Klan did in this country. The attackers had been told to destroy the Irish Republican Army which was supposed to control the section. They found children running from them, and women and old men pleading for their lives. They began by killing a 9-year-old boy. Soon they had killed seven more and set fire to an entire street of houses.

They did not find the IRA. At this time the IRA was a thing that existed only on records in music boxes. On the days after the attack the people living in the section were fearful and constantly asked for help, from anywhere, because they were defenseless. The men cried in their helplessness. Women and children, the fright in their faces, peered out of doorways.

A CHANGE IN THE PEOPLE

Each time since that I have gone to Northern Ireland I have been struck by the change in the people. Now I read story after story about the reforms being put into Northern Ireland by its government, at the urging of the British Government in London. The Northern Ireland Government asks for patience. The British Government extolls the reforms. But where the people live, on these little wet streets of row houses, there has been nothing. The only change has been in the people. At first, when they decided they had to fight for themselves, they came out to set buses and trucks afire and use them as barricades. They threw stones. They began throwing firebombs. The children started to come out of the houses to help. Then the women began to appear and fight.

Now it is 1972 and the brutalization of a population has been complete. Now in Northern Ireland I see only sullen faces. A man with a wife and six children sits and talks to you, very calmly, about the wonder in his mind as he came to realize that now he, too, was ready to go out and kill. Mr. Chairman, this is a man who has never done a violent thing in his life sitting there, and when he draws a line in the dust that he is ready for violence that is a tremendous step for a human being and it is a very degrading step.

At this time in connection with that I think the words of Yeats are appropriate. He wrote: "Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart."

Because of this it is my feeling that the violence in Northern Ireland is really only beginning and a statement from the British Embassy will not make it go away, nor will British troops make it go away. The IRA has come out of the juke boxes and once more is in the streets of Belfast and Derry and, Mr. Chairman, very sadly it is there to stay.

THE USES OF SECTARIANISM

In looking at it it seems inevitable. Throughout the history of Northern Ireland the industrialists and politicians have sent sectarianism running through the streets to keep the Protestant and Catholic working people at each other's throats rather than at the factory owner's profits. Sir Winston Churchill when the home rule was in trouble and it looked like Westminster was going to take it over said that home rule is Rome rule. Now once you get sectarianism on the streets there is no way it can be simply recalled, it spreads its own fire and it gathers strength from the fires it sets. And you have in Belfast and in Derry people who write religious slogans on walls and who would not go into a church if the place was the last refuge from lightning.

In my opinion the words "Protestant" and "Catholic" in Northern Ireland have virtually no religious meaning at all, they stand for the "ins" and "outs" of a political system. The political system of Northern Ireland, the Stormont government, seems to serve only one purpose— the perpetuation of violence.

At times in 1969 I referred to the actual promotion of violence. At that time there was a civil rights movement which had done the dastardly thing of attracting both Catholic and Protestant people to it. The most dangerous thing that the Stormont government could

imagine was getting together the people that they had tried to keep separated and therefore they brought out, "The IRA is coming to kill us all." I would like to tell you at this time today what it means to be an "out" in the system in Northern Ireland.

One night in the area of Derry known as the Bogside I met, in the course of a riot, a person who introduced himself to me as "one of the Breslins of the Bogside." To look at him was to see myself in a mirror, minus several pounds. In speaking with him and comparing family backgrounds we came to realize we were distantly related. In talking with him I found that, at 37, he never had worked one day in his life. After talking with his family, I found his father had worked for only 2 years of his life. These 2 years were spent as a laborer at an American military base in Northern Ireland from 1942-1944.

TWO GENERATIONS ON WELFARE

The father had one other son, who also was not working, and had never worked. In two generations of this family there had been only one job, and it took a world war to get them the one. They are in what we would call in New York a hard-core relief welfare family.

I found these people getting up each morning and walking to a street corner and standing on it all day. Standing and talking and grabbing a cigarette from somebody, and now and then grabbing a few pennies and running to a bookmaking shop to bet on the longest shot of the day.

I told my relative that if there was one thing I would do before leaving it would be to get him a job. I asked political people in the area for help in this undertaking. One of them was able to find a job at a taxicab company. When I told my relative there was a job for him, he seemed hesitant. We made a date to meet the next morning and go for the job. My relative was not there the next day. When I found him he said he had a cold. I made another date with him and again he did not show up.

After several mornings of this I realized that this person had a disability that was every bit as real as a broken leg. He could not face. the task of even walking to a job. Throughout Northern Ireland. street corners of the sections where the "outs" live always are filled with men who stand and stare and grab cigarettes as men have stood and stared for 50 years because they are the "outs" and there are no jobs for the "outs." Once you teach a person to remain on welfare for all his adult life it is very hard to tell him, "You have a job." After spending time in Ireland I understand the street corners of Harlem a little more.

And in Northern Ireland today the men are behind barricades at these street corners. For as it had to be, now they fight.

TO CHANNEL SUPPORT RESPONSIBLY

In America, in my own city of New York, I find for the first time in decades a movement among people of Irish descent to do something which will help the people fighting in the North, which is why I come to you today. The idea of raising money on Second Avenue to buy guns so that an 18-year-old in Derry can kill an 18-year-old British soldier.

a soldier from Manchester who knows nothing of the reasons for the fight he is in, this notion to me is sickening. But I see it as a very real and very ugly possibility. I respectfully ask you gentlemen to attempt to take this Irish support in this country and to channel it into the field of political sentiment.

For our part in New York I have today, along with many others, asked the mayor of the city to revoke the permit for the yearly St. Patrick's Day Parade on Fifth Avenue on March 17. I feel that at this time a parade with banners and bands would shock any sensible person and somebody cheering loudly for "the rifles of the IRA" would produce physical illness. We want instead St. Patrick's Day in New York to become a walk of mourning with political significance attached.

Gentlemen, if I may at this time say one personal aside, I am of New York and whether you agree or disagree with what I have said I do think you will agree with me in that I will take pride in the two elected representatives from the city who are present today, Congressman Hugh Carey and Congressman Benjamin Rosenthal.

Mr. ROSENTHAL. Thank you very much.

Mr. Frelinghuysen.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have been much interested in the testimony of both these witnesses. I would like to begin by asking whether they are both in favor of the so-called Carey resolution. Is that why you are here? Or is it to point the finger at the problem that Ireland represents today?

STORMONT LIKE SAIGON

Mr. DUFFEY. Speaking for myself I support the resolution.

I would like to comment on the Stormont government because I think references to Stormont are an important part of that resolution. I would have much more confidence in rule from Westminster. The British in relation to Stormont are in a position similar to our government's relation to Saigon. I believe, had we been ruling directly in South Vietnam there would have been a more honest election last year. The British are caught in that kind of situation. So I support the full Carey amendment because I believe it represents the only kind of initiative that will set the stage for what must be done to solve this problem.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. AS I understand it, direct rule from Westminster would be a more vigorous participation by the British. Mr. DUFFEY. Precisely.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. And the elimination of Stormont would be because it is somehow useless?

Mr. DUFFEY. I stress again my sentiments are not anti-British. The British are in an impossible situation. They have made their army pawns of the Stormont government. They are asking their young men out of a patriotic sense of duty to go into Ireland literally at the behest and direction and guidance of a government which has lost all credibility even with the Protestant population.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. What does puzzle me is that you say the British troops should be withdrawn but there should be direct rule from Westminster. How would they exercise responsibility if they

have to remove one aspect of that responsibility; namely, the troops. On what basis would they function?

A PEACEKEEPING FORCE

Mr. DUFFEY. With some kind of acceptable police force-I think that is the expression used in the resolution-must obviously be substituted for peace keeping. To take the immediate step out of suspending the Stormont government does not rule out the exercise of some kind of security arrangements.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Do I understand that you feel there should be no use of troops in Northern Ireland but that these might be a British constabulary? Is that what you said?

Mr. DUFFEY. At the present time the British have put themselves in an impossible position. Let me just say that suspending Stormont is only a step to begin negotiations about the future.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. I might point out the word "suspension" is inaccurate. What is called for is the dissolution of the Parliament. I assume the advocates of this method of procedure feel that there is no role for a legislative function in Northern Ireland. They do not seek a suspension of it.

Mr. DUFFEY. Ultimate legislative function that is representative in which the people of the country can have some confidence.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. That is what the British Government is now seeking, I think, to make the legislative more representative.

Mr. DUFFEY. The British Government is making such overtures. But the essential control and rule of Northern Ireland remains in the hands of the Stormont government. The British Government is not really in a position to make the kind of initiatives that Mr. Heath has been suggesting because Mr. Faulkner is essentially the man in control.

THE REASONS FOR INTERNMENT

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. There has been so much talk about internment and so little talk about the role of the IRA. Maybe a historian will have to add this. I think that we ought to have for the record the time when violence began by the IRA and what was the reason for the decision to impose the internment policy. I suppose this was done reluctantly. I suppose it was done to meet a crisis of some sort, and I suppose it was done because the authorities could not see any easy alternatives. We don't have any spokesmen on this point and maybe one of you two gentlemen could help us.

Mr. BRESLIN. As far as the violence of the IRA, there was no violence started by the IRA. There was not one gun in the Springfield Road section, there was no IRA-it was on the late show in a trenchcoat. There was no such thing until the government provoked people and they had to go out and defend themselves. Normally there is no violence among these people. There is one section of Derry, the Creggon Estates, I think has 18,000 people and they had two policemen, a police station with two policemen for years, and no crime.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. You are not suggesting there was no violence by the IRA before internment was imposed?

Mr. BRESLIN. Are we calling defense violence?