Posted on 02/18/2007 10:46:35 AM PST by lizol
Loyalists make Catholic Poles welcome
Wartime debt to Britain's East European allies boosts a battle against racism on estate
Henry McDonald, Ireland editor Sunday February 18, 2007 The Observer
The contribution made by Polish pilots during the Second World War is being used as a weapon in the fight against racism in Northern Ireland.
An estate infamous for the expulsion of Catholics during the Anglo-Irish Agreement protests is welcoming an influx of Catholic residents from eastern Europe. And the Ulster Defence Association is so keen to prevent the new arrivals from leaving, it has leafleted Lisburn urging loyalists to support the migrant workers and their families, with one leaflet reminding loyalists of Poland's contribution to the war effort.
Article continues Eighteen Polish families and smaller numbers from the Czech Republic, Latvia and Lithuania have settled in the Old Warren estate, Lisburn, where the UDA is hoping to reverse the recent upsurge in attacks on immigrants, mainly in Protestant working-class areas. An Observer survey last year found that more than 90 per cent of all reported attacks on immigrants took place in loyalist areas.
'We wanted loyalist people to remember the contribution the Poles made to defeating Hitler,' said Colin Halliday, an ex-UDA prisoner who is now a community worker on the Old Warren estate. 'We were determined to counteract all the bad publicity loyalist areas received in recent years about racial and xenophobic attacks. So we pointed out that you couldn't be loyal to Britain and a racist.'
(Excerpt) Read more at politics.guardian.co.uk ...
Polish Ping
Not really about race, but that's Europe for you.
Of course it's about race!
Just because Americans define "race" by skin colour doesn't mean race IS skin colour. It just means that that's
how Americans look at it, through the peculiar prism of American history.
Europe is divided into four great races: Celtic, Teutonic, Latin and Slavic, with a handful of fringe tribes who don't fit but who have been otherwise acculturated (Basques, Finns, Magyars).
Now there are immigrants as well, of Turkic and Berber race, especially, and of course blacks from sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean.
Not many Mexicans.
Yet.
In New York on Monday nights, a public television channel (gov't run) has a program that features a summary of RTE news for the week. One of the segments spoke about the fact that Catholics were not becoming police in Northern Ireland in the number agreed upon by the bureaucrats. Thus, the authorities have sought out Polish Catholic police and are enticing them over to NI with higher pay.
How is that for irony? A shortage of Irish Catholic cops!
I asked my wife why some in the Guarda weren't applying. She said they know when they have it easy!
Certainly from an NYC perspective! ;)
race is essentially a construct anyways. historically people have refered to the "British Race", the "German Race", etc. It's not just what the US Govt classifies in census forms.
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