© Reuters
Despite a wealth of history suggesting that it's a very bad idea, UK politicians have reportedly devised detailed plans to deploy English police officers in Northern Ireland in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
According to a
report in
The Sunday Times, the plans would first see approximately 300 Scottish police drafted in to support the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) as a preliminary step.
However, if tensions between the unionist and nationalist communities boil over or civil unrest erupts, officers from English forces will be deployed in the province.
A source at London's City Hall told the newspaper: "All the police forces have agreed to give support to Northern Ireland. It is a concern. Thankfully it wouldn't affect too many London officers, but we would be there. Imagine it: officers from the mainland in Northern Ireland. Bloody hell."
Unsurprisingly the report has triggered alarm bells in Northern Ireland and Ireland with many people worrying that it could incite anger among Irish nationalists and endanger the fragile peace in the region.
"English police on the Irish border. What could go wrong? Don't remember this on the referendum ballot paper or being debated in 2016? In the week we have remembered Mo Mowlam I despair at such a reckless attitude to hard-won peace," Labour MP Anna Turley
said.
"We have without doubt the most breathtakingly ignorant, arrogant and reckless Government this country has seen," journalist Peter Stefanovic added.
Crown forces racked up a long history of brutality during hundreds of years of occupation of Ireland.
In Northern Ireland British soldiers killed more than 300 people when they were deployed in the region during the Troubles.
There has been an uptick in dissident activity in recent months; on Monday, a bomb exploded in county Fermanagh in what police described as a "deliberate" attempt to kill officers. It was the fifth attack on security forces this year.
Comment: In late 2016 Downing Street launched a probe into
302 killings by British troops in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. So, this is where the 'more than 300 people killed' figure comes from. The actual number is much, much higher though, even if it is undocumented. Take for instance the now established fact that Britain used secret death squads to
inflict terror on the population:
Members of the Military Reaction Force (MRF) told BBC Panorama programme's, Britain's Secret Terror Force that they targeted an unspecified number of IRA members regardless of whether or not they were armed.
Panorama reports that MRF soldiers killed at least two men in drive-by shootings and injured more than 10 civilians, despite the lack of evidence to suggest that any of them were armed or were members of the IRA.
Several former members of the force were interviewed by reporter John Ware about their involvement in the unit, which was commanded at brigadier level.
"We were not there to act like an army unit, we were there to act like a terror group," said one former soldier.
These
British terror attacks killed untold numbers of people:
In 1974, a coordinated attack was launched in the Irish cities of Dublin and Monaghan. On May 17, three car bombs were detonated during rush hour in the nation's capital. Only 90 minutes later, a fourth explosion went off in Monaghan, just south of the border with Northern Ireland. Thirty-three people were killed. An estimated 300 were injured.
The loyalist paramilitary group Ulster Volunteer Force claimed responsibility for the attack, and in a recent Irish documentary, "Collusion," a member of the group claims that the bombings were conducted under direction from the British Army. The goal: to implement a civil war.
By all signs, 'Brexit' will be in name only, with perhaps a few benefits for those in power, like removing the UK from the judicial rulings from the EU. Britain will be free to stoke tensions in Northern Ireland without any legal oversight from the EU.
A) Massive hike in knife crime.
B) Huge increase in arrests for saying the word "faggot".