FIRST BLOODY SUNDAY

British imperialism has marked the Irish calendar with many a day of blood. The jubilant paratroopers notching their rifles after shooting down 13 Derry workers are acting in the great tradition of British imperialism—cold-blooded murder, terror and armed suppression.

There are still many alive in Ireland who remember the days after World War I, when the Black and Tans and the Auxiliaries, hired guns without honour or conscience, tried to crush the demand for Irish independence.

The Black and Tans carm human material that formed the Freikorps and Nazis in Germany, and Mussolini's fascist bands in Italy.

Many were former soldiers from the wartime armies, brutalized by years of trench warfare, jobless and ready for any dirty work.

They were signed into the Royal Irish Constabulary, a para-military police force of 9,000 armed men.

The RIC even with the aid of 30,000 troops had proved unable to defeat the tiny bands of armed Republicans ranged against them.

The new recruits were hastily kitted out with the surplus brown uniforms and black leather belts which earned them heir contemptuous name. Armed with their carbines and Webley and Scott pistols, they had a single missionterror and destruction.

The Tans began to arrive in Ireland in March 1920 and they were soon followed out there by an even more sinister force-the 1,500-strong Auxiliaries under General Crozier.

The Auxiliaries were an élite force. They consisted almost entirely of former Army officers.

Many had seen service with the expeditionary force sent to Russia by Winston Churchill to fight alongside the White Armies against the infant Their former ranks ranged from colonel to lieutenant.

More than half had battle decorations, and they were a time when thousands of exofficers were pounding the streets looking for work.

They were subject neither to police nor military discipline. With the Black and Tans they shared a taste for torture.

Prisoners were often interrogated with pincers or lighted matches thrust under their toenails.

One man, Ernie O'Malley, was tortured with a red-hot poker in Dublin Castle when he fell into the Auxiliaries' hands.

A gallant Auxiliary officer, Major King, took a boy into a field in Drumcondra, put a bucket over his head and shot him through it. The gentlemen were having fine sport.

By these means, according to Prime Minister Lloyd George, the British government of the day 'had murder by the throat'. • They were aided, as today, by a press campaign which represented