In 1995, en route to an educational seminar in the United States, I was taken off a plane at Shannon Airport and subsequently arrested by US Immigration Officers. The plane was delayed for around two hours while they searched for my luggage and sent for the proprietor of the closed Duty Free Shop to return the money for the bottle of Baileys I had purchased prior to boarding the flight.
When I protested that I was an Irish citizen and the holder of an Irish passport, I was told that this was United States territory and I was being arrested under United States law.
At that time I assumed that the only occupied territory in Ireland
was the six Counties but according to the US officials at Shannon who confiscated my passport and banned me from entering the United States a part of Shannon Airport is the property of Uncle Sam.
I was reminded of this episode last week by the remarks of the departing US Ambassador to Ireland Thomas Foley. Foley a multimillionaire and close friend of the Bush family, spent a number of years in Iraq overseeing the Iraqi state owned services and private sector economy. He compared Iraq to a modern equivalent of the Californian gold rush, an apt description for the US corporate pillagers of the spoils of war in that unfortunate country.
Foley claimed that 'Ireland's neutrality seems to be out of sync with Ireland's culture and temperament'. For the departing representative of the most hated and discredited President in the history of the United States to make such comments on the question of Irelands neutrality may be regarded as an unwarranted interference in Irish Affairs. Indeed one would expect the Ambassador to be told to mind his own business. But the muted response from Irish Government Ministers raised the thought that Foley was not talking out of the side of his mouth when he claimed' that there was no historical or cultural precedent for Ireland's refusal to enter into an alliance with England during the Second World War. It was merely circumstantial and circumstances have changed.
Perhaps Mr. Foley knows more about the changed circumstances of Irish neutrality than the rest of us. As far as I know the Irish Constitution clearly establishes 'that war shall not be declared and the State shall not participate in any war save with the assent of Dail Eireann.' Our neutrality is deeply rooted within the nations psyche to the degree that Ireland is not part of any military alliance world wide.
There were clear historical and cultural precedents for our non participation in World War Two for in the words of George Santayana,' Those who do not remember the past are compelled to repeat it'. That surely would have crossed the minds of our elected representatives as they commemorated the 90th Anniversary of the sitting of the first Dail Eireann.
The history of England's interference in Ireland may have escaped Thomas Foley but it did not escape those charged with establishing the constitution and policies of that part of the nation that declared its independence from England and its militarist interests.
The neutrality of the nation has been influenced by the history of the savagery of its neighbouring island unequalled anywhere in the world that drove millions of the native Irish off their lands and replaced them with Englishmen.
In one year alone Cromwell slaughtered 600,000 Irish men women and children, some 50,000 per month in what could be termed, the Irish holocaust.
There is scarcely an Irishman or women alive today whose ancestors did not suffer death from the barbarity of Cromwell and the subsequent penal laws.
Nor do we forget the famine, the An Gorta Mor, and the million Irish who died of starvation and disease while a further two million left on what became known as coffin ships, to settle mainly in the United States and Canada. We Irish share a common history with the newly elected President Barrack Obama whose ancestors like the Irish were deported in their thousands to be sold into slavery.
When we rightly condemn the Nazis for their slaughter of the innocents we should remember that this horror ended after ten years, but England's war and slaughter against the Irish lasted hundreds of years and is still ongoing.
The responsibility for the conflict in the North over the past forty years that has claimed so many lives has its root cause in the partition of the island by England.
But circumstances have indeed changed with the departure of the war monger Bush from the world stage. The Irish Government must now address its collaboration with that regime for it is widely known that Shannon Airport has been used to facilitate thousands of US soldiers access to participate in the illegal war in Iraq.
According to the constitution military related flights are not permitted to use Irish air space or refuel without giving notice to Dail Eireann' and assurances that there is no munitions or surveillance equipment or that those involved are not engaged in any military exercise or operation
A caveat in the policy does allow the restrictions to be voided under exceptional circumstances with the expressed permission of the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
There have been some exceptions. During the first Gulf War, the Irish Government permitted planes carrying US soldiers engaged in that war to overfly and refuel at Shannon on the understanding that this war had a UN mandate which did not violate the basic position of neutrality. The decision engendered fierce public debate that this was a policy shift contrary to the Constitution.
The war on terror declared after 9/11 brought fresh allegations of a shift in neutrality that allowed aircraft chartered by the CIA to use Shannon for extraordinary rendition involving the transfer of human beings to secret torture centres set up by the US government.
The allegations were denied by the Irish Government but the suspicion remains that Shannon was central to the CIA rendition policy.
As the war in Iraq intensified so did the allegations that Shannon was being used to transport weapons and US soldiers engaged in the war with the knowledge and cooperation of the Dublin Administration.
In 2003 Bertie Ahern and Brian Cowan went before Dail Eireann to address the mounting concerns on changes to the policy of neutrality.
They asked the Dail to maintain 'the long standing arrangement' allowing US soldiers and cargo to pass through Shannon. They argued without mentioning that the cargo was munitions and surveillance equipment that what was transpiring did not amount to' participation in war'.
In other words they changed the constitutional position on Irish neutrality without consulting the people, to accommodate the militarist interests of Britain and the United States.
Foley parting shot was to challenge the Irish Government to clearly state that Ireland is no longer a neutral state.
