just to show how suggestable I am.... here is a word for word transcript of Protestant rights activist Girvan Loyals famous "I have a dream " speech made just before his assasination in 1967 , just on the final whistle of that years european cup final... As we walk on the 12th of july, we must make the pledge to the grand master that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of Protestant rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Protestant is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of taig brutality. We can never be satisfied, as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of marching, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of Manchester. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Protestants basic mobility is from a smaller Lodge to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their sashes and robbed of Sir Walters dignity by signs stating "For Tims Only". We cannot be satisfied as long as a Protestant in The Vatican City cannot vote and a Protestant in Coatbridge believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty Tarrier brush that sweeps stuff under their mhanky grey and green carpet. Go back to Larkhall, go back to Airdrie, go back to Bridgeton, go back to Govan, go back to Ayrshire, go back to the blazers and handshakes of your jobs in the S.F.A knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of Kerrydale I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of celtic and Catholicism, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the Protestant dream. I have a dream that one day this Rangers will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all Non-Catholics are created equal." I have a dream that one day on the blue seats of Ibrox the sons of former apprentice boys and the sons of former lodge masters will be able to sit down together at the table of masonic brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of The Vatican City a state sweltering with the heat of Tobins injustice, sweltering with the heat of the o`ffended, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a quintessentially British nation where they will not be judged by the color of their blue noses but by the content of their character. I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day, down in Armagh with its vicious papists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of ooh-aah up the `ra and communion and confession; one day right there in Armagh, little protestant boys and protestant girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls of any other denomination other than papism as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today. This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to Girvan with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope ; a stone of hope, which sounds very like **** the pope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful orange symphony of masonic brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go be up to our knees in fenian blood together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day. This will be the day when all of God's Protestant children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "The Famine`s over , why dont you go home" And if Her Majestys Britain is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of Glen Mavis. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New Cumnock. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Possilpark ! Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Inverness! Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of East Kilbride! Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Glasgow City Council. From every mountainside from every council, let freedom ring. And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and............ Catholics,........Im only saying that , I dont really mean it......... will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Protestant spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"
The following excerpt is from the novel ‘The Cruel Sea’ by Nicholas Monsarrat. Monsarrat saw action serving on the convoys in the battle of the Atlantic and so was writing from experience. “……But it was difficult to hold one’s contempt from a country such as Ireland, whose battle this was and whose chances of freedom and independence in the event of a German victory were nil. The fact that Ireland was standing aside from the conflict at this moment posed, from the naval angle, special problems which affected, sometimes mortally, all sailors engaged in the Atlantic, and earned their particular loathing. Irish neutrality, on which she placed a generous interpretation, permitted the Germans to maintain in Dublin an espionage centre, a window into Britain, which operated throughout the war and did incalculable harm to the Allied cause. But from the naval point of view there was an even more deadly factor: this was the loss of naval bases in southern and western Ireland, which had been available to the Royal Navy during the First World War but were now forbidden them. To compute how many men and how many ships this denial was costing, month after month, was hardly possible; but the total was substantial and tragic. From these bases escorts could have sailed further out into the Atlantic, and provided additional cover for the hard-pressed convoys: from these bases, destroyers and corvettes could have been refuelled quickly, and tugs sent out to ships in distress: from these bases, the battle of the Atlantic might have been fought on something like equal terms. As it was, the bases were denied: escorts had to go ‘the long way round’ to get to the battlefield, and return to harbour at least two days earlier than would have been necessary: the cost, in men and ships, added months to the struggle, and ran up a score which Irish eyes a-smiling on the day of Allied victory were not going to cancel. From a narrow legal angle, Ireland was within her rights: she had opted for neutrality, and the rest of the story flowed from this decision. She was in fact at liberty to stand aside from the struggle, whatever harm this did to the Allied cause. But sailors, watching the ships go down and counting the number of their friends who might have been alive instead of dead, saw the thing in simpler terms. They saw Ireland safe under the British umbrella, fed by her convoys and protected by her air force, her very neutrality guaranteed by the British armed forces: they saw no return for this protection save a condoned sabotage of the allied war effort; and they were angry – permanently angry. As they sailed past this smug coastline, past people who did not give a damn how the war went as long as they could live on in their fairy-tale world, they had time to ponder a new aspect of indecency. In the list of people prepared to like you when the war is over, the man who stood by and watched while you were getting your throat cut could not figure very high.”
