DIVIDE AND RULE-The key to all Dictatorships

Prior to the Ulster experiment, the British had tried any number of schemes to tame the restive Irish and build a wall between conqueror and conquered. One set of laws, the 1367 Statues of Kilkenney, forbade "gossiping" with the natives. All of them failed. Then the English hit on the idea of using ethnicity, religion, AND PRIVILEDGE to construct a society with BUILT IN DIVISIONS. It worked like a charm.

The laws were in the words of the great English jurist Edmund Burke," A machine of wide and elaborate contrivance and as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment and degradation of a people as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man.

Once the English hit on the tactic of using ethnic and religious differences to divide a population, the conquest of Ireland became a reality. Within 250 years , that formula would be transported to India, Africa and the Middle East.

Sometimes populations were splintered by religions, as with Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims in India. Sometimes societies were divided by tribes, as with the Ibos and Hausa in Nigeria. Sometimes as in Ireland, foreign ethnic groups were imported and used as a buffer between the colonial authorities and the colonized. That is how large numbers of East Indians ended up in Kenya, South Africa, British Guyana and Uganda.

It was "divide and conquer" that made it possible for an insignificant island in the north of Europe to rule the world. "divide and conquer" tribal, religious and ethnic hatred were the secret to empire. Guns and artillery were always in the background in case things went awry, but in fact, it rarely came to that.

Divide and conquer was the 19th and 20th cenetury colonialism's single most successful tactic of domination. It was also a disaster, one which still echoes in civil wars and regional tensions across the globe. This latter lesson does not appear to be one the colonialist have paid much attention to. As a system of rule, division and priviledge may work in the short run, but over time it engenders nothing but hatred. These policies, according to Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, foment "terror." adding. "In tactictical decisions, we are operating contrary to our strategic interests."

Divide and conquer fails in the long run, but only after it inflicts stupendous damage, engendering hatreds that still convulse countries like Nigeria, India, and Ireland. In the end it will fail to serve even the interests of the power that uses it. England kept Ireland dived for 800 years, but in the end, it lost.

All colonialist would do well to remember the Irish poet Patrick Pearse's eulogy over the grave of the old Fenian revolutionary, Jeremiah "Rossa" O'Donovan: "I say to my people's masters, beware. Beware of the thing that is coming. Beware of the risen people who shall take what yea would not give."

Conn Hallinan