http://www.greenanarchist.org.uk/Nire.htm For 17 years now Northern Ireland has been the training ground for the British State's counter insurgency techniques. On a recent visit to Ireland Arthur Scargill told an audience of Irish people that the miners' strike of 1984 had shown Britain for what it really is, a vicious police state. Roars of laughter greeted the spectacle of an English person coming to Ireland to tell the Irish that they live in a police state. For 17 years now Northern Ireland has been the training ground and the Irish working class the guinea pigs for the British state's counter insurgency techniques. .... Since 1972 the British state has been able to erect the full apparatus of a totalitarian state here in Northern Ireland in the name of 'a war against terrorism', ie a war against the catholic working class. 'Totalitarian' is no exaggeration. The typical catholic housing estate here has an army barracks / fortress in the middle of it, keeping a close surveillance of everyone on the estate with close circuit TV cameras, infra red cameras for night vision and a radar system which can detect anyone moving out of sight of electronic eyes in cameras. Helicopters hover overhead for most of the day with zoom in cameras, and telephone of anyone 'discontented' is tapped and their mail opened. Now working class housing estates are built according to a British army architect's specification. They are designed to give minimum room for civil disobedience and maximum room for the British army to step in to crush any outbreaks. Housing estates are built with only one exit / entrance so anyone causing trouble can be easily trapped inside; each block is a different colour or shade, and army helicopters have a special colour code of the estate so that any block or single house can be quickly and easily pin pointed from the air. Etc.