3 February 2015
| Micheál MacEoin
After the Troubles intensified in 1971, most of the left backed the demand for “Troops Out”. But the slogan was disconnected from any wider political solution to Catholic-Protestant division. “Troops Out” advocated as a cure-all, implied strongly that the only issue at stake was the involvement of British imperialism in Ireland. The existence of one million Protestant Unionists in the north-east of the island was, if not ignored totally, then relegated to an epiphenomenal status. What role did “permanent revolution” play in this set of “anti-imperialist” politics?