Changing perspectives
Richard West
Dublin The day after an IRA bombing last week, I overheard the following monologue in a pub: 'There was never any trouble when they had the "B" specials [Northern Ireland auxiliary police]. They knew how to deal with the bastards — kick their teeth in. But the really effective ones were the Tans [Black and Tans]. They'd burn out a village when they'd been fired on, then shoot them behind the barn. That's the way to do it — just shoot anyone found in possession of a bomb or a gun. Whx waste money on a trial?' Such sentiments, expressed in public, would not be remarkable in an Orange Club, or some parts of England and Scotland. But they were heard in Dublin, the capital of a Republic founded in struggle against the Black and Tans and regular British forces.
A professional, Catholic woman in Dublin said to me: 'My neighbour's a great "Republican." She used to make me so mad I wanted to be sick over the hedge. Then she and her three children were caught on a bus when three bombs went off nearby. The youngest child almost ate a hole in his hat with terror. And I'm glad. I haven't heard a word about the "Republicans" since.' This virulence was the more remarkable since the bombs referred to may have been planted by anti-Republican terrorists. London newspapers such as the Daily Telegraph and Daily Express suggest that the Irish government and the Irish public would harbour the IRA and still regard them as patriots. Yet several Irish people I met blamed the British government for what they regarded as softness. An angry man started to talk of the Birmingham prison warders now awaiting trial for alleged brutality to accused pub bombers. 'Yes,' I said, 'it's a good thing they were charged if there's evidence that they maltreated those prisoners ...' At which the Irishman grew still more angry: he wanted IRA suspects and prisoners to be beaten up then shot.
A farmer in County Galway said to me: 'The IRA are Marxists, aren't they? The Russians send them their guns. They want to stir up trouble like they've done in Spain and Portugal. There was a Russian' trade delegation here in the West recently. They want to take us over. That's why Ireland and England must be friends again. Cosgrave and Wilson should stick together against the common enemy, just like Vorster and Smith stick together in Africa.'
The reader may think: 'Ah but the Irish are only telling you things like that because you're English. They talk quite differently among themselves.' Now I admit that an Englishman, the historic enemy, can easily be misled in Ireland — also literally misled, for in asking the way from policemen, hotel doormen and railway officials, I was only once sent in the right direction. But even an Englishman can observe how Irish feelings have changed over the past few years. Back in 1970 and 1971, I enjoyed frequent if friendly arguments over the Irish question, and visits to IRA pubs where modish, middle-class Dubliners chanted and jigged to war-like Republican songs. Even a year ago one heard references to the tyrannous repression against Republicans by the Irish government and in particular by Conor Cruise O'Brien, the arch-fiend of IRA demonology.
Many people still abuse Dr O'Brien but now, • mostly, because of his stewardship of the Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs, which has raised the price of TV licences to an annual £27. Friends and acquaintances who had once roundly (and often rightly) abused the British government, now keep off the subject of Ulster. I did come in for an evening's abuse but this was from Belfast Catholics who said that the British Army (and Prods who painted King William's head on the gable-end) were indistinguishable from the Nazis. Foes of the IRA can be just as intemperate in using the Nazi analogy. A man whom I much admire ticked me off for having written a book review in Hibernia, a mildly Republican journal that he compared to Der Sttirmer, the Jew-baiting, Hitler rag.
The ferocity of the argument here in southern Ireland should not be dismissed as saloon bar bragging and threat. It is remembered but seldom mentioned here that during the second world war, the government of the late Eamon de Valera ordered the hanging of eighty-eight IRA men, found guilty of lesser crimes than those for which men are now serving prison sentences in England and both Irelands. The Republic can turn very savage.
It is noticeable that many southerners now appear to dislike their fellow Catholics in the North more than they once disliked the Orangemen. A Northern Protestant, working in Dublin, said that because of recent bomb
outrages he now, for the first time, felt uneasy at going into a pub. He, a Protestant, because of his accent that might be taken for that of a northern Catholic, felt uneasy in the Republic of Ireland: work that one out. Foreigners should not forget the historic, even spiritual divisions between the four Irish provinces of Leinster, Munster, Connaught and Ulster. According to sages the province now in the ascendant is Leinster, the eastern quarter, that represents prudence, hard work and friendship with England. All three southern provinces have historically feared Ulster, whose emblem of the Red Hand presages war and vengeance. In Ireland this time, 1, have been often asked (and my Irish wife still more often asked), 'What is the feeling over there?' — meaning, are the Irish now 'hated in Britain. It is painful to Irish pride that their civilised country should be associated with insensate murder. No Irishman wants to, or should, apologise for being Irish. One feels that they hate themselves for being tempted now to apologise. This hatred is turned on the IRA, in a way that it has never quite been before, and may become even more virulent after the terrible events of the last few days.
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