Sir: I cannot help noticing the number of totally unfounded
personality attacks on the various Northern Irish MPs now in Westminster, with the presumed message as to what a grand guy Faulkner is, and how the moderate support he has is so important, and how lacking in talent the other Ulster politicians are. I merely wish to say that such is totally ill informed, and in fact dangerous. There is little 'moderate' opinion; after what has happened over five years, why should there be?
Taking personalities first, actually most of the leading NI politicians are far better at their job than the average British Minister who can hardly make a decent speech or stick to a principle these days. How many could steer such a tricky course as has Gerry Fitt for example, who has run rings around Whitelaw and the Sinn Fein; then take Paisley with an income of E20,000 per annum — how many English politicians except for Enoch can hold huge political meetings in either country? He is a big personality and one of the few politicians with the guts to get on a street and stop a riot. Then take Faulkner, who has very few principles other tlkan personal power in his backyard — no British minister can run rings around the whole of the TV interviewers and press corps as can he — only Harold can match him in wily slipperiness and he is a first-rate administrator. Yet Faulkner is not popular in Ulster — during the war he did not join up since there was no conscription; and the feeling was summed up by Gen Jimmy Steele after the war when Faulkner tried to join the TA to become a 'Captain,' who told him that he had had five years in which to join up, and it was too late to join his regiment! West is not the President of the Irish Farmers Union for nothing; indeed to be a politician in counties like Fermanagh takes guts; he has had ministerial experience for longer than quite a few of the Westminster whizz kids. Craig has had his house blown up twice; he is a competent lawyer who has been very ill, but may have recovered his old health after his operation. You may disagree with his long-held view that terrorists must be coped with, and that Britain does not wish to do this, but he formed a party with a considerable degree of success!
The plain fact is that the vast majority back the present eleven Loyalists; they are fed up with Faulkner because he obviously gambled against having to face an electorate and so thought it safe to ignore the majority view on what was hatched up at Sunningdale which had not been previously disclosed to the Northern Irish electorate.
That is why Faulkner, unlike all the others, would not face the electors for a Westminster seat; like Chichester Clark he knew only two well that he would get the bird. What the Conservative Party has to realise is that the majority of Ulster votes for those they can trust not to sell them out; and that when a politician does a deal with the opposite side, and agrees to things which are obviously unacceptable to the majority then he does not get a vote next time round. Furthermore the party structure is in fact more democratic than in England where the whole thing is 'fixed' by the leader who is not accountable to a large party council.
So what do you and your corres pondents want from the Ulster voter? So far, to please Gerry Fitt, the Tory party insisted upon a very one-sided bargain at Sunningdale and decided to do without the Ulster MPs — and that has cost the party the right to govern the country. Do you think the Conservatives can do without any Ulster MPs for ever? It is one thing to talk about Coalition and Councils of Ireland when they are on an equal footing on a like for like basis between South and North Ireland; and when a real grip of the IRA is taken by both sides, and something is done to extradite fugitive terrorists like Dugdale. But that is not what Mr Heath insisted that the Loyalists should accept — instead he let out twenty-four members of the 1st Battalion of the Provos at Andersontown who promptly started murdering British troops, agreed to an all-Irish Assembly which would as in the case of the Council be loaded by PR and power sharing in the favour of Republicans both sides of the border! It was never on. As for extradition, he never even bothered to insist upon it, and it is ludicrous to expect people to cross the border to give evidence — Heath must have known that that is not a possibility whilst the IRA intimidate people and witnesses and judges. The position is that quite unneces sarily the Tories will, if they go on denigrating those who objected to Sunningdale, lose the support of Irish voters altogether for keeps; for nothing worth a twopenny damn in return — not even a bloody 'principle!
Daniel O'Keeffe 4 Cravenhill Gardens, London
Previous page
