THE ETHNIC CLEANSING OF ULSTER

Simon Jenkins argues that Downing Street

has got its Northern Ireland all wrong: its future can only be a segregated one

DRIVE OVER Ulster's Sperrin hills, descend into the valley of the River Foyle and spread out before you is the ancient city of Derry. The scene is one of unparal- leled public spending. Handsome roads and bridges dart between modern estates and community centres. Historic buildings sparkle afresh. Smart factories line the river banks. Derry has been at peace for over two years now. New jobs have arrived, bombings all but ceased (until December, following the Anglo-Irish declaration). Only the security towers that dot the hori- zon recall that this country is still policed without consent. Derry, like many Ulster towns, is a modern San Gimignano.

But Derry is now 'behind the lines' — as exemplified by the official abandonment of the old name of Londonderry. John Hume's nationalist SDLP has won Derry politically and even his rivals for Catholic affection, Sinn Fein/IRA, see no point in bombing and killing their own. The ancient Protestant settlement on the west bank of the River Foyle that was begun by the Stu- arts and survived the siege of 1689 has ended. In just a decade of 'ethnic cleans- ing', the Protestants have been driven from their historic redoubt in the old city across Craigavon Bridge into Waterside, like Croats over the river in Mostar. The Protestant Apprentice Boys no longer jeer down from Derry's walls on the Catholics of the Bogside. The Catholics have scaled those walls and driven them out.

Some Protestants went quietly. Some needed threats and bricks through their windows. They knew they were beaten and no British soldiers could save them, how- ever thick the walls of the Strand Road fortress, however high the turrets of Rose- mount police station. The Foyle is the new border. Old Derry is an Irish city. Its bars, newspapers, celtic lettering, heritage cen- tres are a different country from Belfast or Newtownards or Armagh. Protestants are now migrating east even from Waterside, towards Coleraine and Limavady and across the River Bann into Antrim.

Politics is still about territory. Tribes still occupy and vacate that territory in search of security. They may go first at weekends to caravan lets on the north-east coast, then to relatives, finally to resettle. But they go. Since the start of the latest trou- bles, the number of segregated areas in Northern Ireland has more than doubled. When the British installed direct rule in Ulster in 1974, they inherited what was still largely an integrated province. They have created a segregated one. Over half the population now lives in wards compris- ing more than 90 per cent people of the same religion. How can this apartheid be ruled as one land?

The answer given by two decades of British government is as a colony. I have visited Stormont Castle regularly over these years. Each time I see a new secre- tary of state settling elegantly back in his chair, crossing his legs and reciting the same message — be it Jim Prior, Tom King, Peter Brooke or Sir Patrick May- hew. They say the terrorists are 'tiring of the struggle' and are on the run. They explain how, sadly, the local politicians are a mediocre bunch who cannot be trusted with power. None the less, talks about talks are 'on offer' once they persuade their communities to 'eschew violence' and put down their arms.

At this point the walls of Stormont echo the Punjab and Kenya, Cyprus and Aden. When direct rule began it was described as a 'temporary' measure while local democ- racy was re-established. The Government's emergency powers were equally tempo- rary. In the 1980s, direct rule was gently redefined as 'temporary pending the ces- sation of violence'. Occasional secretaries of state, such as Lord Prior, have mooted political reform: talks-about-talks or `rolling devolution' or a power-sharing assembly. But one or other group of local leaders invariably walks out. Their com- munities continue to polarise and segre- gate. The politics of Ulster have atrophied. The province has settled into Whitehall's default mode, rule by decree. Ulster has joined Gibraltar as one of Europe's last colonies.

In the early days of direct rule, ministers camped out in a wing of Stormont Castle and entertained guests to take-away meals. Soldiers lived rough in old barracks and community halls. The vast 1930s Stormont parliament building — 'unmistakable sym- bol of the Northern Ireland state' says the guidebook — awaited the promised return of democracy. All was in vain. Now the former governor's palace at Hillsborough has been reopened. Pictures of Anglo- Irish beauties have been taken out of store. Guards have been dressed in Geor- gian gaiters. The local grandees — O'Neil's, Abercorns, Hamiltons, Mont- gomerys — have been consulted and appointed to the committees and quangos by which Ulster is ruled. Diminutive min- istries are headed by young British minis- ters flown out to Belfast on special planes from Northolt to get their knees brown.

The army has changed its role too. It still `supports the civil power'. The old friction with the Royal Ulster Constabu- lary has largely ended. But like most colo- nial armies it has been obliged to build itself ever bigger fortresses and spend ever more time defending itself. Britain has built in Ulster the most awesome and hideous urban citadels to appear in Europe since the Middle Ages. The bor- der is lined with outposts designed with wire mesh and concrete to resist the IRA's Mark 15 mortars. They sit like crusader castles, challenging the enemy to attack. in Dungannon two new bases, one army and one police, tower over each side of the town, grimly declaring Britain's sovereign- ty over the wild lands of Tyrone. Military briefings have changed too. They used to relate successes in defending the public and in catching terrorists. Now they talk more about the defence of bases and the capture of weapons that might be used against them. The cost is astronomi- cal: one barracks building in Dungannon base reputedly cost over $10 million. The security forces' work rate is fierce: 750,000 vehicles were searched ten years ago. Over the past year no fewer than 11,601,937 vehicles were reportedly searched. In some operational areas, barely a dozen active terrorists are holding down a thou- sand troops.

Meanwhile Ulster has been disinfected of democracy. In 1970 a report by the businessman, Sir Patrick Macrory, decided that the best way to reform the six gerry- mandered county councils (plus London- deny and Belfast) was simply to abolish them, leaving 26 subordinate district coun- cils with parish pump functions. Local gov- ernment was vested in the then Stormont parliament and its cabinet, a micro-West- minster. In 1974, this parliament was usurped by the British Government and since then Ulster has been ruled by a secre- tary of state under order-in-council. The only democracy left is that this `governor' answers questions from Ulster MPs at Westminster rather than in any local assembly. (Ulster is closer to the French than the British colonial model.) I believe Macrory's reform had more to do with Ulster's recent fate than any other measure. Politics lost all power of local self-renewal. The only elections, to West- minster and Strasburg, were on a sectarian basis: the Westminster parties refused to organise or permit Ulster candidates under their names. With no chain of accountabili- ty and no need for party discipline, elec- tioneering was reduced to the rantings of rival extremists. In the latest poll by Inter- national Social Attitudes, Northern Ireland was found to be the region least interested in politics in all 21 nations surveyed. Small wonder its MPs have been virtually the same for 20 years.

Ulster's middle class of doctors, lawyers, professors and businessmen has shifted from democratic politics into the greater comfort of patronage. If they win the eye of the secretary of state, they can join the housing executive, the tourist board, the arts council, the many development agen- cies. Junior ministers are the new district commissioners, dispensing grants and jobs. Those who stay long enough, such as Nicholas Scott and Richard Needham, become established proconsuls. In no other role can a British politician enjoy such power untrammelled by democracy.

Needham's pride and joy was the revival of Derry. He poured tens of millions of tax- payers' pounds into the city, to bolster John Hume's SDLP base against Martin McGuinness's Sinn Fein. 'One call from Hume to Stormont and the cheque was in the post,' was the local reprise. The tactic worked. The 30-strong city council, no longer gerrymandered to give tht minority Protestant Unionists control, is now com- posed of 17 SDLP members and just 5 Sinn Fein. Though it has only district powers,

such as rubbish collection, leisure and mar- keting, such is Hume's status that Derry enjoys de facto self-rule.

The SDLP dominance has enabled the council majority to share a modicum of power, including the mayoralty, with both Sinn Fein and the surviving Unionist mem- bers from Waterside. A rough-and-ready respect for the territorial space of the minorites has emerged and (until recently) an end to local violence. Business confi- dence has risen. Only the presence of a Protestant RUC and the ubiquitous British military fortifications hold Derry back from a stable peace.

Derry is the exception that should prove the rule. It is one bud of local self-govern- ment which has been permitted to flower in Ulster. The reason is cynical: it suited the British Government to prove that Sinn Fein has little support at the ballot-box. The outcome is to repartition Ulster at the banks of the Foyle. But the outcome is also peace. If in Deny, why not elsewhere, why not in South Armagh? An overwhelm- ing majority of Ulster's population lives in districts dominated by one or other 'tradi- tion'. Why not draw new county bound- aries and give them back the powers they had before 1970, subject to stringent audit of any discrimination? That way power could be shared federally, territorially as it will never be shared in a unitary state under Stormont.

I believe this holds the key to a 'bottom- up' constitutional settlement. Last summer saw a remarkable report on the politics of Northern Ireland. It was of a commission chaired by the Oslo Professor Torkel Opsahl. Since it was published during a lull in violence it was mostly ignored. Opsahl recorded the views of those of all persua- sions who have thought most deeply about Ulster over the years, and attempted to synthesise them. The story was a virtual monotone. By stripping Northern Ireland of democracy and making violence the focus of policy, British governments had committed the oldest colonialist fallacy. They had treated democracy as the reward Ulster would get if it gave up violence. Instead they should treat democracy as the only route whereby violence might be marginalised and diminished. That British ministers in the 1990s should need remind- ing of this is sad.

One Opsahl witness after another deplored Ulster's democratic deficit and Britain's obsession with 'first defeating the IRA'. Direct rule, said the Unionist politi- cian Kenneth James, 'prevents elected rep- resentatives from learning how to govern, and absolves voters from accepting respon- sibility for their actions. Direct rule is a recipe for political stagnation in which the terrorist thrives.' Nor, many felt, would the answer lie in reviving rule from Stormont, an institution that embodied the hatreds, posturings and tribal warfare of old Ulster. Sir Kenneth Bloomfield, former head of the Northern Ireland civil service, admit- ted to Opsahl that power-sharing was never likely to work and that 'the answer may well be to diffuse power to [local councils] and build• in the strongest possi- ble safeguards against abuse by elected majorities'.

Sir Charles Carter, former head of the Northern Ireland economic council, advo- cated bold devolution to councillors, who at present have so little to do they just 'waste time striking political attitudes'. Local majorities should be forced to shoul- der responsibility for planning, libraries, local roads, perhaps even for primary schools and clinics, with safeguards for minority civil rights. This was not a matter of size, said Carter. Multipurpose authori- ties as small even as Ulster's districts exist all over Europe. They are the building blocks to peaceful cohabitation between the communities.

Already power is shared in some degree on 11 of the existing 26 district councils. At this level, people know each other and are the more able to tolerate each other's arguments and needs. As in former Yugoslavia, it is the failure of more distant authority that drags integrated communi- ties apart. But power is most easily shared where one side is dominant and not under threat; as will never be the case at Stor- mont. The essence of political reform in Ulster is to acknowledge segregation even the fact of ethnic cleansing — and try to construct tolerant self-governing com- munities across the divide. The way lies not through artificial, enforced power- sharing but through the power that is shared by local compromise, by the give- and-take of citizens who know each other.

I believe Britain cannot 'leave' Northern Ireland. That is plainly against the wish of the majority, and much of the minority. Ulster will, like Scotland, need its secre- tary of state. But areas led by nationalist/ Catholic councils will form their own links with the South, as many districts do now. Ulster is part of the island of Ireland and the existing all-Ireland mechanisms must remain operational for both security and economic development. 'Troops out' is a matter of logistics, not of sovereignty. 'Ministers and civil servants out' is the first priority. Political reform cannot wait on a solution to violence. There will not be one. As the Ulster specialist, Clare Palley, has often said, only chemists have solutions. The (tentative) lesson of modern Derry is that peace comes from a shift in the politi- cal culture. It does not precede it. Nor does it arise from a repetitive chant of 'peace declarations' from London and Dublin.

Ulster collapsed into violence in the mid-1970s as a simple consequence of Britain's failure to update the province's political institutions. A corner of Europe had been allowed to rot politically, like Sicily. The symptom was mayhem. The need then, as now, was for political reform. Then, as now, Britain's preferred answer was a power-sharing executive at Stormont with institutional links with the Smith. Under the Faulkner leadership this was tried and it failed. For 20 years British politicians have been struggling to re- establish it. They have not succeeded and they will not succeed. Meanwhile, Britain has stayed, fortified and entrenched entrenched physically and mentally.

In private conversation, John Major's commitment to cure Ulster's ills is palpa- ble. Lady Thatcher had consigned Ulster to outer darkness from the moment of Airey Neave's death. She even permitted herself the indulgence of the 1985 Anglo- Irish agreement. This repeated the error of Sunningdale in 1973, that a deal between London and Dublin has some restraining effect on Ulster extremism. What is curious about Mr Major's Down- ing Street declaration is that it seems to repeat the same error. It is just more of the same.

We all have our own special lens through which to view political conflict. Mine is that central government may be a good judge of how best to govern a coun- try, but is rarely its best governor. Mr Major's reforms in England and Wales of education, the police, the courts and local government suggest that centralism is now his prevailing ideology. Centralism prevails too in Ulster. But centralism is vulnerable to its own distortions. In Northern Ireland it places a premium on violence because bombings and murders are what hit the London headlines. Whenever there is an atrocity in Northern Ireland, the secretary of state promises the same ritual, a 'review of security'. He never promises a review of democracy. It is like responding to small- pox with a box of patches.

The Downing Street declaration con- firms that violence is still top of the Ulster political agenda. Indeed it goes further. It offers the paramilitaries a de facto veto on political reform, implying that reform can- not proceed without their presence at the negotiating table. Far from marginalising them, it puts them firmly at centre stage. Never has the IRA received so much attention. Never has it deserved so much neglect. This is crass. It is no way to pro- ceed. And there is another way.

Simon Jenkins writes a twice-weekly column for the Times.