Ulster

A very odd speech

Keith Kyle

The most extraordinary contribution to the -'4ntrions debate on Northern Ireland !ctraordinary not, to be sure, as a parliamenn' occasion since it consisted of halting rrlds falling without impact in a empty House nonetheless, very, very odd — was the nstech of Mr James Molyneux. Mr Molyneux, a e which is not perhaps on everyone's lips, is Cs'e Parliamentary leader of the Ulster Union 'fl addition to being the head of the Black InsecePtorY, a sister organisation to the Orange Sir titution, in which capacity he is known as

--night. He spoke third in the debate, ,7'ediately after Mr Airey Neave had said `me,

to Mr Merlyn Rees's speech; it was his role 11'u eXplain the great contribution which the had em Ireland Constitutional Convention be; Made to parliamentary government which ,ring in mind the debates on Scottish and seteish devolution to follow, would, as he put it, he sty.,! tone for a five-day review of the internal b; "Mare of the United Kingdom. To the empty d_nches stretching out in every direction he sieclared that it was probably the most giflIfficant review of this century. °Iv, the essence of the Constitutional pisi'invention's scheme, it will be recalled, was the Nong on of concessions to the opposition in the itZthern Ireland legislature in order to justify isling them out of the executive. This is what YStei "wn as 'preserving the Westminster directan objective towards which Mr Heath arici'Led the rough side of his tongue. The pride tionic3Y of the Convention's work, the foundarrie, cl the claim of the loyalist majority to have pc),..` file requirement of 'some form of genuine wer-sharing and participation' in an imagin

ative fashion, was its plan for legislative committees. For each department of government there is to be a committee, and on each committee there are to be an equal number of government and opposition members. For half of them the opposition are to supply the chairman who is to be salaried, with an office and suitable staff. They will be empowered to scrutinise all the activities of the departments, sending for persons and papers. After the first reading of a Bill the committee will conduct public hearings into the principles involved and send a report to the House before the second reading. Thereafter it will go to the committee again, still with equal representation of both sides, for the usual committee stage. In addition to Government and Private Members' Bills the specialist committees themselves will be allowed to generate Bills and publish White Papers of their own.

Having said that he considered that this committee system to a great extent met the requirements of the British Government the leader of the Ulster Unionists commended it thus: 'I must admit that those of us accustomed to Westminster practices and traditions are somewhat uneasy about what is outlined in the section dealing with committee structures. We cannot help feeling that the UUUC members of the Convention, in their well-meaning endeavours to involve minorities, may have made the machinery unworkable. They have done this in good faith and in accordance with their election promises. I only hope that my hon Friend the Rev Ian Paisley who presumably might be involved will be able to make the thing work.'

With a salesman like this it was scarcely surprising that the House was not knocked over backwards by the proposals and in fact there was no discussion whatsoever of what exactly they were and how they would work. But Sir Knight, with his casual candour, had of course got it right. The proposals are, not to put too fine a point on it, a complete nonsense, as had been pointed out in the Convention by Mr Bill Morgan, a former Unionist Minister who voted for them, and by the two Alliance Party leaders, Messrs Napier and Cooper who did not. 'We are elevating the oppoSition to the level of sharing in government and administration without being part of it.' Mr Morgan had remarked. 'We are giving the opposition power without responsibility. In plain words, we are dividing power and sharing it with people who by definition are opposing government.' But the majority were prepared, or thought they were, to pay that price to bar the door of the Cabinet to 'Republicans.' If we let them into government,' exclaimed Mr William Thompson, a member of the Convention, 'how can we stop them using their power in that government to pursue policies which will lead us to a united Ireland more quickly than if they were not in government?' All of which explains why one SDLP member shouted at the Unionist leader Mr Harry West in the convention when he refused to give way: 'What I was going to ask Mr West was: would he give the chairmanship of committees to subversives?'

This indeed exposed the whole fallacy of the Unionist case. The position of committee chairman has been so elevated to offer an attractive substitute for a Cabinet post as to make an absurdity of the contention that the SDLP cannot be trusted. At the same time the artificiality involved in forming committees of equal numbers of government and opposition members would ensure the very opposite of what the Province needs: strong and decisive government. The only way this cumbersome machinery, which is hardly in accord with the Westminster model to which Ulstermen claim to be so anxious to stick, could be made to work would be the establishment of a continuous consensus — in which case a coalition government would be a much more natural system.

One calculation on which the 'loyalist' UUUC may have been relying when counting on their new system to work is that the opposition at present consists of three by no means united parts, the SDLP, the Alliance Party, and Mr Faulkner's Unionist Party of Northern Ireland. On the assumption that there were to be six committees and half the chairmanships were to be held by the opposition, there might only be one SDLP chairman, who could perhaps be slotted into a not very controversial spot. But suppose the UUUC were to gain in strength, this would presumably be at the expenses of UPNI and Alliance (though a large proportion of Alliance voters are Catholics, so that if they deserted it would be to the SDLP). The committees would still have to be equal in number, so that as the UUUC grew, so more than proportionately would the obstructive power of the SDLP. .

This committee system is one of three points which Mr Merlyn Rees has referred for further consideration to the Convention, which he announced during the debate he would resuscitate for a month. His speech started off quite well with a forceful presentation of the case against any British withdrawal but on the whole it was not a good day for the Secretary of State. To begin with there was Mr Harold Wilson. He had preceded him with a statement on security in Armagh and, in answer to questions by Mr Thorpe, had visualised a role for the leaders of the Convention in giving advice on methods of fighting terrorism. Mr Rees was subsequently stating firmly that the Convention would be back for just a month to answer his three questions and would then cease to exist when Mr McNamara from the Labour benches gently pointed out that there appeared to be a contradiction between these two approaches. The visible confusion of the Treasury Bench, with Mr Rees looking helplessly at Mr Wilson, was in no way exploited by the comatose Opposition as the Secretary of State unhappily talked his way into another subject.

Then there was the political aphasia with which he has become afflicted by serving twenty-two months in his present office. He started off briskly enough announcing some decisions, most of which had the character of being conciliatory not now to the IRA (that is long ago and forgotten) but to the 'loyalist' majority. There is now, for example, to be no room for an institutionalised council of Ireland (so much ground have we travelled since Sunningdale that this was not so much as challenged by Mr Gerry Fitt). An institutionalised system of power-sharing was by implication no longer insisted on. But hereabouts the Secretary of State felt himself unable to refer to most of the familiar political landmarks by their proper names lest he offend 'loyalist' susceptibilities, with the result that before the end of his speech he was making statments of quite extraordinary opacity. In one of his more lucid understatements he observed that he 'must tell the House that support from both sides of the community is not at present forthcoming for the total system proposed in the Report.'

Curiously enough the Government have not even yet brought themselves to see the value to the Unionists of certain more or less symbolic gestures. There seems no reason at all, beyond a certain constitutional purism that is surely misplaced, why the Governor and the Privy Council should not be restored as part of a plan for devolved government. The reason for not agreeing to a full quota of Northern Ireland MPs is well known — both parties nowadays consider Ulstermen a nuisance and consider that having more than the existing twelve would be pretty unbearable — but the convenience of the party machines really ought not to be weighed in the same scales as the chances of getting the Protestants to agree to a settlement. The Labour Party has for obvious reasons just stated its firm resolve not to allow any scaling-down of the Scottish vote at Westminster to accompany devolution. They can hardly maintain that position for long and fail to give Northern Ireland the seventeen to twenty seats that are her due. (The new seats would not all return 'loyalists.' There would certainly be a 'Catholic' seat in Derry, which could be expected to send Mr John Hume to Westmin

ster and possibly another one in Antrim. Nor are 'loyalists' necessarily supporters of the Conservative party. On most issues four of the present 'loyalist' MPs support the present Government. The group often resolves to abstain so as to keep itself united for the votes that affect Northern Ireland.) The granting of full representation in Westminster is in fact one of the few meaningful concessions to Unionist sentiment that would not be seriously resented by the minority.

There remains one other major issue which was substantially overlooked in the debate, though Mr Molyneux did mention it in his speech. That is the question of local government. It is not always realised that it is not merely devolved government that has been abolished in Northern Ireland but ordinary local government as well. The moment when Stormont was finally brought down by the Ulster Workers' Council's strike was the moment that a huge local government reform had just been completed, establishing a two-tier system with almost all the power in the top tier. And the top tier was Stormont itself. With the Convention in virtual abeyance the only elected politicians in Northern Ireland (apart from the MPs in Westminster) are the members of the twenty-six councils that form the lower tier. But these are almost entirely without function, except for minor environmental responsibilities and the duty of electing a minority of members of the housing and health authorities. Since their meetings are still

front-page news in the local press they spend most of their time posturing about matters, such as security, over which they have power. Some months back the 'loyalist majorities on some of the councils decided to boycott the meetings unless their views. on security were attended to. It was very rapidlY demonstrated that their absence made n° difference whatsoever to the conduct of local administration.

The powerlessness of the lower tier and the absence of the top tier means that local administration has become the business of the government departments. There is no democratic element, except informally on the part of the convention members and they have been officially discouraged from taking an interest in anything except their prime Constitution!' purpose. In these circumstances the civil servants are the first to state that the quality of administration is deteriorating week by week; If, as seems exceedingly likely, devolve government will not be feasible for some time ahead, a really determined effort will have to.be made to establish an effective and responsive system of local democracy. Some more functions could surely be pushed down to the lower tier. And if it is not possible to breathe life into Stormont as a generally acceptable instrument of devolution it might at least be reconstituted as the top tier of local govern" ment, which would give plenty of scope for committee systems, even if no room for a Cabinet.