How firm is the guarantee?
George Gale
The Irish are fond of proclaiming that they alone can understand the Irish problem; but since at the same time they go on to declare its insolubility, their understanding does not count for much. An insoluble problem is not a problem at all, but is either a false formulation or a fact of life.
There are indeed those who regard finding a solution to the Irish 'problem' a waste of time; but we need waste no further time on them, for they have no contribution to make and reject the possibility, let alone the probability, that at some time or other the problem, far from being insoluble, will be dissolved and will disappear. There are others who adopt a somewhat different line but which results in much the same paralysis of political will. They say there is not really a problem at all and that the situation, such as it is, will just have to continue. It could, after all, be worse, they argue; although the state of affairs in Ulster is far from ideal, it nonetheless represents the best of allpossible situations; we, and they, will have to put up with it indefinitely. They do not put it quite so baldly, but this has tended, until lately, to have been the attitude of the leader-writers of the Daily Telegraph, and it also seems to me to be what Dr Conor Cruise O'Brien is driving at. Since the Telegraph and Dr O'Brien give a great deal of serious and intelligent thought and much space to the discussion of the Irish situation, and since such a view also represents what is probably the bedrock of Conservative, in the sense of Unionist, opinion, is not to be taken lightly. Its message is: 'Let well alone, even though what is left alone is bloody awful.' Such a message is usually rendered less bleak by an accompanying hope that, in time, the security forces will have the measure of the IRA and an associated piece of wishful thinking which asserts that, when this happy day arrives, the IRA will at last be seen to have no true support among the Catholic minority in the north.
It is legitimate enough to argue that, although an existing political and social situation is nasty and sustains much cruel suffering, it is best to leave things as they are since to tamper with them would entail the risk of so much more nastiness and suffering. It is a colonial rather than an imperial argument, and frankly I cannot see those who are willing to use it, or at any rate quietly to accept it, accepting it at home.
It is a condition of English tolerance not to tolerate lawlessness; and what is intolerable in England shOuld not be tolerated in Ulster, so long as Ulster remains, however foreign to the English, part and parcel of the United Kingdom, It is not a colony and should not be treated as one: yet this is precisely how we treat it, with British troops in active support of the local police, with a Northern Ireland Secretary enjoying full gubernatorial powers, and with Foreign Office men in semi-secret residence advising how best to deal with the natives.
The election to Parliament by 30,000 Roman Catholics in Fermanagh and South Tyrone of Mr Robert Sands, the IRA hunger-striker, knocks on the head the argument that the IRA has no real support among the Catholic minority. This argument has always been feeble; for the very ability of the IRA to exist within the Catholic population, evidently succoured and protected there, has spoken far more loudly than the endless pieties we get from the respectable Catholic clerical and lay leaders who assert their desire for peace and declare that they have no time for the IRA. It also makes evident that Direct Rule from Westminster has been no more successful in attracting the grudging consent of the minority than was the Stormont regime. Thirty thousand Catholics neither stayed away from the polls nor spoiled their papers, but put their crosses against the name of a man in prison, fasting himself to death, who believes in the gun.
By their votes, and by their protection of the IRA, the minority refuses to give its consent to Protestant, or British rule. It was because Stormont failed, in 50 years, to obtain this consent that Mr Heath abolished it and introduced Direct Rule; now we see that Direct Rule has also failed. And throughout Easter we saw also that Ulster has not been pacified, but is busy dividing itself into two armed camps. That the majority of Catholics, as of Protestants, do not themselves take up arms is neither here nor there. Civil wars, like revolutions, are made and fought by minorities within communities.
Over Easter we had plenty of ancestral voices prophesying war, and the noises and threats coining from IRA rallies were not dissimilar to those uttered by the Rev. lan Paisley. 'We do not need the British army' was the substance of what Paisley said, and he should not complain, although he probably will, if people in Great Britain start taking him at his Irish word. The time of Sands may be running out not much quicker than the sands of time, Mrs Thatcher and Mr Haughey have met and intend to meet again to discuss Northern Ireland and Anglo-Irish relations, and meanwhile Dublin and London officials are meeting to study 'possible new institutional structures, citizenship rights, security matters, economic cooperation and measures to encourage mutual understanding.' Pais ley and that powerful part of the Protestant majority he represents are deeply suspicious, He has organised a Covenant in which Loyalists pledge themselves 'throughout this our time of threatened calamity to stand by one another in defending for ourselves and our children our cherished position of citizenship in the United Kingdom and in using all means which may be found necessary to defeat the present conspiracy hatched at the ThatcherHaughey Dublin summit to edge Northern Ireland out of the United Kingdom , . The Loyalists' persistent fear is that the British Government will, sooner or later, find a way of reneging on the guarantees tirelessly repeated by British Prime Ministers and contained in Section One of the Northern Ireland Constitution Act of 1973: 'It is hereby affirmed that in no event will Northern Ireland or any part of it cease to be part of Her Majesty's dominions and of the United Kingdom without the consent of the majority of the people of Northern Ireland. .
No Parliament can bind its successor and no guarantee can be permanent and inviolable if its consequences are disastrous. This is no time for a British government to talk of reneging: quite the reverse. But it is legitimate to point out that the Rev. Paisley's threat of civil war, if made on behalf of and with the consent of the Protestant majority, could absolve a British government of its obligations towards that majority. Paisley seeks to wreck the Thatcher-Haughey talks, as do others who feel that any such exercise cannot but call into question the integrity of the British guarantee. But if the guarantee fails to secure the peaceful Ulster which was and remains its purpose and justification, then what value its integrity? In like manner if, as is the case, the Dublin constitution utterly fails to provide the basis of any resolution of the Irish problem it, too, cannot remain sacrosanct if the problem is not to persist for ever.
The 1973 Act which contains the guarantee also set up machinery for powersharing. That machinery was wrecked by the Protestant majority. Much of the Act is thus already a dead letter. It may in due time become necessary to accept that Section One is no more permanent than any other legislative provision or more binding than any other political promise. The Ulster majority needs to recognise that it is not self-evidently in Britain's interest to persist in a guarantee which is very expensive in blood and money and which is not serving to pacify the Province. It is too early yet to impose a timetable upon the guarantee's duration, just as it is too early to fix a date for the withdrawal of British troops. Neither of these steps may be necessary. But Paisley's threats of civil war cannot but bring them nearer. Britain may and should act to prevent such a war; but it cannot be expected necessarily to fight one, should war break out. More options are needed: not fewer and certainly not none at all.
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