THE
SPECTATOR
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ULSTER STRIP-TEASE
What I want is Facts.' Mr Grad- grind's words might give pause this week, after the IRA called for a ceasefire to begin at midnight on August 31.
The first fact is entirely obvious, but easi- ly overlooked. When the violence began in Northern Ireland in 1969, the province was racked with communal tension, it was impoverished, it was stained by the treat- ment of the Roman Catholic minority under the Stormont regime (itself an acci- dent of history which should never have happened). But in 1969, there was no doubt that Northern Ireland was part of the Unit- ed Kingdom, its status guaranteed by an Act of Parliament.
Today that Union is in question. The 1949 Ireland Act, which had promised no change in the province's position without the consent of the parliament of Northern Ireland, was ignored when that parliament was prorogued in 1972. Since then, succes- sive British governments have promised again and again that there would be no change in the Union without the consent of the people of Northern Ireland, while all the time taking actions which cast doubt on the continued existence of the Union. A series of Initiatives', including the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement, failed in their own terms. The declared policy of `marginalising the men of violence' failed as well, and the IRA continued its campaign of bombing, shooting and killing, with growing confi- dence.
Over the past year their confidence has Proved amply justified. A great change has come over British policy. Far from insisting — if only in a formal way — that the Union is unbreakable, a succession of hints to the contrary has been dropped. We know that the Government has been in secret touch With the IRA. We don't know what promis- es have been made or inducements offered in private. But the fateful words of last December's Downing Street Declaration, that London had 'no selfish strategic or economic interest' in Northern Ireland, were crucially significant. Governments do not say that about what they regard as part of their national territory.
At the same time the British and Irish governments asked, not to say begged, Sinn Fein to join in an alleged peace process, in direct contradiction of what those govern- ments had said for years past. Far from being marginalised, the men of violence are to be moved to centre stage. To say that the Declaration was a great victory for the IRA is not rhetoric; it is hard, Gradgrind fact.
This week's 'ceasefire' is also a demon- strable IRA victory. Historians are taught to ask of any document not only what it says but why it was written. The IRA has not, alas, been defeated. It is operationally strong, it has shown itself capable recently of great destruction, and there is no evi- dence whatever of a split in its leadership. So why is the IRA ceasing to fire, and to bomb, and to kill children, if not on its own terms? After all, the IRA has carefully said that its ceasefire is 'open-ended' rather than permanent. What is in it for Gerry Adams and his colleagues?
Mr Adams spoke on Tuesday about the need of the British Government to `recog- nise our democratic mandate'. But Sinn Fein has no democratic mandate: it receives 10 per cent of the vote in Northern Ireland, and won none of the 14 seats there it contested in the last election. To believe that it will now, as we have been told, move `from the Armalite to the ballot box' is absurd. Sinn Fein and the IRA have no motive and no incentive for doing so — unless they have good reason to believe that they have now won much of what they want, and will win more; that, in other words, the British Government is close to another symbolic loosening of the Union.
At this point fact gives way to fantasy. Mr Major can do any deal he likes with Mr Reynolds; Mr Adams and Mr Hume can hatch up whatever schemes they want; what they cannot do is create a 'united Ireland' as long as there are a million Protestants living in eastern Ulster.
The British Government spokesman who said on Saturday that the 1920 Government of Ireland Act was `a red herring' was quite right. For one thing the 1920 Act did not (as even intelligent Irish nationalists seem to believe) create British sovereignty over Northern Ireland: the sovereignty already existed. For another, the question does not (as even some intelligent Tories seem to believe) turn on formal sovereignty. What matters is not sovereignty but responsibili- ty, which someone must take for governing Ulster.
It is the slow strip-tease in which that responsibility is being shed which makes the British Government's behaviour so con- temptible and so disastrous. From the British — more especially the English — point of view, there has always been a plau- sible case for abandoning Northern Ireland to its own devices, for getting rid of a thankless burden, and never mind the con- sequences for Ulster itself. The Govern- ment is not brave enough to do that openly but hopes to do it instead by stealth. The talk this week is of peace; yet this peace is almost designed to provoke Loyalist vio- lence. It is hard to think of a policy more likely to lead to civil war.
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