Political commentary

Belfast is not Algiers

Ferdinand Mount

Thinking is different from tho,ught, and it isn't what it used to be. let me expand on my thinking in this area' tends to mean 'I am now going to tell you what I want.'

When the speaker does not know what he wants, it usually means, 'I am now going to say anything that comes into my head.' The things he says are often called 'options'. When you hear that they are considering the options, that's the time to start running.

The Sunday Times says that the joint studies between the British and Irish gov ernments are now considering 'four main options' for the constitutional future of Northern Ireland: independence, devolu tion, joint sovereignty, and 'British withdrawal and Irish reunification'. Meanwhile, the Labour Party's Ireland Study Group is said to have reached a consensus `in favour of a united Ireland as a long-term goal.' A recent paper from the Labour Party's Research Department, according to the Observer, sets out 'three main options': continued direct rule, power-sharing and British withdrawal 'leading to the reunification of Ireland.'

Mr Benn calls for the United Nations to be brought in. Mr Rees says we should drop the guarantee that Northern Ireland will not cease to be part of the UK 'without the consent of the majority of the people of Northern Ireland' — although he adds, in a typical Merlinesquerie, that dropping the guarantee wouldn't make much difference — so why drop it? Dr David Owen calls for a fresh initiative or possibly a new set of options, I forget which — no doubt to be obtained from the Harrods Novelty Department along with Pocketeers and Space Invaders.

Wobble, wobble everywhere. It is hard to know where to start, how to persuade the optioneers to look at the awkward facts of tribal power and national feeling. And how sweet the temptation to opt for some ingenious 'timetable', as though conflicts of power could be settled by a better ABC guide.

British withdrawal and Irish reunification do not go together like bacon-and-eggs. They are opposites. The unspoken truth is that the British government is already conducting the only policy which could lead to a united Ireland.

British rule masks the reality of Protestant power in Northern Ireland. The British government exercises authority in the province only on the sufferance of the Protestants. That is what the 'Loyalist' workers' strike showed so humiliatingly. The British troops were sent in to protect the Catholic minority. That is still their function, however much the Catholics may resent and deny it. Only the British government can guarantee the Catholics either their civil rights or their participation in government. Only the continued presence of British troops could both produce the civil peace and exert the political pressure to impose any kind of all-Ireland 'option' — or even keep alive that possibility.

• Without British troops, the pressure for a united Ireland will fade. And the only inescapable alternative will take swift and implacable shape: an independent Northern Ireland governed by the Protestant majority. Few people in London —or indeed in Dublin like to admit this. Most of us are more interested in demonstrating British sensitivity than in examining the nature of the power Britain is exercising.

The deaths of the hunger strikers have shaken British opinion just as clearly as they have touched the hearts of Irish Catholics throughout Ireland. That never-absent impatience with Ireland frets its way to the surface once more. Curious that the British should appear even sicker of the Irish question when the Irish starve themselves to death than when they kill British soldiers. But self-immolation has always been a poignant spectacle; its passive purity seems to outweigh its futility; Jan Palach, the Buddist monks and Terence MacSwiney may have been less tainted with violence than the IRA hunger strikers, but suicide is still the same ultimate gesture.

It is not only that the Labour Party's steadfastness is at last being shaken by the Troops Out Movement. Many Conservatives are stricken by a severe attack of optionism. Could not Margaret do a De Iaulle — or even a Carrington?

Well, no, I rather think she could not. One of the many places Northern Ireland is unlike is Algeria. The French settlers were outnumbered ten to one, for a start. The war in Algeria cost the Algerians 300,000 dead and the Europeans about 20,000; it also required half-a-million French troops to fight it — a somewhat different scale of affairs. Nor is Algeria much like Zimbabwe where, it may be recalled that the British purpose was to hand over power to the overwhelming majority.

The only recent parallel which is at all relevant is rather less encouraging. When Britain gave up her mandate in Palestine, it was scarcely the end of the fighting. The majority in the territory — a close-knit tribe united by religious conviction and racial memory — fought for, won and defended its independence as a nation against the majority in the surrounding area. There is no reason to suppose that the Ulster Protestants would fight any less hard or prove any less successful than the Israelis.

Besides, the one huge difference with even the Israeli parallel is that Britain would be in effect expelling a part of her own territory against the declared will of the majority of the inhabitants of the region — an unusual event in world history.

But still, on we go optioneering. Dr Conor Cruise O'Brien is one of the few Catholic Irishmen seriously to confront the realities of the North; he sees the Ulster Protestants in a way that most Catholics (and most English people) don't. But even he has wearied of steadfastness.

His option is to redraw the border so as to reduce the size of the discontented Catholic minority. Under his scheme, the Republic would gain Fermanagh, Londonderry, Tyrone and Armagh — the four rural counties West of the River Bann — while in return the Protestants would gain secure boundaries within the two heavily populated North-Eastern counties.

Unfortunately, this redrawing is flawed. There would be over 120,000 Protestant unionist voters decanted into the Republic against their will. Bobby Sands won Fermanagh and South Tyrone by only a modest majority, and the other three constituencies involved have comfortable Unionist majorities. The redrawing would thus be scarcely democratic. Besides, Northern Ireland would still have the Catholics in West Belfast. No doubt both these stranded populations would speedily dwindle by a mixture of force and flight — but not until after a lot more people had been killed.

It's not that revising the border might not be part of the answer, but it isn't the crucial part. The question is and remains: are the British troops to stay or to leave? If they stay, then redrawing the border will not scotch the IRA; indeed, it would only encourage its hopes and enlarge its safe territory. If the British troops leave, then the border will probably be redrawn anyway, but not tidily and not without bloodshed.

Hardly anybody in mainland Britain is eager to see an independent Protestant Ulster. Mr Paisley is probably the least popular politician and the most alien public figure in Britain. But what people want and what people get are two very different things (Mr Begin, for example). Is the British government still secretly backing Mr Paisley, as Mr Enoch Powell fears? Does the British government know what it is aiming fur? Nobody could have been more steadfast than Mrs Thatcher, and indeed Mr Atkins, throughout the hunger strikes. On the other hand, Mrs Thatcher is also an optioneer by temperament. And yesterday's options do have a way of turning into tomorrow's mistakes. But the fact of Protestant power obstlnately limits the choices here to two: either we go on as we are, until the violence is back to the manageable levels of the Fifties and Sixties. Or we leave the province to colour itself orange. There is no third choice.