Two insincerities
Dr Garret Fitzgerald said, after the capture of seven tons of arms which tile IRA was shipping from America to Ireland: 'There are still people in the United States who, failing to comprehend tbe situation in this country, are willing to give aid to purchase and send arms to Murder Irish people, including our police Mid armed forces.' No doubt there exist, in AMerica, uncomprehending innocents who think that the money they give to Irish Republicans is spent exclusively on woolly socks for the old folk at home. But much More important, there exist people who send money in order that Irish people may be killed. Dr Fitzgerald would have sound- ed more impressive if he had drawn unre- Muting attention to this fact. Instead he indulged in an easy insincerity, said what he thought either he himself or his audi- ence would prefer to hear. Politicians are held in such widespread contempt because, from motives high and low, they almost continually avoid being honest. The electorate, it is tacitly agreed, cannot bear very much reality. So we are fed on insincerities, and are almost continually insulted by politicians who expect us to be so stupid that we do not notice the bogus- ness of their remarks. Mr Hattersley is brilliant at administering this sort of insult to an audience's intelligence. Of Mr Kin- nock's defeat at the Labour Conference on the issue of reselection of MPs Mr Hatters- ley said: 'It was a defeat for the motion which he and I supported, but it wasn't a defeat for him.' What does he mean? Dr Owen may or may not be, as some obser- vers now claim, a great man, but often he does not need to be. He merely says what he thinks, proves almost daily that honesty is the best politics. When the Labour Party rejected the views he held, including his view of how MPs should be selected, and it became evident that he could not change the party, he left rather than fight the next election on a manifesto so much of which he would have been dishonest to endorse. Some years after Dr Owen, Mr Kinnock and Mr Hattersley run about crying for one man one vote, and even for a reasonably strong defence policy, find that their activ- ists will have none of it, and sit tight. Those who ride the present Labour Party will find after a bit that they cannot dismount, just as the insincere person finds, after a time, that he is no longer capable of sincerity. They will wait, terrified, for the tiger to throw them off and eat them for breakfast. If only, when the tiger was but a cub, they had said what Mr Hattersley at least thought — that it was a vicious beast — and strangled it.
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