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Spectator

For a lasting peace, for an Irish democracy

When a minority, however poor or small, is sufficiently aggrieved for members of it to take up arms against the existing state; and when, despite the atrocities such members commit and despite the distress and further impoverishment they bring to the whole country, including their own community, the minority still shelters and succours its armed young men; then an official government has only two kinds of response. It can seek to stamp out rebellion by violent repression and endeavour to cow the aggrieved minority into a resentful submission; or it can seek to discover the grievances and, this done, can attempt to remove or to redress or to palliate enough of them for the great majority of the minority to prefer the great benefits of lawful and orderly rule, albeit by the majority, rather than the endless violence and disorderliness offered by its armed men. The minority thereupon itself rejects the armed men from its streets and houses, and settles for a conditional peace which, with skill and goodwill and a measure of trust, may subsequently turn itself into a marriage of convenience, and even of affection.

Within the British Isles the Irish are a minority; within Ireland the Irish Protestants of Ulster are a minority; within the six counties of Northern Ireland, the Irish Catholics are a minority; and within the Catholic and Protestant minorities of Ireland the violent men and youths of the Irish Republican Army and the Ulster Defence Association are themselves minorities. The negotiations between Mr Whitelaw and General Ford and 'officers' of the Ulster Defence Association which have taken place this week are a recognition of the real, effective power of the men of the UDA. There is no harm in recognising such power, and the threat of further violence which it poses; and one advantage of the British Army's negotiations with the UDA leaders is that they have established a precedent for similar negotiations with the other armed minority, the IRA. It should — indeed it will, at any rate in England — be clearly enough understood that the UDA and the IRA are two sides of the same coin. They both reject the authority of the constituted state, they seek to administer their own private justice and to define the areas of their private jurisdiction, and they both are made up of fanatics. They are distinguished, nevertheless, from each other by more than sectarian and tribal differencs and by more than their ideologies and aims. The IRA has sought to destroy the economy of Northern Ireland by a ruthless policy of bombing. The UDA has not attempted this, although it has threatened "to roll over" Northern Ireland. At

bottom, however, both armies are revolutionary, both are subversive and both, by their existence, their policies, their aims and their actions, proclaim their right to have their way through the force of their arms.

The' loyalty 'of the Ulster Protestants is much talked and written about, and much proclaimed by Ulster orators and preachers and rabble-rousers. The Union Jack is indisputably one of the symbols of that ' loyalty.' But it would be stupid to conclude from its use, and from some of the favourite phrases employed by Ulster Unionists, that the loyalty of extremist organisations such as the Ulster Defence Association is to the British Parliament or to the British armed forces or to the British crown. The loyalty of Ulster extremists is to these institutions and men and symbols only when it suits their interpretation of their cause. Although there are many honourable men in Northern Ireland who are genuinely loyal to Britain, those who belong to the Ulster Defence Association and those who support, one way or another, the members and objects of that private revolutionary. army (and not all such members and supporters are Irish or live in Ireland) cannot in any sense whatever be regarded as loyal subjects of the realm. Ever since Carson, the true loyalty of those whose slogan has been, and remains, " Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right" is to a Protestant Ulster ruled by themselves. They have preferred such an Ulster to have the protection and assistance of Great Britain; but they have not hesitated, nor do they now hesitate, to threaten secession and the taking up of arms against the armed forces of the British crown whenever it suits their purposes to do so. Although it must be presumed that the majority of the Catholic minority wish to spend their lives in Ulster in peace, this has not prevented the IRA from receiving shelter and support; and we must expect that, although the majority of the Protestant majority also wish to live in Ulster in peace, this will not prevent them from harbouring and succouring the men of the UDA.

"Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right "was not, is not and cannot ever be a slogan of ' loyalists ' loyal to anything but themselves. It may be that all men's loyalty is of this nature, but the way such loyalty finds practical expression in public politics depends upon what each man believes himself to be. Men have all manner of loyalties. Tribal and regional, as well as sectarian, loyalties persist and exist alongside other loyalties, some domestic, others public. It is as England, Scotland and Wales that 'national' teams play football; and we worship at different churches, synagogMes and mosques, and at none at all. But it is as Britain that we are governed; and it is as Britain that we go to war; and it was as Britain that we organised an Empire, that we inaugurated and carried through the first stages of the still uncompleted Industrial Revolution, and that we sustained the Pax Britannica. Such sonorous historical rehearsals are not inappropriate when this country, Britain, addresses itself, as it cannot escape from doing; to the problem of Ireland. For it is evident that, througfi-, out the history of the British Isles, Ireland has never really formed part of that nation of Englishmen, Scotsmen and Welshmen which we call Britain. And this is true as much of northern as of southern Ireland. England,. and later Great Brit*, have made many efforts to incorporate Ireland within the realm; but all these efforts have failed. Ireland has remained intractably Irish. The English settlements inside the Pale, the Scottish settlements in parts of Ulster, produced an Ascendancy, and British wealth and power dominated the poor and weak offshore island: but the Irish never ceased to absorb the colonists and never ceased for long to regard themselves as anything but Irish. The Irishness of the north is no less Irish than that of the south. The loyalties of Ulster are as Irish as the loyalties of Munster, Leinster and Connacht. And this is what the slogan" Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right" means, and what the IRA and the UDA means; and this is what the Lloyd George settlement which partitionedIreland and which now lies in ruins failed to recognise or to express. When the British army cannot dare to turn its back to either side, when it is now in direct confrontation with IRA and with the UDA barricades, when British authority is openly and successfully challenged' by Irishmen of different persuasion but similar, indeed kindred, temper: then we see clearly that the only solution will be an Irish solution, and that a British solution will never work.

The proroguing of Stormont and the imposition of direct rule, advocated in these columns, was a necessary and statesmanlike step; and we endorse what the Taoiseach, Mr Jack Lynch, writes in this month's

Poreiga Affairs:

Firstly, I consider Opt the decision by the British government io exercise its full.responsibility for Northern Ireland directly for one Year from March 1972 was a positive step because it meant a recognition that it was not possible to work through existing structures. But that step was presented only as a necessary Preliminary to a solution and not itself as a.solution. Secondly, .1 consider that any attempt to follow it up by integrating Northern Ireland fully into the United Kingdom would be disastrous. A substantial minority in the North would permanently resist it with the support of the great majority of the • people of Ireland. Such an attempt would drive a wedge between the majority populations of the two islands; and ... Northern Ireland cannot be dealt With without reference to the Anglo-Irish relationship as a whole.

It is extremely unlikely that any British government Would pursue a policy of fully integrating Northern Ireland into the United Kingdom; and it is also extremely unlikely that any such policy would command any substantial support either in the House of Commons or in the country. Integration will not be attempted by any Conservative or Labour government, for it would perpetuate the problem, exacerbate it, and import it into Great Britain. Mr Lynch declares that "Britain should recognise that the more intransigent among the Unionist minority in Ireland are not entitled to a permanent veto on harmony in Anglo-Irish relations," and indeed they are not; but it is doubtful whether a public pronouncement by the British authorities to this effect would help at the moment. The Irish Prime Minister recognises "that obtaining unity is a difficult process. There has to be a growth of trust and reconciliation on all sides. But I believe that Irish unity should be the aim, and a commitment should be made by the British government to its achievement." There is no doubt that the present British government endorses both Mr Lynch's analysis and his conclusion. The unification of Ireland isthe undeclared policy of the British government and the only substantial difference between the Irish and British governments in this regard is that the Irish government wants the British government to make a public declaration of its commitment. This is very much a question of wording and of timing, and it is clear that it is not yet time for the right words to be found and uttered, if public utterance is required.

This is, however, the time for diplomatic exchange and, reading between the lines of Mr Lynch's important pronouncement, it is not difficult to discern the faint and tentative lineathents of a solution. He writes:

V] should be clear that a united Ireland will not be an Ireland in which the present state in the' South 'takes over the ' North 'and assimilates it into its existing structures. There should be negotiation: but it should ' be about a new Ireland ... which should not ihvohie any levelling down, on either side, of existing social or economic standards....

The 1937 Constitution [of the Irish Republic] as it stands is not suitable for a new Ireland. My own view is that it would be better to regard the new Ireland as an entirely new political entity which should work out and enact for itself its own constitution. I do not say this because of reluctance to consider the changes necessary for a new Ireland but on the contrary because I believe that a fresh start could be a better approach. This would not, however, exclude preparatory work being undertaken now.

It may be that Mr Lynch's notion that some new Ireland with a new Constitution could be worked out and enacted by Irishmen alone so that the government of Ireland, in the Parnell phrase which he quotes, would "be the resultant of all the forces within that country." But it is more likely that any new Ireland with a new Constitution will also have to come about as a consequence of complex negotiations in which the British government would have to play a major role.

Stormont is gone. It is becoming now the time for the Dail to follow it into oblivion; for the Dail, as much as Stormont, is evidence of the division of Ireland; and, just as the rule of Stormont proved to be intolerable to the minority in Northern Ireland, so, inevitably, would the rule of the Dail prove to be to the minority in a united Ireland. This Mr Lynch publicly recognises. And if the Dail is to go, then, for exactly the same reasons, the Irish Constitution adopted by the Dail in 1937 must go too. It will not be a matter of repealing it or re-writing parts of it; for if a united Ireland is to come about, as surely it must, then a new state will have been created and the constitutions and institutions of its constituent parts will have become defunct. That new State of Ireland will need to reconcile its inhabitants; it will require, again in Parnell's words," the energy, the patriotism, the talents, and the work of every Irishman "; it will have to exclude the causes of divisions, protect the rights of minorities and welcome an Anglo-Irish intimacy. The new State, in

other words, will have to be secular, democratic and liberal. It is only through the establishment of a secular Irish democracy that a lasting peace in Ireland will be secured and the Anglo-Irish problem finally be ended.