Editorial from Irish Political Review, November 2002
Northern Manoeuvres
Tony Blair
forced David Trimble to sign the Good Friday Agreement by means of a threat
and a promise: a threat that an arrangement even more advantageous to the Nationalists
(something approaching joint sovereignty with Dublin) would be imposed if he
did not sign, and a promise that the signed Agreement would not be the Agreement
that was implemented. Mistaking Northern Ireland for the Labour Party, Blair
assumed that he could act at whim and then hustle everybody into line. In the
event, he has been able to hustle nobody. And, when the moment arrived when
he had to choose between the conflicting undertaking he had given, he chose
the private undertaking to the Unionists in preference to his public undertaking
in the Agreement.
We have
said repeatedly that the basic requirement of Unionism is spiritual—that
what it needs most of all is the public humiliation of the Republican movement.
The only real question therefore has been whether the Republicans would submit
to humiliation. (Trimble even used the word “surrender”
this Autumn). This has nothing whatever to do with the terms of the Agreement.
But it is in accordance with the personal undertaking given by Blair to the
Unionist Party on the eve of the Referendum for the purpose of hustling the
Unionist electors into a Yes vote.
We have
repeatedly compared the British attitude in Northern Ireland to its attitude
towards the Armistice with Germany in 1918-19, its purpose being to develop
a negotiated Cease Fire into a surrender.
Britain
is the most moral state in the world. Morality enters into everything it does.
It never admits to acting out of particular interest, with morality suspended,
as other states have done. It acts only in the medium of morality. But, since
its morality is forensic, and has been for three hundred years, it can do whatever
it pleases and present it as moral. Its morality of special pleading in a general
culture of casuistry inhibits it from doing nothing that it sees as advantageous
to itself, and it often has the advantage of conning the enemy. The Germans,
for example, have never been able to figure it out.
We recall
an interview with Fr. Faul about 12 years ago, when he was being absurdly depicted
as a “Provo priest” because he would
not stay quiet when atrocities were committed in the name of the law. He was
strongly anti-Republican. But he confessed to being simply baffled by the Provos.
He understood the British. Their national game was cricket. A cricket match
might go on for days on end and then come to an inconclusive finish. the Irish
game was hurling. It went on fast and furiously for an hour and that was it.
But the Provos were behaving like cricketers. The game had been on already for
twenty years at that time and there was no sign of Republican attention and
endurance running out. It just wasn’t Irish. At least it had no precedent
in Irish history.
Fr. Faul’s
view is the view deeply ingrained in Unionist culture and in British culture.
The Irish engage in spasms of hectic activity and then collapse. The Celtic
temperament is both volatile and inflexible. It doesn't allow for sustained
activity over long periods with appropriate tactical adjustments along the way.
That’s the great Anglo-Saxon quality which led to the construction of
a world Empire. And it remains a necessary belief of Unionism that these Celtic
and Anglo-Saxon stereotypes are still functioning and that Nationalism is still
liable to fall into disarray. It is not a belief that is supported by the events
of the third of a century just past. But it is a necessary belief because the
actual context of world Empire in which Ulster Unionist acted a century ago
has fallen away and all that stands between it and dissolution is this stereotype
of understanding.
The progress
of communal antagonism so carefully provided for by the Agreement reached the
point in early October where the Ulster Unionist Party committed itself to collapsing
the structures established under the Agreement unless Whitehall did what it
wanted by some other means. Whitehall came to its aid by ordering the police
raid on the Sinn Fein offices at Stormont with the television cameras in attendance
and launching the “espionage” propaganda
against Sinn Fein and suspending the power-sharing institutions. And it raided
the homes of a few Sinn Fein officials and claimed to have found large quantities
of terrorist material. But then it transpired that it had known about this material
for at least a year. And the way it was found, stuffed into a rucksack which
was not hidden, suggests that Sinn Fein was not treating it as dangerous material.
This
kind of thing had happened twice before in the course of the Peace Process.
Republicans were arrested at critical points and allegations were put into circulation
by the Chief Constable. Unionists were appeased by the exclusion of Sinn Fein.
And then, a few months later when the incident had served its purpose, those
who had been arrested were released without charge and without publicity.
Lord
Whatsisname (who used to be John Taylor) appeared on British radio and television
to say that the latest revelations of Republican perfidy (it being stated as
a fact that the raid on the top-security barracks at Castlereagh for top-security
documents, in which the raiders simply walked in, without disguise, and took
the documents, was a Republican action) was leading to an anti-Republican landslide
amongst Catholics all over the ‘province’.
This was an expression of the necessary Unionist belief that the Irish will
fall into disarray in the face of Anglo-Saxon stolidity.
But the
general response to the ‘espionage’
revelations, even among the SDLP membership, was scepticism. They had seen it
all before. Only Brid Rogers—who did not grow up under the Unionist system—tried
to make capital out of it at the expense of Sinn Fein in the Assembly. But she
made a mess of it, being called to order by Lord Alderdice, the Speaker, for
referring to police allegations about Sinn Fein members as facts.
RTE had
no such scruples. Miriam O’Callaghan, interviewing Gerry Kelly on Prime
Time, treated the allegations as facts until he corrected her. And then
she asked this remarkable question: “How can they
[the Unionists] trust people whose head of administration
is allegedly going around with secret sensitive documents?” It
puts one in mind of the much ridiculed Law of Suspects in France in 1793-4,
under which it was an offence to have an allegation made against you.
Unionist
expectations would long since have been met, if the conduct of the “Irish”
in the North was determined by the attitudes of the Dail and the media in the
Republic.
The Irish
state is a weak state by comparison with the British state. But Irish society
is strong relative to the state, whereas in Britain society is scarcely distinguishable
from the state. The Irish electorate last year did something that is unimaginable
in Britain. It rejected a proposition put to it by the state in its broadest
sense—by all the political parties which had ever participated in government,
by the economic organisations which are accustomed to act in conjunction with
government (including the Trade Unions), by the academic institutions, by the
Church, and by the Fourth Estate (as Edmund Burke called the press).
The Irish
state was shamed before its European colleagues by its failure to control its
democracy. Being a weak state—a state without resources of moral strength—it
could not take its stand on the decision of the democracy and make a virtue
of it. So it called a second referendum on the same issue and frightened the
relatively apolitical part of the electorate into coming out and voting Yes.
Left
to its own devices, this state could only exert a weakening influence on the
Nationalist community in the North. But, since the election of John Hume as
leader of the SDLP, Nationalist conduct in the North has been beyond its influence
almost as much as Republican conduct.
Mark Durkan had apparently acted as Trimble’s poodle until the police
raid on the Sinn Fein offices. Then, put on the spot by the Unionists, he acted
in conjunction with Sinn Fein. And, when Blair suspended power-sharing and gave
an ultimatum to the IRA, and the IRA responded by withdrawing from the De Chastelaine
Commission on decommissioning, Durkan revealed that Blair had suggested to him
that the SDLP should form a Coalition with the UUP—which would amount
to breaking the Agreement.
If the
Unionists had operated the Agreement in September 1998, it is a virtual certainty
that the IRA would be disbanded by now. But the Agreement has not been operative
at all for much of the 41/2 years since it was signed, and it has been only
partially operative when supposedly working. (Trimble vetoed North/South operations
even though the Courts declared the action illegal.)
The Unionists
sometimes hint that their object is a Coalition with the SDLP. But when it was
offered a Coalition by Seamus Mallon in December 1998 it rejected the offer.
Mallon was a devolutionist, rather than an anti-Partitionist. He favoured an
internal settlement in the North. Six months after the Referendum, with the
UUP still preventing the institutions from being set up, he said that, if Trimble
allowed devolved government to start, he would agree to give an ultimatum to
the IRA to disband within 6 months. He guaranteed to act with the Unionists
to exclude Sinn Fein from government if the ultimatum was not met. Trimble’s
rejection of the offer demonstrated that the Unionist objection to the Agreement
goes far beyond the question of the IRA.
Matters such as this should form the staple of questioning of Unionists on RTE.
But such matters are never raised: which is why Unionists just love being on
RTE.
(Miriam
O’Callaghan, questioning Gerry Kelly, showed she is no better informed
on Irish history than on Unionist history. She said: “Today
I spoke to somebody close to the Irish Government, who said it’s almost
history repeating itself, that you are a semi-constitutional party, and that
until you become totally constitutional these problems will arise”.
The first semi-constitutional party was Fianna Fail, and it has been the backbone
of the democratic system of the 26 Counties ever since 1932, and has hardly
ever been out of government. The fully constitutional party seventy years ago
was the Treaty Party, Fine Gael, which became Fascist in opposition to Fianna
Fail democracy. (This matter is described on another page.)
We conclude
with some extracts from the Vincent Browne Show on Radio Eireann. Gerry Adams
was invited on the show to discuss the Nice Treaty but was questioned instead
about the allegation made in a recent book by Ed Maloney that he was a member
of the IRA. The questioning was such that the only response by Adams that would
have satisfied Browne was that he should walk away from Republicanism, as Sean
MacBride and Proinnseas De Rossa did, become self-righteous and leave the problem
to fester—
Ah, Gerry On, Gerry On, Gerry On, Gerry On, Gerry On, Gerry On!——No, Stop!!!
C
O N T E N T S
Northern Manoeuvres.
Editorial
Democracy And War
Pat Walsh
Review: Middle East Propaganda.
Sean McGouran
Browne/Adams Interview
Death Of Klinghofer.
Sean McGouran
An Cor Tuathail: Peter The Pikeman
(Compiled by Pat Muldowney)
Casement: A Postscript On Fascism.
Brendan Clifford
The Archive: Rape Of Palestine (2)
Palestinians And The Right To Return.
Angela Clifford
Looking Behind Ha'aretz's Liberal Image.
Ran HaCohen
Empire-Lite.
Sean McGouran
Athol Books On-Line.
BlurbLABOUR COMMENT edited by Pat Maloney:
Labour Party: A New Leader
If you wish to subscribe to the Irish Political Review, Labour & Trade Union Review, Church & State or Problems Of Capitalism & Socialism please go to our secure sales area.