Tolerating terrorism
C inn Fein's announcement that it is to L./contest only 80 of the 566 seats in Northern Ireland's local government elec- tions next month is a reminder that it is much weaker than commentators tend to allow. The IRA has no hope of taking power by way of the ballot box. But it can use the ballot box to confuse liberal onlookers into thinking, if that is the word, that its campaign of terrorist murder is somehow a noble one. The pamphlet Terrorism and Tolerance by T. E. Utley, just published by the Centre for Policy Studies (8 Wilfred Street, London SW1; £1.95), offers a timely warning against this delusion. Addressing himself particularly to the IRA terrorism, he points out how often it is committed for ordinary criminal motives, and that where it is inspired by fanaticism, 'the condition of mind which a man obsessed with one goal in life assumes that all other goals have no validity and that those who pursue them have more or less deprived themselves of the status of 'Fancy a bit of Wet-bashing?' human beings', it is not morally superior to other sorts of crime. Nor is it immune from calculation: the terrorists are calculating in the selection of their targets, and will be calculating in their appraisal of deter- rents. But Mr Utley reaches the heart of his argument when he observes that 'our liberal principles and the institutions in which they are enshrined are of imperish- able importance; but they do not them- selves provide us with the key to how to defend them.' In Northern Ireland, terror- ism cannot be defeated by impeccably liberal methods (witness the abandonment of trial by jury), and it is better to be frank about this, and clear about the extent to which liberal conventions have to be sus- pended in the fight against an illiberal enemy, than indulge in a corrupting pre- tence that ordinary methods of law- enforcement are adequate.
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