Ulster
White Paper and scissors
Rawle Knox
A few weeks ago in Londonderry two youths were on their way to plant a bomb in a grocery store (that had been bombed some seven times previously), when the thing went off and blasted them to oblivion. Across the commonplace carpet of blood and dusty ruin a priest picked his way, as ever, to administer the last rites. But even before he reached the tragic mess β the Derry priests are prompt on such cues β the word had come by local witch telegraph that one of the dead boys was a Protestant. For much of the morning the worst of the many fears that entwine Ulster was snaking through Derry: had the extremists of both sides combined? Then the private eyes that see so piercingly through the social miasma reported that the Protestant youth came from a 'queer' family β strict father; rebellious children who mixed with Catholics; all was explained. But the fear took a little time fluttering to rest. There were tales that UVF leaders had been talking to the Official Sinn Fein over the border in Co Monaghan; even that the Ulster Freedom Fighters, shortly before categorised by Professor Lindsay Kennedy of Coleraine University, a leading loyalist fisticuff man in the recent Assembly, as a branch of the British secret service, had emerged to seek a meeting with the IRA. It isn't only the middle class that harbours the terror that one day 'they' β the exponents, on both sides, of bullet, bomb and torture β will get together in a common campaign of murderous pillage; you find it among the steady workers of Belfast, the small farmers in mixed communities on the border, and even among the little Protestant strongholds of the northeast.
All these people, as Merlyn Rees said when launching his White Paper last week, could do more to exorcise the demon that haunts them by genuine co-operation with the police. There we come back to an old problem, which Rees must know as well as anyone. People β that is to say almost all Catholics and a surprising number of disgruntled Protestants β disregard the police because the constabulary has not changed, despite much government blarney to the contrary; and will not change until the politics of Northern Ireland do so. This time we come back to Merlyn Rees's White Paper, and its chances of changing these politics. Despite Edward Heath's protests there was little really new in it, and what is old will be the hardest to shove home. True, Rees saw massive Protestant opposition to the Sunningdale agreement without going into little matters of intimidation, but I am sure he is right. Then I was never one to believe, as the Government apparently still does, that the whole Catholic population is terrorised into republicanism by a few gunmen.
Initial reactions to the White Paper were almost affable, by Irish political standards. There was, of course, a sort of silence in the Faulkner camp where not even brave words, for so long its only product, could be delivered at the pithead. Dublin could be heard swallowing hard while it searched for the Council of Ireland. 'Loyalists' on the other hand were generally enthusiastic. They took the British government's emphasis on a continuation of 'power sharing' in their stride. Ulstermen sitting in conference together, it seemed, could succeed where British interference had failed. The discordant notes were predictable; they had all been played so often before.
Over the past month there has been some thinking among Ulster Protestant leaders previously more accustomed to mere talk. In the process the 'Ulster working man' has been smartened up a bit. Throughout the troublous period that brought down the recent Stormont Assembly, the U.w.m. was being presented by the Ulster Workers' Council and the Ulster Defence Association as folk hero, Protestant or Catholic, who had been exploited by the ascendancy, by the middle-class politicians, and by extremists of both wings. He had only Ulster and his job at heart, and no interest in politics so long as he could live peaceably in one and work safely at the other. Mulling over these warm thoughts kept men like Paisley and West somewhat out in the cold. It was not long before they were asking the UWC whether its general strike would have been so effective if there had been a solid proportion of Catholics working in the key jobs. And who but the politicians had seen to it that the right men were in the right places and the best available homes?
There were unionists who disputed this claim, but not effectively, because the politicians had had their votes for so many years. Soon it became clear that the U.w.m. was not the kind of bloke you met on Sunday coming out of Mass. The working man must fight to hold his own, and what's his own in Belfast has come largely at the discretion of the Protestant politician. That's what makes them so mad in Derry. A stevedore manager I know there was the other day hearing out a docker complaining of the way Catholics were excluded completely from Belfast wharfage work. "But," said the manager, "would you have the Protestants working in here?" The man gave him an astonished glare. "The bastards tried it five years ago," he said "By God we had them out in a hurry." There speaks the Ulster working man.
If there is unlikely to be power-sharing on the shop floor, some 'loyalist' leaders have given the idea political lip service. They have also said they will not work with 'disloyal' Catholics, i.e. those representing parties whose ideal is a united, republican Ireland, and who between them claim 99 per cent of the Catholic vote. That is so absurd as to make one inquire further. The answer, even from Unionists who regard power-sharing as some unknown English expression, is that they have orders to do anything they can to denigrate the SDLP, even if it comes to striking a local bargain with Sinn , Fein. At the last elections the SDLP showed itself easily the most popular of Northern Catholic parties. When it came to power-sharing, only the SDLP was there to represent the Catholics on the Executive. The party was also working very closely with the Dublin government. It is the Dublin government, not the IRA, that your Paisleys and Craigs are afraid of, especially that now even a Conservative British government has apparently entertained thoughts about that unthinkable future β a united Ireland. Sinn Fein, which is ostracised by both major political parties in the south, makes almost no electoral showing there and precious little in the north, is infinitely preferable to the SDLP. The Unionists, so sorely divided themselves until recently, and likely to split again once the jockeying for new places gets under way, are at one in wanting to dismember the Catholics. One way to take the pain out of power-sharing, is to see that there's no one strong enough to take much of a share.
It was brave of Garrett Fitzgerald, Irish Foreign Minister, to venture north last week to see what fragments of a former incipient cooperation he could pick up. He was, of course, statutorily warned off by Harry West, who nevertheless did meet him. Fitzgerald will have to go again, and again, if he can bring himself to. He will be doing the British government, and such men as Ian Paisley, who wouldn't see him last time, a great favour if he does. For only by showing those nervous Northern Unionists that Dublin is no monster can he give a tolerable face to the 'Irish dimension' β which after all does ekist β and also satisfy his own people that Liam Cosgrave's government is still interested in all Ireland, if not immediately in a united Ireland. If Fitzgerald could even stimulate some interstate political travel, now almost negligible, he will have earned his expenses.
As so often in Northern Ireland, there seem only to be a few short months before the next crunch. If, in the run-up to elections, Unionist leaders could learn to talk to Dublin ministers, the fear of power-sharing β the fear, that is, of working alongside traitors β could begin to dissolve. If you talk to the man across the street yourself, you don't so much mind what your next door neighbour runs across and tells him. Unionists will have to unlock themselves to make some such approach, because they really . can't make power-sharing run away. The Ulster public has interestedly watched it at work, and working.
I seem to remember that Sunningdale was the last chance for Ulster. It would be a pity if anyone in the province were to grow blasΓ© about last chances. The longer the people are given leadership by claptrap, and accept it, the β’ more desperate the desperate men of both sides are becoming. The nightmare that one day they will unite to destroy only recurs in troubled Ulster minds because the politicians say nothing, and do less, to make it go away.
Rawle Knox, the distinguished foreign correspondent, now lives in Londonderry and writes from there regularly for The Spectator
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