A Spectator's Notebook
The Irish situation degenerates. The British authorities' tolerance of the new UDA barricades and the creation of new Protestant ' no-go' areas has an air of fairness about it: after all, if the men of the Provisional IRA are to have their barricades and their no-go areas, why not the men of the UDA? The argument is specious. The Ulster Defence Association is supposed to be loyal, although it clearly is not. More to the point: the IRA men have drawn their support from a minority which has had a legitimate grievance against the rule of the Protestant majority. The only grievances the men of the UDA have are, first, that the British authorities have not been able to impose law and order on some of the Catholic areas and have not been able to defeat the men of the IRA, and, second, that the privileged position the Protestant majority leaders have enjoyed during the fifty years of Stormont has been taken away. Putting up UDA barricades will not help the British to restore law and order anywhere. Taking the law into UDA hands may precipitate civil war, which will do neither the privileged nor the unprivileged any good at all. This is not how the men of the UDA see it: they see now that the British authorities are not going to support them, and their loyalty, it is plain to see, is to themselves and to Ulster and to their conception of Ireland.
Them and us
Thus, to the men of the UDA as much as to the men of the IRA, the relation between themselves and the British authorities is a 'them and us' situation. As far as the British authorities are concerned, it is also a 'them and us' situation, as Mr Willie Whitelaw and his political aides make clear in all their private discussions. This 'them and us' business does, however, produce some anachronisms. Sir Con O'Neill, Foreign Office mandarin and negotiator with the Brussels Six, product of Eton and Balliol, All Souls and the Times, had had the most British kind of upbringing and career. Yet he is very much an Ulsterman, and of the same family as the former Stormont Prime Minister, Terence, now Lord, O'Neill. Sir Con has been heard to remark, of Ulster. "I am convinced the British want out."
Nasty thinking
Some of the political thinkingof the spokesmen of the UDA is dangerous, and nasty, too: "Northern Ireland" they have declared "would be better run by military rather than by political minds and for this reason the country would be better run by martial law.' It may yet come that martial law will have to be introduced, but when men start saying of their country that it "would be better run by military rather than by political minds," when they put on
uniforms and set themselves outside and above the law, the language they are talking and the activities they are doing find no parallel in modern British history. For European parallels we can only look to pre-war Germany and Italy.
Premature move
Con Howard, the Press Counsellor at the Irish embassy in London for the past three years — which have been the busiest and most difficult three years anyone in his job has had to serve — is about to be transferred. from London to Boston, where he is to become consul. His application to serve a further term of duty in London has been declined, although there is a celebrated precedent: Val Iremonger did no less than nine years in the job. It may be that Mr Howard has not always seen eye to eye with his immediate chief, Ambassador Donal O'Sullivan, and the Permanent Secretary in Dublin; and it would, no doubt, be awkward for the Irish Foreign Secretary, Dr Hillary, to intervene on Con Howard's part above their heads. Nevertheless he would be well-advised to do so. Two of Con Howard's children, at school in England, have only a year to go before their ' 0 ' levels; in Boston they will presumably get no comparable qualification, so there exists a perfectly good personal reason for giving Howard another year, if not another full three years' stint in London. But quite apart from this, Con Howard has been an exceptionally successful Press Counsellor in London, and it is difficult, if not indeed impossible, to think of anything that he will do in. Boston half as useful as the job he has done in London, or to think of anyone in the future who will do the job half as well. Con Howard's methods were unconventional: he did not just sit in his office waiting for journalists to ring him up; he went out to meet journalists. This, naturally, took him from time to time into the bars in and around Fleet Street where, such was his manner and his ability, that if you did not know he was a diplomat you would never have guessed it. This not only is intended to be intended to be, but in fact is, a great compliment. London — and Ireland, north as well as south — will be the poorer for his departure and only Boston, where the baked beans and the Kennedys, and the Cabots and the Lodges, came from will be the richer.
First War weather
Hedgerows, fallow fields, humps of earth and clay and mud in building sites, are this year blazing with poppies. I do not recall ever seeing such proliferation, and I have mildly wondered at it. Then I read somewhere that the June of this year was the worst since 1916, with which month our last month is most comparable. I thought of the poppies blowing in 1916 in the fields of Flanders; and the poppies that I see all around me, although they look as beautiful as every, have now acquired a kind of melancholic patina.
Architects and developers
Sir Basil Spence, OM, Kt., OBE, RA, RDI, FRIBA, Hon LLD, Hon DLitt, and builder, among other things, of the Knightbridge barracks, is feeling sorry for himself because of criticisms of his design for a building to replace Queen Anne's Mansions. He says in the Times: "I am mortally, wounded at being rejected by this criticism. Only ten years ago, in 1962, I was awarded the Order of Merit. I was given honorary degrees and I was very much in demand. This criticism is bound to be a terrible disappointment." That, however, is just too bad. Knightsbridge barracks is a terrible affront, let alone a disappointment. Almost every visitor to London must see it. Like Centre Point, it is almost impossible to move around London without seeing it. Graham Greene rebukes us in a letter this week for not condemning architects such as Sir Basil when we condemned developers like Mr Harry Hyams. I welcome the rebuke, and take the opportunity to condemn Sir Basil for his part in the process of ruining London. While I anl about it, the authorities — whoever they may be — who wanted a new barracks put up in Knightsbridge and who provided the cash and allowed the erection of the monstrous eye-sore are every bit as much to blame as the developers who make themselves into multi-millionaires by building speculative offce properties. I see that Sir Basil defends the developer of the Queen Anne's Mansions site, the recentlY ennobled Lord Samuel, who apparently prefers not to have much publicity about his projects. "Lord Samuel did not want publicity," Sir Basil says, adding, " He is perfectly entitled not to have it if he doeS not want it." Lord Samuel is perfectly entitled to privacy; but he is not at all perfectly entitled not to have publicity if he does not want it when the subject of the publicity is yet another building which the public will have to look at for years arid years, long after Lord Samuel and Sir BasIl are dead and gone, and all their honours, titles and riches have perished.
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