AS I WAS SAYING
One Tory policy which Mr Blair should abandon
PEREGRINE WORSTHORNE
The Romans, it was said, created a desert and called it Peace, and it is begin- ning to look as if something almost equally baleful will have to be said about the British in Northern Ireland — that they created a desert and called it a peace pro- cess. There can be no peace in Northern Ireland. If Britain granted the Catholic minority what they want — progress towards Irish unification — this would provoke the Protestant majority into tak- ing up arms, thereby replacing one nasty small war with an even nastier large one.
The only realistic choice is between two wars: one bloody enough but the other quite certain to be bloodier still. A peace process, which is bound to turn a bad job into a catastrophe, cannot be a good idea. We all know that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Britain's in Northern Ireland in the last few years have been of the best. But if continued with, the result could be — and very soon — the worst kind of hell: civil war. For heaven's sake, Mr Blair, take a deep breath of the cold, sobering air of political realism and think again, or rather start thinking for the first time, since the peace process has always been more dream than reality. I sounded the same Cassandra note in The Spectator at the same period last year in a piece entitled, 'The real Irish nation- alism' (22 June 1996). The peace process had already shown that it was heading, slowly but relentlessly, towards the very evil it was supposed to avert. Nothing has changed except that this grim conclusion — that the peace process is more problem than solution — is now even more inescapable than it was then. What can be done with a peace process that is going in the wrong direction? Do you press on regardless — which is what the last gov- ernment did — or do you put the brakes on and bring the train not so much to a grinding halt (since it was the advance that caused the grinding) as to a discreet and relatively orderly halt, from which the bona fide passengers on board can descend with a sigh of relief at having escaped what has increasingly been seen to have become a misguided journey into a dead end? The second option was not really open to Mr Major. Having given the peace pro- cess the green light and set the train on its disastrous way, it was too much to expect him to admit that it had all been a blun- der. In any case he had no experience in jettisoning long-established policies or turning political somersaults. That, howev- er, is what Mr Blair is famous for. Ever since becoming leader of the Labour party he has been transforming it into the politi- cal equivalent of a London taxi which can turn 180 degrees on a sixpence. But whereas it made sense for him to take over Tory economic policy, which was working very well, it made no sense for him to take over Tory Irish policy, which was working very badly. What he should do, and what his immense popularity here and in Amer- ica might allow him to do with impunity, is to replace the peace process with some- thing more like a limited war process, a process aimed not at bringing the troubles to an end, which cannot be done, but at trying to ensure that in future they do not spread or escalate, and just might in time simmer down and cool off.
How can this be done? By doing almost exactly the opposite of what we have been doing in the peace process. In the peace process we have been trying, ever more desperately, to put a smile on the face of the Sinn Fein/IRA tiger. It hasn't worked. Sinn Fein/IRA, under this treatment, has got cockier but not one jot friendlier. The same is true of the Irish government. No progress has been made down that path. For a year or so Sinn Fein/IRA led us on with a ceasefire. But that was no more than a tactical ruse. Meanwhile, of course, the Protestant majority, only too well aware of the gains being won by Sinn Fein/IRA out of the peace process, have grown even more suspicious of the British government. The only effect of trying to sow trust in the hearts of the Catholics has been to sow distrust in the hearts of the Protestants. The end result: more distrust overall, there being more Prods than RCs. Such are the poisoned fruits of our peace- making efforts.
What we should have been doing all along is trying to put a smile on the face of Ulster Unionism — itself no mean task. For it is only by making the Unionists feel secure that the temperature can be low- ered. Talk of peace, however, was bound to make them feel more vulnerable, since the only chance of peace is on Sinn Fein/IRA terms. In Ulster nothing so quickly induces war fever as talk of peace, which arouses dangerously high hopes on the Catholic side and dangerously exag- gerated fears on the Protestant side. Call- ing off the peace process would certainly provoke the IRA, but it would equally cer- tainly come as a blessed relief to the Unionists, and it is in exploiting and build- ing on that relief that hopes may lie, not for a peaceful future — there is no hope of that — but for a less explosive, warlike future.
Why less explosive? Simply because with the shadow of the peace process lifted with all that this would imply in terms of the British government having finally come to the conclusion that Sinn Fein/IRA are incorrigibly, irretrievably beyond the pale — the Unionists might, for the first time, start to think seriously about treating the Catholics as fellow citi- zens; and the Catholics, disillusioned, at any rate for the foreseeable future, about the prospect of getting what they want i.e. a united Ireland — might start being more appreciative of what they already have, i.e. Britain's higher employment rates and more generous social security payments. Certainly Sinn Fein/IRA would continue to do their damnedest to set the one lot at the throats of the other, and the long-suffering British army and people would have to soldier on and grin and bear it, but, we would hope, in a cooler climate with the two populations less inflamed against each other and in more of a mood of live and let live.
Possibly the peace process may indeed be already over, or at least the Unionists may have been given cause to believe so, which might explain the new mood of marching civility among the Orange Order leaders. For it is precisely an increase in those small acts of civility and common sense which an end to the peace process might reasonably be expected to produce; small gestures which, in return, might pro- duce comparable civilities on the Catholic side. It is these small shoots of decency that the peace process has done much to crush and which the end of the peace pro- cess would help to bring back to life.
Could Mr Blair be the man to cut the cackle about Northern Ireland, and risk the wrath of world public opinion by call- ing off the dogs of peace? If his spin-doc- toring genius could rise to that one it real- ly would have proved its worth.
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