The Irish paradox
Richard West
There is not much interest here in this week's general election south of the border in what is still generally called the Free State. Although the citizens of the Free State, the 26 counties that chose to secede from the rest of us 60 years ago, enjoy the right to vote in the United Kingdom, there is no reciprocal right for British citizens to vote in the Free State. We can stand for election in the Republic, as several UK citizens such a Bernadette McAliskey (nee Devlin) are now doing; but not vote. Nor are the Northern Irish quite as exercised as So English as to whether the election in knithern Ireland will influence 'dialogue', talks' or 'initiatives', towards unity. The Protestants, even the Catholics here, do not want unity with the Free State. What they do want is a Dublin prime minister who will suppress the IRA; but neither Garret Fitz- gerald nor Charles Haughey has in the past been eager to do this.
From what one hears, the Irish general election is anyway more concerned with economics than with British-Irish relations. The Northern Irish share this preoccupa- tion. On Monday it was announced that Harland and Wolff, the shipbuilders, are to dismiss 1,000 out of a staff of 7,000 Workers. The company chairman, Dr Vi- vian Wadsworth, blamed this on the British government for losing Harland and Wolff the contract to build a bulk carrier ship for the Norwegians. He said that redundancies would in the long term make Harland and Wolff more productive.
Certainly Harland and Wolff look more viable than Mr De Lorean, an American Manufacturer of cars who has received big grants to provide employment in Northern Ireland. At the time of writing, it is not yet known whether De Lorean will continue operations here, but the Northern Irish will not be too surprised if the enterprise ends in failure. For many years, since long before the latest round of political trouble, the Westminster government has been giving money to businessmen who will invest in Northern Ireland; and almost always the venture has ended badly for Northern
Ireland, if not for the businessmen. The De Lorean of the 1950s was the once famous carpet-maker, Cyril Lord.
Business failures here seem to bear out the thesis that was popular five or ten years ago, that Northern Ireland would have to unite with the South for economic reasons. The thesis (which I confess I believed at the time) was plausible: Belfast and parts of north-east Ireland were one of the classic industrial revolutionary centres, like Man- chester, Newcastle and Glasgow. Its in- dustries, principally textiles and ship- building, were typical of the first and se- cond Industrial Revolutions. Dublin and south-west Ireland were characteristic of those regions which suffered in the In- dustrial Revolution, like eastern and south- west England.
In the second half of the 20th century, so the thesis continued, fortune deserted the old industrial regions like Glasgow, Newcastle and Belfast. The British Isles could not compete at shipbuilding and textile-making with eastern countries like Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea and Japan. Agriculture was not the source of wealth, and Southern Ireland was bound to flourish under .the Common Market arrangement on food prices. Furthermore, the Southern Irish, not having identified with the British Empire ethos, did not believe (as the British workers did) that the world owed them a living. They, the Catholics, now had the Protestant work ethic. Or so the thesis was offered by journalists like myself. It was all rot.
The thesis failed to predict that Southern Ireland, having seceded from Britain, would blithely adopt all the worst characteristics of modern British thinking, like property development, overmanning, trade union militancy, excess government spending and what W. B. Yeats called the `social welfare dream'. -The farmers grew lazy and agriculture declined, so that Southern Ireland now has to import potatoes from Israel and Greece. The Southern Irish economic miracle has ended in 20 per cent inflation, huge unemploy- ment and debts worse even than Poland's. The South is almost bankrupt but the North survives. True, Harland and Wolff have had to lay off 1,000 men, but what other shipbuilders in the United Kingdom have lasted as long? Those of Glasgow, Newcas- tle and Liverpool died, long ago thanks to the greed and folly of the trade unions. The Northern Irish textile industry has suffered but it survives, and it has done better with old family companies than with the giants like ICI and Courtaulds. It is the Pro- testants who, in the end, still have the Pro- testant work ethic. When Harland and Wolff sack 1,000 workers the rest do not strike or occupy the premises. Even the trains are running here. Students work in the vacation. Many Ulster people, too many, emigrate to Australia or Canada, where they are welcome. Those countries do not welcome English immigrants.
Here in Belfast it does not appear, as it appears to British politicians, that Northern Ireland must one day be joined with the South, though perhaps the South might re- join the North, having first apologised for the 1916 incident and paid for the damage done to the Dublin Post Office.
Connoisseurs of the Irish paradox will enjoy this Saturday's rugby match between Ireland and Scotland in Dublin. The Irish team, having already beaten Wales and England, may win the 'Triple Crown' for- the first time since 1949. There is far more excitement now about rugby than about politics. Nevertheless, rugby is here a very political issue. The Fenian Irish condemn rugby as English; members of the Gaelic Athletic Association may not play rugby; and an Irish writer in the Universe, the Catholic weekly, has just called rugby a middle-class game, except, he remarks, in Limerick. Nor do the Northern Irish Presbyterians much like rugby or indeed the English. There are very few Northern players in the united Irish team. The sport at which they excel is soccer — and more recently snooker. Yet this Saturday all Ireland will go mad in support of a rugby
team whose captain is an officer in the Republican army and whose star player is called Oliver Campbell — not a Fenian name. The rugby is strange enough. But what can one make of the tours advertised here for followers of the Northern Ireland football team to go to Spain for the World Cup this summer? Bookings are almost full, I was told by a travel agent, in spite of the fact that Nor- thern Ireland is playing its qualifying matches in the Valencia area, which is not very attractive. But why is Northern Ireland playing at all? No other state which com- petes for the World Cup has entered teams from provinces such as England or Scotland. One does not read of teams from Provence or Bavaria. And Northern Ireland is merely a fragment of one of the provinces of the British Isles. It all goes to show the tragedy and fatuousness of that secession, 60 years ago, of the 26 counties of Southern Ireland. Had they remained within the British Isles, they might also have retained more of their Irish nationality.
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