ANOTHER VOICE
A fourth solution to the Irish Question
AUBERON WAUGH
Obviously, these two deaths are a drop in the ocean. In the sense that the two victims were not innocent civilians, but fully committed members of the security force, their deaths may be found less shocking than those of the victims of the Enniskillen bomb, for instance, or of the various bombs which have gone off on the English mainland, killing civilian men, women, children and horses at random. Again, the murders on this occasion — or at any rate the beatings up — were at least committed in hot blood. The Sunday Times ventured the information that the IRA had not wanted the men killed at that point. They hoped to question them first, no doubt with further torture, and murder them later. But mob rule took over. It was one of those rare occasions, so beloved of Chomsky and other thinkers, when the masses become 'politicised' and take direct democratic action. .
It is partly for this reason that I find it the most profoundly shocking of all the atrocities I have read about since the Ulster troubles resumed 20 years ago. One can easily comprehend wickedness com- mitted by a single person, like Denis Nielsen or Peter Sutcliffe. The risk of meeting such people on a dark night is part of the price we have to pay for belonging to the human race. Similarly, I am prepared to contemplate the prospect of a gang of desperadoes plotting to let a bomb off in a school playground, or some equally wicked and beastly thing, in order to make what- ever abstruse or boring political point they choose. Once again, the wickness and the guilt are confined to a small circle of like-minded people. It is only when a crowd of ordinary citizens sets itself to pursue and murder two men who are trying to run away that one can start talking of a collective wickedness, a collective guilt, embracing not only the hundred-odd peo- ple who were involved in the action but also the many thousands who were not present, but who would have done just the same thing if they had been: the society which condones this behaviour, the culture which sustains it, the leadership which encourages it and the priesthood which fails to condemn.
Of course it is true to say that those who chose to attend the funeral of Kevin Brady were probably not your typical Fenians-in- the-street. They had chosen to participate in a tribal demonstration. A fair propor- tion of them might well have been mem- bers of the IRA, well used to helping the murderers in their midst in whatever way they could.
Again, it is possible that in the wake of the Milltown Cemetery killings a few days earlier some of them thought that the funeral cortege was under attack from another lunatic, although this belief could not have survived the discovery that the young men trying to escape from the funeral stewards were British soldiers. What in fact we had was a large crowd of mourners assembled for a religious service, suddenly turned into a pack of hunters and killers. The Liverpool football fans who murdered a number of Italians at Heysel Stadium may seem comparable, but there is no reason to suppose that they intended murder; they were drunk and offering battle, which is not at all the same as cornering two fugitives for the purpose of putting them to death.
It is the brutality of the action, con- tinuing for some 15 or 20 minutes, uninter- rupted by the police and with the enthu- siastic support of the crowd, which inspires the first reaction of disgust. But having established the notion of a collective guilt, it might be possible to convert this negative reaction into a more constructive form of anger.
The first thing to do is to take a step back and ask ourselves what on earth the Irish problem is all about. It is certainly not about religious observances, since these are not threatened, nor is it about the freedom to practise contraception, since this has been conceded, nor abortion, nor divorce which are clearly negotiable. What we are asked to believe is that the entire impetus for a change in the status quo comes from the fixed desire of the 500,000- odd Micks in the province to adopt the ramshackle, bankrupt government of Dub- lin rather than submit to the Anglo-Saxon and Scots majorities of Stormont or West- minster. For this, we are asked to believe, they are prepared to murder and be murdered, just as the majority of non- Fenian Ulstermen are prepared to murder and be murdered rather than submit to the slightly altered conditions of rule from Dublin.
Other considerations are suggested which might sharpen these feelings — the historical prejudice against Fenians in employment, the loyalty of non-Fenian Ulstermen to the Crown, the influence of Fenian Americans — but anybody who is not a politician can see that it is all a load of rubbish. Nobody except a tiny minority of psychopaths, power maniacs and crooks has such an interest in politics as to be prepared to kill for it. What we have in Ulster is a classic case of tribal confrontation. The solution must be to privatise the province, remove the goal of domination, and let both tribes flourish independently. There are quite enough Fenians in the province to employ themselves. Conflict arises only from domination at the centre — in government jobs, government investment, etc.
Obviously, democracy cannot work where one tribe outnumbers the other 2-1, any more than it would work under Dublin with a 4-1 bias in favour of the Fenians. The last act of British rule in Ulster should be to appoint an unelected dictator for life, with very limited powers and no funds from Britain: merely a military alliance against invasion from the South and the threat of direct military intervention if he tried to increase his powers or increase the functions of government. In order to be acceptable to both tribes, he would have to be, in the first place, a citizen of the Irish Republic, in the second place a Protestant. Lord Gowrie has the additional advantage of being, if not black, at least distinctly dusky. If the emoluments of the job were not sufficient to safeguard his standard of living, he could make it up by selling modern art to the natives. I think this is the fourth time I have solved the Irish Ques- tion. If they are not prepared to accept any of these solutions, they will simply have to stew in their own juice until I can think of another one.
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