POLITICS
became How 'intergovernmental' a dirty word
NOEL MALCOLM
It is notoriously difficult to say anything unequivocal and at the same time sensible about Northern Ireland; but Mrs Thatcher has managed it occasionally. In 1984 the New Ireland Forum, which was composed of representatives of the SDLP and the main political parties in the Republic, issued a report which listed a whole series of possible 'solutions' to the problem of Ulster. When Mrs Thatcher was asked for her opinion of these proposals, she gave it with admirable brevity: I have made it quite clear that a unified Ireland was one solution that is out. A second solution was the confederation of two states. That is out. A third solution was joint authority. That is out. That is a derogation from sovereignty.
So there. This simple observation, de- scribed by the Irish Times as offhand, patronising, callous and imperious, earned the muted applause of the Ulster Union- sists, but otherwise passed almost without comment in the United Kingdom, where it was regarded as a statement of the ob- vious. No one could have expected the Prime Minister to say anything more favourable than this on the subject of 'joint authority', where this phrase stood for a real change in the constitutional position of Northern Ireland. But the Irish Times had expected her to say it a little more tactfully, given that the occasion on which she said it was a press conference at the end of the second summit meeting of the Anglo-Irish Intergovernmental Council.
Less than a year later, when the Anglo- Irish accord was signed at Hillsborough, `intergovernmental' quickly became a dirty word among Ulster Unionists, with con- notations of doctrinal impurity almost as great as the Intercession of Saints or the Immaculate Conception. In Ulster, where the unofficial motto is 'To hell with the future, and long live the past', memories can be surprisingly short at times. We all need to be reminded now that the Union- ists in 1984 had no objection to the existence of an Intergovernmental Coun- cil, meeting on a regular basis to discuss matters of mutual concern: i.e. one matter — Northern Ireland. And if we go back even further, to 1972, we can find a set of proposals put forward by the Ulster Union- ist Party which strikingly foreshadowed some aspects of the 1985 Anglo-Irish accord:
A tripartite declaration . . . affirming the right of the people of Northern Ireland to self-determination. Intergovernmental dis- cussion about co-operation in ending terror- ism in Ireland, and review of extradition arrangements. . . . If such action is taken, the formation of an Irish Intergovernmental Council, with equal membership from the Northern Ireland Government and the Gov- ernment of the Republic of Ireland, to discuss matters of mutual interest, particular- ly in the economic and social fields.
Clearly, people of good will who helped to frame the 1985 accord could claim that they were only trying to get things moving in a direction which had already been signposted by the Unionists themselves. Equally clearly, such a claim has died a thousand deaths since 1985. The Northern Ireland Office has preached patience, arguing that objections to the principle of the accord would eventually die down when the benefits of putting it into practice became apparent.
But practical benefits have been few and far between. In December new Irish leg- islation made it more difficult, not less, to extradite people to the United Kingdom; Irish criticism of the British judiciary over the Birmingham bombers, and of the Attorney General over the RUC, was expressed in language of a sort hitherto reserved for politicians engaged in consti- tutional crises in Australia; and the Irish Government's decision to set up its own inquiry into the shooting of Aidan McAnespie this week can only be de- scribed as a gesture of studious distrust.
The trouble with the accord was that it tried to do too many things at once. The primary practical aim was to ensure greater co-operation on a whole range of security matters. No sensible nationalist or Union- ist would disagree with that. But it was assumed that the Republic would not be willing to go much further down that road without obtaining some sort of sweetener or quid pro quo, in the form of an increased say or influence (in the exact wording, the power to 'put forward views and proposals') over policy matters within Northern Ireland. This has encouraged a blurring of operational matters and policy issues when they should have been more strictly divided. Another aim of the accord was to give the Catholic or nationalist minority in Ulster the feeling that their interests were being represented, and thereby to reduce their sense of grievance. But one did not need exceptional prescience to see that the Unionists' sense of grievance would be hugely increased by this measure, with its implication that the interests of one section of the Ulster population should be repre- sented by the ministers and officials of a foreign state. Power-sharing having failed, the accord seemed to be introducing policy-sharing by the back door. The dilemma is the same in both cases: if the shared power is purely nominal it achieves nothing, and if it is genuine it alienates the majority.
The beauty of the accord, in the eyes of the Northern Ireland Office, was that it was all being done over the heads of the majority; it did not involye setting up an executive or an assembly for them to pull out of. Indeed, the cleverest twist of the whole plan was the provision that entire areas of policy would automatically pass out of the Intergovernmental Conference's consideration the moment that an accept- able 'devolved administration' was set up in the province to deal with them. This, in other words, was meant to give the Union- ists a sufficient incentive to knuckle under to power-sharing once more. Instead, what we have after two and a half years of the accord is the worst of all possible worlds.
The accord comes up for review in November of this year, and already there is a feeling on both sides that expectations should be scaled down. Mr Haughey does not greatly mind how far Anglo-Irish rela- tions sink, provided that the sinking does not seem to be his fault. On the British side there is a growing realisation that the pseudo-representative powers granted to ministers of the Republic in Northern Ireland are a constitutional ghost which must be exorcised. But the only constitu- tional reality which they can imagine put- ting in its place is yet another 'devolved administration' of the sort which has been so amply shown to be unworkable in a post-Stormont Ulster. On both sides of the House of Commons there is general agree- ment that devolution is a foolish idea when it is proposed in Wales or Scotland. Mr Kinnock came of age as a politician when he campaigned against devolution in 1974; and Mrs Thatcher is on record as believing that 'Ulster is as British as Finchley'. The people of Finchley are quite used to direct rule by now. The greatest temptation which accords and agreements offer Mrs Thatcher is the feeling they give her of Doing Something; and the idea that prog- ress can sometimes be achieved by doing nothing is surely the hardest lesson to learn.
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