Ulster: No Integration
There has been a disposition in both official and in partisan quarters to play down the Prime Minister's remarks following his visit to Ireland and his lengthy talk with Mr Cosgrave, the Irish prime minister. We do not believe that what Mr Heath said after those talks was casual, tantamount to a slip of the tongue, of no Significance. On the contrary, we believe that his remarks were deliberate, calculated, premeditated. We accept that the storm aroused by the remarks had not been fully anticipated and that, in consequence, timorous officials of government and of party sought to bowdlerise them so that they would cause no political offence. But the circumstances under which the remarks were Made, the knowledge we have of the character of the man who was making them, and the information which has subsequently been allowed privately to seep out leaves us in no doubt at all that Mr Heath meant what he said.
In an interview broadcast by the BBC Mr Heath, having been asked "What would happen if you failed to have an executive before March?" replied:
Under the constitutional Act, if it is not formed then we go back to responsibility at Westminster, which is direct rule. I think this time people would feel we cannot have continuing uncertainty and it is much better that the whole thing should be arranged on an integrated United Kingdom basis. And then we shall be able to produce an efficient and fair government over the whole of the United Kingdom. I don't think it IS possible once again to enter on what was really a temporary basis, saying we are doing this for a year or perhaps eighteen months in which we create a fresh form of government.
This is clear enough; and those who might argue that he was Speaking casually cannot maintain the argument in view of what he said to ITN, in response to a similar question: If there is no prospect of having an executive — if they fail to form an executive or, having formed one, it then breaks down — then under the Act we return to direct rule, and I think it would have to be direct rule With proper integration. One cannot go on with a temporary arrangement under direct rule.
There is really nothing ambiguous, or accidental, in these remarks; and no long-term good is done to the matter of Anglo-Irish relations by pretending otherwise. Mr Heath quite Plainly meant what he said, which was: that, if the various factions of Northern Ireland are incapable of agreeing amongstthemselves to set up an executive body by next March, then Northern Ireland will be permanently — not temporarily — integrated Within the United Kingdom. Various questions were left unasked and unanswered; but the presumption must be that, short of the demonstration by the Northern Irish of a capacity to put their own house in order, then come March Northern Ireland will become one or two county councils in the United Kingdom, Policed for the time being by the army acting in support of the civil authorities. Moreover, it will be the British government's intention that this 'integration' will not be a temporary device, but permanent, unarguable, unnegotiable, irredeemable. "Right," says Mr Heath to the people of Ulster, "if you cannot-learn to behave yourselves by next March then to hell with you, we'll make you part of us for good. Our patience is exhausted."
It needs to be said straight away that, whatever the people of Ulster may think about this prime ministerial ukase, the people of England, Scotland and Wales will want nothing of it. Under no circumstances at present imaginable would the English want the people of Ulster to be integrated with themselves; and at the present time and given the present circumstances neither the Welsh nor the Scots would willingly accept the integration into the United Kingdom of the Irish. Had the Ulstermen who seek to retain the United Kingdom link behaved responsibly and genuinely attempted to make the executive work, then integration might subsequently have been considered. As it is, integration is the alternative Mr Heath proposes because of the irresponsibility of the Ulster loyalists.' Whatever the people of Ulster may think of integration, the people of England will utterly repudiate a policy which can have no other immediate effect than to import an Irish quarrel into the British mainland, and Mr Heath has even less business to foist this potential disaster upon Great Britain than he had to saddle us with the disastrous consequences of his European daydream. It is a measure of the contempt Mr Heath has for his electorate that he is prepared to integrate Ulster into us with the same historical ignorance and political flippancy that he has sought to integrate us into Europe. The British are in the process of rejecting themselves from the European body into which they have unnaturally been transplanted; their health will not be improved if, at the same time, they are compelled, following another outbreak of Mr Heath's surgical engineering, to reject a body unnaturally transplanted into their own. It needs to be said, very very clearly, that, whatever the various Irish may think of Mr Heath's threat to integrate Ulster into Britain, as far as the English are concerned it is not on. The ' loyalists ' have, by the disloyalty of their wrecking manoeuvres, forfeited any claim they may once have had upon our hospitality. They may visit this house and receive assistance from it; but they will not be welcome as unwilling members of this domestic household. If they sort out their problems and manage to contrive an executive to manage their affairs by next March, then well and good; Britain will then, willingly and gladly, seek to assist and sustain their economy and contribute armed forces, for as long as necessary, for their security. But if they cannot, or at any rate do not, sort themselves out then integration "on a United Kingdom basis" will not, whatever Mr Heath may say, be an answer acceptable to the people of Great Britain.
The choice confronting the Northern Irish is not between having an executive and being integrated; it is between having an executive and stewing in their own various Irish juices. In other words, in one way or another an Irish solution will have to be found before the Irish mess can be cleaned up. The Irish mess is in great part the English fault; but it will not be cleaned up by ' integrating ' part of Ireland into Britain. That would only spread the mess. Direct rule had become a necessary step if the sects and tribes of Northern Ireland were not to tear each other apart and were to learn to live with each other in a sufficient amity. Britain was obliged to destroy the Stormont rule which had failed in its purpose. But there was never any point in first setting up and then destroying Stormont if, at the end of it all, Ulster was to be brought wholly and fully into the United Kingdom. Direct rule only made, and only makes, sense as a step on the way to an Irish solution — a solution which, it had become clear, could never be found as long as Stormont's rule persisted. British policy must remain based upon the need to seek the Irish dimension in Ireland. If a time should arrive when Irishmen of the north refuse to cooperate with the British authorities, refuse to work the proposed new institutions, refuse to treat one with the other, and, through sectarian strife, make the continuance of the status quo impossible, then the British answer can never be to integrate Northern Ireland and must instead be to withdraw the troops and cut it adrift. If a gangrenous limb cannot be cured, it is better to amputate it than to bind it closer than ever to the body which it threatens. We do not advocate pulling the troops out and cutting ourselves off from Northern Ireland; it remains a United Kingdom responsibility, and as long as there is any hope, however thin, of a settlement and a cure direct rule, preferably with the assistance of a representative executive, should be sustained. In the long run — and this we all must recognise — there will le no end to the Irish troubles until the sects in the North accept that they must live alongside each other and until North and South also realise that an accommodation must be reached between them which removes the fears of the minorities of both parts of Ireland. In the bloody and painful meanwhile, no good is done at all by rash and stupid talk of the permanent integration of Northern Ireland into the United Kingdom.
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