CENTRE POINT

An Ulster truce that feeds the triumphalism of the winners and the fury of the losers

SIMON JENKINS

Gloom is the occupational hazard of Ulster watchers. On a wet day it seeps up from the streets of Belfast and coats our vision of the place in pessimism. A sort of sun emerges across the lough, hesitates, then collapses below the horizon with a sigh. There have been too many false dawns. Cheering does not come easy in this land.

I and others were criticised last week for excessive scepticism towards the latest IRA ceasefire. Could we not cheer, just this once? Could we not rejoice? The men of violence were laying down their arms. The killing and bombing were to stop. Who cares how sincere they were, or for how long? A new era was beginning. Something different was being tried. Dawns are better than nights, even if they prove false. There is so much bad news out of Ulster. Give the place a chance.

I buy that, but only just. To be sure, nobody ever made money betting on peace in an Irish horse-race. The favourite's name is always Breakdown. But when a newcom- er of whatever dubious pedigree gallops onto the track, the sportsman should give it a punt. Last week's columns and editorials might have been more gracious. John Major and Albert Reynolds had tried hard. Perhaps Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness had turned over a new leaf. The active service units had been stood down. There should be no wailing of army and police wives for the time being. All that is good and we should say so.

But then what? Any competent negotia- tor can formulate a truce. From the no- man's-land football of the Great War to the Geneva cavortings over Bosnia, truce-mak- ing is easy. The dove with the olive branch is always cleared for take-off. But as an early UN commander in Sarajevo said on being told of another ceasefire, 'I wonder how many that will kill.' Welcoming cease- fires and ignoring their terms and conse- quences is stupid. It feeds both the tri- umphalism of the winners and the fury of the losers. 'The hand that signed the treaty bred a fever.'

I agree that it is good that the IRA has promised to stop killing and bombing. Cer- tainly it has refused to do so permanently. Active service units have not been disband- ed, nor armouries surrendered. There are many ways of waging a territorial war short of killing and bombing, as the IRA knows. Within hours of the ceasefire, the no-go area made its way back onto the Belfast scene. This is the customary prelude to handing the struggle back to women and children on the streets. The ethnic cleansing of Deny, Fermanagh and Armagh continues. This requires no Armalite, just a note on the door at night. But yes, it is good that the IRA has stopped killing and bombing.

The Unionist paramilitaries, of course, have not stopped. When it comes to killing, they are more than a match for the IRA. This year Loyalist gunmen have killed more people than the Republican ones. But because the IRA has had the most system- atic and best-publicised killers, the British Government has always accorded it higher status. Feelers are 'put out' to the IRA. LinIcs to Washington and Dublin give it a cosmopolitan aura. Republican killers have historical glamour and British governments feel more comfortable having them as ene- mies. The Loyalist cells are just murderous thugs, who will go quiet if the IRA is seduced to peace.

So if the Loyalists go on killing and bombing, as they have done this week, that is merely an aftershock of the joyous event.

If they provoke Republican counter-vio- lence, this has been 'built into the scenario'. If the all-party talks — whose agenda is a total mystery — prove as stillborn as all their predecessors, so be it. If the resulting murder and mayhem mock any claim that Northern Ireland has found peace, well, nobody said the province was a rose gar- den. It is still good that the IRA has stopped killing and bombing.

Everybody in Ireland has his pet cure for the troubles. The potion is composed of three parts history and one part religion. It has been distilled over three centuries and is served up, diluted with waffle, at inter- minable Anglo-Irish conferences. As the O'Briens, the Fitzgeralds, the Humes stag- ger to their feet to unveil this year's brew, I long for a surprise, for some new concoc- tion. But no. It is yet another dose of re- partition or joint authority or all-Ireland council or condominium. Down the hatch it goes. We cheer to the rafters and fall down drunk. Nothing changes, except that the IRA has stopped killing and bombing — which is good.

The reason for my own gloom about the ceasefire is its likely impact on my own solution: a swift end to direct rule and devolution of all matters except security to new democratic county councils. I firmly believe that only if that happens will new moderate leadership emerge within the semi-autonomous Republican and Unionist counties, and violence be truly marginalised. And I believe that the ballyhoo of the Down- ing Street declaration and the ceasefire has impeded progress to such a goal.

The bolstering of moderate Republican- ism has been at the centre of British policy in Northern Ireland for the past five years. It is seen in the subsidies and patronage granted to John Hume's SDLP councillors in Catholic areas. Until last year, this policy had driven the IRA far into the political wilderness. Until last year, it had nothing but violence left in its locker. That violence should have been treated as the gangster- ism it had mostly become, outside the polit- ical process. Instead it has been allowed to dictate the entire course of the British poli- cy. A revivified IRA may have stopped its killing, but its campaign against the Union- ist veto will continue on the streets. The Unionist extremists will show no restraint in their response. Both extremes have been given new prominence.

Twenty-five years of British rule have been a disaster in Northern Ireland. They have reduced the province to a dependent colony and its towns to a parody of Chicago under prohibition. High on crime, drugs, knee-capping and public spending on secu- rity, these towns have no interest in chang- ing the status quo. Northern Ireland poli- tics recalls Gibbon's comment on Britain after the Roman empire: 'The desire of obtaining the advantages, yet escaping the burdens,, of political society is a perpetual and inexhaustible source of discord.'

Ulster is no minor irritant on Europe's outer fringe. It is political scandal. It shows the depravity to which even a civilised gov- ernment is reduced if it denies local democ- racy to a subordinate region. It strips an entire community of the responsibilities and duties that come with self-government. If I thought the ceasefire was shortening the path to devolution, I would cheer. If I thought the British Government knew that talking politics to the IRA would be fruit- less and means anyway to install democrat- ic institutions in Ulster, I would cheer. I would even cheer if the ceasefire meant a genuine end to extremist killings.

As it is, I react to the ceasefire as good, but . . .

Simon Jenkins writes for the Times.