John Bull's Other Island
113' DENIS IRELAND T' the beginning of this century George Bernard Shaw wrote a play about Ireland under the typically patronis- ing, Anglo-Irish title of John Bull's Other Island. If Shaw's famous title is now a trifle dated, it still has point and application in Protestant and industrial Belfast. On the banks Of the Lagan " John Bull's Other Island " might be narrowly translated as meaning the artificial island of Lagan mud where m the shelter of towering steel gantries, to the accompaniment Of a thUnderous clangour of automatic riveters or the glare of oxy-acetylene welders, new liners, tankers, aircraft carriers, and specialised ships of all kinds are born and delivered to ,the ocean. The Queen's Island and the vast acreage of Messrs. Harland & Wolff's corrugated-iron sheds, foundries, Moulding shops, fitting-out wharves, dry docks and launching slips are, in fact, the point at which John Bull's power most °IienlY and dramatically exerts itself in the Six Counties. • Here in a very real sense is an extension of John Bull's own island beyond the Irish Sea. Here, too, is a vital factor integrating the economy of six Irish counties with the economy of Britain. An Ulster poet has compared the tide of shipyard workers that pours every workday evening over the Queen's Bridge to " an army terrible with banners "; any one encounter- ing or following that army on its homeward journey soon realises its importance in the life of industrial Belfast. When times are good " on the Island " and pay packets full, every 811, oP• grocery store, and public-house, either in the working- Class districts or on the main arteries leading to them, reaps its share of the harvest. The clangour of automatic riveters on the " Island " has, therefore, definite political overtones for the Belfast Protestant, °vertones that sound for him like a kind of twentieth-century Lillibulero. So long as that clangour continues, he feels that he is not so much joined to Britain as separated from Ireland. L‘Finove or sever the economic link with Britain, his politicians him, and grass will immediately begin to sprout from the asphalt outside Belfast's ornate City Hall. • Now this argument may have been a trifle over-emphatic 11'11 ,the year 1912, when the question at issue was Home tile. The point today is—has it force and application in a divided island which, in an age of supersonic air speeds, is °illy just off the coast of a divided Europe ? There are two answers—one practical, one hypothetical. The practical one Comes, as one would expect, from North-east Ulster, more particularly from Belfast and its industrial environs; and the United of it is that, by statutory obligation, warships for the ,sunited Kingdom must be built in the United Kingdom. It is good answer, but it has one defect; it is baied on the strategic assumptions of the nineteenth, not the mid-twentieth century. _ It remains, however, in triumphant possession of the field, and the Republic of Ireland's potential come-back never comes, du! a very good reason—the fact that, except for fervent for sof Communism, the Republic of Ireland has, 1...'r practical purposes, no such thing as a foreign policy. As ne.Irish Times has remarked, " There is no support for a policy of any kind—even of neutrality; the present animation is that Ireland must remain in a state of suspended !Illation until the matter of partition is settled." Coreal And concealed within that state of suspended animation is al deadlock of Irish affairs. For if the Twenty-six County Republic were to formulate a particular kind of foreign lic trY,it would thereby lay the foundation for a new form of ate the ifie and economic Irish Unionism. At the moment, with cohlePtiblic's foreign policy not so much lost in a fog as PletelY absent, there is an air of bleak " wrap the green flag round me" unreality about Irish demands that Britain should withdraw her armed forces from Northern Ireland; nobody ever states, at any rate in public, exactly what is to replace them. But suppose a policy clearly aligning twenty-six Irish counties within the defensive framework of NATO, and there is immediately a searchlight on the Irish scene that shows up the politics of partition as shadow boxing—on both sides of the border. In the light of such a policy a Dublin Govern- ment, any Dublin Government, could overnight produce a blue-print for Irish strategic and economic unity that would leave six-county Unionism with its weight on the wrong foot. It could suggest an all-Ireland Parliament to restore the economic, if not the full political, unity of Ireland.
A synopsis of its proposals might run like this. The ending of the strategically dangerous situation oko militarily divided Ireland. With British military resources strained to breaking point, six-county Protestants to play a leading part in gradually replacing the British forces at present in the six counties by forces recruited from amongst the inhabitants of the six counties. If necessary, conscription to be introduced at the same moment in both constituent states of the new united states of Ireland. The British forces to be finally withdrawn only when the new Irish air farce is in a position to carry out the tasks and duties (including anti-submarine patrols) at present allocated to British air arms using six-county airfields and flying-boat bases. The availability of all Irish (and not just six-county) ports for the natives of the Atlantic nations. The flotillas of light craft required for the defence of Irish coastal waters and the planes to form the nucleus of an all- Ireland air force to be built in Belfast, thus bringing additional, or alternative, work to the shipyards and the Belfast aircraft factory, both in manufacture and maintenance. Some such statement from a Dublin Government would at least answer two crucial questions. The first, asked by the six-county, and more particularly by the Belfast, Protestant is : What would happen to Belfast's heavy engineering, and more. especially to John Bull's Other Island on the Lagan, in a united Ireland ? The answer is that Belfast would become a shipbuilding and heavy engineering centre not only within thirty-two Irish agricultural counties but within an alliance including, amongst others, Biitain, France, and America. The second crucial question comes from the British Imperial General Staff, which very rightly wants to know who is going to defend a united Ireland, incltiding the north-western and southern sea approaches to Britain. The answer to that has been indicated in my purely imaginary synopsis of a purely imaginary statement issued on behalf of a Dublin Government that has arrived at a clear and explicit foreign policy. Meanwhile, until such questions are answered, my guess is that British forces will remain in Northern Ireland; that John Bull's Other Island on the Lagan will remain the hard core of the problem of Irish economic unity; and that Irish anti-partitionists (of whom I happen to be one) will go on wasting their time.
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