Political commentary

Experiences of an Irish PM

Ferdinand Mount

There is the impatience of British politicians and there is the impatience of Irish politicians. The British variety is of the Irish R.M. type, a proconsular impatience, alternately good-humoured and testy, with the supposedly irrational leprechaunish behaviour of the Irish. British ministers are always looking for solutions and launching initiatives, much as Major Yeates was always looking for a sound hunter. True to form, Jim Prior said on being appointed in September that he hoped he could perhaps 'help to find a solution there.'

His valued Minister of State, Lord Gowrie, who charmed the blankets off the H-block protesters, has even said that if there are no signs fairly soon of cooperation with the south, 'then sooner or later one British government or another will have to impose a solution.'

Since the British Government has already imposed two of the available solutions on Northern Ireland — a subordinate parliament at Stormont and the replacement of Stormont by direct rule — this can be interpreted only as a threat to impose the third, viz, expulsion from the United Kingdom, either partially by means of an Anglo-Irish condominium over the province, or wholly by a relinquishment of British sovereignty.

The mere issuing of such an ultimatum, however oblique and remote, suits the British Foreign Office which is eternally impatient for a solution that makes life easier for British diplomats. It fits in with Mrs Thatcher's temperamental impatience with the unresolved. And it is manna to Dr Garret FitzGerald.

Dr FitzGerald is accounted a darling man by one and all. Not an ounce of shiftiness in him, Garret's your own true man, not like Charlie Haughey who'd sell his own grandmother if there was an EEC subsidy on her. But Dr FitzGerald has a tiny majority. He is vulnerable to Republican rhetoric at byelections. He has a nasty budget to get through. He too must make a show of impatience for Irish unity, despite the patient and sensitive tone in which he described the necessary steps to unity in Towards a New Ireland.

He therefore had to act pleased with the results of his first meeting with Mrs Thatcher last week. Had she not promised that the UK parliament would not stand in the way if a majority in the North expressed a wish to join the Republic? And had she not also broadened the usual stuff about promoting reconciliation within Northern Ireland to include the whole blessed island?

Ah, but had not Dr FitzGerald on return been compelled to say publicly that `unity would require the agreement of the majority in the North?' Mr Haughey claims that this was an unprecendented humiliation for a Taoiseach, to which Dr FitzGerald riposted smartly that at Mr Haughey's own first meeting with Mrs Thatcher last year, he too had agreed that 'unity would only come about with the consent of a majority in Northern Ireland'.

Yet all sides agree in their impatience for 'progress' — an impatience which remains strictly confined to the minds of the politicians. The people of the South are in no hurry to have the North dumped on them. And as pointed out by Dr Conor Cruise O'Brien (how pleasant to be dealing with such a cluster of Ph Ds — in England, nonmedical doctoring gets you nowhere) direct rule from London is easily the most popular form of government in the North among Catholics as well as Protestants. Although British voters have always preferred not to keep thousands of troops in the North — who wouldn't? — there is no sign of that mood growing into an urgent political imperative. There are no British votes in 'getting out of Northern Ireland', and few to be lost by staying.

The one clear imperative is to continue the business of restoring full and cordial relations between the United Kingdom and the Republic. All solutions start out from and come back to a 'British Isles solution'.

Yet even now this prosaic business of repairing the De Valera breach is constantly bedevilled by Dev-type aspirations. In response to demands for 'political progress' the regular meetings between officials of the two countries have been christened the Anglo-Irish Council.

This pseudo-council is supposed to have three tiers — Ministers, MPs and civil servants — although the fog is so thick that, at one moment last week, Downing Street was putting it about that the meetings of the two Prime Ministers already constituted a third tier — like the bridal couple on the top of a wedding cake.

Adding the Parliamentary middle tier is a tricky business. An effort to arrange separate representation for Northern Ireland cannot help evoking perilous memories of the All-Ireland Council, the feature which undid the Sunningdale Agreement by giving the Loyalists a concrete expression of Irish unity to protest against. And why add legislators to an administrative and advisory structure, unless it is intended at some stage to propose legislation upon which they may advise?

Dr FitzGerald offers in return to make the Republic more attractive by abolishing the clauses in the Irish Constitution which lay claim to the whole island of Ireland. Even if he manages to deliver this, renounc ing the claim to a united Ireland solely in order to unite Ireland is a manoeuvre unlikely to convince the dimmest of Dr Paisley's drummer boys.

Wishful thinking is still equally prevalent among politicians both in Dublin and in London. By concentrating on the less allur ing aspects of Unionism — the bully boys on the Carson trail — both sides manage to ignore the genuine reasons which the Unionists have for wishing to stay British. The greatest of these was and is the secular power of the Roman Catholic Church. Removing its 'special' position from the Irish Constitution is a help, but it does not alter the fact of that power. The difficulty is that British liberal atheists rather admire the brutality of the Roman Church — at a distance. They find something awfully splendid in the way the hierarchy refuses to countenance divorce or Anglican orders or the dreary old Queen.

And as for insisting that the children of a mixed marriage be brought up as Catholics and educated in Catholic schools, well, at least you have to admire the way they stick to their principles.

It is not usually admitted in polite circles, but one of the IRA's best weapons is the decline in anti-Catholic feeling in Great Bri tain. That old prejudice, unpleasant as it was, did give the mainland British a lively sense of the horrors of a social control exercised by an ignorant and bigoted priesthood.

This appreciation has been numbed by a nostalgia for the simplicities of bog life' typified by Harold Macmillan's whimsical sigh, quoted by the Sunday Times: 'Ph Ireland, the only happy country left in Europe.' In vain do Irish writers from O'Casey to William Trevor depict an island of drink-sodden bachelors and bitter, desperate women; the English ruling class continues imperviously to dream of proud, clear-eyed colleens and the sons of Eris cheerfully cutting the turf. Superimposed upon this is an equally rosy vision of the new Ireland, all Mercs and mod cons.

Each slight slackening in the Church's grip on family law is celebrated in Britain as if it meant the end of the Church's control of family life — which is a long way off Yet' Sentimental Englishmen may regret the old Catholic Ireland, but it is a political fact that the Loyalists do not and that they retain the ultimate power to enforce their preference. Which is why impatience Was and is bad politics.

Sometimes you wonder why Mrs That cher bothers with these Anglo-Irish suramits. Either she refuses to report back to the Commons, or she prevaricates on the long term status of Northern Ireland for half an hour. Either way, Loyalist accusations of 3 sell-out eventually force a robust declara tion of Unionism out of her — which Puts her back where she started. This time it was, 'Northern Ireland is part of the Unite,' Kingdom as much as my constituency 15 • Watch out, Finchley.