The left against the IRA

Richard West

Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh Certain reporters on Northern Ireland have been telling us every week for the last 12 years how the latest atrocity means that 'nothing can ever be the same again', that we are now on the brink of outright civil war, police state rule, mass expulsions and bloodbath. Having never been one of the bloodbath theorists, I do think that something of real significance happened in Northern Ireland last week; and something which, though it might seem to forebode only more trouble, in fact may provoke a revival of common sense.

The incident does not sound very exciting. It was the vote by the local Social Democratic and Labour Party not to field a candidate in next week's parliamentary by-election for Fermanagh and South Tyrone. At the previous by-election, four months ago, the SDLP failed to put up a candidate because they were led to believe that this would mean splitting the Catholic republican vote for an acceptable left-wing candidate. At the last moment, the local republicans put up as candidate Robert Sands, one of the IRA convicts on hungerstrike at the Maze prison.

Sands narrowly won the election. Although 3,000 people spoiled their votes, the Catholics ,f County Fermanagh and South Tyrone either approved of the IRA or preferred a terrorist of their own persuasion to Harry West, the Protestant candidate of the official Unionist Party. There was a great deal of outrage in the English press, although anyone could have found from the reference books that this constituency tends to elect a Fenian terrorist or supporter.

When Sands was elected and soon after died on hunger strike, the SDLP leadership said that next time round, they were going to stand on principle. They were going to put up a candidate who believed in nationalism and socialism but only to be attained by parliamentary peaceful methods. This was the aim expressed in public by John Hume, the Europe MP, and the acknowledged non-violent champion of Northern Ireland's Catholic community. Only two weeks ago the executive of the SDLP agreed to put up a candidate in the by-election here, even if this might mean splitting the Catholic vote and enabling a victory for the Unionist candidate; but the members of the constituency party voted by 48 to 44 to reverse that decision. Now the executive, including Hume, have agreed to go along with the wishes of the constituency party.

This funk by the SDLP has various explanations. Some of the members in this constituency probably fear disapproval, even physical violence, from the Provisional IRA. It is not a topic they would discuss except with close friends aiid relations; they certainly would not discuss this fear with an English reporter. One cannot measure the strength of intimidation but one does not need to stay long in Enniskillen, or anywhere in Fermanagh and South Tyrone, to get a sniff of the danger and nastiness that pervade the society.

On the other hand, many SDLP supporters sympathise with the hunger-strikers and do not want to damage the cause of their candidate Owen Carron, a teacher who acted as Robert Sands's agent in April. Even those SDLP members who disapprove of the IRA prisoners in the Maze can comfort themsel with the thought that the fasts and the deaths are the fault of 'intransigence' by the British Government. This is the point continually made by SDLP spokesman. Their genuine worry about the hunger-strikers is mixed with the knowledge that Catholic feeling in general is with the men in the Maze, and that to come out against them would mean political failure.

The loss of nerve on the part of the SDLP might seem like a victory for the terrorists. In the short run, it is. But I believe that the anguished debate on whether to field a candidate expressed a more general doubt concerning old loyalties. There are signs that the left or liberal Catholics in Ireland, both South and North, are waking up to the ghastliness of the IRA.

The three men in Ireland who have most firmly and unequivocally spoken against the IRA are all veterans of the democratic and non-Marxist left. Of these three Conor Cruise O'Brien, the author and quondam politician, is best known in England; indeed his Irish enemies always label him as a 'West Brit' who reneged on Irish loyalties in return for favour in London. One is constantly told that Mr O'Brien changed his position on Northern Ireland; his published writings give this accusation the lie. He is an Irish Nationalist but in the peaceful, parliamentary way that goes back further even than Fenianism and might have triumphed but for the Easter Rising. Indeed Mr O'Brien has come as near as dammit to saying that 1916, the revolution in which the Republic was born, was really a catastrophic aberration.

While Mr O'Brien has conducted the intellectual argument against terrorism, a brave man in Belfast has fought the political battle at local government level. He is Gerry Fitt, the MP for Belfast West since sone years before the present troubles began. He is a Labour man of the type that used to be found in England as well — before the party was taken over by middle-class Trotskyist sociologists. Through all the discouragements of the last 12 years, he has stuck to the old idea that the Labour Party should serve the interests of its natural constituents, the manual workers, regardless of their religious leanings. He is the mortal enemy of the IRA, who have attacked and threatened him constantly over the years; his home in the AntriM Road is a heavily guarded fortress. Only his constant good humour and sense of the ridiculous have kept him going under such nerve-racking strain. Although he was one of the founders of the SDLP, Gerry Fitt left because of its compromised attitude to the IRA. He has come out unequivocally against any kind of political status for terrorists, and any concessions to hungerstrikers. This unwavering attitude lost him votes in a recent local election and may have threatened his parliamentary career; but some people are coming round to his way of thinking.

A third Irishman of the left who has come out unequivocally against the IRA is less well-known in England but greatly respected in Dublin. He is Noel Browne, a medical doctor whose work as Minister of Health in the Fifties involved him in furious battles against the hierarchy of the Church, against whom he still has bitter feelings. Whatever the rights and wrongs of statefunded medical aid, Dr Browne worked wonders in the elimination of TB (from which he himself had suffered) and greatly improved the health of the Irish nation. Although still a TD, or member of Dail, the Irish Parliament, Dr Browne is rather a loner, rather prickly and, so his enemies say, self-righteous. But because of his sticking to principle, Dr Browne has much respect from the sort of people who read the Irish Times. It was in that paper last Saturday (8 August) that Dr Browne published a letter attacking Hume and the SDLP. Their failure to enter a candidate in these last two by-elections here in Fermanagh and South Tyrone has meant, Dr Browne says, the extension of Provo power in Ireland South and North: 'The Provos have already started in the South in Cavan, Monaghan and Louth. There was one in my own constituency, Dublin-Artane. This resulted from Hume's decision prior to the election of the last Provo, Sands in Tyrone/Fermanagh. His decision then, by greatly encouraging the hunger-strike, could be said to have cost Sands and later Doherty [a TD hungerstriker] their lives.

'Another win for the new Provo candidate means more hunger-strikes, death and much more. Hume is one of the men responsible and guilty for those deaths and consequences, with the extension of Provo Policies south of the border while they keep their army intact, killing fellow Irish men and women in the North, mainly because they are Protestant'.

Then Dr Browne goes on to present the inescapable choice between terrorism and Parliamentary politics: 'The 48 members of the SDLP who refused to fight the election against the Provos, were either frightened or simply Pro-Provo, and so are irrelevant. It was Hume's duty to lead the minority of 44, ideally with himself as candidate, in the fight against the Provos in order deliberately to split the Catholic vote, lose the election and elect the Protestant Unionist parliamentarian, who is not a gunman, to the House of Commons'.

At the start of this letter, Dr Browne compared Hume and the SDLP with those who let in the Nazis — 'burning of the Reichstag, the end of parliamentary democracy, the beginning of fascism in Germany and the rest'. It is a just analogy but I would take it further by saying that the Republic of Ireland itself began in much the same way as Nazi Germany. The men of 1916 did not want independence by peaceful means; they wanted what the sinister Pearse called a sacrifice of the blood'. The Easter Rising of 1916 was not expected to bring instant victory but to provide Irish martyrs. The same intention lay behind Hitler's equally futile rising in Munich in 1923. Martyrs and myths were created in Ireland and Germany. The brownshirt thug, Horst Wessel, killed in a beer cellar brawl, gave his name to a song that brought terror to all Europe. The terrorists who at first were reviled soon swept into victory at a parliamentary election: in Ireland in 1918 in Germany in 1933. There are of course many degrees of terrorism. One could not compare even a Man like Pearse with Adolf Hitler. Perhaps Ireland is better compared with Cyprus or Palestine, where terrorist groups such as the Stern Gang and EOKA have come face to face with counter-terrorist groups of Arabs and Turks. The original IRA, back in the Twenties, were foiled in their effort to seize all Ireland by the implacable enmity of the Northern Protestants. They are just as implacable now and they may, as a last resort, start up a counter-terror against the Catholics. Such is the logic of the events begun with that 'sacrifice of the blood' in 1916.

Among the saddest sights in Northern Ireland are TV funerals for the victims of violence. They generally seem to come in pairs, so that while the IRA gunmen are firing their pistols over the latest dead hunger-striker, the Protestants will have gathered to mourn the latest dead RUC man. Northern Ireland TV gives equal prominence to the funerals, which are watched by the afternoon crowds in the pub in almost complete silence.

Here in Enniskillen last week I watched two of the funerals twice, in two different pubs. At the first nobody spoke a word or showed any sign of emotion as first the masked Provos did their sombre pageanty in Belfast, and, later, the widow of a policeman sobbed and howled and had to be helped along the cortege. During this second occasion one of the drinkers remarked only: lasus, but hasn't old Paisley been putting some weight on'. The funerals have been stylised. With the Protestants, it is the widows who howl incoherently to the TV cameras. With the Provos it is the mothers and sisters.

Thanks to the Provos, this town like so many others is full of menace. ' 'What newspaper are you working for?' I was asked by a friendly character in a pub of unmistakably Provo sympathy. 'The Spectator', feeling confident that he had not heard of it, but I was wrong. 'The Spectator? Now isn't that the paper that wrote bad things about Tom O'Fee?' I remembered then that Auberon Waugh's attack on Cardinal Archbishop O'Fee had been much publicised throughout Ireland. 'I'm a great admirer of Bishop Daly of Derry', I said; hoping to turn the conversation away. The man continued: 'How could anyone write nasty things about Tom O'Fee. What did you say your name was?'

It seems very likely that Owen Carron, the candidate of the H-Block hunger-strikers, will hold on to the seat won by the late Robert Sands. But I feel that at long last the IRA are beginning to lose their undeserved sympathy and support from professional people, teachers, university lecturers and even some of the politicians. I think it proper that this opposition should come from men of the left such as O'Brien, Fitt and Browne, and indeed from some of the old left in England. (Michael Foot has always been wholly against the terrorists.) In a very good article on 'Italian Terrorists' in July's Encounter Claire Sterling shows how the Red Brigades and the rest have survived so long because of 'the decent, well-meaning citizens who formed a protective Second Society around them'. She also quotes again from the passage in Dostoievsky's The Possessed where Verkhovensky boasts of the power of his terrorists: `Do you know that, even now, we are terribly strong? We have people other than those who cut throats, set places on fire, go in for classical assassinations, and go around biting people. I have them all at hand already. We have the teacher who makes the children entrusted to his care laugh at their God and their families; we have the lawyer defending the welleducated murderer because he has reached a higher stage of development than his victims; the schoolboys who, to experience a strong sensation, kill a peasant, are also with us; the juries who acquit criminals are all working for us; the prosecutor torn by his anguished fear of not being liberal enough does us a service. Ah, we have so many high government officials with us, and so many literary figures who don't even know it themselves!'