NO SUCH THING AS A FREE PEACE

Jenny McCartney, this year's T.E. Utley

Memorial Award winner, investigates the modern uses of Unionism

THERE IS an axiom which British politi- cians love to cite when venting their good- humoured exasperation at the mercurial Irish. It is that whenever Gladstone came close to solving the Irish question the Irish kept changing the question. The misfor- tune of Ireland in the 20th century has been of a different kind. It is that on the question of Ulster the British keep chang- ing the answer.

Honour is a word which is rarely heard in political language today. It seems curi- ously outdated, reeking as it does of gauntlets thrown down and duels at dawn. But honour is also about the triumph of principle over expedience and, as such, it has little place in the realpolitik of modern government. British honour is a fiction which is resurrected only when British interests are at stake, most noticeably in time of war. In accordance with this, the Britishness of Ulster has proved infinitely variable.

During the second world war, Belfast became as British as Basingstoke. More so, perhaps, by virtue of being more com- prehensively destroyed in the Blitz. Churchill, having previously failed in his attempt to barter the six counties of Ulster for the use of three Southern Irish ports, directed his praise to the North. While Southern Ireland remained neutral, 'loyal Ulster' alone kept open the sea lanes between Britain and North America. Ulster, as Churchill later wrote, 'stood a faithful sentinel', or, to use the language of the time, acquitted herself with honour.

But honour is a musty, old-fashioned concept, a hangover from a defunct system of alliances, and so it would seem today are the Ulster Unionists. They are represented in the British media by means of the para- phernalia of bowler hats and Union Jacks, die-hard loyalty to the Crown and political intransigence. Their continual harking back to a shared past, to the sacrifices of the Somme and the casualties of the second world war, is something of an embarrass- ment to the British. It inspires a resentful sense of obligation, like the visit of an unwanted relative who once rescued you from the path of a bus.

And their leaders, the creatures of Ulster's political vacuum, are even worse. Ian Paisley and James Molyneaux, the Punch and Judy of Ulster politics, step from another era into the glare of the tele- vision cameras. Paisley attracts media attention, but of the wrong sort; publicity is his constant companion, and almost never his friend. By contrast, the elusive Molyneaux, leader of the majority Unionist Party, must be dragged squinting into the limelight. Rarely can a political leader have said so little on behalf of so many.

It must also be said that Unionism is not a readily exportable creed. It cannot trade on the vision of a romantic Ireland which nationalist mythology has annexed as its own. Its heroes are not the poetic Pearse and fiery Connolly, but the sterner figures of Carson and Craig. Unionist arguments of a separate identity from the rest of Ire- land, and of shared cultural, historical and economic ties with Britain, are too com- plex to meet the needs of a sound-bite society. In the face of vigorous nationalist proselytising from the government of Southern Ireland, the SDLP, Sinn Fein and a powerful Irish-American lobby, where should Unionists look for support in advancing their cause?

Not to Britain. For the true situation is that the British Government has no fur- ther interest in Northern Ireland, and it has tried to tell the Unionists so as politely as possible, without provoking any unnec- essary scenes. With the end of the Cold War, Northern Ireland is no longer of sig- nificant use as a military base. Further- more, the economic subsidy required to keep it going, combined with the mounting cost of IRA attacks on mainland Britain, meant that Ulster was a loss-making proposition. The Joint Declaration of December 1993 spelt out the new reality. The British Government, it said, had 'no selfish strategic or economic interest in Northern Ireland'. By a delicate linguistic shift, Britain embraced the role of honest broker, a disinterested party willing to `facilitate' an all-Ireland solution. The British Government loyally honoured its own lack of interest in Ulster.

With the discovery that Sinn Fein and the British Government shared the same ultimate policy objective of British disen- gagement from Ulster, the 'peace process' could begin. The start of the cease-fire in August 1994 marked the beginning of a Faustian pact between the British Govern- ment and Sinn Fein/IRA. The bargain, in essence, was this. Sinn Fein/IRA agreed to the suspension of violence in return for a series of political concessions from the British Government.

The immediate dividend was, of course, peace. For the people of Northern Ire- land, who have lived with shootings and bombings for 25 years, that is a very big dividend indeed.

Sadly, there is no such thing as a free peace, and the price for pro-Union people in Northern Ireland came in the form of the Framework Document. The docu- ment, although written in prose so tortu- ous as to almost defeat the extraction of meaning, effectively provides for the grad- ual erosion of British sovereignty over Ulster in everything but name. Gerry Adams hailed it as a blueprint 'for one Ire- land and an all-Ireland arrangement', but when Unionists refused to embrace it on grounds that this constituted a threat to the Union they were accused from all sides of trying to spoil the peace process for every- body.

So far, the peace process has been a kind of political tombola, with a superfluity of dream tickets. John Major got to be a statesman, as did John Hume. Gerry Adams got to be a celebrity. David Ervine and Gary McMichael, the oft-cited 'sources close to the loyalist paramilitaries', got extensive airtime and a couple of prawn cocktails with government officials. The main Unionist parties got very little; but all the people of Northern Ireland got a virtu- al suspension of violence. Everybody got something, but some people got more of it than others.

Since the IRA cease-fire and the lifting of the broadcasting ban, Sinn Fein has been courted with extensive media atten- tion and the palliative Framework Docu- ment. Petgr Brooke praised Gerry Adams as a man of peace. President Clinton shook hands with Mr Adams at the White House, and Bianca Jagger, fresh from Sarajevo, indulged her interest in human rights by dining with him at a fund-raising evening for Sinn Fein.

But Faustian bargains have a way of approaching midnight, and tombolas of running out of tickets. Concessions from Sinn Fein are failing to materialise. Not a single kalashnikov or pound of semtex has been surrendered, in contrast to Sir Patrick Mayhew's eager decommissioning of 800 British Army troops. One can almost see the beads of sweat forming on the brows of the British negotiators: 'If Gerry would just play ball!'

The British Government has elevated Sinn Fein, who commanded just 10 per cent of the vote in Northern Ireland, and the spokesmen for the loyalist paramili- taries, who command no votes at all, to the status of major political figures and savants. Rejected by the Catholic and Protestant people of Northern Ireland, the paramilitaries have now achieved centre stage through systematically supplying and withholding terror. It is unlikely that they will freely abandon the only means which have granted them any validity.

Britain may have cause to reflect, howev- er, upon the results of abandoning that peculiar, old-fashioned concept of honour. Ulster is still waiting to see if such a policy can really be in any of our interests.

For this year's T.E. Utley Memorial Awards, entrants were asked to comment on the fol- lowing statement: The question of Ulster is one which profoundly concerns what, in the old-fashioned phrase, is called "the honour and interest of Britain".' Jenny McCartney won the university prize of £2,500 with the essay above, and Anna Hillman the school prize of L1,500.