Ireland
MR. 11., .s. LEK'S hint that the Government
might be willing to consider imposing economic sanctions on the Republic of Ireland, if the Republic does not do more to stop Border raids. may have been only another of his cele- brated gaffes. Or he may have been misreported --to judge from his reference to the subject in the Commons this week this seems likely to be the explanation. But there are possibly people in Britain (as there certainly arc in Northern Ire- land) who imagine that such retaliation would he justified. So it is worth pointing out that the main strength of the Republican movement in Ireland today—and for the past twenty years— has lain North. not South, of the Border.
One reason for this, which the Northern Ireland Government is naturally reluctant to admit, is that the Border was unfairly drawn in the first instance: the Irish Nationalists of Fermanagh, Tyrone and other parts of Ulster were excluded from the Free State. and are still excluded from
the Republic. The great majority of them, as the last election results showed, have no sympathy with the Republicans; and even in the South sup- port for the traditional 'physical force' ideal is now negligible. But as long as the Border runs where it runs, the difficulty of keeping the peace in those areas will remain. If the Northern Ireland Government is really anxious to end this in strife, therefore, it should begin to think in terms of some accommodation with the Republic. Politicians on both sides of the Dail now accept the need for compromise: and there is no reason why an agreement should not eventually be reached, given some flexibility on both sides, which would remove the remaining causes of friction—rendering the Republicans as harmless as the latter-day Jacobites.
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