POLITICS
`There are two sides out there, but only one of them's playing cricket'
SIMON HEFFER
There is nothing like an IRA bomb out- rage to excite the pompous prigs of the political establishment. Saturday's attack on the City of London did the trick: 'The terrorists will never win'; 'Business as usual'; 'The Dunkirk spirit'; and, best of all, Sir John Wheeler, one of the Government's most loyal backbenchers, trotting out that `public interest is best served by measured and statesmanlike responses'. Sir John may not have noticed but measured and states- manlike responses have characterised our policy for most of the 24 years since our troops went in to protect Catholics against Protestant extremists. The fruits of this statesmanship are the thousands of corpses in the Province and the dozens on the mainland that this policy has bred.
The Government's Northern Ireland pol- icy is a shambles. It is not the Govern- ment's fault alone. The policy is supported across the Commons, though Labour will not back the annual renewal of the Preven- tion of Terrorism Act. Because IRA terror- ism has been going on for years — one needs to be over 30 to remember life before the present 'troubles' — people have become used to it. This perceived acceptance of the status quo intra bellum seems to allow politicians the luxury of doing nothing, except spouting stiff-upper- lip rhetoric. Meanwhile the corpses, includ- ing those of small children, pile up.
There is a typically British reluctance to be blunt about how to address the problem. The choice is simple. Either we liquidate the terrorists or we talk to them. Both ideas disgust most 'civilised' people, who would rather the IRA kept on murdering babies. For years we have said we will defeat ter- rorism; but when? As Mr David Mellor put it on Sunday (and, predictably, he was denounced for it): 'Why are more of these people not caught? And when caught, why is it so difficult to convict them?'
I have instinctive sympathy for the views of my colleague Mr Charles Moore who, like me, learned much of his philosophy on this question from the late T.E. Utley. Mr Moore has often written, here and else- where, that the terrorists might just give up if Britain showed her determination to gov- ern Northern Ireland in the way she gov- erns Kent. The Anglo-Irish Agreement, though, put paid to that. The Agreement allowed the Irish Republic a say in the gov- ernance of the Six Counties, and therefore gave the IRA cause to believe they were winning. Moreover, the level of intergov- ernmental co-operation we have secured stretches only to terrorists being released on bail by Irish courts to go fishing.
But even if the Agreement were repudi- ated, that would not be enough. The Utley/Moore school has always been keen on internment, though that must be prac- tised on both sides of the border and in Britain if it is to be effective. Britain must also decide whether it is serious about keeping terrorists out. This would mean defying Brussels and having strict immigra- tion controls not just between Eire and the United Kingdom, but between the Province and Britain. Measures such as these imme- diately raise a cry of 'civil liberties'. It is an objection that only applies.if you believe we are not fighting a war with the IRA. Once you accept we are fighting one the rules change, and civil liberties operate as they did between 1939 and 1945. Internment, censorship, identity cards and shooting to kill all become possible; not to mention prisoner of war camps and the Geneva con- vention.
The Rule of Law, which has proved pret- ty useless since 1969, is also suspended. Every soldier and policeman I have met who has served in Ulster claims the security forces know who is doing what, and where. Had the IRA been Germans, and had this been 1943, commandos would have gone into enemy territory and taken no prison- ers. 'But you can't do that,' a minister said to me recently. 'The Americans wouldn't stand for it.' He was being serious, too.
Some advocate capital punishment for terrorists. It worked in squashing the 1939 offensive. It also worked in the Free State when the Irish government told its rebels to stop their campaign, or it would shoot one rebel prisoner a day until surrender came. After more than two months, the rebels gave up. But occasional capital punishment today probably would create martyrs, and the trials would be turned into propaganda exercises. Since they call themselves an army, let them die soldiers' deaths, on `active service'.
This might just dampen their enthusiasm. The IRA are not known for their bravery; people who blow up children in shopping parades hardly qualify for the Victoria Cross. If the IRA really wanted to make a point to the Government, one of its brave volunteers would crash a light aircraft packed with semtex on the House of Com- mons during Prime Minister's Questions. But they do not crave the death they so readily inflict on others. Declaring actual, not rhetorical, war on terrorists and fight- ing to the death might sap their resolve.
But the Government will not do this. It has admitted defeat already by not making the usual statement in the Commons last Monday on the outrage in the City. Offi- cials claimed no statement was made because it would have given more publicity to the terrorists. The real reason was that, with this bankruptcy of policy, there is nothing left to say. The Government will continue to play by the laws of cricket, and the corpses will continue to pile up.
If there is to be no move to a war footing, then the Government should be honest and admit that the IRA has won. It should invite its high command to talks, as Lloyd George did with Sinn Fein when he realised he could not subjugate Catholic Ireland. A price could be negotiated for a ceasefire. It would be a grave humiliation, but then this Government is used to that. It would be better than this pretence that there is a 'diplomatic solution', that by keeping the upper lip stiff and paying trib- ute to the newly mangled corpses of the innocent some great moral force will carry the forces of democracy to victory. It won't.
This solution might be secretly attractive to the Government. In their conduct of Northern Ireland policy they have shown no enthusiasm for a continued presence in the Province. Sir Patrick Mayhew, the Sec- retary of State, has said we will stay only as long as we are wanted. The predominantly nationalist Catholic population is increas- ing faster than the Protestant, and will be in a majority within perhaps 20 years. That is a shorter time than the present troubles have lasted. The Protestants, no doubt, would then initiate Beirut-style carnage. Mr Major, if still Prime Minister, could even invite his EEC partners to send one of their celebrated peace-keeping forces to Belfast to sort matters out.
Rhetoric having failed, the honest choice is between a bloodbath now and a blood- bath later. If the Government could only face up to that, it would be a start. The cross-party agreement to do nothing except spectate on death is not only incredible, but also toys with too many innocent lives.
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