When is a nation not a nation?
TABLE TALK DENIS BROGAN
Mr Gladstone made some mistakes in his life and admitted some of them. But the mistake that he most fully admitted and most deeply re- gretted was the speech he made at Newcastle on 7 October 1862. In this unfortunate utter- ance, the future Grand Old Man declared that Jefferson Davis, among other achievements, had made a nation. Although he admitted his mistake and later did his best to undo it, there was an oddity in the speech that has not been sufficiently noted. For the one thing Jef- ferson Davis could not do, on the theory on which the 'Confederate States of America' were founded, was make a nation, for the Con- federate, government was, so it was asserted, a mere managing committee for the share- holders in a political limited liability com- pany of which the 'sovereign states' were the principal, indeed the only, stockholders. Indeed, most modern American historians be- lieve that poor Jefferson Davis realised in prac- tice that what the Union called the 'War of the Rebellion' could not be fought on the Con- federate theory.
I was reminded of this when reading the account of last week's Biafra debate in the House of Commons. I was also reminded of the dangers of what the Middle Ages called 'rea- lism.' For the orthodox scholastic doctrine was that the classes that they invented and which covered so much of life were real and the scep- tics who denied that this was so were 'nominal- ists' and wicked and misguided men. So when I read of Mr Foley talking of 'the nation of Nigeria' I knew I was listening to a 'realist' in the mediaeval sense of the term. And the mark of mediaeval realism was the ability to believe in classes which might represent no reality in the less ambitious modern sense. But our rulers or, at any rate, the people who are paid for ruling us, are mediaeval 'realists; facts, in the vulgar modern sense, mean nothing to them—which is very fortunate for them, for the facts are against them.
What are the facts? They are being evailed by giving to the word 'Nigeria' (invented, I believe, by Lady Lugard, as the British colonial political creation was invented by her hus- band) the emotional force of ancient, long- established bodies with their traditions and psychological assets or the emerging power of 'nations rightly struggling to be free.' Nigeria is a mere arrangement which might have grown into a real federation if it had stayed at peace. But that is a past hope. Why is it that it is right, indeed a high moral duty, to take sides in a civil war in defence of so vulnerable a structure? The French had their own, more intelligently planned, West African Federation with an appropriately magnificent capital, Dakar (much superior, I am told, to Lagos). It broke down and General de Gaulle had more sense than to try to hold it together by backing either Senegal or the Ivory Coast. Why is it that we made no attempt to pre- serve our greatest achievement, the political and economic unity of India, in 1947? Are we to be partisan now in the convulsions of Paki- stan? 'Biafra,' we are told, is a bogus name for a bogus country. Is it any more bogus a name than Ghana? Is it not less bogus than Nigeria?
We have other examples of former refusals to accept the intolerable upsetting of sacred political forms. Where is the quondam King- dom of Ireland? I note that people now talk and write of Captain O'Neill and his more or less secure hold on his 'country,' meaning that highly artificial creation, 'Northern Ireland.' What does the 'country' mean? Is Northern Ireland a part of Ireland or of the former United Kingdom or of the present United Kingdom, mutilated since 1921? Have we any doubts about how the Irish Free State was created, or Northern Ireland, or indeed the United States of America? Why are the Ibos wrong to attempt to set up for themselves after what was (not only for them) a disillusioning experience in this brand-new political structure called 'Nigeria'?
But are the Ibos serious, are they not vic- tims of their own misguided or criminal leaders and of their own unnatural fears? Maybe: but it seems to me that the Ibos, no doubt with their human faults that recall, in so many ways, those of the Jews—and the Scots—have, much more successfully than Jefferson Davis ever did, created a nation. 'What is a nation?' asked Lord Hugh Cecil, arrogantly, putting the ungrateful Irish in their place. 'A nation,' replied Tim Healy, 'is what 'people will die for. Even the noble lord would not die for the meridian of Greenwich.' The Ibos, foolishly or not, are proving themselves ,a nation. Their 'terrible beauty' has been born.
Against my vulgar realism, the scholastic answers come. Of course, there are non- scholastic answers too. The war is about oil; it is about investments; it is to keep out General de Gaulle; it is to prevent the Rus- sians being the only gainers; so we must back up 'Nigeria.' Of course General Gowon doesn't permit bombing of hospitals and, churches. His Egyptian pilots will, no doubt, be severely rebuked. Where had I read all this before? It recalled the stout stonewalling of that de- fender of empire unity, Hamar Greenwood. History has answered Sir Hamar.
I am told that in addition to wishing away the awkward fact that there are tribes, re- ligions, traditional feuds in 'Nigeria' (as I might, if I were silly enough, wish away the real passions behind the Rev Dr Ian Paisley), there is some bad 'realist' history being peddled by the Foreign Office. 'Look at the American Civil War. It lasted four years and cost hun- dreds of thousands of lives, but the right side won and the wounds were healed.' I might point to George Wallace (or 'black power') to suggest some doubts. But it is more to the -point to notice the terrible differences between the two civil wars. 'The War of the Rebellion' killed men, not women and children. The 'in- famous' army of Sherman plundered and burned on a far less serious scale than armies have been doing in Europe for most of this century, including American armies. I have found it tedious in 'the South' to listen to people lamenting the sufferings of their ances- tors a century ago. Compared to the sufferings of Biafra they were trivial. And the American Civil War was fought between people who had the same language, religion, culture, where there was close kinship between the com- batants at all ranks. It was not, despite southern propaganda, largely fought by foreign mer- cenaries. The fearless Egyptian pilots, who naturally find it easier to bomb market-places than to risk flak, had no American parallel.
I am not an admirer of the dramatic methods of Herr Hochhuth, but here he has a subject after his own heart, where the evidence is not locked up in Zurich but is open on the pages of Hansard. We cannot win in this odious contest. We cannot save our oil, our traders, our discredited diplomats. We shall end, we may already have ended, 'unwept, unhonoured and unsung.' And no belated passing of the buck to the Organisation of African Unity (it- self a scholastically 'realist' organisation) will wash the blood and mud from the lily-white bands of Messrs Wilson and Stewart.
And in Prague, the Czechs may well wonder how genuine is our indignation at the Russian measures to keep down tribal indiscipline.
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